If I may comment on a few assumptions;

What does "intelligent design" logically mean? That there is some cosmic information processing system?

Logically a spiritual absolute would be the essence of sentience, from which we rise, not an ideal of wisdom and judgement, from which we fell. The fact we are aware, than the myriad details of which we are aware.

The presumption of this all-knowing father figure is a social construct to educate a constantly regenerating population. The all-seeing eye to keep people in line.

The real intellectual crime is not recognizing the fallacy of confusing the ideal, which is aspirational, with the absolute, which is elemental.

That all the movements seeking to replace montheism and its political expression, monarchy, also tend to assert their ideals as beyond debate shows how the long shadow of this primal focus on the ideal, irrespective of context, still controls society.

Yet the fact remains that we are aware, as well as are the numerous other life forms. It seems to be an assumption of some that recursive thought/reflection is the real source of consciousness. Thus unexamined lives and other fauna are not conscious by decree. Is the fact a fly is so much faster than the hand trying to swat it evidence for or against consciousess, or simply that it doesn't engage this consciousness in much recursive second guessing?

I think if we accept this essence as something bubbling up through life and driving it, rather than some external element dictating to it, it might not only change some religious beliefs, but scientific ones as well.

Another topic I frequently try to take issue with is time.

That as we are mobile organisms, it logically necessitates this sequential process of perception and decision making we experience as thought, in order to navigate our environment. Then, as humanity, we learned to communicate fairly complex descriptions of our journeys and the lessons learned.

Consequently we experience time as the point of the present, moving past to future. The reality though, is that change turns future to past. Potential, actual, residual. Tomorrow becomes yesterday, because the earth turns.

There can be no literal dimension of time, because the past is consumed by the present, to inform and drive it. Causality and conservation of energy. Cause becomes effect.

Energy is "conserved," because it is the present. Its changing form is time.

Also temperature, pressure, color, sound. Frequencies and amplitudes.

So the energy, as process, goes past to future, while the patterns generated go future to past.

Think of a wave; The energy is what drives it, while the forms we perceive, the fluctuations and undualtions, rise and fall, come and go, as the energy goes onto further forms.

Consider a factory, where the product goes start to finish, future to past, while the production line goes the other way, consuming material and expelling product, prior to succeeding, past to future.

As lives go birth to death, while life moves onto the next generation, shedding the old.

Consider as well that consciousness also goes past to future, while the patterns it manifests, perceptions, emotions, thoughts, come and go, future to past.

Which suggests we might think of consciousness as an energy.

Think how this applies to the idea of determinism. That as cause inevitably leads to effect, the entire course of history must be laid out in some cosmic realm.

Yet if only the present is real, than the calculations determining what happens can only occur within the present, so the future is not calculated and cannot be determined, until it is.

Then consider what is causal? Is it the patterns, or the energy? Remembering that consciousness functions as an energy. Is it any wonder we seem to act before we think, much like the fly?

I will leave it at this, just making the point that even the sciences haven't explored the basic logic very thoroughly. Let alone where it all comes from.