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Ghazzali comments on The Wonder of Evolution - Less Wrong
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My point is that you can argue rationally about whether there is design in the universe, but you cannot argue whether the design is good or bad. The later is incoherent. Maybe the Grand Designer does want to make things confusing? Maybe he has put evidence of design in the universe, but not absolute evidence for whatever reason He wants? You can make the point that the design is good or bad, but that point has no real consequence to the question about whether there is design in the first place. Thats my point.
Another interesting point;
Do you agree that design does indeed exist anywhere in the universe? Lets say in the form of human design? If you do believe that humans actually do design, and it seems like you do because you are judging the design in nature based on human experience of design, then you have to come up with an explanation of how purely mechanical/physical beings produced this design to begin with?
I'm not arguing about whether design is "good" or "bad"- reuse for example isn't an aspect of good or bad design. It is an aspect of design, period.
Sure, and maybe the Grand Designer deliberately made all the evidence look like there was no designer, and then the designer is going to reward people in the afterlife who looked at it logically and came to that conclusion.
Or maybe this entire discussion is actually occurring in a simulation in some future transhumanist utopia, after Ghazzali made a bet with a friend that he'd be logical enough that even if placed in the benighted 21st century he'd still reach correct conclusions about the nonsense that is religion. (Apparently you were wrong.)
Or maybe this entire conversation hasn't occurred, and this message is the last fraction of coherent apparent input to you before your Boltzmann brain dissolves back into chaos.
Etc. Etc. Do you see why this isn't a useful game to play?
It does though. Absence of evidence is evidence of absence. That you can construct other hypothetical deities that are more and more convoluted in their behavior says more about your imagination than the likelyhood of their existence. This is especially the case because the deities as described in most classical religions (e.g. Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism) are explicitly highly interventionist.
I'm not sure what you mean by this. Are you asking how humans come up with new ideas? There's ongoing research by psychologists and cognitive scientists on this, but it isn't an area I know much about. My understanding is that the current hypotheses suggest that some of it is random borderline nonsense bubbling at a barely conscious level, and that part of the difficulty is recognizing the good ideas and bringing them out to full attention. But again, not my area.
You didn't address whether there's any amount of evidence that would convince you that evolution was correct.