Show me the intelligence ...

Not exactly a new topic, but it always seems to get side-tracked.I'll not suggest anything about whether designs CAN come
about without an intelligence, but just ask if someone can
point to what it is about a system (any system) design that
indicates that an intelligence was responsible for it.

It's in the IK in the Wist Modlands

Perhaps my question is too obtuse.Suppose I found a watch in a field what about the watch
would make one consider it to be the product of an intelligence?

In a way that's what I was getting at.Is there some feature of a watch (beyond knowing that
watches ARE intelligently designed, or that one could see signs
of tooling) that says it is designed by an intelligence.I wasn't using it as an analogy, but as an example of a known
intelligent design (and whimsically for obvious reasons).Suppose you were an alien coming to a desolate planet and
found a watch. What about the watch would suggest it as
an artifact of an intelligence?

This is what I'm trying to get at.If the only way we can say that something that we KNOW
is designed by an intelligence is because we know
it was designed by an intelligence ... how can we even
assess the intelligent design content of an object
ANY object ... even a watch.

I agree that we cannot place ourselves in an alien's
shoes ... but the comments so far seem to be heading toward,
basically, that we cannot determine whether intelligence was
involved even for something which we KNOW in advance was
intelligently designed.

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How can you know if a snowflake is designed or not?

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Not asking about design -- asking about intelligence.But one cannot know whether a smow-flake was intelligently designed
or not without knowing that it was intelligently designed.

quote:

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How are these things not dependent on a designer, if a designer made everything in the universe?

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More or less my point. Unless one knows the IDer one cannot
know that there was ID .... even for objects that we know where
the product of intelligent design (am ... am I repeating
myself? ).

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Is unfalsifiable a bad thing?

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No ... it's just not terribly useful/informative.

Sorry, forgot to answer a direct question:

quote:

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Question for Peter: What if I found an amorphous glob of goo that quivered and pulsed in a field? What about that object would make one consider it to be the product of an intelligence?

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My answer to this question is: I cannot think of anything.
Perhaps some recognisable maker's mark, or an instruction
manual with revision number ... flippant perhaps, but that's
how I see things.That's my problem, and why I started this thread. I cannot see
any way of determining the 'intelligent' input to an extant
object ... even one that is a KNOWN intelligent design ... like
a watch.

quote:

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I understand. Good job I know the IDer

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Great! Perhaps you can get him/her/it to post here and end
all our confusions

Am I to take it, judging by the sharp change in direction,
that there is nothing that anyone can think of about
any object that they may come across from which the input
of an intelligence could be inferred/deduced or otherwise
determined?

That's the problem -- 'we assume'.If no one can come up with something about
the pocket watch that suggests intelligent
input, what hope to we have for anything else?A snow-flake doesn't reproduce either does that
have an intelligent input? Why/why not?

You appear to be saying that there is nothing inherent
in a watch (a known intelligent design) that could lead one
to conclude that an intelligence was involved -- apart
from already knowing that to be the case.Is that a correct understanding of your opinion?

Whether the 'designs' are 'good' or not has no bearing on
my original question.There are plenty of human designs that are flawed, some
fatally so -- if that were not the case there would not be
increasing interest in various forms of safety analysis,
and structured design approaches.Many human designs are 'poor', but there is still an intelligent
input.The perceived quality of the object/system in question is
in no way connected to the intelligent input to the 'design'.If natural selection does indeed drive evolution (along with
isoaltion etc. etc.) then one can have designs that had no
intelligent input -- how do we determine the intelligent input?

So that's a 'Yes' then.We cannot determine that an intelligence was involved,
we can only know that to be the case.So we cannot know (one way or the other) whether intelligence
was involved in biological system design.Doesn't that leave ID high and dry unless that question is
satisfactorily answered?Evolutionary theory proposes mechanisms that would not require
intelligent input, and supports those with evidence.ID theory proposes intelligent intervention, but can have no
evidence to support that contention.

Not considering design at all at the moment, only
the identification of an intelligent input into the
design.