What general characteristics are unique to intelligently designed things so that we can separate them from all other things? (This is what I asked and that is what I meant. It seems to be a question that is like garlic to Dracula).
“Your wording exemplifies what I mean. You want to find some things that are intelligently designed as distinct from other things that aren’t. That means the designer has a hand in some things and left others alone. Hence, a designer who fiddles.”
No, I asked for MEANS not ends.
Then by your reasoning if I intelligently designed a clay pot and chose not to fire or paint it I’d be fiddling with it? Or if I later fired and painted what I intelligently designed I would be “fiddling” with it?
Yeah, the I.D. folks do tiptoe past the “designer” like evolutionists do with the origin of life, using the same sort of reasonings. But if you assert that the I.D. folks have changed the way they describe I.D. you didn’t show any citation to demonstrate it.
Anything else on the question I asked concerning by what means I could tell if a piece of fired clay I found was intelligently designed or not?
I've given the question some thought, and I don't have an answer. I'm not sure there is one. Maybe every intelligently designed thing is identifiable by its own unique set of characteristics, but there is no set that can identify them all.
This seems to me more a question for design proponents, and is one of a bunch of related questions they seem to avoid. Why do some things show evidence of design and others not? And if everything shows evidence of design (as Jefferson seemed to think), then why should we expect some things to show it in a way we can measure (irreducible complexity) and others in a way we can't (the water cycle)?
Then by your reasoning if I intelligently designed a clay pot and chose not to fire or paint it I’d be fiddling with it? Or if I later fired and painted what I intelligently designed I would be “fiddling” with it?
If you made a clay pot, used it for a while without firing it, then fired it and started using it for a different purpose, than yes, I'd say you'd fiddled with it. I'm not sure how relevant the analogy is, though, since no one claims that clay pots reproduce themselves or evolve.
But if you assert that the I.D. folks have changed the way they describe I.D. you didn’t show any citation to demonstrate it.
I'll work on that. I still maintain that any discussion of irreducible complexity, which was part of ID since I first started hearing about it, necessarily implies a designer who tinkers with his design, which is a subset of what lowercase "id" encompasses.
Anything else on the question I asked concerning by what means I could tell if a piece of fired clay I found was intelligently designed or not?
I'm neither a potter nor an archaeologist, so I don't have a lot to offer that question. My first thought is that we could ask if we knew of any way clay could get like that without intelligent design. (We already know clay can get like that with intelligent design.)