In his book Animal Algorithms, Eric Cassell describes the amazing behavior of what are perhaps the most astonishing creatures on the planet - ants.
Somehow, in a brain so tiny that it's almost invisible to the naked eye, ants store the information that allows them, among other things, to farm, engage in warfare, practice slavery, exploit division of labor, build consensus, form castes, construct cities and architecture and use trigonometry, polarized light, and chemical tracks to navigate as well as employ a variety of chemicals (pheromones) to send and receive communications.
These behaviors require software algorithms whose origins are simply inexplicable in terms of unguided Darwinian processes like genetic mutation, natural selection and genetic drift.
Below are a couple of videos that describe the incredible abilities of one species of ants called weaver ants. As you watch keep in mind that none of these behaviors is learned, they're all innate, and each one requires a separate suite of genes and algorithms. Where did the information necessary to do all this come from?
What's especially astonishing is that these tiny creatures know instinctively to carry larvae to the leaves and to draw the silk from the larvae to sew the leaves together.
One argument against intelligent design is that it's not a scientific hypothesis, presumably since it posits a designer that's not subject to scientific scrutiny. Even so, consider this disjunctive proposition:
Either the behavior of weaver ants and other social insects is explicable in terms of blind, purposeless processes acting by chance in a coordinated fashion to produce the physiology and behavior seen in these videos, or the physiology and behavior are the result of intentional, purposeful and intelligent engineering.
If this proposition covers all the live options, and if the first disjunct is as astronomically improbable as Cassell's book makes it seem, then the second disjunct is most likely to be true. In other words, it's more probable that the physiology and behavior of ants is the product of intentional engineering than that it's the product of blind, purposeless processes.
If one doubts this conclusion one really should read Animal Algorithms.
