An open-ended investigation into whether or not life was designed is not for the intellectually timid who need to "know" things before proceeding.

I'm convinced. What's our next step in this investigation?

If we can't see the "hands", how do we know there's a "mind" at all?

We don’t. An open-ended investigation into whether or not life was designed is not for the intellectually timid who need to "know" things before proceeding. But we don’t need to see the hands with our eyes to see a mind with our mind’s eye.

The Designer is either material or immaterial. If material, you're just kicking the ball down the road: Who designed the material Designer? If immaterial, how does he interact with the material world? If there isn't any way to interact, then the material world can't have been designed, at least by this Designer.

These are metaphysical questions that don’t add anything of use to an open-ended investigation into whether or not life was designed. In fact, you’ll notice that my original question, a question of central importance, was never really answered by your three questions. How does one go about detecting the hand-like action of actualizing without having some clue about the mind-like action of designing?

Van Til's "excellent insight" uses the hazardous rhetorical strategy of invoking an analogy to support his point, rather than just to illuminate.

No, Van Til, an ID critic, is using the analogy to illuminate design. And it is an excellent insight. Design is a mind-like action and thus detecting design is akin to detecting another mind. Conceptualization precedes actualization. I’ve taken it further to note that a focus on the hands without an earlier focus on the mind is a misguided approach. And if you took off the battle gear, you might even notice that this is precisely why the DI approach to detecting design is doomed to fail. But then again, I’m assuming folks have the intellectual ability to think about ID without the prism of the DI. You think I would have learned by now that the vast majority of critics do not have this ability.

Well folks, that’s all the time I have for TT this time around, as the kids are off school. So let me wish everyone here a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Words like "code", "transcribing", and "translating" are our shorthand for chemical processes.

Your entire comment can be reduced to a simple argument i.e. observing chemical processes also entails assuming the causal sufficiency of prior chemical reactions to produce what is observed. It's a philosophical position. There are no causal reasons why a particular amino acid polymer is generated to produce a unique protein configuration. Except the utility it affords a cell. Selection is not a chemical explanation outside a cellular environment. But cells did not always exist. The causal selection explanation for the existence of cellular structures does not apply to non-cellular environments. You can try to make linkages but they are contrived.

show me the chemical formula

ID can't handle anything more complex than "The Designer did it"? OOL research starts with the observation that electron orbitals arrange themselves in such a way that their mutual repulsion minimizes potential energy. This causes the polarity of water, for instance. It allows carbon atoms to link in chains and rings. Rings with nitrogen become RNA, which can polymerize to the extent that some of them can catalyze themselves, and other molecules. To be sure, there are gaps in the theory, things that haven't appeared yet. Our solution is to keep looking, experimenting, and thinking. Your solution seems to be to give up. Accept the existence of a totally unknowable Designer, with no knowable means of moving atoms into specific orientations. Emphasize specific. In a naturalistic scenario there are lots of variants; some survive, some don't.

that produces a genetic code out of nucleotides … along with a means of transcribing and translating it.

Words like "code", "transcribing", and "translating" are our shorthand for chemical processes. If you can't show how the Designer manipulates individual atoms, no one who actually cares about biology will pay any attention to you.

on a lifeless earth like planet

Everything in a living organism is non-living. CO2 isn't alive, but it forms the raw material for glucose, which isn't alive, but forms the raw material for amino acids and lipids, which aren't alive, but form the raw materials for cells. Glucose also stores the energy for the production of ATP, which moves all the processes of a cell. When you get to the orderly release of the energy of glucose, you begin to talk about life. (A brief nod here to deep-sea life powered by HS. Who designed that?)

Bradford: Nucleotides are not information. They symbolize it. Ink is not information either but can represent information.

Ink on paper represents information, but needs a mind to interpret it. The information might be conveyed equally well by pixels on a screen, vocalization, sign language, Braille, or smoke signals. None of it is informative until a mind interprets the represented information.

Molecules are different. In a typical cell, molecule A might attach to molecule B, which is attached to a particular place on molecule C. The shape of protein B changes, causing it to lose its grip on molecule C. This allows molecule D to assemble on molecule C, which allows molecule D to assemble. Molecule D collides with molecule E; the combination allows molecule F to assemble. Molecule F attaches to molecule G, embedded in the membrane of a cell; G changes shape, ultimately allowing molecule H to assemble itself.

For convenience we say that A is a transcription factor, B is a repressor protein, C is DNA, D is messenger RNA, E is a ribosome, F is a signaling protein, G a receptor, H a growth factor. We can interpret the sequence as information being conveyed from molecule A to molecule H, but it's all just chemistry. The shapes of the individual molecules allow electrical interactions to make the chemistry happen. If information is something that makes or allows something to happen, then the molecules are the information.

MG: Thus, how does one go about detecting the hand-like action of actualizing without having some clue about the mind-like action of designing?

If we can't see the "hands", how do we know there's a "mind" at all? The Designer is either material or immaterial. If material, you're just kicking the ball down the road: Who designed the material Designer? If immaterial, how does he interact with the material world? If there isn't any way to interact, then the material world can't have been designed, at least by this Designer.

Van Til's "excellent insight" uses the hazardous rhetorical strategy of invoking an analogy to support his point, rather than just to illuminate. For support, there has to be a close corrspondence between the entities and behaviors of the analogue and the analogized. Doesn't work here: automobiles don't self-assemble, molecules do.

A truly impartial observer would attempt to accurately gauge the DI position and would thus be able to determine for himself if someone else’s position is different from the DI position.

That's what I was trying to do. Impartially.

Since an impartial observer would not want to paint targets around arrows, why not first specify, in as much detail as possible, what the DI presents.

An impartial observer would ask the person that said, "You can allow the Dover school district and the views of DI fellows to fashion the lens through which you view all IDists if you wish. That's stereotyping," if he could be more specific.

Does that help/clarify?

No, it doesn't.