Yup, that’s a pretty good summation of the ID Creationist “research” strategy. Throw as much shit as you can against the wall, and see if anything sticks.
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This cannot not be be distinguished in a designed universe as everything is the product of design.
This also cannot be distinguished in a universe by chance as everything is attributed to chance.
What can be distinguished are observations that can be attributed to inert matter and living organisms and those that cannot.
Reproduction can be explained by the characteristics of living organisms. The origin of reproduction cannot.
Interesting thought. I agree in the sense that a negative cannot be proven (there is no designer). “A universe by chance” asserts that chance is a necessary and sufficient cause, and we see plenty of evidence for randomness. “A universe by design” asserts that something more than chance is necessary, but (for this thread) cannot produce naturally occurring watches in evidence.
Huh? What kinds of observations cannot be attributed to matter, living or inert? Energy perhaps, but physics relates energy and matter.
Nothing can ever be explained, until it is. 
I am not sure what you mean as the universe did not deliver watches in evidence. The Designer is a universe maker. He decided to delegate the watchmaking task to his intelligent creation who had use for it.
I am not sure why we would think this is less impressive than a watch in the Cambrian where it had no practical use.
I think where the evidence is virtually non existent is complexity reliably increasing as a result of reproduction and natural variation.
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I think you missed the humor … digging watches out of the rocks instead of … nevermind. 
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Where is the evidence of complexity reliably increasing as a result of God’s actions?
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And when it sticks, that’s evidence of design. When it falls off, instead, that’s also evidence of design.
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That’s exactly the point.
Since you are unable to understand how the nested hierarchy of life points to common descent and not to separate creation, I don’t expect you will understand this argument either since it is similar in many regards. But just to spell it out:
Evolution predicts that examples of functional complexity in the natural world will be more commonly, if not exclusively, found in things that are the result of reproduction with variation.
Intelligent design makes no such prediction.
The prediction of evolution is confirmed.
Therefore, the evidence supports evolution and not ID.
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Hi Faizal
Intelligent design is a method for detecting or inferring design in nature. It is not mutually exclusive of evolution.
The challenge is making the case that this signal (hierarchal pattern) is strong enough to determine cause on its own. The pattern includes dramatic changes in genetic make up especially if you start with LUCA.
Special creation in my mind simply suggests a different starting point for science where we do not have to reconcile different gene patterns.
This makes no sense. Its like saying evolution is a method for detecting or inferring evolution in nature. Intelligent design is regarded as an inference not a method.
The signal is darn obvious and its cause is biological reproduction.
Name these “dramatic changes”?
Special creation of various kinds is a dead idea.
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So tell us:
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What are the steps of this method?
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How has the reliability of this method been tested?
Oddly and on the contrary, it seems connected exclusively to things that evolve. That’s the point. Why shouldn’t non-evolving natural things also show the specified complexity associated with intelligent design?
Too vague to make sense of. Cause of what? The hierarchical pattern is strong enough to determine the cause of the hierarchical pattern, i.e. common descent, since there is no other cause expected to produce such a pattern.
But special creation doesn’t produce nested hierarchy. You have abandoned a cause that does explain the pattern for one that doesn’t. And that’s a step forward for science?
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And the question remains: Why are those who claim this method works unable to detect or infer design in nature in anything other than those things that have evolved?
ID’ers are constantly saying that human design provides the template for how they detect design in nature. But the things humans design are like watches. They are things that are built individually, not things that arise thru self-replication.
How does ID account for this rather strange fact?
Design detection has levels. It is more evident in biology but it is not necessarily absent when observing matter if you consider Behe’s criteria.
It’s mostly true at this point. Self replication is a much bigger challenge and the biological sciences are in the early innings of the game. Crispr is moving in the direction of human biological designs using biological components to do gene editing.
Okay so, for the ID-creationists who just don’t get it, the question being posed is why the Cdesignor doesn’t produce irreducibly complex, “created for a purpose” things that “look designed” but which are NOT an evolving organism? Why is it that of all the things the designer COULD create, that would also exhibit properties like irreducible complexity, having a “purposeful arrangement of parts” and so on, such as super-complicated mechanical clocks even more accurate, intricate, and superior to Jens Olsen’s World Clock - Wikipedia, or supercomputers, or high-speed trans-continental trains, we only ever find wet, oily, growing and evolving things instead?
No, we never get any of that. What we find are sand dunes, random irregularly shaped rocks and stones, wind-eroded mountains produced by plate tectonics, random cloud shapes, and innumerable other phenomena everyone has no problem thinking are produced by “blind” physics and chemistry. Yes, that rock could have been produced by cooling magma washed over by seawater over millions of years. Yeah that’s just another random cloud formation. Yep, wind made those sand-dunes, fine.
And then there’s evolving organisms. Of all complex things the designer COULD have decided to make, she made complex things that evolve. Curious fact, isn’t it? Why are the “hallmarks of design” we are constantly told about only ever exhibited by things that undergo the very process that produces that same property?
Why doesn’t the designer ever make non-evolving complex things that also have irreducible complexity, have purposeful arrangements of parts, specified complexity, and all that other fancy technical-sounding stuff? Why do we not find non-evolving, purely synthetic computers, the constant and unalterable watch, and the divine vehicle that requires literally every single component to function at all?
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From Ewerts paper
The JavaScript applications fit the tree or the depen- dency graph better than the null model. However, the dependency graph is preferred to the tree. This again confirms one of the predictions, software can exhibit a hierarchical signal while being produced by a dependency graph. Nevertheless, it still fits the dependency graph better than the hierarchical pattern.
Designs create hierarchal patterns also due to the reuse of components and systems. The pattern on its own is not enough to determine cause. The Howe Venn diagram indicates separate starting points.
Bill, all you’re doing here is presenting more evidence that you don’t understand the point summarized in the title of this thread. More word salad will not help you.
If you have no meaningful contribution to make to this discussion, I suggest you just remain silent rather than engage in this sort of vapid, obfuscatory bafflegab.
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Natural selection, drift, mutation and recombination are glaringly obvious in biology. Pick any macromolecular system say a flagella or an ATP synthase and you would see the signs of molecular evolution there. Intelligent design just has no merit in biology, but it could if its proponents did the dirty work of science.
Gene editing is not self-replication and we stole that technique from systems capable of self-replication.
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So Bill, any explanation for why the designer isn’t creating watches, computers, or vehicles, but seems to restrict all her “things having purposeful, irreducibly complex arrangement of parts” to only being found in evolving organisms? No?
Okay.
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