Detecting design or intent in nature

[Heywood]

Somehow I think you're misrepresenting Chas's statements. To me, Chas was demonstrating how your argument fails if you replaced evolution with thermonuclear reactor. He was not advocating the sun requires intelligence. Chas will probably comment to clarify and also throw an insult as well.

I wouldn't be surprised. Insults are the weapons of choice for the weak minded. His argument fails because we observe thermonuclear reactors coming into existence without the need of intellects. The same cannot be said of evolutionary systems. If it can, show me the observation.

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You asked for an instance of an evolutionary system not intentionally designed by intellect. I considered using the flock, the school or the ant colony. But to be more poignant, I offer religion, arising as an emergent property of human interaction. Among humans, tribes leading to nation states and overall society also qualify. You may object that these involve humans and therefore intellects. The involvement of an intellect in a non-intentional role doesn't count if you are trying to make the inference of a personal God being required to kick off humanity or life on earth. Nobody intended to create the tribe. An impersonal cause is consistent with a naturalistic explanation.

JuliaL, Thank you for giving us specific examples to look at. This is exactly what I am asking people to do. I would argue that flocks, schools(of fish), or ant colonies are not evolutionary systems in their own right. They are emergent complex system.

But lets look at tribes. Does it have the elements of an evolutionary system
Replication: Tribes do replicate. Members move off and start new tribes.
Heritable traits: New tribes share the same knowledge and culture of the parent.
Change: Knowledge and culture do change, this is self evident.
Selection: Not all Tribes survive or are successful.

So yes I would say civilization counts as an evolutionary system. I would even go on to agree with you that it wasn't intentionally designed. But if you pay close attention to my posts(you can look at my first post on the first page of this thread for instance), I have always maintained that evolutionary systems required intellect, either as a designer or as a component. I have never claimed that all evolutionary systems were intentionally created by intellects.

Tribes is not an example of an evolutionary system that did not require intellect to be implemented. It may not have been intentional but it certainly needed intellect.