[CarolinaGuitarman]

"We also have knowledge of markings being made by natural forces. And we can know, from our knowldege of how natural forces make markings, that the cuneiform tablet I showed you was at least 99.99% unlikely to have been made by nature."

The thing that convinces us is our knowledge of human writing, not the processes of nature.

"We'd have come to the same conclusion about it if we found the thing on Mars instead."

Maybe, maybe not. Without the examples of other designed tablets, we wouldn't be able to conclude squat. We need to know SOMETHING about the designer. We need to know something about the nature of design. There needs to be an objective way to say what *design* is. There is none.

"'m not among those actively promoting the theory, but I'd say that a designed organism would be one whose features no fathomable naturalistic explanation could explain, just as with the tablets."

That's why ID is not science; it can only make statements about things we can't explain yet. It gives no other explanation than *the intelligent designer(s) did it*. Arguments from ignorance and incredulity are not science.

[inquest]

The thing that convinces us is our knowledge of human writing, not the processes of nature.

Look at the images at #528. At least two of them show markings of a type that humans have been known to generate, but also of a type that nature has been known to generate. Hence, it's not enough merely to know about what humans do. Likewise, follow the links at #520. We know that humans make roads that look more or less like that, but we also, so far, can't completely rule out their being natural formations either.

So what it still comes down to is ruling out natural causes. Once that's done, what's left to conclude?