A topic that frequently comes up in these creation debates, be it in context of evolution or the origins of the universe or alike, is our supposed ability to be able to differentiate "design" from natural occurances.
Yet whenever creationist or "design proponents" bring this up, it seems to me that they are either very vague about it or their methodology of "detecting design" seems to be no more then fallacious argumentst from ignorance ("I don't know how it can be natural, so therefor it isn't"), arguments from incredulity ("I don't believe it's natural, therefor it isn't") or various species or combinations thereof.
I would say that in a nutshell, we detect design by demonstrating signs of manufacturing or use of artificial materials.
This implies that we have to understand manufacturing processes and what signs / traces they tend to leave.
It also implies that we have to understand the difference between naturally occuring materials and artificial materials.
This in turn means that we could not detect or conclude design when it concerns things of unknown manufactoring and natural processes or of unknown materials.
This also means that if a designer sets out to mimic natural processes and materials while doing a perfect job, we would not be able to tell the artificial object from the natural object.
For example, if someone would take a rough stone and smooth it out by perfectly mimicing water erosion as what would happen in say a river, we would not be able to tell that this was done by a person instead of by a river.
So, having said that, when somebody *Mod edit* then states that one can "detect design" in the universe based on for example of the values of the physical constants, I wonder what the methodology is that is being used.
So in this thread, I invite people who disagree with my methodology of detecting design to explain their methodology of doing so and demonstrate how it achieves better results.
Natural processes are a type of design, if natural processes are logical, and not randomly based. For example, the DNA is wonderful design for storing all the complex data needed for life, using only two base pairs and hydrogen bonding data processing.
When humans design something, it is often first done in the head; idea, then on paper, before the design is expressed in reality. These steps are possible, because the final design has a sense of casual order in terms of assembly and function.
You cannot design with a purely random or dice and cards approach. The intellect is not needed, if you can just flip coins or roll dice. Random assumptions are more of a tool, that the builders of the design may use. But is not useful for designing. In a factory, QC will use statistical models to optimize a process. But the process would never be designed by statistics; rational means more predictable and reliable. The statistical tool is good for fine tuning, but not for designing. The black box assumption of the tool prevents designing in the mind; in the dark.
The metric system is a very intelligent design. It is based on water. If we have 1cc or 1ml of water, it will weigh, 1 gram. If I then push that 1ml or 1 gram of water, into a cube, each side of the cube will be exactly 1 cm. This simple water based design allows us to derive the metric system from scratch, with hardly anything.
The natural design for star formation is very simple, logical and perfectly self reliant. Gravity, which is a force built into matter, very early in the universe, acts upon other matter and then matter will mutually attract. As matter accumulates, via the mutual attraction, the gravity gets stronger. This will pull even more matter, from even farther away. As this attraction cascade is happening, gravity also creates pressure and does work that generates heat.
We have this self feeding process, designed to amplify pressure and heat, all the way to the extremes conditions, needed to start and contain nuclear fusion. This is an excellent natural design that feeds and amplifies itself, with little need for process control, maintenance and GC people to keep it going. That is an intelligent design, which I define as a design that is simple, effective, efficient with no maintenance requirements.
The way science has designed the dynamics for the inside of the our sun; stellar theory, is not as efficient. The manmade theory relies on dice and cards. The hammer tool is not usually used in the design stage. The hammer is better for building and maintenance. The problem is we cannot see inside the sun to know anything for sure, so we are sort of stuck with a black box design.
If I wanted to make the inner workings of the sun, as simple and as beautiful of a design, as the self feeding gravity cascade design, I would design the fusion core to take advantage of the density inversion of atoms, at high temperature. Atoms are mostly space, that is occupied by electron clouds. Inside the sun, the extreme heat will ionize atoms to various degrees, stripping off electrons.
What this does is allow smaller atoms, like hydrogen, to fully ionize; shed their electron, and thereby reach nuclear density. It becomes only a nucleus. Larger atoms, like iron for example, will still retain some inner most electrons, making this partially ionized atom less dense than hydrogen or helium; still occupies has a lot of space due to a few inner electrons (density = mass/volume).
If we dropped iron into water the iron would sink. But in we hammer the iron, into the hull of a little boat, it can float on water. The fully ionized verses partial ionization of atoms, at extreme temperature, will cause the larger partially ionized atoms to floats on the smaller fully ionized atoms. This natural inversion forms a very functional heavy atom shell that can passively control the fusion process; self maintaining and self healing.
For example, if the fusion was getting too hot; runaway fusion, the shell will heat up and this will further ionizes the heavy atoms. This makes the shell heavier so it sits lower in the core. This seals and slows down the fuel diffusion that is pushed into the fusion, by gravity/density. The loss of fuel then cools the fusion core. The runaway is resolved.
This cooling may cause sun spots to appear on the surface. If it cools too much, electrons are back added to the shell, and the shell float up higher and opens up for more fuel diffusion. This can cause an effect, that I like to call fusion hammer, where the sudden fuel and fusion surge, bangs the shell, like a gong, for higher atomic synthesis. It is the mother of all particles colliders. The residuals can appear on the surface as a solar flare. By tweaking the ionization density of the shell, there is passive process control that can handle any problem while being fuel efficient.
Over time the shell will thicken due the to buildup of higher atoms. If the shell gets too thick, it can cause the core to starve of fuel and lose efficiency. This usually means it is time to clean the pipes. The sustain cooling of the core can float the shell and allow a large fuel surge. This can create a mega fusion hammer, can blow out large quantities of shell material, entraining solar surface material.
My guess is our sun came from its own rebirth; first generation star, that cleaned its pipes. The solar system formed from the blow out and a new sun; version 2.0, reformed from the hydrogen, reforming a new shell for fusion control.
