When does design become intelligent? (AS OF 8/2/10 - CLOSING COMMENTS ONLY)

Crashfrog writes:We cannot infer any notion of a designer just from the paper clip.

Bluejay writes:This is very unhelpful. As presented in the OP, we are supposed to determine whether or not something was designed by an intelligent agent based on observations we can make about its characteristics right now.So, basically, your suggestion is that we can tell that things are intelligently designed by finding out whether they were intelligently designed.

Bluejay writes:After all, there is a gradient between things natural and things manufactured.If we gave an alien from outer space a beehive, a bird's nest, a wigwam and a Clovis point, would this alien be able to unambiguously determine which of those designs were made by intelligent agents and which were not?I doubt it.

Huntard writes:You do realize you just destroyed your own argument, yes? If the alien is able to distinguish something designed, such as a paperclip, from something undesigned, such as nature, that means he can do so because nature isn't designed. Thank you, Buz.

Jar writes:........ we still need to figure out how the designer did it.

Anglagard writes:Why the designer did it is irrelevant and unimportant to understand HOW it happened.Read what you quoted. Where in what I said do you find the question of "why"?

Bluejay writes:So, please, formalize the criteria! Tell us what they are, and how we can identify them!

Bluejay writes:This completely undoes the entire point of your original statement that an alien could tell design from non-design. You can't back out now and say that the alien must have the time to develop the same intuitive, non-formalized sense of design and non-design.

crashfrog writes:In the body? As it grows? Yes, absolutely.The way your skull "knows" to be as big as your brain is that your brain grows at the same time as your skull. All those tissues develop at the same time, next to each other, and they signal each other where to grow to. Your brain gets signals from bone cells that say "stop growing here." Your skin and muscles "know" to grow as long as your leg bones because the muscles get chemical signals that say "grow and attach to these points." And muscle cells produce signals that say "cover us with skin."There aren't instructions in your genetics for your eyes to be a certain size, your bones to be a certain length, your skull to be a certain volume. Your body is harmonious not by design but because your cells are sending each other signals to keep it that way. Your body can't be the result of genetic design because much of it isn't designed; your genes don't contain a blueprint of your adult body. They contain blueprints for proteins.No part of your genetics specifies your height in inches, the length of your arms, how much skin your body needs to cover all of your muscles and organs. None of that can be the result of genetic design because none of that is ever specified in your genetics. The proportions of your body, ultimately, are determined by your body itself, as your cells make arrangements - and even compete - amongst each other.

Coyote writes:It is simply trial and error.What works gets to roll the dice again. What doesn't is out of the game.

onifre writes:That's your belief, ICANT, you have described no mechanism. A mechanism would be how god created the universe. And it wouldn't be yours, it would just be how it was done because it would be testible, verifiable, empirical evidence. ....................That's not a mechanism, that's a statement. .....................You have been told, a shitload of times, by cavediver and son goku, that the Big Bang was the universe going from you state (form) to another state (form).

DC85 writes: --------------------------------------------------------------------------------What makes these complex processes Different then the complex processes in the human body?