You assumed it through indirect evidence. That makes you a "mystic." Had you never seen an automobile in your life, would you think it sprung up in the desert the first time you saw one?
"You assumed it through indirect evidence. That makes you a "mystic."
I never said that indirect evidence was unscientific, that's your lie. I said *theories* with no physical evidence and no testable claims were unscientific. Physical evidence can be either direct or indirect. Theories though HAVE to be testable.
"Had you never seen an automobile in your life, would you think it sprung up in the desert the first time you saw one?"
If I was raised in a culture that had never seen anything like a car, or better yet, one that had next to no technology, I might have no idea what a car was or how it got there. I wasn't, so my assumption was rational.
We would know the car as a 'designed', and more importantly 'manufactured' object because we would notice the similarity of patterns, materials, form, manufacturing methods (tool marks) and the lack of 'apparent' randomness we see in nature, to other artifacts we have observed humans creating. This does not mean we can determine the designedness of nonhuman creations.
Your analogy of a car in a desert is inaccurate. The design you stipulate is inherent in DNA, a cube of water, or any other phenomenon we do not create can not be determined in the same way we determine design in human created artifacts. Because of the possibility of nonhuman designers, we need to design a more rigorous method that can be used without any knowledge of the designer. So far this has not been developed.