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"Steganalysis," "Steganography," etc. will require some further investigation on my part.

Hiding messages in unrelated media by bit twiddling. The most obvious example commercially extant is hiding watermarks in the noise in photographs so that the casual observer cannot detect the changes made. Check out the company "Digimarc".

Am I wrong in assuming there are only two possibilities? 1.) designed things exist, or 2.) designed things do not exist?

You exclude the counterargument. Not playing fair. Things that give the appearance of design exist, snowflakes and diamonds for example, the assumption that a designer therefore must exist, however, omits some important common steps in critical analysis of evidence you'd never get away with in a decently run courtroom.

Perhaps a third: All of existence is a figment of my imagination, but I don't think those kind of skeptics inhabit this place.

Yes they do I've argued with several. I myself hold that it is inherently impossible to disprove this notion, only to disapprove of it.

"You exclude the counterargument. Not playing fair. Things that give the appearance of design exist, snowflakes and diamonds for example, the assumption that a designer therefore must exist, however, omits some important common steps in critical analysis of evidence you'd never get away with in a decently run courtroom."

Actually, in your haste to assume my conclusion, you've taken my argument a step futher than I've heretofore proposed. All I'm asking is whether the universe contains "designed things" or not. You've chosen to extrapolate "appearance of design" from this and brought up snowflakes. I would be happy to include snowflakes among "unintelligent" or "undesgined" matter.

Let's stick with the object known as a pencil. Does it have the attributes we call "design" or not? That's all I care to ask for now. If you wish to tell me it only has "the appearance of design," I guess I'll have to put you in the radical skeptic category. You know. Those people who think all of existence ais a figment of their imagination.

Oh yes. And what "counter argument" am I excluding? Please put it in simple terms. Add it to my list of possibilities so I can review and either concur or reject.

Thanks.

the assumption that a designer therefore must exist, however, omits some important common steps in critical analysis of evidence you'd never get away with in a decently run courtroom.

Not true at all. Scientifically speaking for example, the chances of abiogenesis being true are far, far less by an unimaginable order of magnitude greater than the 1 in a billion chance of the DNA found in the OJ case was someone elses.