What is intelligence ?

A Collection of Definitions of Intelligence

Intelligent design is “the deliberate choice of a conscious, intelligent agent or person to affect a particular outcome, end, or objective.”

According to Wikipedia, intelligence can be defined as:
to comprehend or perceive, the capacity for logic, understanding, self-awareness, learning, emotional knowledge, reasoning, planning, creativity, critical thinking, and problem-solving. More generally, it can be described as the ability to perceive or infer information and to retain it as knowledge to be applied towards adaptive behaviors within an environment or context.

1. “The ability to use memory, knowledge, experience, understanding, reasoning,
imagination and judgment in order to solve problems and adapt
to new situations.” AllWords Dictionary, 2006

2. “The capacity to acquire and apply knowledge.” The American Heritage
Dictionary, fourth edition, 2000

3. “Individuals differ from one another in their ability to understand complex
ideas, to adapt effectively to the environment, to learn from experience,
to engage in various forms of reasoning, to overcome obstacles by taking
thought.” American Psychological Association [28]

4. “The ability to learn, understand and make judgments or have opinions
that are based on reason” Cambridge Advance Learner’s Dictionary, 2006

5. “Intelligence is a very general mental capability that, among other things,
involves the ability to reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend
complex ideas, learn quickly and learn from experience.” Common
statement with 52 expert signatories [13]

6. “The ability to learn facts and skills and apply them, especially when this
ability is highly developed.” Encarta World English Dictionary, 2006

7. “. . . ability to adapt effectively to the environment, either by making a
change in oneself or by changing the environment or finding a new one
. . . intelligence is not a single mental process, but rather a combination of
many mental processes directed toward effective adaptation to the environment.”
Encyclopedia Britannica, 2006

8. “the general mental ability involved in calculating, reasoning, perceiving
relationships and analogies, learning quickly, storing and retrieving information,
using language fluently, classifying, generalizing, and adjusting to
new situations.” Columbia Encyclopedia, sixth edition, 2006

9. “Capacity for learning, reasoning, understanding, and similar forms of
mental activity; aptitude in grasping truths, relationships, facts, meanings,
etc.” Random House Unabridged Dictionary, 2006

http://www.vetta.org/documents/A-Collection-of-Definitions-of-Intelligence.pdf

Imagine...

you were invited to go to a martial art fight and had the opportunity to bet on the fight, and if you won, become one of the wealthiest persons imaginable. Gaining more money than the ten richest men on earth together. Richer than the Rothschilds. You had two options to chose, two fighters, being:

Option one: The best, most capable, best trained, best-equipped fight warrior ever seen:
fully armored extraordinarily life-long trained professional warrior prepared for any fight,  applying advanced and developed fighting skills and tactics, highly capable, planning how to fight by studying and understanding his opponent, thoughtful, knowledgeable, experienced, using foreplanning and judgment of how to perform the fight, reasons and thinks how to apply complex fight techniques, observing and perceiving his surrounding, and adapting and adjusting effectively to the conditions of the fight, calculating, applying stored information of previous experience.

Option two:
you have a warrior, which just appears like a warrior, but is, in reality, a mindless, brainless, blind, earless lifeless bot, with no sensory perception at all, just standing there like a show doll in the vitrine.

Any sane person would obviously bet on option one, the capable warrior, which, in an instant, would shred the bot into peace and not leaving other than snippets of peace on the ground.

Theists are those that opt to choose in a debate the capable warrior. Atheists, option two, the mindless bot. It's OBVIOUS when armored with good arms, theists win an intellectual fight. The arms are knowledge in philosophy, theology, and science.

God is comparable with the capable warrior.

An intelligent designer can create:

- an object in nature very similar to human-made things
- something made based on mathematical principles
- systems and networks functioning based on logic gates
- something purposefully made for specific goals
- specified complexity, the instructional blueprint or a codified message  
- irreducible complex and interdependent systems or artifacts composed of several interlocked, well-matched parts contributing to a higher end of a complex system that would be useful only in the completion of that much larger system.
- order or orderly patterns
- hierarchically arranged systems of parts
- intelligence can create artifacts which use might be employed in different systems ( a wheel is used in cars and airplanes )
- Fine-tuning

No agent at all, that is:

- fortuitous accidents
- spontaneous self-organization
- unguided stochastic coincidence
- events without external direction
- reactions influenced by environmental parameters

can not.

An Intelligent Designer can climb mount unsurmountable, that is:

- trigger the Big bang, and create a finely tuned and adjusted universe
- invent mathematical laws which enforce how matter behaves  
- finely tune on a razor's edge the conditions to make stars, essential for life, which is a chance of one in 10^209 ( a vanishingly small number )  Chance practically zero.
- create the complex building blocks of life
- select the four nucleobases, and the 20 amino acids, amongst hundreds extant on the early earth.
- create the extremely complex molecular machinery, and chemical factory, producing the basic building blocks of life.
- create energy in the form of ATP
- codified instructional complex information, stored in a minimal genome of 500 thousand nucleotides.
- set up a minimal proteome to have a functional cell with 438 proteins. Chance to get those randomly is 1 in 10^350.000
- create cells that are interdependent and irreducible complex ( a minimal genome, proteome, and metabolome size are required to give life a first go ).
- create millions of different lifeforms, different body architectures, and forms, based on preprogrammed instructional complex INFORMATION encoded in various genetic and epigenetic languages and communication by various signaling codes through various signaling networks. That brings us to the origin of an intelligent designer.
- create conscience and personality
- create and enforce in our hearts objective moral values
- create humans that seek for meaning and truth

No agent, can with high certainty, most probably, not.

It is obvious, that the theist is on the winning side. And, provided with a good education, will win every debate with atheists in the sense of most likely being on the side of the worldview which is true. And his winning price cannot be bought with all wealth existing on earth: Eternal life in the presence of the triune loving, just, graceful, forgiving, good, immensely powerful creator.

What is your choice? In which team do you want to play?