Public Forum, William Dembski, "Intelligent Design: Making the Task of Theodicy Impossible?"
According to Edward Oakes, intelligent design makes the task of theodicy impossible. As he sees it, intelligent design is committed to an interventionist account of divine action in which God periodically has to nudge things along when things cannot quite get along by themselves. This, of course, raises the question why God does not intervene to prevent evils before they take root. Oakes is not alone in this concern. Howard Van Till refers to intelligent design as punctuated naturalism: nature does just fine most of the time, but then needs to be punctuated with divine interventions. Kenneth Miller regards intelligent design as progressive creationism by another name. Edward Oakes memorably characterizes intelligent design as "deism under a stroboscope."