Cool response. I admit, I like your style.

Thank you David Heddle. I am glad you liked my response.

All the best -WB

However, a non-religiously motivated MikeGene wasn't an option in this thread's game, nor are such IDists particularly relevant.

Of course it was an option. You could have said, MikeGene's religious motivations for proposing ID are non-existent. You could have said, MikeGene's religious motivations for proposing ID are irrelevant. You could have said, MikeGene's religious motivations for proposing ID are not important. You could have signaled those opinions by not playing. Yet during the game, you were blind to these options. Instead, you chose two options that were not only easily discredited, but you showed us all how you are enslaved to your simple-minded stereotypes. What's more, I note that you failed to admit you were wrong, suggesting to me that you still cling to your stereotypes.

I'll give you credit for playing, Aagcobb, as none of your fellow critics were willing to put their devotion to stereotype to the test. But nevertheless, you lost and it wasn't even close.

The Don McLeroy's of the world are the driving force behind IDism;

I have little doubt that the Don McLeroy's of the world give your life meaning. But from where I sit, you are fundamentally no different than the The Don McLeroy's of the world; you are simply their mirror image. That means you have more in common with The Don McLeroy's of the world than I do.

as you yourself have pointed out, any legitimate attempt to detect design is likely to be futile.

Context is needed. While your black-and-thinking leads you to believe that ID is almost certainly false, I take a more open-minded and nuanced position that demonstrates a greater tolerance for ambiguity. Yes, as I explained, I estimate a 20-30% chance of design being successfully detected. Of course, if I was a baseball player, those would likely be my odds of successfully hitting the ball. Would the likelihood of futility keep me from trying?

Of course, I also believe that in a legitimate attempt to detect design, it is indeed likely that we will generate new knowledge about the biotic world. Of course, your linear thinking will probably misinterpret this.

I can't guess the likelihood of something by extrapolating into the future when there is no current trending to lead me. As of today, all I see is that human beings are not very skilled at understanding communication from other life forms. In fact, I think we are not very skilled at understanding the communication from other human beings. But none of these really matters all that much, as there is no community of experts out there actively scanning for messages in life's building blocks. I fail to see how you can be so certain about this.

It has occurred to me that this doesn't bode well for IDism. If we are incapable of identifying a message left in the genome by an intelligent designer, how could we ever distinguish a designed biological structure from a naturally occurring one?

You cannot even imagine someone writing about ID without having religious or political motivations.

Actually I can; given the number of habitats available, one can reasonably expect memes to proliferate into an extravagant variety of species. However, a non-religiously motivated MikeGene wasn't an option in this thread's game, nor are such IDists particularly relevant. The Don McLeroy's of the world are the driving force behind IDism; as you yourself have pointed out, any legitimate attempt to detect design is likely to be futile.

You wrote…

So I'm in hell.

Am I that difficult to live with?

Many I should buy my wife (our wife?) some flowers.

I'm glad. What did you think of Niven's Thrints?

I'd have to read the book.

BTW, I am beginning to suspect "Thought Provoker" is just the anonymous alter-ego pseudonym for the "MikeGene" anonymous pseudonym. All too often they are posting within minutes of each other. Maybe there is only a single intelligence driving both but it is severely schizophrenic.

So I'm in hell.

To me, a detailed, consistent model is what is what separates "intriguing" fiction from "wistful" fiction.

To me, wistful is melancholic.

Providing more details, like calling it a Science Fair project, makes it more intriguing and provocative, IMO.

I like Movie.

Mike, like it or not, you define yourself by who you label as your critics.

Everyone is my critic.

a) true on many simple things like paperclips we don't always bother to include any message, but virtually every complex thing we build includes a variety of messages and identifiers for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is pride in accomplishment, a signature which effectively says "I made this!" If someone went to the bother of carefully crafting a bug with a tool set to enable it to diversify into the glorious variety of life we see today, I would think he/she/it would want to take credit for it.

IMO, this rationale doesn't justify your level of certainty here and I incorporate it into my estimate. Now we would need to better nail down what "complex things" are. I, for example, might build a tree house for my children or a dog house for my dog. I would consider these complex things. But I would not feel a need to embed some "I made this!" message in the tree house or dog house. I can think of all kinds of complex things that don't include within them messages and identifiers. Furthermore, as I mentioned, these "I made this!" messages and identifiers are a function of our psychology and sociology. Such things are almost always appendages and not part of the functional essence of the design.

b) Early 21st century human scientists are already placing messages in genomes. I would expect that the intelligent agent who designed the first eukaryote would have a level of sophistication sufficient to overcome many of the obstacles you identify.

But again, I think this fails as a justification for your near certainty. The obstacle seems to be a serious one to me. We have to assume that the designers where a) motivated to overcome this obstacle and b) could indeed overcome it. Keep in mind that the motivation is also a function of (to borrow from TP) have an indispensable design objection be the evolution of mental capabilities that could detect messages in the chemistry of life's building blocks.

c) I didn't mean to imply the message would be detected in the next four months, only that if a message existed, we would likely detect it eventually.

I can't guess the likelihood of something by extrapolating into the future when there is no current trending to lead me. As of today, all I see is that human beings are not very skilled at understanding communication from other life forms. In fact, I think we are not very skilled at understanding the communication from other human beings. But none of these really matters all that much, as there is no community of experts out there actively scanning for messages in life's building blocks. I fail to see how you can be so certain about this.

I could very well be wrong, of course.

Black and white thinking does not convey this sense.

But since we are the only species we know of capable of even attempting to design organisms, I'm basing my assumptions on how humans behave in regards to our ambitious engineering projects. Its hard for me to imagine anyone with the vision and ambition to undertake a project designed to unfold over billions of years doing so anonymously.

LOL. You cannot even imagine someone writing about ID without having religious or political motivations. I'm not sure you should so deeply trust your ability to imagine.

You wrote…

Liked the synopsis.

I'm glad. What did you think of Niven's Thrints?

BTW, I am beginning to suspect "Thought Provoker" is just the anonymous alter-ego pseudonym for the "MikeGene" anonymous pseudonym. All too often they are posting within minutes of each other. Maybe there is only a single intelligence driving both but it is severely schizophrenic.

Of course it approaches fiction (although the adjective wistful does not apply). The acknowledgement of no independent evidence for unidentified intelligent beings intentionally created life on Earth is the starting place for my inquiries.

Niven creates fictional accounts that are constitant both with the story and with what is known about space. Niven's fictional cosmological history is even called Known Space.

To me, a detailed, consistent model is what is what separates "intriguing" fiction from "wistful" fiction.

I agree [the idea life came from Alien contamination is] intriguing. So too is the notion that this is all an experiment.

Providing more details, like calling it a Science Fair project, makes it more intriguing and provocative, IMO.

I ascribe human-like mental abilities to the designer(s) because I have experience with human-like mental abilities.

Science fiction provides all sorts of interesting concepts of mental abilities that aren't very human-like. For example, Deep Space Nine had entities living in the worm hole which had a hard time understanding the totally alien concept of "time".

However, you err if you think that I envision human-like mental abilities as an indispensable goal of the design. That position is embedded in Aagcobb's attempt to falsify ID, not my approach.

Mike, like it or not, you define yourself by who you label as your critics.

(disclaimer: this equally applies to both sides and, by comparison, does not apply to the MikeGene pseudonym which is why I brought it up because I knew it would be provocative and would cause MikeGene to think about it)

Liked the synopsis.

IMO. a suggestion that a single, unidentified intelligent being intentionally created life on Earth is more likely than an errant meteorite approaches wistful fiction considering we have evidence for the latter and practically none for the former(note: God is an identified designer).

Of course it approaches fiction (although the adjective wistful does not apply). The acknowledgement of no independent evidence for unidentified intelligent beings intentionally created life on Earth is the starting place for my inquiries.

If there are intelligent aliens running around, why wouldn't it be likely Earth's seeding was accidental? An interstellar passenger liner just happened to purge it's biological waste tank in this general vicinity billions of years ago. You know the chuck a material we found in Antarctica we THOUGHT was a meteorite? Well"¦.

Indeed! In fact, somewhere in the 1000s of postings I have made over the years, I think I raised this very issue.

Some people might not find the idea of life on Earth being the result of contamination an intriguing idea, but I do regardless of whether it happened via a meteorite or some other"¦ err um"¦ material.

I agree it's intriguing. So too is the notion that this is all an experiment.

The point of this long-winded comment is an attempt to illuminate the general bias I have noticed in the presumption that human-like mental abilities are considered indispensable to the point of not only ascribing the them to designer(s) but also presuming it is a goal of the design.

I ascribe human-like mental abilities to the designer(s) because I have experience with human-like mental abilities. However, you err if you think that I envision human-like mental abilities as an indispensable goal of the design. That position is embedded in Aagcobb's attempt to falsify ID, not my approach.

My response to Aagcobb would be to ask about the probabilities that Earth was accidentally seeded by a meteorite in an attempt to explore his gray areas.

IMO. a suggestion that a single, unidentified intelligent being intentionally created life on Earth is more likely than an errant meteorite approaches wistful fiction considering we have evidence for the latter and practically none for the former(note: God is an identified designer).

I think its reasonable to ask IDists to provide a specific hypothesis to consider rather than a wild variety of speculations spun of the top of the head. MikeGene's hypothesis, as I understand it, is that the eukaryotic cell was designed with the intent that it evolve into multicellular organisms, so that is the hypothesis I'm responding to. I'm not particularly adverse to the possibility that early single celled life originated elsewhere, and arrived on earth via meteorite, since we know that bacteria can survive frozen for millions of years, though I thinks its much more likely that terrestrial life originated here and not elsewhere. That, however, is not an ID hypothesis, since there is no particular reason to think that a bacteria arriving accidentally in a meteorite was designed. I am also very skeptical of interstellar travel, given the vast distances and light speed limitation.

Not being able to physically examine the designer is not the same as not being able to infer characteristics of the designer and the methodology used to execute the design. It is ID that has generally abandoned the obvious implications of design, a causal connection between the artifact, the artists and the art.

How do we know if something is an artifact? Is a birdnest an artifact?

How would we know that a wholly robotic spacecraft not of human making was an artifact? Suppose we later found the galaxy to be teeming with robotic spacecraft of many varieties, but with no other sign of intelligent life as we know it. What would it be about the robotic interstellar spacecraft that would license an ID inference, if anything?

Reversing perspectives, if humans died out but not before creating self-replicating spacecraft-manufacturing robots, how would future aliens know that those robots and spacecraft had had intelligent designers?