[oldmanreedy]

"So it is you, not I, who should be justifying just how you claim to believe blue jeans are designed artifacts."

Uhhhh, I asked you first chief, and you have magnificently failed to answer. It's just common courtesy not to answer a question with another question. But I'm a generous fellow, so I'll excuse your ignorance of etiquette and give you some of the reasons I am persuaded that bluejeans are made by humans:

1. I knew some dudes that worked in a bluejean factory
2. I've seen video of people making bluejeans
3. I took a home ec class where we made pants similar to bluejeans
4. In the same home ec class we sewed stitches that look exactly like the stitches found on bluejeans.
5. My bluejeans have a tag on them that says in English "Made in Thailand" and I've only ever seen evidence that humans and computers programmed by humans use English
6. There was a news report about exploitation of child laborers in bluejeans factories, and they mentioned how many jeans each kid made per day.
7. Once my jeans ripped and I took them to a tailor who repaired them, and he told me he made new ones as well.
8. Bluejeans are sold in stores and catalogs that exclusively sell other manmade artifacts.
9. Advertising material sometimes brags about the person who made the bluejeans.
10. There are sewing books that tell you how to make bluejeans.
11. etc.
12. etc.

There you go, including plenty of indirect evidence to put the lie to your lunatic strawman that I only allow 'direct observation'.

YOUR TURN: Lets see that process of 'scientific induction' that persuades you blue jeans are man-made. Since this is the third time I've asked you this question, if you don't answer the boogeyman is gonna getcha.

PS:
Your assertion that 'consistent methodological naturalists' cannot identify a genetically engineered organism is laughably insane, and contradicted by the plain facts. Are Monsanto not being 'consistent methodological naturalists' when they sue somebody for stealing their organisms? Please explain the exact reasoning that would forbid me from concluding Al Qaeda made a disease if they in fact wrote "Made by Al Qaeda" in the genetic code.

[Liberty1970]

The problem with every item on your list is that it fails to explain how you KNOW blue jeans are intelligently designed and manufactured. Every item on the list gives evidence that blue jeans CAN be made by intelligent designers. But that is not the point of dispute! Of course an intelligent designer can accomplish these functions. But to claim that you KNOW that blue jeans were intelligent designed and made, you need to RULE OUT the possibility that nature made them without intelligent design. None of your reasons addresses the competence of nature to produce blue jeans, or the lack thereof.

That is what is missing from your list. Consider a seeming random arrangement of stones on a beach. You could give all kinds of reasons for supposing the stones are there due to the actions of an intelligent designer. You could speak of seeing children produce similar arrangements while playing, or workers leaving such an arrangement of stones for one reason or another. And it is true that an intelligent designer can mimic nature. Yet if we had no direct evidence for this particular set of random stones, it would be unreasonable to demand that anything more than natural forces were involved.

To rule out the possibility that blue jeans are the product of natural forces alone, we need to bring to bear observations about what nature does not do (I will now, thus, answer your original query). This would include observations such as the following:

-Cotton in nature does not form into tight-woven threads free of impurities and of substantial length.
-Threads left to themselves in nature will not weave together into tight patterns free of impurities (twigs, leaves, etc.)
-Clothe left to itself will not form together into the shape of a human body.
-relatively pure brass will not form in nature.
-If it it present, there is no reason to suppose it will form the shape of a button.
-If a button is left in nature, it will not integrate itself with tight-woven cotton cloth to wind up in the right spot on a pair of blue jeans.
Etc.

Are Monsanto not being 'consistent methodological naturalists' when they sue somebody for stealing their organisms?

No, precisely because they are following the Intelligent Design methodology of unambiguously identifying the actions of an intelligent designer. To the extent that they fail to prove that the 'theft' could not be the result of natural forces, they will lose their case in a court of law.

This is exactly the sort of thing that is discussed repeatdly in ID books, and that methodological naturalists are failing to cope with. You admit that Monsanto can unambiguously identify the actions of an intelligent designer, yet you refuse to admit the criteria by which they are doing so!

Please explain the exact reasoning that would forbid me from concluding Al Qaeda made a disease if they in fact wrote "Made by Al Qaeda" in the genetic code.

Again, it is because (as shown by your list and reasoning above) you refuse to evaluate the evidence from the standpoint of "what can't nature do?" This is the key question in identifying what in biology is the product of evolution and what is the result of an intelligent designer. A designer can mimic chance and natural forces, but the reverse is not true.

Again, citing evidence that people can do something and are doing something (making blue jeans, etc.) is not the same as proving that nature can't do those same things. Thus if I was ignorant of science and the considerations I list above, you would have given me no reason whatsoever to have confidence that a particular set of blue jeans was made by an intelligent designer.