Replies

But along comes ID. ID says that both the house and the rock were designed. Both ultimately were created by the "great designer" based on the complexity of the atoms which form the house and the rock. So ID finds design in everything.

No, ID does not find design in everything. The overall process of life coming about is seen as exhibiting design as well as the necessity of natural laws and chance. That is not the same thing as seeing design in every individual object that exists.

Which is why using techniques that hint at man-made design fail for detecting design in general.

Actually the notion of applying the principles that hint at man made design to detect design in general is an accepted practice that is already in use. See below:

Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI)
One of the clearest examples of design detection can be found in the SETI
program. The SETI program is systematically scanning the heavens with radio telescopes,
searching for patterns of signals that could only come from intelligent sources.

Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) One of the clearest examples of design detection can be found in the SETI program. The SETI program is systematically scanning the heavens with radio telescopes, searching for patterns of signals that could only come from intelligent sources.

Ummm... You just proved my point. SETI is looking for man-made signals (an alien made signal would probably have the same properties as a human-made signal). So SETI is not detecting design in a general sense, only in man-made context. So taking what SETI is doing and trying to project it onto ID is misunderstanding what SETI really does.