Spotting Beretta's "designer" {Now only 1 summation message per member}

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In essence, if a structure can be found that cannot have developed through natural processes, wouldn't that force us to conclude that some non-natural, intelligent agent had to be behind it?

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To expand on Ned's response a bit.In practice we could only discover that known natural processes as we understood them, under the conditions which we believe applied could not generate the structure.Even if we managed to rule out the possibility of unknown natural processes or known processes acting in an unexpected way (due to limits in our understanding or lack or knowledge) - a difficult task - we couldn't conclude that the source was both intelligent and supernatural. Because how can we rule out unintelligent supernatural causes ? Real forensic science avoids that question by relying on methodological naturalism - a point that virtually all IDer's prefer to obscure and avoid.(As a side note IDer's have a tendency to confuse the natural/artificial dichotomy with the natural/supernatural dichotomy. Methodological naturalism is about the latter and includes the actions of intelligent agents).To replace evolution ID really needs to have an alternative theory. And it doesn't. With an alternative theory they would not need to rely on arguments from ignorance. With an alternative theory they would not need to falsify evolution in an absolute sense. If they were honest scientists they would not be trying to influence the school curriculum until they had a robust theory that could be shown to be superior to evolutionary alternatives in at least some respects.To give ID it's due it could have been done on a much more scientific basis. That that is not the case is entirely the fault of the ID movement which cares about science only as a (useful but not necessary) apologetic tool.

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Well, the conclusions that could be confidently drawn about the nature of the agent, whether it was intelligent or supernatural, would depend entirely on what we saw as an example of a structure that could not have developed by evolution. I'm sure that with a bit of imagination, any of us could describe a hypothetical discovery that would difficult, if not impossible, to explain without resorting to the intervention of an intelligent agent, supernatural or not.

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I think that it bears repeating. We have no idea of what an unintelligent supernatural cause could NOT do, therefore we can never eliminate one through negative arguments.ID's reliance on negative argumentation is a major weakness, and one of the indications that ID is not trying to be scientific.

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You should look at William Dembski's argument for specified complexity and elimination of chance as a cause. He has come up with a way of assessing every situation using probability stats to decide causation of anything found in nature. It's well worth considering.

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That is overstating it. Dembski's method is a simple eliminative argument. It's only useful in cases where there are problems with positive arguments for design (which aren't part of Dembski's method) and the situation is simple enough that we can identify all the alternatives and calculate probabilities for them.Unsurprisingly, it has never been successfully applied to biology and is largely ignored even within the ID movement. It's very hard to find cases where it is actually useful.If that weren't enough, as Dembski has since recognised, a target chosen after the fact is not the same as one chosen in advance. Dembski's notion of specification isn't strong enough to make up the difference. So far as I know this problem has yet to be fixed.

Instead of accusing other people of being biased or brainwashed because they don't agree with you perhaps you would like to actually discuss the evidence.You say that you like Dembski's method of identifying design. Well how about giving us a worked example to show that there really IS design in nature ?

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The artifact hypothesis squashed by the discovery of perfectly preserved soft bodied embryo fossils below the Cambrian in China. The suggestion that the precursors to the cambrian were soft bodied and thus not preservable no longer holds as an hypothesis.

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Where by "squashed" you mean "confirmed". Or haven't you noticed that the discoveries represent creatures only fosilised in special conditions and include the supposedly "missing" precursors ?

Way back in Message 64 you stated that Dembski had a method of detecting design that is "well worth considering". I can't help but notice that actual use of this method is nowhere to be seen in your claimed evidence. Perhaps you would like to explain why.