THE ARGUMENT FROM INTELLIGENT DESIGN - JUST ANOTHER "GOD OF THE GAPS" REASONING?

Some Christian apologists and theologians claim that the order in the universe is evidence of an intelligent designer—which, of course, is their very specific Christian God. But could this reasoning amount to just another 'God of the gaps' argument? I have one reason to think so.

Christians, including Jesus, believe(d) that disorder in the world (sickness, for example) is as a result of an intelligent mischief maker—the devil or demons. This is a belief that is fundamental to teachings about the divinity of Jesus and the potency of the Christian faith and therefore is no fringe theory. For example, the Bible tells of Jesus speaking about a woman who had what seems to fit the description of a hunch back as having been bound by Satan for 18 years (Luke 13:16).

However, we now know the pathology of most sicknesses. Science has revealed how they work, and it is crystal clear that there is no spiritual input in any pathogenic disease we have studied thus far. There is no evidence of any intelligent mischief maker behind diseases. And in cases where pathology is not fully known, there has never been any justifiable indication that there could be an intelligent mischief maker behind them. 

This tells us that it is possible to firmly but wrongly assert that there was a form of  'intelligence' behind an apparent natural phenomenon, as the Bible demonstrably does on the specific matter of diseases.

From this, I surmise that the idea that order in the universe is evidence of an intelligent designer could be just another 'God of the gaps' reasoning, not much different than the reasoning that disorder in the human body is evidence of an intelligent mischief maker. In the one case, disorder is perceived as the action of a form of intelligence; in the other, order is perceived as a form of intelligence. 

The link here is that both cases assert that there is intelligence at work in the universe to cause either order or disorder. But as science has shown us over and over again that disorder in the universe, specifically in the case of human diseases, is not due to any intelligence even though humans (including Jesus) firmly believed that this was the case, there is a good inductive reason to question any claim of intelligence being the origin of the universe's sustained order. 

Humans reasoned that intelligence caused disorder in the human body because they did not know what the real cause was. The intelligent mischief maker was put into that gap in knowledge and offered a psychologically satisfactory explanation for what they could not comprehend. Is it not apparent that the same motive undergirds the reasoning that order in the universe is due to an intelligent designer? It seems so to me.