Detecting design or intent in nature

[Jenny A]

When people see design or the guiding hand of God in something, how would we define that?

We use experience to detect design. When the New Horizon probe flies by Pluto if it images machinery on the surface of the dwarf planet we will conclude that machinery was designed because in our experience machinery is always the product of design. Now suppose the probe images something completely novel to us. We'd have no way of knowing if that thing is designed or not.

I see the hand of God in nature. Every evolutionary system I have observed, whose origins are known to me, requires the existence of intelligence. Therefore I find it reasonable to conclude that the evolutionary system which produced me also required the existence of intelligence.

Funny, but I look at nature and see the reverse. I do see design, but not evidence of a designer. Machinery shows evidence of design and a designer. It tends to be for a purpose and while there might be decorative bits, there aren't any completely irrational twists in the functional part of the design. Designers are free to begin from scratch, and designed things show evidence of that freedom.

For example, early autos show some decorative details that suggest the designer was thinking in terms of carriages pulled by horses including a carriage like shape and lamps that reflect the time period. But early autos didn't have a harness hanging out in front for the horses, or a feed bag, or a left over whip. Nor did they contain a little legless horse still breathing and glued to the dash. Roads don't include residual train tracks. Planes don't have residual rear view mirrors.

But evolutionarily designed things do have left overs no designer would even have considered. Your body is covered in little tiny tiny hairs that serve little purpose today. Certainly, they don't keep you warm. And they probably aren't decorative. Your spine is a modification of a design meant for walking on all fours, and as a design it frankly sucks. It would have been better to start from scratch just as replacing a horse with an engine is better than trying to make a mechanized horse to do the job. Whales and dolphins swim by pumping up and down, because that's home mammal spines work. But fish move much more efficiently. Why? Evolution working on what is, not designing from scratch. The hallmarks of adaptation and design are quite different.