So we detected design, now what?
I believe the process to be:
1. Determine design in an object.
2. Determine the mechanism for design. This is generally held to be outside the scope of core ID and is instead the domain of ID-compatible hypotheses.
3. Develop designer detection methods based upon the available evidence.
4. Once a generalized designation or category for the Designer is developed, then attempt to find characteristics or information pertaining to the specific Designer. Of course, some ID-compatible hypotheses presume a specific Designer from the outset.
The second half of this discussion also broaches on this topic a little:
http://www.uncommondescent.com/evolution/complex-speciation-of-humans-and-chimpanzees/
1. Determine design in an object.
This is where we are now - we've got a theory that some features of life appear to have been designed on the basis that additive Darwinist models to not successfully account for them.
2. Determine the mechanism for design. This is generally held to be outside the scope of core ID and is instead the domain of ID-compatible hypotheses.
I think we need to do some more basic work before we can have any reasonable chance of understanding the mechanism - for example we need to basically quantify the amount of design:
For example are the bacterial flagellum that Behe describes an example of a minority or a majority of biological systems: Might life consist of a mixture of evolved and designed systems, and if so what proportion?
If the flagellum (for example) had a single genesis it ought to be possible to determine when the feature was designed by comparing the divergent forms of the genes for that component - that is of course unless the theory of common descent is also false.
Speaking of which, that's a vital question which we should be able to determine with relative ease: For example we ought to be able to look at genetic tell-tales (e.g. such as germ-line mutations) to see if there really is common descent between apparently unrelated species. And if we are able to do that we should be able to identify not one single tree of life, but a 'forest' of life.
But one question - why is all of this outside the scope of ID? Why limit ID to merely detecting design - surely these other questions could be answered. If our theory is more correct than rival theories then I'd expect that experimental confirmation of our propositions should be easy to come by.
Most ID researchers accept the principle that we can reliably detect design in life, but having detected design what comes next?
Are we ever going to have scientific answers to the next obvious questions, such as how, when, why, where and ultimately by whom was life designed?
If you believe that we cannot ever know the answers to these questions what does that tell us about the science of ID? And if you think I'm asking the wrong questions please help me by speculating what route will best propel ID into mainstream science?
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