Yes, BUT, the point the IDers keep missing is that "detecting a designer" depends heavily upon specific knowledge of the designer's abilities, methods, and purpose.
We can "detect design" when we find an ancient astrolabe because it is very much the kind of thing that humans are *known* to make, for *known* purposes, via *known* methods and materials, etc. etc.
However, the "IDers" keep refusing to pin down *anything* about the alleged "ancient designer(s)". Without knowing anything about an alleged "designer's" methods, purpose, capabilities, intelligence, history, etc., it is epistemologically impossible to determine whether any given object is or is not an instance of that hypothetical designer's "design". Is the pile of rocks in yon forest "designed" by this hypothetical designer in their current configuration? Maybe, maybe not -- who the hell can say?
If we find something on a distant planet that *looks* like a machine, can we determine whether it was "designed" by some unspecified and unknown designer of unknown purposes and unknown abilities? How the heck would we be able to know? What exactly would we test for? It might turn out that the *puddles* on the planet were designed by aliens who wanted puddles for some reason, while the "machine" was the result of some natural process like the formation of a clamshell or some bizarre natural process resulting from the planet's unique chemistry and weather which we did not yet understand.
The point is that in order to tell if thing X is the product of process Y, we *must* know enough about process "Y" in order to be able to determine what kinds of things it actually *is* likely to produce, and what it's not likely to produce, *and* enough about other processes that might be at work in order to make sure that we're not mistaking the results of process Y for the results of another process Z.
The way the "ID" folks refuse to say anything at all about their alleged "designer", the less we can actually conclude whether anything at all actually might or might not be the product of that mysterious designer. Heck, the mysterious designer my well produce "designs" that look NOTHING LIKE what we expect a human design to look like. Behe and his friends like to babble on about the "appearance of design" or an apparent "purposeful arrangement of parts", but what assurance do they have that their mysterious designer's works would even *appear* to be design to us, or involve anything at all like what *we* would consider "parts" or "purpose"?
You stretch science to the point of a gross caricature of reason in suggesting there is "no evidence for intelligent design" when so much matter is organized to carry out purposeful function on a scale both micro and macroscopic.
Really? What's the "purposeful function" of a snowflake?
You've indulged your hatred of God to the point of insanity, and it is unbecoming.
Now you're just ranting.
Careful, that could cut both ways...all of the arguments against ID which are based on the notion that "Now come on, why would an intelligent designer do THAT?" are derived from the idea that we have a good sense for what an intelligent designer would do. And if we admit that an intelligent designer may have purposes unknown to us, these arguments lose some of their cogency.
Really? What's the "purposeful function" of a snowflake?
Maybe snowflakes are so we can make snowmen. :-)
Cheers!
Sometimes, yes. It remains a fact, however, that both are ascertainable by scientific method. In fact, I don't know what other method would be able to detect intelligent design, do you? Or does prayer do the trick?