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Finally, from what we now know about the cosmos, to think that all this was created for just one species among tens of millions of species who live on one planet circling one of a couple of hundred billion stars that are located in one galaxy among hundreds of billions of galaxies, all of which are in one universe among perhaps an infinite number of universes all nestled within a grand cosmic multiverse, is provincially insular and anthropocentrically blinkered. Which is more likely? That the universe was designed just for us, or that we see the universe as having been designed just for us?

The Design Inference: There is a distinct difference between objects that are naturally designed and those that are intelligently designed.

Mount Rushmore is made entirely of natural material (rock), but no one would infer that the natural forces of erosion account for the design of four U.S. presidents’ faces on the granite. This is an example of what Intelligent Design theorists call a “design inference,” another staple argument, this one with its roots in lutemakers and William Paley’s watchmakers. Of course, there are lots of examples of natural forces that do account for designed-looking objects: the rock formation in Maui’s Iao Valley State Park that bears a striking resemblance to President John F. Kennedy in profile; the eroded mountain on Mars that under coarse-grained resolution looks like a face; the eagle rock off the 134 freeway in Southern California that overlooks the town of Eaglerock; the “Nun Bun” found by a Tennessee baker that resembles Mother Teresa; the Virgin Mary stained on the side of a bank building in Clearwater, Florida, or on a Chicago freeway underpass, or on a cheese sandwich in a Las Vegas casino. Although they were created entirely by natural forces, almost no one infers that there is an Intelligent Designer behind such artifacts of nature (with the possible exception of the Virgin Mary stains, which some religious devotees regard as miraculous apparitions). How can we tell the difference between natural design and artificial design?

“Design theorists infer a prior intelligent cause based upon present knowledge of cause-and-effect relationships,” writes the philosopher of science and Intelligent Design advocate Stephen Meyer. “Inferences to design thus employ the standard uniformitarian method of reasoning used in all historical sciences, many of which routinely detect intelligent causes.” Archaeologists, for example, employ statistical and physical criteria to discriminate between natural-made and human-made artifacts, so it is fair to say that “intelligent agents have unique causal powers that nature does not. When we observe effects that we know only agents can produce, we rightly infer the presence of a prior intelligence even if we did not observe the action of the particular agent responsible.”19 Intelligent Design theorists point to the elegance, uniformity, and ingenuity of DNA: It is no more naturally designed than the pyramids. If it looks intelligently designed, it was.

But the inference to design is subjective. Sometimes it is obvious, other times it is not. The difference between a rock and a watch is obvious; the difference between a rock and a chipped-stone tool made by an Australopithecene three million years ago is not obvious. And the inference to design is specific to each claim. In the chippedstone problem, for example, a rock that has been chipped on both sides in a symmetrical fashion is more likely to be intelligently designed than naturally flaked. Nevertheless, archaeologists admit that they likely infer false positives, and there is no surefire design inference algorithm that applies to all archaeological problems, let alone one that applies to all scientific fields. The set of criteria used by archaeologists to determine whether a stone was chipped by chance or design is completely different from the set of criteria used by astronomers to determine whether a signal from space is natural or artificial.