Intelligent Design and Intelligent Self-Designer

These days, the phrase 'intelligent design' is best-known as a Creationist counter-argument to Darwinism, the fundamental premise of which is that the patterns evinced by Nature are better ascribed to a deity than to a random process.  The argument is also similarly applicable to Big-Bang Theory, though it seems to appear less in that context.  But while it is now associated with Creationism, a version of it has a long history, preceding its emergence in Medieval Theology as one of the 'proofs of the existence of God', advanced by Aquinas, in particular.  Newton, too, subscribes to the argument, but because his Physics overshadows his Theological writings, his continuation of that tradition has been relatively less recognized.  Now, Kant's critique would seem conclusive.  Nevertheless, the argument has survived its apparently more formidable peers that are included in Kant's critique--the Ontological Argument and the Cosmological Argument.  In any case, Spinoza's doctrine implicitly refutes its Medieval version and its descendants.  As has been previously discussed, his attribution of Thought to Nature is equivalent to the attribution to Nature of Intelligent Design.  But implicit in his doctrine is that the inference from Intelligent Design to transcendent Intelligent Designer is fallacious, i. e. begs the question.  For, an inference to immanent Intelligent Designer is also possible.  In other words, his affirmation of the principle that Nature is an Intelligent Self-Designer is another example of his Pantheism/Monist Naturalism undercutting the Dualism that continues to prevail in both Theology and Philosophy.