[Ha Ha Thats Very Logical]

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).

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.)

[count-your-change]

And the questions/answers you pose are important ones.
They go to heart of how we make judgments about what is an an artifact of intelligent design and what is not.
No minor thing to the archaeologist, paleontologist, SETI, etc.

If I find a Clovis point I have no doubt that it is intelligently designed, but if find a chip of flint I can't say for certain that it was or wasn't.
Somewhere in between these two extremes I put the stone fragments I find into one class or the other or a “I can't tell” group.

If I can detect intelligent design in a piece of flint chipped into a Clovis point why cannot the same principles of logic and deduction be applied to that flagellum?
Or does intelligent design only apply to non-living objects?
Clovis points but not cloven hooves, as it were.

Or a pottery shard? True clay pots don't reproduce themselves as far as we know, but we might be able to construct a scenario using known processes whereby they could, however unlikely. What sort of scenario?

A round stone is partially buried in clay. The sun heats the stone more than the clay around it so that a crust of dried clay forms around the stone. A forest fire comes through baking the clay red hot while the stone shatters under the heat. We have our clay pot without invoking intelligence or unique, unobserved processes.

Unlikely, impossible? How do we decide?

“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.”

A principle suggested by I.D. is looking at the information embedded in the item under consideration. Taking my Clovis point as an example, it is not the chipping or the material that makes it a tool, there is plenty of chipped flint around, but the relationship of each chipped part to all the others and the overall organization of the various parts into an integrated whole. In short information.

As in the case of my clay pot, we might mentally construct a scenario whereby observed processes could result in a Clovis point but would we seriously accept that as a possibility?
Or would appeal to an intelligent designer provide a better explanation?

To this degree I.D. theories and intelligent design overlap.

Design implies designer? Indeed yes. Which is why the I.D. folk avoid the question since speaking of a designer raises questions about his nature and identity, and not doing that allows one to accept I.D. apart from a particular belief about who the designer is.