(2020-09-04, 10:21 PM)Sciborg_S_Patel Wrote: [ -> ]I don't think that it is scientific to simply say, "Ah there's a designer draw your own conclusions as to who you think it is".
What would be the reason for not speculating besides leaving the door open for interpretation based on one's preconceived desires?
Those making an argument for ID should offer speculation on a designer or designers. Perhaps the foremost question is does the evidence somehow negate [nuts & bolts] aliens? Does it have to be entities we'd usually class as "spirits" or at least "immaterial"?
The suggestion: Why not speculate about what the bare minimum intellectual capacities of a designer would be, given the incredibly complex, intricate, intertwined design of life especially as revealed in recent years? In for instance the human brain, which is very very far from being understood now after more than 100 years of scientific investigation. It’s not answering the ‘who’ question, of course. But think of it almost as programming question: to choose a very much simpler goal, what kind of knowledge would be needed for a designer to, say, design the physical biological mechanism of the irreducibly complex bacterial flagellum? Etc, etc.
There is abundant data to work with on that question. The designer of organic life on our planet needed temporal and physical access plus some extremely advanced (compared to current human technology) skills in biochemistry. Of course it is arguable whether biology, especially molecular biology, has in recent years perhaps revealed a degree of intricate complexity that may be beyond human intellectual capacity to comprehend. Of course biologists would deny this, but it is a legitimate proposition.
But for purpose of argument consider this. If our level of competence in biochemistry advances apace for say another 500 years (assuming our civilization persists that long) could we engineer artificial life that could survive and evolve on Mars, Europa, or Titan? I think just barely possible, requiring the assumption that there are other possible candidate chemical bases of "life" of some sort that are based on something other than long-chain carbon polymers and water. We could transport it there with the technology we have today. Nothing supernatural required.
Of course, this rapidly gets into philosophical and metaphysical speculation since the evidence so far indicates that mind, consciousness and will are not functions of the physical mechanisms of life or the brain. Because of that it seems unlikely that with such advanced technology we could create artificial life with mind, consciousness and will.
But could we eventually (or could very advanced alien beings from other planetary systems) engineer living organisms in the beginning of life, and engineer periodic major innovations in the design of life, on a scale of millions of years? It's a stretch, but the answer seems to be a provisional yes.
So aliens must be at least on the short list of major possibilities for the designer of much of life.
But there are major limitations or flaws in this concept mainly because:
(1) It just kicks the can down the road since these alien designers had to have some creative origin, and they some even earlier creative orgin, and so on. In other words, the who created the designer question.
The question of who created the designer, and so on, inevitably comes up, which inevitably brings up the seeming necessity of postulating some sort of immaterial supernatural ultimate source of design.
(2) As alluded to previously, many evidences and philosophical/metaphysical arguments and logic lead to the conclusion that mind, consciousness and will are not materialistic functions of the neurological structure of the brain. Given this, such alien designers using some sort of very greatly extrapolated human biological technology and knowledge might be the designers responsible for the sudden innovations periodically observed in the fossil record.
But such aliens would not presumably be able with such technology to create mind, consciousness and will. This appears to require some spiritual or immaterial source.
This line of reasoning seems to inevitably implicate some sort of immaterial spiritual beings of a very high order as being involved at least partially in the creative evolutionary process.
The beings responsible whoever they are evidently exhibit characteristics we could term playfulness, aesthetic sense, capriciousness and total indifference to suffering, in addition to obvious extreme ingenuity in following engineering design principles.
If advanced immaterial spiritual beings must be part of the process, why couldn't they totally be the agents responsible?
Does this line of reasoning require some sort of ultimate superintelligent Source? It seems so, but for all intents and purposes identifying such aliens and/or spiritual beings as possible proximal designers seems to be sufficient and it is not necessary to speculate further.
Is all this speculation "scientific"? I don't think so. Does the lack of all this speculation make the research into the evident intelligent design of life "unscientific"? I don't think so.