What IS evidence of design? (CLOSING STATEMENTS ONLY)

The point of empirical evidence is to eliminate ideological differences. People with different ideological/political/religious backgrounds must be able to make the same observations.

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You can have brevity and clarify, or you can have accuracy and detail, but you can't easily have both. --Percy

And the best interpretation is determined by further experimentation and observation producing more empirical evidence. You don't get to cling to your pet interpretation after it has been refuted. If you want to challenge the accepted interpretation, you have to produce more empirical evidence, not just make excuses for why there isn't any.

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You can have brevity and clarify, or you can have accuracy and detail, but you can't easily have both. --Percy

I agree. Bees are round and they make bee-shaped holes to store their honey in. It just so happens that when you "stack" round holes, you get a honeycomb. I think the honeycomb is more akin to the snowflake than to anything designed.

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You can have brevity and clarify, or you can have accuracy and detail, but you can't easily have both. --Percy

What if I take a piece of driftwood and don't change it in any way except to put it on my coffee table? Did I "design" something by selecting a new location for it?

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You can have brevity and clarify, or you can have accuracy and detail, but you can't easily have both. --Percy

Yes, I think that's a resonable assumption. Things like toolmarks aren't the only signs of human intervention.

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You can have brevity and clarify, or you can have accuracy and detail, but you can't easily have both. --Percy

So, if I throw rocks into the river to divert the water, is my dam designed but the beaver's is not? The rock dam could have been caused by a natural rock fall whereas the beaver dam shows tool marks (teeth marks).You could probably tell the difference between a beaver dam and a replica made with human tools but how would you tell the difference between an intentional rock dam and an accidental one?Edited by ringo, : Fixed quote wrongly attributed to Robert Byers.

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You can have brevity and clarify, or you can have accuracy and detail, but you can't easily have both. --Percy

Sorry. Fixed. Because that's the topic, evidence of design. If we can't tell whether an artefact was designed or not, the whole concept of the "intelligent design" of life becomes irrelevant. If we can't tell the difference between an intentional result and an act of nature, we might as well shut down the Intelligent Design forum.

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You can have brevity and clarify, or you can have accuracy and detail, but you can't easily have both. --Percy

The piece of driftwood on my coffee table would seem to be irreducibly complex because if you take one piece away - i.e. all of it - it ceases to perform its function. The same is true of the rock that I use as a doorstop.On the other hand, the dam that I designed would not seem to be irreducibly complex because taking away a piece or two won't effect its performance at all.So I'm not seeing the correlation between irreducible complexity and design.Edited by ringo, : Fixed punc. tuation.

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You can have brevity and clarify, or you can have accuracy and detail, but you can't easily have both. --Percy

Well, that's part of what makes "irreducible complexity" a fairly useless concept. You need a definition that's tailor-made for your desired conclusion. That's circular reasoning. It has to fit your definition of irreducible complexity to be designed and it has to fit your definition of design to be irreducibly complex.What we're looking for in this thread, I think, is some way of detecting one without depending on the other.

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You can have brevity and clarify, or you can have accuracy and detail, but you can't easily have both. --Percy

The concept of irreducible complexity was invented specifically to support the idea of intelligent design. Irreducible complexity implies design because it was defined in such a way that Behe hoped it would eliminate anything but design.If the two ideas are only linked by inductive reasoning, why is it that only those who already believe in design come to the conclusion of design? In this topic, we need to ask ourselves what evidence there is to distinguish the two. What evidence distinguishes a murder from a suicide or an accident?What evidence distinguishes an intentional dam from an accidental one? Irreducible complexity doesn't work. Move on to something that does.

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You can have brevity and clarify, or you can have accuracy and detail, but you can't easily have both. --Percy

Yes, that's what I was getting at.If the driftwood was moved onto my coffee table by a flood, for example, we could expect to find other evidence of that natural cause - dirt, water marks, etc. In the absence of such evidence, we can reasonably conclude that an object surrounded by human-designed objects was put there by human design.Now, what about the dam? How can you tell whether the rocks fell into the river accidentally or were thrown there by me?Edited by ringo, : Added a hyphen, just for fun. They're cheap.

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You can have brevity and clarify, or you can have accuracy and detail, but you can't easily have both. --Percy

Yes, if there's an overhanging unstable rock face then it would be reasonable to assume a natural fall (though the fall could still have been caused by human intent). On the other hand, if there was no source of rocks within a mile, it would be reasonable to conclude human design.

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You can have brevity and clarify, or you can have accuracy and detail, but you can't easily have both. --Percy

I used to have a little animation that showed how an arch could have been built by purely natural means. Two rocks a little bit apart became almost buried in sand. Then two more rocks were washed/rolled into place above them and between them to finish the arch. Finally, the sand was washed away to open up the space under the arch - irreducible complexity without intelligent guidance and without any woo-woo "purpose".

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If you have nothing to say, you could have done so much more concisely. -- Dr Adequate

Function is just another arc in your circular logic. You don't need foresight to get function. The turtles can use the arch as a bridge even if they didn't plan it.Edited by ringo, : Cpelling.

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If you have nothing to say, you could have done so much more concisely. -- Dr Adequate