The ground of all being....

I've noticed that Intelligent Design tends to be linked to Deism, not Theism. It comports with Theism and could be reformed but often it leads to the view that God set the universe up to run like clockwork somehow and then left. This is based on a mechanistic view of cause and effect which extends into the past. Tick tock! But it's interesting to note that a study of cause and effect leads to the same type of philosophical questions here and now, not events in the distant past created by a distant God. For example, the fact that you're reading this sits on chains of cause and effect as your eyes see, your optical nerve sends signals to the brain, certain brain events are taking place, the brain is composed of the same fields of energy and matter and so on as everything else, etc. We know that things are linked in causal patterns, yet they cannot extend infinitely so what is it that is at their end? Aristotle would answer that instead of an infinite regress there must be an infinite Being, an unmoved Mover or an unchanged Changer. Christian philosophers like Aquinas would go on to point out that this is God and go on to derive many conclusions about God such as omniscience.