Dembski seems to be using a quantitive approach to demonstrate that novel biostructures could not have arisen as a result of either chance (or rather, that the improbability is such that it is as good as impossilbe [he multiples the number of quarks in the cosmos by the number of plank moments or something like that to get the denominator for the inverse of his threshold of so-improbable-that-it-is-as-good-as-impossible) or necessity. He concludes that these forms have arisen as a result of specified complexity. But the specified in this term is another name for something that a rational being, especially an engineer, would think of. So it's kind of a way of talking about teleology via quantification.
How about defining it as an instance of functional complexity? And treating the list of properties as following necessarily from this definition? Okay, this is very diamond-in-the-rough (or perhaps zirconium...) but here goes my thoughts on the matter: (Complexity) Many diverse parts (functional) acting for the sake of the whole I think I need to add something like "not as the instrument of another" or something like that. Given that they act together as one whole and given entropy, etc., the organism will need to posses more order than its surroundings (homeostasis). It will therefore need to take in energy (nutrition), which it will use to sustain its readiness to interact with its environment so as to preserve its own being (homeostasis again?), but which will eventually break down (death), so that in order for that life form to continue it will need to duplicate itself (reproduction), which, upon occurring, will involve both development (growth) to maturity and...
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