What IS evidence of design? (CLOSING STATEMENTS ONLY)

I Think you are going in the wrong direction in this discussion. The issue is not if there are designed things that can look just like undesigned things, but if there are specific attributes that you will only ever observe when looking at something that was designed. This is not saying, of course, that all designed things have these attributes, but rather that if you do observe one, then it was designed.One such criteria that was proposed by the ID movement was irreducible complexity, another was specified complexity.I have seen other criteria proposed such as emergent properties but it was a bit ill-defined. The basic idea was that if a certain numbers of pieces were arranged in a specific way in order to have a new property emerge (such as the arrangement of metal that makes a plane fly), then it was designed.So it not really what characteristic do all designed thing have in common, but rather what characteristic can identify something as designed if it is present.

I've never read any of Dembski's books, including ''the Design inference'' so I know nothing about it.I have read Behe's ''Darwin's black box'', but he has made advances in defending this idea that I have not read (partly from his blog, partly in other books)Still, I guess you could tell me the problem you see with irreducible complexity, since I do think that claims that it has been ''completely and utterly demolished'' are far from the actual reality of it.Edited by slevesque, : No reason given.

I guess you could say that it is an inductively proven premise, since every IC system of which we know the origin was designed.

All I said was that any claim that it had been ''completely and utterly demolished'' seem pretty senseless to me, partly because I doubt a whole lot of people here have read Behe's original book, let alone all the updates and ''answers to the critics'' he has done through his blog and other books. there is more to the idea of IC then what you read on talkorigins.com ...

You can inductively conclude design in those instances.

IC systems are designed
System A is not an IC system
Therefore system A was not designedClassic example of denying the antecedent.

All IC systems are designed
System A is IC
Therefore system A was designedThe first premise comes from the induction:all IC systems of which we know the origin were designed,
therefore, all IC systems are designed.To negate this you would need to find a counter-example.The second premise is an observation.The conclusion follows.AbE: This would be inductively true up to the point where we find a counter-example, which we have. Inductive reasoning is central to the scientific process. Theories are proven until counter-examples are found.Edited by slevesque, : No reason given.

quote:

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all IC systems of which we know the origin were designed,
therefore, all IC systems are designed.
  —slevesque

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You seem to be struggling to understand how induction works, that much I can tell.Let's take a less contentious example:1. All swans are white
2. This is a swan
3. Therefore it is whiteNow this first premise is proven inductively by the following:All the swans I have seen are white
therefore, all swans are whiteNow suppose I hid a swan in a box, and asked you what color it was. Wouldn't you be justified to inductively conclude that it was white ?Would you be justified to say ''I have not seen this swan, so it does not apply nor does the rest of the reasoning'' ?

It's all probalistic. It depends on the strength of the induction. You are never obliged to accept an inductive conclusion, however, there comes a point where it is unreasonable to reject it, as you be right a very small percentage of the time.Just as no one is obliged to accept a scientific theory as true, but they will rarely be right in doing so depending on the strength of the theory.

These are not irreducibly complex systems, since they only have one piece. You are comitting the same fallacy as Frako, ie denying the antecedent. The reasoning is not that if a system is not IC, then it is not designed but rather that if it is IC, then it is designed.

a mousetrap ?

Try making complete, or at least sensible, sentences and not skip words, etc.Because this is clearly incoherent, and even though I think I know what you are trying to say it does give the impression that you are retarded (no offense)

I have no idea where you got this idea. The definition of Irreducible complexity is given in Message 127. I honestly do not know where you got the impression of any circular reasoning, irreducible complexity is certainly defined appart from any reference to design.In fact, the very quote you take from me contradicts what you are saying here. I explicitly say IC ==) ID, not IC (==) ID. SO it goes only one way, irreducible complexity implies intelligent design. Furthermore, I have also explained that this does not come from the definitions, but from inductive reasoning linking the two. We need to ask ourselves what ability does an intelligent mind have that a natural process does not. My contention is that at least one ability is the capacity to project into the future. An intelligent mind can imagine possible future outcomes and strive toward desired. Natural processes cannot, it deals only with the present and cannot 'plan ahead'.Now, what type of systems demand such capacity ? Behe's claims that an irreducible complez system doesm because all the pieces must be in place all at once in order for the desired property to emerge. (Seen this way, irreducible complexity joins unto the ''emergent property'' criterion I spoke of earlier)

We have a boatload of IC systems that we know were designed in many different spheres of technology. The only IC systems that we do not know the origin are biological systems. The induction is not incomplete, in fact you yourself give the answer.Suppose we replace the first premise.All IC systems are designed by humans
System A is IC
Therefore system A was designed by humansSomeone could claim premise 1 is proven inductively, however it can be proven false by the following modus tollents (denying the consequent)If all IC systems are designed by humans, then biological IC systems were designed by humans
biological IC systems are not designed by humans,
Therefore not all IC systems are designed by humansFirst premise is a conditional statement. Second premise is proven by observation (biological IC systems were there before humans), and the conclusion follows. Let's try to clear up all the logical steps leading to IC maybe being a candidate for identifying designed systems before going into counter-examples.

First of all, the burden of proof is on those who claim life can arise through natural processes. Not the other way around.Second, the fact that despite all our efforts we fail to find life elsewhere is actually evidence for the fact that life does not arise naturally, or else it would also have elsewhere. Fallacy of composition.Life isn't just chemistry, it is an emergent property of the atoms when arranged in a very specific way. Yet I'm the one racking up the fallacies in this thread.