I originally posted (a slightly modified version of) this in the "Evolution/Creation on Trial" thread, but I feel it's perhaps worth its own thread, as the discussion of "is X designed" comes up a lot, and is clogging up no less than two different threads I'm involved in here. Let's move it here, eh?
There's an important problem when considering design. Attempts to call something "designed" necessarily fall back on comparisons to design by humans. We see this in every argument made, and even when it is not explicitly stated, it is there, as we as humans have experienced almost no other form of design.
So where's the problem with this? Simple. Our "design"? Part of nature. We, humans, are part of nature. This distinction we make between our design and natural processes is entirely artificial, and while it is a useful one to make in some scenarios (anthropology, for example), it's an utterly confusing one in the context of evolution and abiogenesis. What's more, because virtually our only reference point for design is "our design", what we really end up distinguishing is "natural processes" and "natural processes".
Here's the essence of what I'm getting to. This complex machine?
Made by
nature.
So what does this mean? It means in essence that in discerning "design" among things like this, what we are distinguishing is not "design vs nature". It's "designed by X vs. not designed by X". This
completely shifts the issue, and offers us actual useful ways of modeling and discussing it. So how do we determine whether a certain entity designed something?
This is a non-trivial problem when it comes to humans. Some landscapes designed by professional architects will be designed explicitly to parallel naturally occurring landscapes. Certain naturally occurring structures look like they were carved by human tools, despite simply being the product of natural erosion. And we generally know what humans are capable of throughout history, what the hallmarks of human design are, and in many cases, we can go back and say, "Ah,
that's who designed that, there's their signature".
In other words, we can objectively recognize specified design by looking at what we
know organism X has designed, and then comparing the object we have with what we know occurs
outside the purview of organism X and what we know organism X can and does do. Notice how this is necessarily dependent on the organism! If we were to look for evidence of beaver design, we would not use the same set of objects for our comparisons as if we were to look for evidence of bumblebee design, nor human design. In the case of human design, we have a wide and deep range of things to look at, and to compare to. We have language as a fairly clear distinguisher - something that non-human processes could produce only as a bizarre coincidence and which humans produce all the time. We have metalworking as a distinguisher. We have clayworking and pottery. And so on, and so forth.
This sort of methodology is fairly robust and can be judged by objective criteria. Indeed, it's this sort of method used by various flavors of zoologists to determine what kind of animal made a particular kind of nest.
But now we're presented with an object you claim was designed. By a different designer. One whose signature we do not know; one whose capabilities we are unaware of; one whose hallmarks are unclear, and one whose
very existence is based largely on the claim that a particular object must have been designed by this designer. I'm sorry,
that's not good enough. That's not how we recognize human design. That's not how we recognize
any sort of specified design.
So what do we
know your designer has designed? What do we know your designer can do? What have we established that this designer has designed? We haven't even established this designer's
existence yet? Well, shoot.
Look, if you want to provide some alternative objective way of determining whether something is designed or not, or whether something is designed by a particular entity or not, then by all means, let's hear it! Thus far, I have heard of no other robust mechanism to distinguish design from non-design, particularly without any
established work of the designer in question. But you need to provide this mechanism, and it needs to be robust and testable. We should be able to take your mechanism and demonstrate with reasonable surety that things we know are designed (by a certain thing) are designed (by that certain thing), and things we know are not designed (by a certain thing) are not designed (by that certain thing). Make any sense?
@stevevw @Oncedeceived