The Watchmaker: my fav argument

[polymath257]

OK, propose an observation. I'm certainly willing to listen.

What sort of observation would lead to the conclusion of design?

That is the basic question that has to be answered. Without that, no design claim can even get off the ground.

Firstly, if your inability to propose an observation isn't valid, why would my inability make a difference? Some propositions in science have taken years, if not decades, to observe. According to Wikipedia, gravitational waves were first proposed in 1893, more formally in 1905, and yet weren't possible to observe until 2016―that's a hundred year difference.

Secondly: Science is not a Courtroom. Your question places you squarely into the problem of induction and underdetermination. That is why I keep emphasizing falsification as the only logical approach. And I have already given the forum one approach to falsification using the following argument: A universe in which everything is designed, implies a universe in which everything can be designed; therefore, if anything in this universe cannot be designed, the universe is not designed. (I gave some descriptions of design here.)

Theories don't have to get off the ground, as you say, they have to be shot down. That is what is meant by conjecture and refutation.

Yes, gravitational waves were proposed long before they were observed. But, included in that proposal was a pretty clear description of the properties of those waves and what they would look like *if* they were observed. It was then a matter of technology to actually make the devices to detect them.

In the case of design, the description of what would distinguish design fron 'not-design' has not been give. It isn't a technological issue. It is a failure of the proposal to make a definite prediction about some observation.

Actually, no you did NOT give a description in that link. You gave some rather vague fluff that could not be used to actually dstinguish any particular case. In particular, you make a logical claim that if everything in the universe was designed, then everything in the universe *could* be designed. But you don't say how to definitively say when something *cannot* be designed. What, precisely, would be something that we could use to conclude design is impossible?

And no, before a theory can even reach the possibility of falsifiability, it needs to be given in enough detail to ALLOW for observations that *could* falsify it. For gravitational waves, it was very clear from the first proposal what would be required to detect them, what their properties were proposed to be, etc. Then, when we detected something with those properties and in the situations predicted, we could say we detected gravitational waves.

To 'get off the ground' means giving enough detail that the falsifiability criterion is met: *some* observation *could* show it to be wrong. If a theory cannot get to that level, it is simply not scientific at all.

So, what observation would allow us to conclusively determine that something could not be designed? Until that question can be answered, you do not have a scientific proposal at all,