Yes. We gain confidence as we can more clearly identify purposefully arranged parts.
Behe and the IDers have never gotten beyond “this looks designed to me so it must be designed”. They keep changing the terminology to keep the claim sounding fresh (i.e “those parts look purposely arranged to me!”) but it’s still 100% argument from personal opinion. Not a bit of positive supporting evidence in sight.
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As others have noted, there are several things wrong with this statement, but again I stress that calling something ‘purposeful’ and then concluding that it is the product of a mind, is purely circular reasoning. To get back to some sort of logical argument you need to actually demonstrate that the functionality we see has been arrived at on purpose. You haven’t even started doing this.
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You have not identified a single purposely arranged part in naturally occurring biological life. Not one.
I actually think that yes, we would conclude that Rushmore is designed and Everest is not. Mainly, because the likelihood of erosion producing four sets of faces closely resembling historical people is indeed extremely low. It seems weird to deny that.
Where the argument fails is in the claim that Rushmore is a valid analogy for biological structures. Clearly there are numerous essential differences - Rushmore is hewn out of solid rock and so needs someone or something to have hewn it, whereas biological structures grow by themselves, usually quite unassisted as long as they are in the right environment. Another essential difference is that biological structures are found in organisms that are not one-offs but originate from populations of similar organisms that generate offspring. These differences are quite sufficient to sink the analogy between Rushmore and biology.
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We observe lots of functional purpose in biology. Mobility, reproduction etc.
No Bill, we observe lots of function. No one has ever observed any purpose in biological features. You really should learn the difference.
Behe made a fool of himself again with his “purposeful arrangement of parts” claim. Are you going blindly follow him off the cliff again?
In a single-celled organism, such as an amoeba, mitosis is how the cell reproduces. This asexual reproduction is also how many cells within a complex organism, such as a human, create new cells. … Through a process known as cytokinesis , the single cell breaks apart into two identical cells, completing the reproduction.May 29, 2019
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What Are Three Primary Purposes of Mitosis? | Sciencing
As long as you keep sneaking in that word, your reasoning will remain circular.
There is a lot of anthropomorphic language in science. This is done because it simplifies explanations. For instance, geographers say that rivers strive for an ideal profile. This doesn’t mean that rivers have minds and work towards a specific outcome.
Most people understand that this is a figure of speech. Some other people jump on such expressions in an attempt to shore up a position for which they don’t actually have any evidence.
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I got a big smile imagining Bill desperately Googling to find a science paper anywhere with the word “purpose” in the title. 
And indeed, it shows the involvement of a mind.
That is to say, it shows that your mind was involved in ascribing purpose.
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I think this is one of the most notable things about the ID movement/trainwreck. They don’t do substantive work on design itself. I haven’t read Axe’s latest book but the abstract is that it’s all about “intuition” which is literally the opposite mindset from “science.” So here we are watching a design apologist point to xx minutes in yy video, instead of pages xx-yy in a book by a scholar.
This whole thread is a grade-school level conversation, which is sad because there actually are scholars who have thought hard and well about concepts of design in biology. Instead of the childish sound-bites of the ID movement, we could discuss Del Ratzsch’s concept of counterflow, or we could read Dan Dennett’s work on design, etc. The best we have in this thread is the brilliant illustration by @Art using the Old Man of the Mountain. (I hope someday to use that in a book, with Art’s permission of course.)
I am seriously fascinated by the fact that the “Intelligent Design movement” harbors no one who thinks about design. (I am cheerfully open to refutation of this claim.) All I see is “gee whiz” at best, and cynically crafted falsehood at worst. Show me some real thought about design.
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Do you think that general relativity’s prediction of black holes is a farce because their formation has not been directly observed?
I see continuous objections that have no grounding in scientific standards. This one is an example of hundreds I have seen from the anti design movement. When I discussed @TedDavis post with Mike Behe he also mentioned this issue.
Arbitrary criticism is frequent and constructive criticism is rare in my experience.
Here’s some constructive criticism Bill:
If you want people to think biological functions are a “purposeful arrangement of parts” you need to provide some positive supporting evidence, not just your personal opinion.
Constructive criticism is always ignored by the ID True Believers in my experience.
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No. But I remain uncertain about them for now.
My entire point was that people “see” minds at work without adequately examining the possibility that it is their own mind that was doing the work.
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YES. No conversation about design can even be coherent, much less credible, without beginning here, with human cognitive science. Detection of design (aka agency) is a unique and fundamental feature of human minds, and the detectors seem to be set for high gain with the resultant high false positivity rate. Which is to say that a human announcing that they “see design” is only the beginning of an argument for design. At the outset at least, this kind of “detection” says more about the mind of the observer than it does about whatever it is they are looking at. This is why claims like Bill’s lack any intellectual credibility: not because design is undetectable, or non-existent, but because the “detection” that he is defending is exactly the kind we know to be unreliable and easily misrepresented.
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I would make that distinction, and it’s not clear what @sfmatheson is trying to say.
He’s saying ID could be approached as a serious field of scientific study if its proponents would come up with some testable hypotheses and actually test them. Sadly all we have now is the Discovery Institute’s bunch of yahoos pushing anti-science propaganda to further its religiously driven political agenda.
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