Talk:Intelligent design

The Quotations Are Very, VERY Condescending
My personal favorite... "Now tell me how intelligent design works."

Easy, tell me how natural design works. That is, create your own version of Conway's Game Of Life, on a much more grand scale, and show us that natural design/evolution is possible. A computer should easily be able to simulate billions, or even trillions of years worth of evolution and should be able to randomly create self-evolving virtual life and pretty well anything else you like.... except... oh, it can't actually. No, unfortunately we have to actually hire programmers and we have to actually code things from scratch. We haven't even been able to create intelligent virtual life, let alone naturally evolving intelligent virtual life. The presumed argument works just as easily with our computer systems as it does with nature. If "life" can naturally be created, then so can virtual "life" within a computer system... except it can't. The attempted argument/rebuttal with nature is the 'ol, "well it would take billions of years for it to happen, that's why we can't recreate it"... but that excuse doesn't hold up in simulated virtual environments where time is the equivalent of processing power. If you can't create it virtually... you cannot prove natural evolution any more than the other side can prove intelligent design. This entire article is rather biased in that it focuses too much on the crazy end of the spectrum whilst completely ignoring actual rational discussion and debate on the subject. In short, this is more of an attack article than anything. --Onideus (talk) 17:01, 16 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Eh, you do realise that computers are machines, right? ScepticWombat (talk) 17:10, 16 January 2017 (UTC)


 * You do realize that your body is technically a machine, right? Hence the reason we're starting to use rat brains in robots in place of collision detection software.  There is no definitive line between man-made machines and man himself.  Here's some fun links for you...
 * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-0eZytv6Qk
 * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLb9EIiSyG8
 * --Onideus (talk) 17:22, 16 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Okay, so you think there is no difference between biological creatures and machines? And you post some random YT videos for me to (supposedly) be wowed by as the clincher? Tell me, do people usually find this style convincing? ScepticWombat (talk) 17:26, 16 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Why would I want to "convince" you of anything? I'm stating facts, whether you wish to believe them or not is entirely your own business, not mine.  A computer system uses a binary based encoding scheme in conjunction with the flow of electrons.  A human uses a quadnary based encoding scheme in conjunction with the flow of ions.  If the two weren't directly compatible then bionic limbs and eyes wouldn't be possible...
 * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bh3MaoPVdNM
 * --Onideus (talk) 17:42, 16 January 2017 (UTC)
 * https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=z_Nq3xuHkgE ScepticWombat (talk) 17:52, 16 January 2017 (UTC)


 * Apparently this "looney" (going by his ad hominem video reply) is denying the existence of bionic implants and augmentation, despite the countless dozens of FDA approved models currently in use. I guess next he's going to deny the entire existence of the field of genetic engineering.  I'm guessing maybe he's one of those types that think the earth was created 10,000 years ago by some crazy cloud monster living in the sky. --Onideus (talk) 18:01, 16 January 2017 (UTC)
 * One thing you failed to do here is provide any reason to suggest that intelligent design deserves anything but smug condescension. It's not exactly... epistemologically or scientifically sound.  ikanreed You probably didn't deserve that 18:07, 16 January 2017 (UTC)


 * Oh that part is easy... the DNA form as we presenty understand it is a quadnary coding system in a double helix array containing roughly 1.5 gigabytes of data (when translated into our binary system) in the human genome. Now, build me something, virtually, as complex as a human being, including an operating system to govern its every function and process and do it all within that 1.5 gig range... oh, oh you CAN'T, can you?  Unless your attempted argument is that nature itself is a form of intelligence, one which has surpassed human intelligence, you don't actually have much of an argument for natural design unless you want to use one of my theories regarding a self-evolving encoding key intertwined into the folds of the DNA structure that could greatly increase the data availability, a theory present supported by known measurements, at least according to Dr. Lynn  Zechiedrich, but not one firmly substantiated... and even if it were, it wouldn't directly negate the possibility of intelligent design, in fact, if anything, it would support it.  Since at that point you would need to somehow prove that nature is capable of creating (by accident) not just life, but a self-evolving compression algorithm along with it.  In effect it would make your position doubly harder to prove.


 * And, that is the point, isn't it... just as the creationists can't prove their side... neither have you been able to prove yours. This article does wonders as far as pointing out the potential logical flaws in their arguments along with lots of fedora level hat tipping, but it does nothing to actually support YOUR side with REAL EVIDENCE.  Instead, again, all you have is excuses.  The entire basis of this article is, "Their argument is flawed, therefore our argument is sound." which is itself a fallacy.  But, hey, prove me wrong... 1.5 gigs, let's see you create virtual artificial life as complex as a human being within those constraints.


 * Oh, and just for the sake of really adding insult to your failing belief system... explain this (genetically)...
 * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ant_mimicry


 * Not to mention this...
 * https://lawnchairanthropology.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/cyphonia.jpg


 * Genetic/physical mimicry sorta defies everything we supposedly know about evolution.
 * --Onideus (talk) 18:39, 16 January 2017 (UTC)
 * "It's easy" *procedes to babble endlessly about what they think I'm personally capable of* as if the fact that I couldn't design something is evidence of it being designed* That's not even remotely scientific or epistemological validity.  And it certainly isn't a good reason to not be condescending.  If anything, I don't think you're aware enough of the implicit contradictions within your own statements suggesting a kind of mental incompetence that edges on deserving outright scorn.  ikanreed You probably didn't deserve that 19:34, 16 January 2017 (UTC)


 * "procedes"... oh, I didn't mean you, actually. I sorta meant go find someone more intelligent than you are to argue your side FOR YOU.  Or, if you like, I can do it FOR YOU.  By no means was I ever suggesting that you, yourself, were capable of actually defending any possible or potential merits of the random beliefs to which you have so precariously latched onto without the benefit of even understanding the most basic fundamentals.  The only thing I'm expecting of you is some euphoric, fedora wearing, neck-beard babble at best... but if you'd like to prove me wrong, by all means, do try.  --Onideus (talk) 20:02, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

A million years can be a very large number of generations - and most species do not start from scratch ('Tomorrow, apefolk, we are going to go onto the plains and turn into super-apes, so everybody start deconstructing like (well known brand of building toy) - this time we turn the FOXP2 brick round etc... oh, we have we here now - humans not super-apes') or go back to the beginning (as with the Edgar Rice Burroughs books). Evolution tends to operate on 'what there is and can be adapted to work for what is required however badly it does work in practice' (see list of badly designed intelligent design on RW). 82.44.143.26 (talk) 18:56, 16 January 2017 (UTC)


 * Time means nothing to a computer. In computer terms, time is effectively processing power.  Let's see... guess I'll debate myself for a moment.  There are actually some computer models that have shown it's theoretically possible for color based mimicry mutations to naturally evolve within butterfly species... but it's still just a hypothesis, it's not definitively proven by any means and certainly not with complex genetic structures and forms.  My own personal hypothesis is that species may be able to indirectly "steal" genetic material in a sense from other species, likely through ingestion, which may then be utilized in some active capacity that we're not presently aware of.  If true it would bring a whole new meaning to the phrase, "you are what you eat".  --Onideus (talk) 19:02, 16 January 2017 (UTC)
 * You are absolutely wrong here and are now also showing your ignorance of computers. Time is very important in computing, otherwise there would be no clock within them. Every modern computer has a clock and it is used to synchronize CPU operations. Even if you designed a computer without a formal clock (e.g., a Turing Machine), there is still the sense of time in so far as instructions are processed sequentially. Bongolian (talk) 20:48, 16 January 2017 (UTC)


 * You're talking about clock cycles and such, which has absolutely nothing to do with SIMULATED "time" within a virtual environment. Basically you're trying to argue electronic semantics for lack of a real argument.  If you think "time" is fixed within a computer you've obviously never even run a game emulator before.  For simulated "time" within a virtual environment the "time" is effectively governed by how fast the computer can process information.  The faster it can process, the faster that simulated "time" can go.  This is pretty basic stuff kiddo, so I'm not really sure what point you're trying to make (if any).  --Onideus (talk) 22:31, 16 January 2017 (UTC)


 * Mmmm, the thing that really ruins your argument against intelligent design though... is your own argument. We, as humans, are an intelligent, self-aware species and we have been able to screw around with the very bowels of creation itself, effectively playing God.  If your argument is that an intelligent, self-aware species can naturally come into existence and, as we have proven ourselves, as a species, we can in turn play God... we are our own best argument for intelligent design.  We can prove intelligent design using our own supposed natural intelligence and what we've been able to create... but on the flip side we have been unable to definitively prove the reverse. --Onideus (talk) 19:14, 16 January 2017 (UTC)


 * Computers and 'carbon based life' are two different things - attempting to argue 'because we created computers some entity created us' involves a category error.

There is no 'theory' to mimicry on one level - a creature that 'looks like' something that is poisonous or inedible (eg a fallen leaf) is more likely to survive than one which does not. On this superficial level parts of the theory of evolution can be understood (along with eg 'here is an environment/potential food source - can we exploit it?'). The only answer to 'Intelligent design' is 'Goddidit, Goddidit, Goddidit, and whatever I say three times is true (but only if it involves the Bible and no other system of religious belief including the Apocrypha). 31.51.113.179 (talk) 22:55, 16 January 2017 (UTC)


 * I'm actually referring to genetic manipulation/engineering, although it is largely aided by computers...
 * http://www.rdmag.com/article/2016/03/scientists-create-revolutionary-synthetic-life-form
 * We humans have the power to play God, we can create new life from scratch. Heck we can even create artificial biology...
 * https://www.technologyreview.com/s/601641/a-big-leap-for-an-artificial-leaf/
 * And we can do it BETTER than nature!


 * Humans prove, definitively, that "intelligent design" is possible. We can create a "zero player game" similar to Conway's Game of Life on a grand scale, anywhere and anytime we like.  Hell we could fire off a rocket to any planet of our choosing and seed it with whatever genetic building blocks we like and over the course of billions of years that simple life could evolve on that planet into intelligent life, wondering all the while where it came from.  We have no idea if the life on earth really came from earth originally, even if the underlying development of that life is nature, the core, the basic building blocks, can be manipulated, controlled and programmed to produce whatever we like.  --Onideus (talk) 23:06, 16 January 2017 (UTC)


 * Oh, forgot to mention, you're also wrong. There very much IS a "theory" to mimicry, in fact there's more than one, but the current favorite follows a two-step hypothesis. The first step involves mutation in modifier genes that regulate a complex cluster of linked genes that cause large changes in morphology. The second step consists of selections on genes with smaller phenotypic effects, creating an increasingly close resemblance.  The other big theory is in regards to convergent evolution.  However, again, it's ALL theory.  There have been some limited computer simulations regarding population genetics which have supported the theory... but not definitively proven it.  --Onideus (talk) 23:13, 16 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Just because intelligent design could have happened doesn't mean it happened.- 23:32, 16 January 2017 (UTC)


 * That works both ways though. The point isn't to say that it did or didn't happen, just that it remains a POSSIBILITY and that no definitive proof has been discovered on either side of the equation.  You seek to negate a very potential possibility simply because you don't like the usual "branding" that comes along with it, but that doesn't make the oppositional hypothesis any more substantiated.  In essence you've got a Guilt By Association fallacy, a Questionable Cause fallacy, a Relativist fallacy, a Circumstantial Ad Hominem fallacy AND an Appeal to Ridicule fallacy all bundled on up into a great big butthurt article about how much you hatred there is for religious nutballs... which, ya know, I get.  I have as much disdain for religious nutballs as I do for euphoric, fedora wearing, neckbeards... but then this is supposed to be the rational wiki... not Encyclopedia Dramatica. --Onideus (talk) 00:02, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

Onideus, let me make sure I understand your argument - it summary, you think life is so complicated, it must have been designed, it could not originate by random chance - is that correct? Further, your evidence is that you could not personally design life, so it must be designed, not originated by random chance? Hipocrite (talk) 15:55, 17 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Careful — he might turn his powerful diagnostic abilities against you. Reverend Black Percy (talk) 16:17, 17 January 2017 (UTC)
 * I think the point the other IP was trying to make is - there is 'what happens' (the interactions between various parts of the living world and the environments in which they find themselves, whether or not Gaia is involved) and then there are the theories of the mechanisms by which such changes occur (eg with the samurai crabs). There will always be a mixture of 'chance' and 'the genes/the form that they create making certain lines of evolution possible and others not' - certain lines succeeded in the world of the Burgess Shale so we ended up with two eyes, four limbs and five digits on each, rather than five eyes and seven limbs, or looking like a computer mouse. 82.44.143.26 (talk) 17:09, 17 January 2017 (UTC)


 * It's not about complicated so much as directed complexity. Complex forms can occur naturally of course, but DRIVEN complexity, that's something else entirely.  Evolution is a driver, it is not a natural process, at least not compared to other natural processes.  I mean Bismuth for example has some real nice complexity in its natural formation...
 * https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1f/Wismut_Kristall_und_1cm3_Wuerfel.jpg
 * But the point is, it's not ~doing~ anything, it has no inherent directional purpose in the way that "life" has. People generally talk about "life" as if it's a natural state, and while there certainly are a number of natural/randomized forms within "life", the thing that sets it apart from everything else known in the universe... is directed purpose.  To evolve is a GOAL, it is not natural, nature by its nature, should have no goals, no direction at all.  The direction of life is to try and create the most perfect being, in effect, to create God, or at least God by nature's standards.  Likewise "life" could be described as nature becoming sentient to some capacity or degree.  Ultimately my point is that you shouldn't blindly fixate on ONE potential possibility when there are SO MANY different possibilities and potentials behind the nature of the universe at large.  To automatically ignore and dismiss all other possibilities makes very little sense and serves only to stagnate scientific discovery and advancement.  In short... keep an open mind... although not so open that your brains all fall out. --Onideus (talk) 19:13, 17 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Oh, wow, so that literally tosses the central theorem of intelligent design out on its ass: namely "irreducible" complexity in favor of the even more bullshitty, even less defined "directed" or "driven" complexity. Much as I'd "enjoy" the several hours it would take to demonstrate that this is classic begging the question by assuming intelligence in a process as part of proving that process is intelligent, I'm fully aware you would change subjects and ignore how you're wrong again.
 * Life has no built-in point, and you have done exactly nothing to prove it. ikanreed You probably didn't deserve that 19:28, 17 January 2017 (UTC)
 * The very fact that you're incapable of seeing how your own post can be inversely directed at your own fixed position (that nature is entirely without purpose) pretty well proves my point entirely. In your particular case though... you may very well be right... I don't think YOU, personally, have much point or purpose... unless you count serving as a warning sign.  --Onideus (talk) 19:39, 17 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Just lol, creationists are so sad. "If you don't take my bullshit without evidence you're closed minded."  Has that line ever worked on anyone, kid?  ikanreed You probably didn't deserve that 19:59, 17 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Uh, I'm not technically a creationist, kiddo. I simply don't cling to polarity in a state of mental insecurity.  i will generally take the oppositional side to whatever is the prevailing/fixed view presently at play within a given medium.  Unlike you I do not suffer from single point sagacity and linear thinking.  --Onideus (talk) 20:08, 17 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Lol, you're a fucking creationist. You believe the universe was endowed with intelligent being with inherent purpose because *vague non-specific mumbles*.  The fact that you don't like thinking of yourself as a creationist is quite aside from the point.  I generally try to respect self-identification, but if you want me to take you seriously, I feel like you gotta accept that you're a particularly vague and non-specific creationist.
 * And that's important too. You think being vague makes your position more open minded, because you've confused lack of obsession about details with openness to multiple positions.
 * Here's the deal: If you think purpose is fundamental to life, I want you to tell me in which part of a paramecium I can locate purpose. Which is the minimum set of organelles to remove, if removed, would suddenly render it no longer having purpose.  You've attached your personal sense of value of life to a concrete, fundamental, non-human purpose, which I will tell you flat-out you can't substantiate.  ikanreed You probably didn't deserve that 20:29, 17 January 2017 (UTC)
 * " i will generally take the oppositional side to whatever is the prevailing/fixed view presently at play within a given medium". Always playing the devil's advocate is the very definition of "single point sagacity and linear thinking".  Automatically opposing the prevailing point of view  is intellectually identical to blindly supporting the prevailing point of view.  Petey Plane (talk) 20:39, 17 January 2017 (UTC)
 * And, to your point of "purpose" in reality: Do you believe that creation's purpose is ultimately knowable? If it is not, then is there any difference between an unknowable purpose, and no purpose at all?  Petey Plane (talk) 20:43, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

Always playing the devil's advocate isn't static so long as you never choose a single devil to advocate for. Advocate probably isn't the right word choice though. You seem pretty fixated on wanting to determine my particular belief set, so I guess I can humor you. To be perfectly blunt, I see you as humans as rocks. Some are brightly colored and kind of interesting to look at, some I might keep/collect... but yer all seriously just a bunch of fuckin rocks to me.

I have a hard time recognizing most people as a sentient presence in and of themselves, largely due to their before mentioned single point sagacity and linear thinking, so a lot of times I'll think of MULTIPLE people as a SINGLE entity and then it's kind of like you have an actual sentient presence.

Which is why I very rarely keep track of people's names, unless I find them especially interesting. Otherwise I tend to think of all the people I interact with as being the exact same entity... it's less lonely that way.

I consider the nature of what it is that I am to be the present living God of humanity's demons, whether you want to take that to be a literal description of what I do to people, or if you'd like to interpret it as a metaphor is entirely up to you, but in either capacity I can breed hatred and infuriation in you and use it to my advantage.

As to the other part, about knowing the "purpose" of reality, I don't think it's as simple as that. I think it's possible to derive any number of potential purposes or drivers and you can perceptually quantify them using any number of forms. The point of scientific experimentation should be to actively attempt to influence or control specific hypothetical drivers and then to observe how various systems react to those changes to determine a potential sense of will or want. Of course keeping in mind all the fun little tricks like the observer effect and so forth. To quote Kyubey, "If we could observe it, we could interfere with it. And if we can interfere with it, we can control it."

That's what I'm seeking... to control the nature of reality itself on a grand level. To be perfectly blunt, if your fixed perception holds true, that reality isn't governed or controlled by any sense of reason or want... it becomes all that much easier to take control of that reality. So on a personal level I actually hope your side is the correct one. --Onideus (talk) 21:23, 17 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Oh gasp. A self-righteous while simultaneously dimwitted asshole having trouble recognizing the basic humanity of other people and immediately jumping to puppetmaster defense.  SUCH A SURPRISE THERE.  unique on the internet, really.
 * "Merely by being noxious and unthinking I have provoked a reaction of dislike in you hahahahaha!"
 * I'm collapsing this discussion now. ikanreed You probably didn't deserve that 21:30, 17 January 2017 (UTC)


 * On the contrary kiddo, I use very precise levels of emotional instability infliction in order to achieve a variety of goals and to experiment with and on a level you've likely never even seen before. As an example I once took a woman whose kid committed suicide... and I in turn manipulated her into becoming an active ADVOCATE of suicide...
 * http://i.imgur.com/VXQxZrb.jpg


 * Neat thing about you humans... you're not just intelligent, you're EMOTIONALLY intelligent... as such, by purposefully inflicting specific emotional states in precisely controlled ways you can effectively and permanently burn information, knowledge and experiences directly into a person's long term memory engrams in order to screw around with their base level cognition, perceptions, ideals, beliefs and desires.


 * Slightly unethical mind you... but VERY effective! :D
 * --Onideus (talk) 21:46, 17 January 2017 (UTC)
 * - 22:20, 18 January 2017 (UTC)

My further argument against Intelligent Design (at least i think it's mine)
It's all bollocks! Exactly which 'Intelligent' designer would design organs such as testicles that only work properly when outside the body they belong to, yet are so delicate that they cause extreme pain to their owner when even slightly knocked or bruised? QED Ps. I'm very new here and tried to add this once already but it disappeared, no idea what i did wrong, just the fates punishing me for hubris i guess...hope you don't mind my temerity, i've been reading here a long time and like what i see. Changeling (talk) 23:41, 4 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Better question: why would a perfect Intelligent Designer create external sexual organs only for humans to cover them? Why not hide them to begin with? 03:47, 5 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Reverend Black Percy (talk) 14:51, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

Indeed, it's a very quirky not to say perverse designer that will do that for whales and delphines, that apparently have no sense of shame, but not for humans, whose sense of shame is seriously over-developed.Changeling (talk) 04:57, 5 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Maybe it's the whales that are God's chosen people... Reverend Black Percy (talk) 14:51, 5 August 2017 (UTC)
 * I like it! Perhaps Noah was merely an oversight, and the whole Ark story was made up by the accidental survivors to cover up their marginal position in the great scheme of things. Changeling (talk) 18:50, 6 August 2017 (UTC)

It's pretty obvious that design is really pretty unintelligent. Everything is based on things that came before. A God "intelligent designer" would have been able to uniquely design every beast to uniquely fit it's role without any consideration of the designs of other organisms. (Yes, I understand that that's a better argument against the "Young Earth" version of ID.)--Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 16:38, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

Trial and Error Design
We know that some 99% of all species that ever existed are now extinct. If god is in charge, that means he made a species, later decided he could do better and wiped out that species, replacing it by better. Then he later decided he could do even better so wiped out the improved species and made better, and so on, for species after species after species. This is not Intelligent Design but Design by Trial and Error.(184.22.101.203 (talk) 04:15, 30 January 2018 (UTC))
 * It all depends upon how you define 'better' - and often there is a transition between one species and the next. (Sometimes there #is# a significant change - as with the Great Oxygenation Event, Dinosaur Asteroid, creation of the Deccan Traps etc - or a species suddenly moves into a totally new environment and has to evolve rapidly to survive.) Anna Livia (talk) 18:04, 7 March 2018 (UTC)

Reverse engineering
If 'the design' is 'intelligent' what can be deduced about the intelligence - were the construction plans peculiarly incomprehensible (we all know the feeling)? Anna Livia (talk) 18:04, 7 March 2018 (UTC)

another possiblity
The gods of the various planets are involved in a game of exquisite corpse/consequences - they have to make the best they can of the entities they are presented with. Anna Livia (talk) 17:23, 16 May 2018 (UTC)

Moving the goal post
the page makes this claim:

"One problem with finding evidence for intelligent design is the inability to distinguish "naturally" evolved mechanisms from "designed" mechanisms. Nobody knows what the "design" of a supernatural creator looks like; how can we tell what was and was not designed?"

And then a few sub sections latter brush off the floundering of abiogenisis as not their problem.

It would seem to me that as time goes on the idea of a self replicating chemical that can form the basis for life spontaneously forming get's more and more unbelievable as we learn of all the things that need to go right for it to form. The difference between the mechanisms is That the naturalistic one would seem to tell us that probability against the formation of life is literally beyond astronomical while the design hypothesis does have any such implication. If a thing is highly improbable to exist it makes more scenes to ascribe it dissing rather than chance. If someone came up to you handing the complete works of Shakespeare then puts a gun to your head saying "if you get question right i'll let you live. Was this book produced by humans or a million monkey's at typewriters?" What would you answer? If you play poker with your friend and he always has a royal flush would you expect him of cheating? The answers should be obvious to any rational person so why then when we are presented with even greater odds do you insist their must be a naturalistic cause?


 * You're missing the point of the quote, and removing it from the context of the paragraph leading to it makes it sound as if it's asking a different question than it is. Intelligent design fails to construct its own explanatory description of what design actually entails.  It merely sets itself as "that which cannot be explained any other way(and please ignore the theory with a ton of explanatory power for exactly the things we're claiming)".
 * So the quote is asking that intelligent design proponents propose a theory of what attributes designed things would have.
 * For human design there's a number of dead give aways.
 * Modularity: when humans design useful objects, we design them to be modular with components that can interconnect on specific interfaces. As an example, take a look at the many devices that plug into a computer via usb.
 * Right angles: Useful for storage and organization, objects with right angles(possibly with smoothed corners) are incredibly common in day-to-day life.
 * Perfect circles: whether for wheels or ease of construction or uniform lighting, things with a perfectly circular cross section are extremely common aspect of human designed objects.
 * Interchangable parts: like, but not the same as modularity, this is a recent(only 2 centuries old) expansion of human design, but being able to replace a broken component with an identical one from elsewhere is huge, and as result of purposeful design
 * Fixed sizes and ratios: All the gears in my watchmakers watch, they're all different numbers of milimeters accross, predictable and useful for getting exact timing.
 * Solid materials: making a consistent material for construction of each component gives huge advantages in terms of predictable characteristics. This is useful when designing objects so you can know how they'll work.
 * All of these things are things one can look for(and indeed archaeologists do look for) when identifying human designed objects. Notably, not a single one of these apply to supposedly intelligent-designed organisms.  So the challenge should fall to the theory's owners to craft such elements.  And they don't because they're just creationists under shallow cover.  ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 15:43, 14 November 2019 (UTC)

Modularity: DNA, RNA, and protein are all modular. By arranging DNA/RNA in different ways you can code for many different things using only four bases. Proteins Similarly can be arranged and folded to form many different nanomachines from only a handful of parts. Many animals can separate a part of their body to get away from predators and then grow it back

Right angles: And the golden ratio is common in nature. right angles are design aesthetic and the lack of it in a design aesthetic does not make it any less designed.

Perfect circles: Leg provide better all-terrain locomotion and are harder to design which is why we are only now designing robots. I fail to see how our technological limits imply no design. As far as "perfectly" circular cross sections go that is once again a design aesthetic. What of symmetry which is rarely made by random forces.

Interchangeable parts: All the cells in your body are regularly replaced with the same cells types unless something goes wrong. On a more macroscopic size we do organ transplants and blood transfusions all the time

Fixed sizes and ratios: Once again we see the golden ratio everywhere, also while body size may differ between members of the same sex and species we see a ratio between parts.

Solid materials: Spider silk is stronger than steel. Humans can survive the traumatic amputation of limbs. For the same wight bone is 5 times stronger than steel and for the same size 3 times lighter.

So life shows all of your criteria for design you laid out except for some specific design aesthetics. So it would seem to be reasonable to believe it was designed. &mdash; Unsigned, by: Jkevo / talk / contribs

You set forth a set of criteria that would show something was likely designed and I showed that life met those criteria. We have one theory that rest on "chance" and just so stories which makes few predictions with what few it does beggars belief and another one that make predictions like there should be apparent design witch seem to be born out by the evidence. It would seem to me that the only reason to hold the former theory and not the latter is an irrational denial of non-materialistic things.Jkevo (talk) 23:04, 14 November 2019 (UTC)
 * Believe me this is more effort than anyone affiliated with ID or the discovery institute has ever put towards that kind of attempt. Suffice it to say, I appreciate the effort, but there's some big problems, like right angles and the golden ratio having jack shit to do with each other.  And wheels not being the only circles in designed things.  Look at any given object on your desk, and tell me there's no circular components.  ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 18:35, 15 November 2019 (UTC)


 * Let us suppose we land on another planet and we find a relatively large amount of object that are equilateral triangles and perfect octagons which include buildings and tools. Would It be reasonable to deny the possibility of design because it lacks circles or right angles? There are a myriad of reasons it could be that other intelligences could choice not to use right angles and perfect circles maybe they are ascetically displeasing or perhaps they don't fit in with their technology. Unifying design choices are whats important not specific ones so I would argue that the golden ratio suffices for at least weak proof of design.Jkevo (talk) 20:15, 15 November 2019 (UTC)
 * Different numbers of digits on each limb (3, 4 and 6 are probably more practical than 7+) or 'millipede-oids' would probably cause such differences. Anna Livia (talk) 20:27, 15 November 2019 (UTC)
 * I would find their engineering suspect, as octagons don't fucking tessellate. ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 20:35, 15 November 2019 (UTC)
 * To first find engineering suspect you must admit their was an engineer so my point was made.Jkevo (talk) 01:17, 16 November 2019 (UTC)