“we don’t know the identity of the villagers but we do know that there were villagers”
Exactly, I’m glad to see you affirm this principle of design inference and agree with ID theorists. See, there is no trick, you understand the argument correctly. Whether you like the implications of the argument is another matter, but that has no bearing on the rigor of the argument itself.

“It was mathematically proven…”
Excuse me, are you just blowing smoke here? I checked the paper you referenced, there are no mathmatical proofs in the paper at all. Here’s an exerpt you were likely refering to:

“…at least thousands of mutations must have taken place. Each new mutant in turn must have derived its survival value from the effect which it produced upon the “reaction system” that had been brought into being by the many previously formed factors in cooperation; thus a complicated machine was gradually built up whose effective working was dependent upon the interlocking action of very numerous elementary parts or factors”

I quote in length because it beautifully illustrates how Darwinists flow so easily from the Darwinian imperitive (“thousands of mutations *must* have taken place…” “…each new mutant *must* have derived its survival value…”) to the evidential indicative (“…thus a complicated machine *was* gradually built up…”). Gosh, if we’re allowed to just assert “it *must* have happened this way (assuming evolution) therefore it did happen this way”. Please tell me you see the circular reasoning in this!?
Next time read and understand before regurgitating TalkOrigins material…

So back to my initial and only point: there are only two scenarios for the origins of life and its biologically encoded information: it is either 1) intelligently caused or 2) a product of unguided, unintelligent processes. Do you agree with these options or is it a false dichotomy, and if a false dichotomy, please share other options. Cheers.

The Intelligent Design proponents, on the other hand, use some mathematical sleight-of-hand and then throw up their hands in helpless mystification. I’ve mentioned before that the mathematical “analysis” used by William Dembski is little more than a trick. Real mathematicians are underwhelmed by his arguments. It was mathematically proven in 1918 (that is not a typo, 90 years ago) by Muller that evolution will produce the appearance of irreucible complexity through development and later alteration of complex systems. By contrast, Behe just adds up the odds for each step and assumes they all happen at once. My brother used to prove to pretty girls that, given this and that little fact about them, they were vanishingly unlikely. Truth is sometimes stranger than fiction. What are the odds that a presidential hopeful would pick racehorse Eight Belles as her favorite and compare herself to the horse, which would then break down on the race track and have to be destroyed? But it happened.

And Behe even gets his science wrong. He claims that an intraflagellar transport is always necessary for building flagella when his poster child for the irreduciblly complex flagellum, the malaria parasite, doesn’t have one!

His examples, one by one, are being refuted. Horseshop crabs have one blood-clotting step. Lizards have, I believe, two. Our four-step system is obviously not irreducible.

But what’s their mechanism? Mathematically it’s unlikely, especially if we assume it all happens it once, which no one (but creationists) ever said it did. An unnatural agent performing an unspecified supernatural act? That’s not science.

“If there’s an Intelligent Designer, then you have to explain how he/she/it/they evolved or who designed him/her/it/them.”
Your mistaken here on two counts. First, it is not necessary to know the identity of the designer in order to make a proper inference that something is indeed designed (SETI and archaeology prove this). Otherwise you would necessitate an infinite regress of causality for science to proceed which is absurd and thus untennable. Secondly, the intelligence that most ID theorists would posit would be a necessary being by definition and thus it would be a category mistake to ascribe contingent properties (such as “designed” or “evolved”) to it. Cheers.

The underlying scientific assumption of the time was Lamarkian: that use of disuse of limbs or organs was inherited by offspring. Darwin had no need to come up with an explanation for change that didn’t involve God. The challenge was to break out of thinkin change would occur only within “kinds.”

If there’s an Intelligent Designer, then you have to explain how he/she/it/they evolved or who designed him/her/it/them.

Once again, religious beliefs have no place in scientific experiments.