Design Counterarguments

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Originally posted by Jairo:
Anything that happens more frequently than expected. (I think this is the creationist definition.)

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Do you comply with it?
If not, why?

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And I remember there is a situation when the "designed by what" question matters. It's when the event seems random. When you know what you are looking for, apparently usual events can provide complex information.

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But we are analyzing complex-looking events. (No desing argument uses random-looking ones.)

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Define random, complex, and information. It's not as easy as it sounds. According to the mathematical definitions, designed things have a tendency torwards redundancy (less complex), and random is indistinguishable from complex without prior knowledge of how to decode the message in question.

Hey! I didn't use any of these words in the past definition. But now you asked, I'm confused. My definitions comes from dictionaries, (non-English dictionaries!)It's ok some designed things won't be detected by us without prior knowledge. But some of them will just fall in that category.(Happening more than expected).I think it's a good indicator of design in some cases. Creationists want it to be an indicator all the times. And you?

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Jairo:
[B]Hey! I didn't use any of these words in the past definition. [/QUOTE]No, but you needed to.

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But now you asked, I'm confused. My definitions comes from dictionaries, (non-English dictionaries!)

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That's because you'll only find every-day definitions in those dictionaries, and those definitions are insufficient for technical discussions. Words like information and existence have such vague definitions that they are practically meaningless when you get into the details.

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It's ok some designed things won't be detected by us without prior knowledge. But some of them will just fall in that category.(Happening more than expected).

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Such as?

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I think it's a good indicator of design in some cases. Creationists want it to be an indicator all the times. And you?

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I think it's a good indicator when we're talking about things that we commonly run across. I can use it while walking down the street, or in the woods. I don't think it applies in the hard sciences (biology, chemistry, physics), math, or philosophy. It's good enough for me to choose a place to buy lunch, but I wouldn't use it to determine the correct button on an alien doomsday device, or to solve a path integral for an electron interaction.