Detecting design or intent in nature

[watchamadoodle]

Minimalist posted a thread referencing this article which had a quote from Lawrence Kraus:

Metaxas’ error is “akin to saying that if one looks at all the factors in my life that led directly to my sitting at my computer to write this, one would obtain a probability so small as to conclude that it is impossible that anyone else could ever sit down to compose a letter to the [Wall Street Journal].”

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2015/01/read-...ion-story/

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

For example, an archaeologist might look at a pattern of flaking on a rock and see human tool-making. On the other hand, sometimes natural processes like glaciers or wind cause delicately balanced rocks, arches, etc.

Probably it's a simple question, but it confuses me. (Of course I'm not arguing in favor of intelligent design like Metaxas argued in the Wall Street Journal.)

[vorlon13]

Design like human pregnancy going awry and generating a kid with grossly unformed crotch area ??

[abaris]

That's a question for theists and for us to pull apart. I'm not looking at anything in nature and assume it's designed or suddenly believe it's designed. Why should I?

[watchamadoodle]

That's a question for theists and for us to pull apart. I'm not looking at anything in nature and assume it's designed or suddenly believe it's designed. Why should I?

I suspect I'm thinking about the question wrong, and that's why it seems confusing to me.

Here some disconnected thoughts:

(1) It seems like we would need to know something about the design goals before we can measure the probability of some non-natural engineer (however you define "non-natural" - God, intelligent hominids, etc.)

(2) There is the sharpshooter fallacy to consider. The hypothesis of intelligent design needs to predict some new experimental data - not just "explain" existing data. Of course the new data doesn't need to be future data; it could be newly discovered past data (in the case of archaeology).

(3) I've heard many people say the increasing entropy of the universe indicates a design goal. Does a human have higher or lower entropy than the equivalent mass/energy of microbes?

As you can see, I'm just confused and thinking in circles. I'm sure if I looked at the question in the right way, then it would be simple.

[Tonus]

We are pattern-seeking machines; we can see "design" in just about anything. We are wired to give meaning to things that might not have meaning otherwise. We also have vivid imaginations. Put those together and what you get is quite wonderful, though it will occasionally produce some terrible things.

[bennyboy]

Design like human pregnancy going awry and generating a kid with grossly unformed crotch area ??

That seems strangely specific. Are you trying to tell us something?

[robvalue]

This is the rebuttal I like:

We notice design by comparing it to non-design. We recognise a watch in a forest as designed because it never occurs in nature, as opposed to all the plants around it, which do occur in nature. So it's reasonable to conclude the watch is designed, as we also have experience of them being designed.

With the universe, we don't have anything to compare it to. What would a "non designed" universe look like, if not like this?

---

Also, we have excellent scientific explanations back almost to the Big Bang. I can't remember where I heard it, but some reliable guy said that even if some "God" designed the singularity, that God couldn't predict how it would have played out. And there's no evidence any God has interfered since then. So no design today, or at least no reason to think there is design.

[Heywood]

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.

[JuliaL]

I've never found the design argument evenly slightly convincing.
I think it hangs on a type 1 (fast) intuitive error.
In the Paley classic, the observer is supposed to contrast the watch to the surrounding rocks to deduce that the watch was designed. Some steps later this fact is supposed to prove that the rocks also were designed. The deduction from the initial comparison was therefore wrong as were the conclusions leading therefrom.
It also fails in that if humans were the product of eons of natural selection acting on wet chemistry, then their "designed" products; watches, cars and 747s are also the result of eons of natural selection acting on wet chemistry. You have to have a dualist presupposition of design already in place for the conclusion that actual design follows from apparent design.

[watchamadoodle]

This is the rebuttal I like:

We notice design by comparing it to non-design. We recognise a watch in a forest as designed because it never occurs in nature, as opposed to all the plants around it, which do occur in nature. So it's reasonable to conclude the watch is designed, as we also have experience of them being designed.

With the universe, we don't have anything to compare it to. What would a "non designed" universe look like, if not like this?

Let's say we have 2 rocks and 1 watch. Depending on the type of classification, we might decide that the watch has more in common with one of the rocks than the two rocks have in common with each other.

I wonder if the difference is that a designed system can be described accurately with fewer parameters than a non-designed system by using patterns. For example, a rock has random bumps and pits. We probably need a huge matrix to describe the rock. Meanwhile the watch contains geometric shapes that can be described with only a few parameters (e.g. the face is a circle with a radius).

Of course we have those Japanese gardens that are designed to look random and natural. And we have abstract paintings that look like somebody spilled paint by accident on the canvas. Those designed systems contain asthetic design patterns like complementary colors, balance, etc., but there is still a lot of chaos like a natural system.

Also, we have excellent scientific explanations back almost to the Big Bang. I can't remember where I heard it, but some reliable guy said that even if some "God" designed the singularity, that God couldn't predict how it would have played out. And there's no evidence any God has interfered since then. So no design today, or at least no reason to think there is design.

What if causality is an illusion? Maybe the universe is like a book that God wrote and we are reading that book. We become attached to the main character in the book (our physical body) so much that we forget that we are not that physical body. We think we are making choices, but actually we are just observing choices that have already been made by God when he wrote the book. The illusion of causality is created by progression of the plot.