Well, actually, with regard to #2, it wasn't until #9 that I caught on to my own stipulation that design can mimic chance, the criterion being useless for ELIMINATION of design; and only useful for DETECTION of design.
After all, if it has what appears to be a 50-50 shot with artifacts known to be the product of intelligent agency, how can we have confidence in what it tells us about artifacts that we don't know about?
I actually agree with you here; that is indeed the question. I tend to think that if there is a reliable test then there is a lot of research and refinement that needs to occur.
I tend to look at the problem like a murder mystery, sort of like the way we could tell whether Laci and Conner Peterson were murdered, or whether their deaths were accidental. If we were on Scott's jury, would we have any credulity in his tale of an amazing coincidence that he just happened to be fishing in the same general locale where his wife and son's bodies were found, but that he had no part in their deaths? The question I keep asking myself is how to quantify something that we intuitively decide all the time, which is, how we determine whether something is accidental or caused by an intelligent agent.
Cordially,
What I conclude from this exercise is that there is not yet a reliable test for determining the presence of intelligent design. That being the case (at least at this stage of our knowledge) it seems that ID "theory" is not yet a theory, because it can't be reliably tested. Thus, ID remains conjecture, and those who claim that it's a valid alternative to evolution are a wee bit premature. At this stage, evolution stands alone, as the only scientific theory that accounts for the diversity of life on earth. (As always, if new information is discovered, this conclusion may change.)