Sure you are, but the answer “it was intelligently designed” is not an answer. It may be PART of an answer, but it is no more an answer than “it evolved”. Though it must be noted that even if we say that, we still have at least some idea and some constraints to work with. We know something about what really physically happened in reality. If something evolved, we can at least stipulate that it probably involved some combination of heritable genetic mutations occurring, that they were subject to varying levels of natural selection, population mechanics, and that it amounts to some form of incremental, trans-generational change. And you’d be completely in your right to ask for more details. Explain what we see. We’d all like to know, and science is the method we go about answering that.
For the sake of argument we might say here that it may be true that it was designed, but that is a rather vacuous answers in and of itself. How was it designed? What actually happened when it was designed? We need details, models, that actually explain what we see. If I tell you I made a pot of clay, you have some idea of what pottery entails. There is no such thing as just blanket “design”. It’s only when we know the actual designer that there is some semblance of explanation hiding in the word. If humans made it, I instantly imagine someone had to use their hands at least. What did I actually do to bring the thing into existence?
There’s nothing wrong with saying that, it’s just that you need a reliable method to arrive at that conclusion that doesn’t suffer from the fatal flaws detailed previously. And merely saying that doesn’t answer the question you posed first, which was “how this molecular machine came about?”. For reasons detailed above, merely saying it was intelligently designed, even if that is true and you have some evidence that indicates that, still doesn’t answer the question of how it came about. It has no explanatory content.
How was it intelligently designed? What does that actually mean really? Why are there so many versions of it? Why are they distributed like they are in life? Was one of them designed first(which one?), and the others diversified from it by neutral or adaptive evolution? Were they all independently designed de novo? Why are there these noteworthy similarities to other cellular molecules and structures, such as membrane protein and DNA/RNA translocases, RNA helicases, and so on? Why are they distributed the way they are across the diversity of life? Why the different central stalk architectures between V and F-type ATP synthases? Why wasn’t the same one just re-used when the overall function of the system is the same? What methods were used?
The problem is the method you would use to attempt to answer them, which has nothing to do with science. For reasons explained in previous posts, the method you’re advocating be used to “infer intelligence” doesn’t actually work, and it still leaves us with what is a completely vacuous band-aid of an answer. If you said it was designed, I’m still left wondering what actually took place, not having answered the question you yourself posed.
What you should be doing if you really are interested in advancing a “science of the signs of intelligence”, is to try to come up with a coherent and testable one that abides by proper scientific principles. Not try to construct ad-hoc excuses and arguments for why your method doesn’t need models, or to predict data(as Bill was arguing). And not ignore when it is shown that your proposed method suffers from flaws that fundamentally undermine the whole enterprise. That should be a motivation to return to the drawing board and try to come up with a better method instead of trying to get it shoehorned into acceptance.
I do have to note that I find the whole idea of the “science of the signs of intelligence” kind of odd and suspicious in the first place. It’s like all you want to is to find “signs of intelligence”. You don’t seem to be much interested in determining how that intelligence works and accomplishes the designing and manufacture of these entities. You just want to be able to say that you’ve found “signs” of it so that you can say that this supposed intelligence exists. Even in your attempt to try and name your proposed scientific field, you betray it’s fundamentally evangelical, religious purpose. You’re not really interested in finding out how ATP synthase came about, at bottom all you really want is to find evidence for God. I find a revealing parallel to what Bill Dembski has written in response to calls for more details from ID proponents: ID in their own words: Dembski
“As for your example, I’m not going to take the bait. You’re asking me to play a game: “Provide as much detail in terms of possible causal mechanisms for your ID position as I do for my Darwinian position.” ID is not a mechanistic theory, and it’s not ID’s task to match your pathetic level of detail in telling mechanistic stories. If ID is correct and an intelligence is responsible and indispensable for certain structures, then it makes no sense to try to ape your method of connecting the dots. True, there may be dots to be connected. But there may also be fundamental discontinuities, and with IC systems that is what ID is discovering.” - William A. Dembski Organisms using GAs vs. Organisms being built by GAs thread at ISCID 18. September 2002
Biologists generally aren’t satisfied merely with finding “signs of evolution”, they want to know details of how that actually happened.
I dare say a “science of the signs of intelligence” is vacuous, and for that reason, ultimately also useless.