What is design ?

I another topic I had a brief discussion that made me
question my assumptions about the common meaning ascribed to
the word 'Design'.What does it mean to be 'Designed', and what act is 'to design' ?It was suggested that repeating patterns might indicate
design, but that would make a snowflake or crystal a designed
object (IDer's probably go 'Well it is!!').What does design mean to those who debate here ?

I'm bumping this, because I feel the lack of responses
from supporters of ID on what IS design suggests that
they don't actualy know.If you can't tell if something is designed, you have
no foundation for ID (except faith).

Bumping this really ... what is intelligent design
without a set of design criteria ?I can see how signs of manufacture could indicate
design (tool marks etc.), but ID seems to make
a lot of references to complexity, when complexity and
design are unrelated.Saying that for something to be designed it must be specified,
sounds like saying for something to be designed it must be
designed.

Hello ...any IDer's out there ?If you claim that life shows design, tell me what design
is.If you cannot then there is no scientific foundation for
ID.

So are you saying that the 'premature' stop codons were
added by mutation after the gene was designed an implemented
in man and in chimps ?

The DNA sequences presented currently indicate that the
current sequence of DNA was either::1) Very poorly designed with lots of mistakes (God didn't
invent the waterfall model yet or something )2) The sequence as it stands was not designed.If (a) God introduced the errors as his Curse for mankind, does that
mean that repairing the mistakes would make us all immortal?Or (b) is it more likely that necessary functional proteins would be
unavailable?If (a) is true then we can't have irreducibly complex chemical
pathways, since jigging them doesn't get rid of function.If {b} is true, God didn't do it.If the changes occurred through mutation after the inception
of the design then there can be no argument against beneficial
mutations.