The idea of intelligent design manifest in ways that superseded the limitations of the genetic blueprint model of understanding of how the spirit of life was "created"/"evolved". There are many semantical hangups around the concept of "intelligent design", stemming from the indoctrination of most western science into a dogmatical mechanistic Universal misconception, that "intelligence has be created", when it is more feasible that the intelligent structuring of the genetic molecule organically evolved from its own inner nature......life beginning as primitive strands of self organizing, free associating RNA, before forming itself into the increasingly complex DNA superstructures which eventually lead to the genesis of self aware multicellular organisms.
There is simply no need for the myth of a designer/creator when viewing life as a sui generis phenomenon, where the fundamental energy of the cosmos crystallizes itself within the living genetic matrix. Creating the complexities found within all of lifes forms through a process of ever evolving feedback mechanisms, which attain higher degrees of intelligence through the succession of transgenerational reproductive synthesis.
Its also very misleading to view all the living organisms as separate entities, whose existence can be entirely explained by the mainstream modes of darwinian evolution. The idea of "natural selection" in which the divergent strains of DNA, we call separate species, are all randomly mutating, competing and evolving as separate and autonomous"creatures", is an archaic and oversimplified theory which needs to be seriously revised if biological scientific understanding is to progress to its next stage of evolution.
The question shouldn't be a matter of "if life has within it an element of intelligent design?", instead one should ask exactly when did the building blocks first become alive and once alive when it they begin to manifest intelligence? There must of been a transition from ignorant and Random connections between proto Genes within the primordial soup, to the emergence of intelligently designed micro RNA managed epigenetic adaptations.
Perhaps there are yet to be discovered biofeedback mechanisms which direct the actions of epigenetic adaptation, in ways still not understood. Our modern instruments are not sophisticated enough, nor our top researchers endowed enough with the visionary intelligence needed to formally discover these deeper connections, behind what drives the creative genesis of life.
The mainstream genetic model is a primitive stick figurine representation, of forces beyond comprehension. There are theoretical assumptions as to how exactly the blue print of life was originally drafted....the mechanistic tic tock view seems to prevail in much of academia...synthesised proteins regulated by a clockwork, endless junk gene jargon. Much of what is taught in the universities regarding biology is fascinating...the cellular models full of organelles, the micro machines transporting proteins to and fro...yet behind all the interesting forms and formula taught to the children at school, the origin of the living creation remains elusive.
The idea of sudden planetary level genetic shifts, isn't so far fetched once it is realized how interconnected everything is... periods of hyper-speciation, collective epigenetic mutation, evolutionary quickening have always occurred and will continue to occur. To what degree these events shape life on earth is not certain, and much of the evidence is not accessible to our instruments and so can only be speculated upon.
Earth life has undergone inumerable wave of mutilation events....triggered by innumerable factors....over innumerable ages. Each epic event encounter leaving indelible marks upon the genetic codes of the mutated, mutilated, and adaptive. In the aftermath of each generations apocalypse, life's lessons are learned....then burned and buried into genes, passed to the next generation. Somewhere out of dark and obscure origin the freedom of choice is formed, in the binary decisions "to be latent?" or "to be active". The primordial building blocks that once seemed merely mindless and randomly self replicating automata, had awoken into intelligently reactive self aware creators of their own destiny.
These feedback Mechanisms were developed on the cutting edge between life and death, as it moved through thriving to dieng cycles.....at some point the accumulation of beneficial mutation reached a critical mass, becoming intelligently capable of perceiving environmental demands and proactively modulating the genetic code in a kind of educated guess as to what the most beneficial mutation may be. The genes of the most successful of these early attempts were shared by survivors in viral fashion from form to form, infecting the future generation with a greater will and innate capacity to survive. This spirit, once formatted; replicated and transfromed itself into the whole of the Gaian matrix.
Its important to note that this capacity for intelligent design which directs the course of evolution is in no ways absolute...as is above so is below.....The intelligence of the Genetic code can be related in some ways to the intelligence of the humans it created.... much in the same way our theories of how the universe works are in many ways based on "educated guesses", the way genes are modified through biofeedback guided epigenetic adaptation, is based upon educated guesses which draw upon genetically embedded latent lessons of what worked in the past. Sometimes these guesses are wrong and the environment changes unexpectedly....or else there is some glitch in the basic program that inhibits optimal adaptation from occuring...in such cases of failure to properly adapt, natural selection is used to eliminate the non viable experiments. Though natural selection does play a key role in the process of evolution, its accompanying theory of mutation being entirely random is a baseless assumption.
Just as human experimentations have basic theories and hypotheses behind them, it is possible that these mutations are not totally random and are under the creative effort of an undiscovered intelligence. Also, just as we can never fully predict the outcome of our own intelligently designed experimentations, neither could the aspirations of our genetic forbearers ever predict the nature of the progeny their efforts produced....and just as the lower forms are entirely unaware of the creative intelligence of the higher forms, perhaps there is an even greater intelligence at the superorganism level that is way beyond our own awareness....if such a superintelligence did exist it may not even be able to perceive of us on a human level, much in the same way from our humanly jaded perspective, we could never perceive the true nature of the awareness of the lower forms.(as is below so is above, ad infinitum)