[PatrickHenry]

But for the thermostat, we know that because we know there are designers of thermostats who make them on purpose to do what they do. On the other hand, for beehives, the existence of their designer is the thing we're supposed to be proving.

Right. I had been under the impression that ID theory claims we can detect the work of the Designer by a careful examination of the designed work to see the unmistakable indicia of design -- whatever those indicia may be. And it was Diamond's task to apply such indicia as he could devise to systematically detect which of your test objects were the product of Design. Which implies that we can, by careful examination, determine what has not been designed, because such "natural" objects can be seen to lack the indicia of Design.

But if we get ourselves into a position where it is simply assumed that everything is designed, then it is pointless to examine objects as Diamond has been doing, because -- by arbitrary proclaimation -- everything is designed. Such would not be a scientific theory.

[Doctor Stochastic]

For design theory to be other than vacuous, there must be things that are not designed. Of course, that begs the question of how an undesign object comes to exist.