The "appearance of design" concept

The more I think of this “appearance of design” idea, the more incredulous I become at the prospect that you are holding it as some sort of evidence of creation. I have to ask straight-up – is this one of your “evidences” that the universe was created? The “appearance of design”?

I mean, let’s forget for the moment that claiming “appearance of design” is no different than claiming “well, it just looks that way”. There is no distinction. I suppose the sun “appears” it’s getting eaten by the moon during an eclipse. The earth “appears” to be flat. And the sun “appears” to move in the sky. When did “appearance” become some sort of scientific evidence? That’s my first issue.

But moreover, the term itself isn’t delineated or defined scientifically. Who’s to say how things appear? If I shuffle a deck of cards, they will wind up in a specific order once I’m done shuffling. Since they are in a specific order, does the deck then “appear” to have been deliberately put in that order? I suppose one person could look at it and say “the cards are in random order” while another person could look at the very same deck and say “cards don’t just get that way by themselves. They were obviously put in that order by design.” No matter what order they are in, or what process put them in that order, anyone could claim they “appear” to have been deliberately put in that order. That’s my second issue with it.

But there is one final issue that puts the whole question of appearance to rest. Since creationists claim that everything in the universe “appears” to have been designed – that means there is nothing that doesn’t appear to have been designed to compare it to. How do you decide what appears to have been designed where there is nothing to contrast it against? I mean, with a deck of cards, one can reasonable say that if all the cards are in order by value and suit, then it is reasonable to say that someone deliberately put them that way. And there are a few other sequences those cards could be in that would indicate that they were deliberately put that way by someone. But if one were to say that no matter what order they are in, they “appear” to have been deliberately put that way, then every deck of cards is then declared to be “in order”, and now there’s no such thing as “non-order”. Once you do that, the meaning of the word “order” vanishes, and the word has no content anymore.

 If a word or phrase attempts to describe everything, then it describes nothing in particular. If it describes nothing in particular, then it describes nothing at all. Therefore, if you claim that everything in the universe appears to be designed, then there is no such thing as “non-design”. And if there’s no such thing as “non-design”, then the word “design” no longer has any content, and it doesn’t mean anything anymore.

Therefore when you claim the universe and everything in it has the “appearance of design”, you’re using a term that has no content, and no meaning. I sure hope that this is NOT one of your evidences for creationism, because if it is, you are in for a bumpy ride, brother.

But at this point, I would like to know if we can all agree that “appearance of design” is completely ruled out as having any cognitive content and scientific or philosophic usefulness. It certainly cannot be used as evidence for anything. Can we at least agree on that up front?