Thanks to all for the warm reception.
ps - if you haven't figured it out yet, type...
Thanks for the tip, RAZD.
Thus we should be able to develop a technique that can distinguish the design of DNA and test it with known modified plants and animals and bacteria.
This is intriguing. I think we're on the same page with this, but would you agree that our ability to recognize a modified genome is only made possible by our knowledge of genetic modification techniques? That is, in order to reasonably infer that modification has occurred, we would need to know the natural (normal) state, what conditions would be necessary for modification to occur, and if it's likely (or even possible) that someone could have made those modifications.
For example, say we found a glowing green mouse running around the house, and it has the gene for green fluorescent protein (GFP) identical to that found in aequorea. We might reasonably infer that it was genetically modified by having the GFP gene inserted into its genome, since no mice are naturally found with this gene and the technique is well known. However, we can't say the same thing about the jellyfish, since we have no experience of divine hands inserting genes into organisms in the wild.
In other words, we could conceivably test for human (or other intelligent) tinkering against a known, natural pattern, but I don't see yet how we could test the original pattern itself for signs of design. But I could be wrong...