I say not designed on the basis of lack of evidence.

If evidence is a requirement (and it should be) then you have no alternative.

I also say that if you must hypothesize a designer, you cannot evade the implications. Otherwise, you are not doing science.

To argue that A implies B, and I don’t like B, therefore A is false, is not scientific.
To argue that A possibly, might imply B, etc, is even less so.
I do not evade the implications. I remind you again that the implications are not evidence. You seem convinced otherwise, which opens the door to all sorts of “scientific” conclusions based on our preferences and opinions. If water boiled at 100 degrees, it could burn my hand. Ouch! Therefore, water does not boil at 100 degrees.

Your quote and follow-up are irrelevant and, dare I say, pompous. You make a prior assumption that science will one day find evidence supporting a specific conclusion, and anyone who disagrees or waits for the evidence is underestimating science? What?

The prospect of life appearing in a chemical accident is too fantastic and contrary to all available evidence to be taken seriously. When you try to declare the impossible inevitable, speculation and extrapolation don’t cut it. If you want me to believe in perpetual motion machines or accidental life, show me the money. The rest is bluffing.

Either a thing was designed or it was not. We determine that by the evidence, not by the implications.

I say not designed on the basis of lack of evidence.

I also say that if you must hypothesize a designer, you cannot evade the implications. Otherwise, you are not doing science. (A hypothesis that leads nowhere lacks utility.)

Speaking of science, I leave you with the following excerpt from a letter to Science by Christoff Koch, of CalTech:

“August Comte, father of positivism, wrote in 1835 that we shall never know what stars are made of (A. Comte, Cours de Philosophie Positive (1830–1842)). A few decades later, the chemical composition of stars was deduced by spectral analysis of their light (G. R. Kirchhoff, R. Bunsen, Ann. Phys. (1860); p. 110, 160).”

Do not underestimate science. It has repeatedly confounded philosophy and theology.

Your reasoning is absolutely fallacious:

It is the arbitrariness of the notion of special creation that is problematic. Once you start believing stuff like that, where does it end? With special creation of each baramin? With deliberate generation of mutations, which might otherwise seem spontaneous and random, in the present time?

Either a thing was designed or it was not. We determine that by the evidence, not by the implications. A thing is neither true nor false because of what it might or might not lead to. (For example, some might argue that if we evolved from lower animals, then our morality is arbitrary. It’s true, but that’s not evidence against such descent.) So perhaps we can leave behind such fallacious reasoning.

I will not address omnipotence or any religion’s belief about God. If you think they are relevant, please consider reading more about ID.

I am intrigued by new arguments, new challenges to my point of view. Questioning the testability of ID is neither. I’m not saying it’s not a valid question, but the question, as-is, is better answered by the available material.

Thank you for continuing this discussion.

If there is no reason to think that anyone is throwing off scientific experiments from time to time, then there is no reason to think that anyone interfered with the history of the universe to create life as a discrete act.

It is the arbitrariness of the notion of special creation that is problematic. Once you start believing stuff like that, where does it end? With special creation of each baramin? With deliberate generation of mutations, which might otherwise seem spontaneous and random, in the present time?

On the other hand, if your “anyone” is omnipotent, there is nothing that would prevent him from creating the universe at the Big Bang complete with all of the elements and conditions to generate life without further intervention. If one could rule out that possibility, then the scientific pursuit of those elements and conditions would be an irrational endeavor.

I would add that believers in the Judeo-Christian creator (who is, I surmise, the one you have in mind) behave in ways that refute your claim that the creator is aloof from current history. They pray for the creator to intervene on their behalf, and they thank him when things turn out well for them. “Thank God!”

But your logic really fails when you reason that such an implication is, in itself, evidence.

Not evidence, an objection.

As for your questions about testability, see the FAQ and glossary.

It would be a kindness if you would tell me directly in your own words.

You said you had a problem with a designer because said designer might be able to act arbitrarily at other times, making science more difficult.
Thus you suggest that the implications of a designer make a designer less likely.
The implication you suggest is real, although, as I said, there’s no reason to think that anyone is throwing off scientific experiments. Planes don’t really fly, the designer was holding them up, and then they crash.

But your logic really fails when you reason that such an implication is, in itself, evidence.

As for your questions about testability, see the FAQ and glossary.

And how would you know what implications I might or might not like?

And based on this logic, you think that life randomly occurring in a chemical accident is somehow less nonsensical. As I’ve said, such a thing is too ridiculous to believe without solid evidence, by which I mean a detailed, repeatable account or a time lapse video.

I honestly wonder if you ever stop to think what a preposterous event you’re proposing. If you believe such a thing, how can you chide anyone for believing in miracles? Is there anything you believe can’t happen by accident? You’ve already surrendered your connection with reality.

What’s more, you’re openly rejecting a hypothesis because you don’t like its implications. That’s good science.

What we do have is a rather solid inference on the one hand, and a spectacular something-from-nothing fantasy on the other.

I agree. I would, of course, put the shoe on the opposite foot from your intention.

A problem I see with your willful miracle-maker hypothesis is that an entity with such miracle-working powers would necessarily be entirely unconstrained from acting arbitrarily at any time in the remote past or the recent past or in the present. Can’t base any science, which depends on some consistency in our interactions with the environment, on that hypothesis. Je n’ai pas besoin de cette hypothèse.

Meanwhile, the science that you reject will continue to stumble along making testable hypotheses about the origin of life and its evolution. Whatever is learned from the results of those tests is a contribution to a time machine.