Detecting design or intent in nature

[Heywood]

But no, I don't see that natural selection was designed either. For one thing, it isn't a system. There is no more to natural selection than this: those organisms which are most often successful in replicating themselves will be most common in the next generation. It's a mathematical truism not a design any more than 1 + 1 = 2 is a design.

Natural selection is not evolution. It is often, but not always, a component of an evolutionary system. Sometimes evolutionary systems use a different selection mechanism. For instance, artificial selection is responsible for the current form of the "atheist's nightmare".....the banana.

Natural selection is not a system at all. It's just a simple rule. It applies in simulated worlds too. What is designed in simulations is not the rule of natural selection but the environment in which it takes place, the mechanism by which the simulated organisms change and in your simulation the selection of a single criteria for determining which organisms will reproduce. But evolution would take place in any environment where organisms can reproduce.

I think you are conflating natural selection with evolution. They are not the same thing. I am okay with your characterization of natural selection as a rule but remember, rules do not operate in a vacuum. Rules operate on things other than themselves. They have external references. You need much more than a selection rule to have an evolutionary system. You also need to have replicators with heritable but changeable characteristics. The rule, the replicators, the heritable characteristics are all connected things which make up a more complex whole. They are a system in the truest sense of the word.

I have never observed these systems come into existence spontaneously except when intellect is the selection mechanism. I have only observed these systems come into existence via outright design by intellects or when intellects make the selections. This being the case, what good reason do I have to believe, as you would have me believe....as matter of faith....that the evolutionary system which produced me was not outright designed or there is an intellect which makes the selection?