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

You are focusing on the "intelligent" part of "intelligent design". However, the most controversial part is the "design" part.What evolutionists are mainly claiming, is that biological diversity results from evolution, rather than from design. And if there was no design, then the question of whether the design was intelligent is a question that never actually arises.I'll grant that some people see an appearance of design when they look at biological organisms. I don't. It seems clear to me that evolved things are very different from designed things, and that no design, no matter how intelligent, would result in what we see when we examine biological organisms.

No, not "everybody."I do not consider DNA to be information. Rather, I consider it part of a causal process.

I tend to agree with crashfrog on this, though I admit it's perhaps a bit fussy making the distinctions.The piano roll is part of a causal chain. The key I use to unlock my front door is part of a causal chain. I expect information to be abstract, and separated from causal chains. Otherwise we begin to start calling the cogs on gear wheels bits of information, and before long everything is information. John Wilkins takes the view that it isn't information unless it is part of an information processing system. That's probably about right. I think his most relevant post about that was from before he moved from scienceblogs to his current wordpress blog site, and I didn't dig that far back.

And that is the basis for the disagreement right there.With your presupposition that everything is designed, you will see evidence of a designer in everything you look at. And the more obvious it is that a thing was not designed, the cleverer will be the designer you have to conjure up, in order to not contradict your presupposition that everything is designed.

{Hidden because is 2nd final comment - Adminnemooseus}Edited by Adminnemooseus, : See above.