Gordon wrote

But my point is this: there is no scientific experiment that can distinguish whether a percieved intent was intentional or unintentional! Why? Because intent and purpose are immaterial concepts that lie beyond the empirical reach of the scientific method. So, while a careful qualitative study of the object does properly lead us to the correct conclusion, it is not a scientifically testable claim that can be measured or quantified - no matter how true or reasonable it might be.

That’s true if one doesn’t have access to the designing agent. Study of the object itself can generate hypotheses about the intention(s) and other ‘mental’ properties of the designing agent — a hypothetical example might be that it values thermodynamically efficient devices over inefficient devices — and some of those are testable without access to the designing agent. For example, one could look at an array of different devices purported to have been designed to ascertain whether there are more thermodynamically efficient designs available for some. If so, then we can tentatively reject the hypothesis about what the designing agent values. Or more likley, we reject the conjunction of the hypotheses that (a) the designer values t-d efficiency and (b) the designer has the necessary knowledge, skills, and abilities to build the most efficient t-d devices. If we can find equivalent devices that are more thermodynamically efficient, either the designer doesn’t calue t-d efficient or the designer’s skill set is inferior to ours or both.

Most claims about the non-existence of God are of that general nature: They outline some claim about the nature, intentions and/or skill set claimed for God , e.g., God is benevolent and provident and all occurs according to some divine plan, and God intervenes in the world to keep the plan on track, and then point to counter-examples in the world that are difficult to reconcile with such a God.

Take Michael Behe’s latest book, The Edge of Evolution. There he writes

Here’s something to ponder long and hard: Malaria was intentionally designed. The molecular machinery with which the parasite invades red blood cells is an exquisitely purposeful arrangement of parts. C-Eve’s children died in her arms partly because an intelligent agent deliberately made malaria, or at least something very similar to it.

What sort of designer is that? What sort of “fine-tuning” leads to untold human misery? To countless mothers mourning countless children? Did a hateful, malign being make intelligent life in order to torture it? One who relishes cries of pain?

Behe doesn’t answer his own questions, but an atheist has a ready answer: If that’s the sort of God you (generic “you”) want us to accept as benevolent and provident, fuggedaboudit. The inconsistency between putative properties of the designer and observed reality leads us to reject the hypothesis.

(Metacomment: I sure wish there was comment preview. I can never remember what tags (if any) are permitted. Excuse any formatting messups on that account.)

But, as you know, the creator was not unconstrained in the design process. The design of our body plan is constrained by its evolutionary history. This is testable via several different independent methods of investigation (palaeontologic, morphologic, genetic, biogeographic, etc..). And while a magnificant specimen in many ways, our bodies are still recycled from a more primitive “tube-in-a-tube” layout, and one pipe is all we get. It’s a variation on a theme, rather than something designed from scratch. Even so, as I ate squid last night for dinner, I can’t help but marvel at what the Creator has done with this simple “tube-in-a-tube” body plan!

If God limited Himself to design only that which could be achieved through small successive steps driven partly by contingency, then it places a hard limit on just how much we can reasonbly infer about his character through the systematic study of nature. In some strange way, as my friend Cliff Martin likes to point out, evolutionary creation avoids some problems of theodicity.

From the Christian perspective (and I appreciate your perspective RHB, even though you are a non-theist), special revelation is necessary specifically because natural revelation is insufficient for this purpose. For everything in nature that points us to God’s glory, one can find something that seems to exist only to torture us.

GJG

Very true, but how do we even know that the intent of the designer is to maximize thermodynamic efficiency? We can’t project our intent onto an unknown agency, or make assumptions about its intent. What if there are trade-offs between t-d efficiency and some other parameter that we are ignorant of? The kind of information we can reasonably infer about the designer from the design is limited and subjective.

Um, I wasn’t clear. I wouldn’t suggest that we “know” that the intent of the designer is anything. I suggested that we can make hypotheses about that intent, and potnetially test those hypotheses by additional observations of other systems/devices.

Sure, it gets complicated by the tradeoffs, since the designer is constrained by (among other things) historical contingencies: what is possible to be done now depends on what was done previously. But that it is complicated doesn’t mean it’s a useless exercise. Evolution is itself complicated (in any real case) by a tangled snarl of tradeoffs, yet we attempt to understand it formally.

I’m not sure what I’m arguing here — I’m making it up as I go along. Maybe (as I think you’d agree) caution with respect to making testable hypotheses about the natural world based on some notion of a putative designer’s conjectured knowledge, skills, abilities, and intentions.