Re: Signs of Deliberate Artifact?


Seanpit wrote:
Inez wrote:
Seanpit wrote:
Inez wrote:
Seanpit wrote:
It is often argued in this forum that the detection of design is
dependent upon some knowledge of the identity, motive, and mechanism of
the designer(s) responsible for a given phenomenon.

Well, how does one determine that a given phenomenon actually shows
signs of artifact? How does one rule out the possibility of a natural
cause? Does the simple demonstration that someone can produce a given
feature mean that this feature, when found somewhere else in a
different setting is evidence of artifact? What if a non-deliberate
process could also produce such a feature? How then would artifact be
detected?

Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com

If you want my personal opinon, I mostly go on guesswork.

So, forensic science, and SETI science and anthropology are based on
guesswork? ; )

I don't believe Forensic science, SETI science and anthropology are
based on my guesswork.

So, you really don't know how it's done? Is that what your saying? You
just guess instead? ; )

I don't know how what's done?

If the item
has a serial number, I consider this a strong clue.

How do you know that this serial number wasn't produced by a
non-deliberate process? Non-deliberate processes can make etchings in
stuff you know. Some of these can look like numbers. How do you know
that the serial number you are looking at wasn't produced by some
non-deliberate process?

You're trying to push me into the realm of "knowing" here. Still, I'll
try to be serious for a moment and answer.

If I see a car, I believe it to be designed because I know humans
design and build cars. If you want me to say that cars don't look like
anything I see coming out of the natural world, I will agree to that as
well. For that matter if I saw a polished granite cube I would assume
that it was produced by humans for similar reasons.

But how do you know that such things are not the product of
non-deliberate natural forces? How do you know that just because
humans design and build cars that non-deliberate processes don't do the
same? It is possible, isn't it? Do you know that non-deliberate
processes can't make a car or a highly symmetrical polished granite
cube? Hmmmm?

Again, this is really not something I get worked up about. I've never
heard of "non-deliberate" forces producing a car. It seems quite
unlikely to me that they would, but I cannot calculate odds for you,
and I doubt anyone could.


Your guesswork
methodology isn't any better than flipping a coin.

That doesn't stand to reason. Educated guesses can do much better than
coin tosses.

Not if you can't explain why you guess the way you do.

Really? You don't think I can guess if cars are human produced or
naturally occuring at better than a 50% error rate?

You really can't
base anything at all on that, even if you aren't religious, can you?

Not being a scientist, I don't really need to base anything on it, do
I?

You do if you want to argue that someone else's methodology isn't
scientific. You have to be able to explain why one methodology is
scientific and why another isn't.

I don't believe this logically follows. I would have to be able to
explain the difference between "someone else's methodology" and
"Scienctific," but I wouldn't necessarily have to be able to reference
another branch of science.

For example if someone were to claim that a certain gene required a
certain number of "fairly specified residues" and all intermediate
steps were toxic or neutral and had to be arrived at one base at a
time, in order to accept it as scientific I should want to see
experiments showing this was in fact the case. I would not necessarily
have to point out that gallileo dropped rocks from a tower to prove his
theories of gravitation.

If you believe that forensic science
and anthropology are real scientific disciplines, upon what basis do
you hold this to be true? If you just "don't know", are you not basing
your belief in the notion that these disciplines really are science in
blind faith?

Personally, I do take it on faith that scientists know what they're
talking about. I've nothing like the kind of time to become an expert
in every branch of science, or the level of intelligence to do it even
if I had the time.

.

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