Can't ID be tested AT ALL?

No, I'm not trying to be that mathematical about it. It's more like a detective surveying a crime scene and talking about possible motives. I'm not defining ordered as /= random. Perhaps I should use the word 'purposeful'. Life seems to be purposeful. You will argue that is a squishy sort of term, but if we are to explore the idea of an ID we have to, as best as we can, adopt that assumption and see if it fits the evidence. No, I don't think so. A design can use chaos where relevant. Watch the floor of the NYSE for instance: It operates under certain rules, but each individual trade is not governed by the central authority, and so trading fits no simple pattern. No, zip file compression, like 'send to compressed (zipped) folder' under Windows? Perhaps a better illustration would be lossy compression, like MP3. It's been found that certain sounds can be modeled quite compactly by spec'ing frequency and amplitude plus 'noise'. The hiss that accompanies certain consonants or the crash of a cymbal are two examples. So you don't code the entire waveform, just say 'give me some noise within this envelope'. So MP3 uses randomness in it's design, along with more direct encoding. We look at the compact encoding of MP3 as a sign of brilliance, not evidence that it wasn't designed. Well, then, you can use your brain, but not speculate on how it came to be, beyond its purely physical ancestry. To use your brain is to make enormous assumptions about its relevance to the external world. Those who wish to speculate on the genesis or even meaning of the mind must examine those assumptions. If I may be able to bring him up again, C.S. Lewis describes having this same emotion. To put it as succinctly as I can think to do, if there is a creator he is of greater complexity and depth than the natural world. The creator is the random number generator, without him you are limiting yourself to a deterministic world. To the extent you don't think nature is deterministic you are a mystic like me. There are a whole bunch of people who claim just that. Did you investigate or just discard them out of hand? I'm going to be accused of ascribing 'base motives' again, but if you are truly just an advanced animal, nothing is more likely than that there are all sorts of things about which you have no concept whatsoever. I bet that beautiful dog of yours has never wondered how the universe came to be.

You don't actually mean that, of course, because things like creation are pretty measurable causal effects of God. Bless you, my son, I'm so glad somebody else sees that. Sorry, I'm no doubt diminishing your credibility by agreeing with you. I'm a step back from you: I'm not a scientist, even. I have no need or desire to categorize reality, I just follow the evidence where it leads.

I don't know how to respond to things like this without being insulting. 'as certain as scientific certainty' can be? That's perfectly absurd to me. As certain as say, white light being composed of many colors, which I can test with my own prizm? You were advising some of the others about how their stubborness is viewed by THE OTHER SIDE, but this is just another example: The unwillingness of you guys to be honest about the level of evidence for evolution. We on the other side are frustrated by the inability to even have a rational conversation about this subject. And by the way, if you were open minded you'd realize that ID'ers might be complete morons and still be right in their basic premise. As far as we know, scientific evidence is not influenced by the intelligence of the observer. Again, you start dancing like the rest. You said "the day we can measure..." and I merely pointed out that measuring the effects of ['the hypothesized', does that help?] God is not the problem. Again, this is more a criticism of what you call science than anything. Science has nothing to say to one of the most interesting questions man has ever dealt with? What the hell good is it then? To me this is no different than saying consciousness, or time, is not a scientific issue because we can't as yet define it.

Yup, I guess that pretty much sums it up for you, doesn't it? You just keep running down your mobius strip logic.
I think I'm done here.