Intelligent Design: Did you design yourself?

[Heywood]

This is knowing the history of "these kinds" of objects. The real problem is that there is no way to, by inspection of the artifact alone, determine which are "these kinds" which are designed from "these kinds" that are naturally occurring. We identify design by having a plausible story for how the article might have been designed. If you want to do the same for the current lineage of life, you also need a plausible story for how a designer did it. You have no designer and no story; therefore your inference that the current lineage is also designed is unsupported.

There is an science fiction TV show called Farscape. In the show they had spaceships which were not made of metal or silicon but rather they were biological living creatures. Now suppose you came across such a thing. Would you know if it was something intelligently designed or did it come into being via some natural process? Objectively you have no clue. Natural processes exist....but so does intelligent design. Now suppose in your travels, you come across shipyards where these things are designed and built by intellects and you never come across an observation of one coming into existence naturally. That would give you good cause to believe all these kinds of space ships are intelligently designed. I think what you are doing is taking an inductive argument and saying it is fallacious because it is not a deductive argument.

It is certainly plausible and actually quite likely that 100 years from now, most lineages of life on planet earth with be the products of intelligent design. If this is the case for the planet earth, there is no reason it cannot be the case for the universe as a whole.

If the machine on Pluto resembled the metallic blob of a crashed asteroid, we'd have no way of knowing it was designed. You're trying to cheat by smuggling the assumption that it is a machine that has traits like a machine that we might have designed would have. If so, we would know that it was designed because it shows signs of having been worked by a designer, which, again, is something you don't have for life. Let's turn this around a bit. Let's assume that the first lineage of life on our planet is designed. Can you tell me what traits of this life show signs of having been designed? If you can't demonstrate that life on earth either was or wasn't designed by its traits, then you have no reason to suspect that it was designed rather than natural.

If you come across something completely alien, something which consists of traits of which you absolutely have no prior experience....you have no way of telling if such a thing is designed or if it occurs naturally. You wouldn't be in a position to call your blob machinery. Showing signs something has been worked by a designer is simply applying your experience to recognize that those type of things come into existence via being designed.

Now if I never observe a new lineage of life coming into existence via some natural process, but I do observe new lineages of life coming into existence via some engineer designing and manufacturing the initial DNA code for that lineage....I can conclude that the initial DNA code of a lineage is a designed thing.

Only if "those kinds of things" show signs of artifice similar to the ones we make, and there were a plausible scenario for how a designer might have been responsible. As already remarked, if the machine appeared to us as an amorphous blob of metal or a lump of crystals, we'd have no reason to suspect it was a machine at all. You've loaded the example by assuming "a machine" would look like a human artifact. It wouldn't necessarily. Without knowing the typical effects of the designer, we would have know way of knowing that a specific "machine" was designed. Do you know the typical effects of the designer of the first lineage of life? No? Then you don't know that life is designed.

If you need a plausible scenario for how a designer might have been responsible, simulation hypothesis is one such scenario.

First of all, it's not an assumption I make. a) I used the word 'seemingly' to imply that it has the appearance of being a naturally created lineage, I didn't assume it; and b) I've already stated that I don't know whether it was natural or designed.

This argument is disputing the notion that lineages of life appear to arise naturally. You cannot just say they do and think you won the argument. Your thinking here is circular....and a bit contradictory. If you do not know whether our lineage of life is designed or not, you cannot credibly argue that it is not designed because it seemingly appears to be naturally created. You have to show that lineages of life are naturally created and that our lineage of life is substantially equivalent to those you've shown were naturally created. We are not even close to doing this. You are basically saying you don't know that our lineage was naturally created but you know it looks naturally created because you know what naturally created lineages look like. How can you do this if you can't differentiate a naturally created lineage from a designed one?

However you're wrong in concluding that believing the original lineage to be natural is an assumption. It's not. We have plenty of evidence of natural processes and none of any hypothetical designer. We also have plausible scenarios which might explain the origin of life which don't depend on a designer. So you're simply wrong in calling it an assumption; it's a hypothesis with evidence supporting the belief that it is a true hypothesis. Your support for the notion of the lineage of original life being designed, on the other hand, rests on a weak philosophical argument. You have no designer, and no way to measure "like those kinds of things" so that you can look at something, life or a blob of ore on Pluto, and tell it was designed solely from "experience."

Natural processes exist....but so do intelligent designers. You claim the designer that created our lineage is hypothetical, well so is your natural process you claim created our lineage. If it is not hypothetical but reality....show it to me...show me this real process creating a new lineage of life. You cannot because such processes do not exist. If they did...we would observe them....and we wouldn't be having this argument. You simply do not have an observation of a natural process which creates lineages of life so therefore you cannot claim such processes exist in fact. You assume such processes exists and therefore conclude they exist.

Now if you claim that our lineage is evidence of the existence of such a process, why can't I claim our lineage is evidence of the existence of a designing intellect? This is not ignorance....this is inference.

You said, "I do know is that the development of life in this lineage can be explained by natural processes, even if its origin has not been explained". What science has shown us, is that this lineage of life can also be explained by intelligent design. Where is this designer you ask? Well where is this natural process you speak of?

Really, you're going to an argument from ignorance now? I've already pointed out that abiogenesis is not an assumption but a working hypothesis with support. Where is the support for the activity of a designer. Where is the designer. We know natural processes exist.

If by working you mean people are working on it...then yes....abiogenesis is a working hypothesis....but so it intelligent design and irreducible complexity.....people are working on those too. If you mean by working that we have a hypothesis that allows us to replicate abiogenesis....you're way way way off.

But suppose one day abiogenesis is achieved in the lab. Well as others pointed out earlier in this thread, just because something is achieved in the lab doesn't mean it occurs naturally.