Detecting design or intent in nature

[Heywood]

But wait. In Dawkins' the Blind Watchmaker, there's a chapter about how silicates (clay) could form an evolutionary system! Holy coinkydink, Batman!

How silicates could form an evolutionary system? Thats a cool story....but without an observation of such, that is all that it is....a cool story. Plenty of religions have cool stories too. I don't find cool stories to be compelling reasons to contradict observations. If there is an observation of silicates forming an evolutionary system without intellects, I 'd like to see it as this is the kind of thing I would expect to see if evolutionary systems can form without intellects. I am serious...I have asked myself many times why don't we observe minerals evolving?

Anyways, Rasetsu, the reason we got here some 80+ pages later is the original poster wanted to know how we detect design. I explained that the way we know something is designed or not is by experience. If our experience is that watches are always the products of intelligent watch makers then whenever we run across a watch......even if we didn't observe it coming into existence....we can safely say it was the product of an intelligent watch maker. There is nothing unreasonable about my explanation on how we detect design.

We only observe evolutionary systems coming into existence with the help of intellects. We only observe watches coming into existence with the help of intellects. If you want to believe that evolutionary systems or watches can come into existence without the help of intellect.....that is your business.

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Your definition of evolution is incomplete; I am not sneaking anything in, just correcting you.

To be isomorphic with biological evolution, replication of replicators is required. Do you not understand isomorphism? Apparently not.

You are so full of shit. You don't even understand what constitutes a straw man.

There is nothing wrong with my definition of evolution. It is perfectly reasonable. I have corrected you on this many times. Perhaps you are just too thick headed to understand evolution.

Regarding your strawmanning the facts are this:
1. You are trying to narrow the definition of evolution being used in the argument I have made.
2. After narrowing the definition of evolution you then claim the observations presented don't satisfy the definition so the conclusion is wrong.
3. You are committing a straw man because you are attacking an argument I did not make. I made an argument using one definition of evolution, you are attacking an argument using a different definition for evolution.

If you admit that if my definition of evolution were true, then my argument would be valid....I would accept that you are merely challenging the definition that I am using and that you are not making a straw man argument. Will you concede that if my definition were true there is nothing wrong with my argument?