The absurd need for logical proofs for God

[R00tKiT]

Creation doesn't necessarily indicate design.  If it does, then your concept of design is also vacuous.  In that case "design" is not a property, and your entire argument collapses.  You're anthropomorphizing your god, which IIRC, is a no-no in Islam.

I think you misunderstand what my concept of design actually is; it is creation itself. I don't draw any distinction between clever combinations of matter/nature [e.g. machines] and matter/nature in its initial form. But you do, so you are the one who has problems with the concept of design here, not me.

It also occurs to me that God didn't create anything either, but simply converted his potency into matter.  Without the raw material of God's potency, there would be no matter.

Nonsense. Potency is a property of God, not some material external to God. An omnipotent God, by his potency -rather than (((converts))) potency-, creates matter ex nihilo.

Your only way out is to somehow prove that ex nihilo creation is logically impossible. Good luck.

So nothing is created and one way or another, everything, whether God or the universe, were just eternally existing things under this view.  So you've essentially eviscerated both the concept of design, and your god's claim to any obligation from us or rights he has toward us.  Allah is just another cog in the machine that is everything.)

More nonsense resulting from the misunderstanding above.

First of all, complexity is NOT a hallmark of design. Competent engineers strive for simplicity not complexity.

I didn't claim anywhere that complexity logically implies design, it only increases its probability. It's the appearance of adaptation of means to ends that points to design. And your remark about competent engineers is misplaced, the latter deal with a finite amount of matter, so efficiency is important. A deity doesn't have this concern. Paleophyte already made this mistake, you might want to go back and read all the replies.

Second, we recognize design by contrasting them to things that occur naturally,

If so, then your definition of design is meaningless. If you already exclude things that occur naturally from the realm of designed things, then you're begging the question of whether nature is designed or not -you already answered no by choosing such a discriminatory definition.
That's really ..dumb.. if you think about it.

And just because something has the appearance of design, does not mean it is designed.

According to your 'method', the following, purely naturally occurring, weathered rock formations are all designed, but they are provabley not.

As I said above, your definition of design is very problematic. Until you provide a better one, the issue of whether these rock formation are designed or not should be put aside for a while.

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It doesn't mean that if something is complex that it is inteligently designed.

I didn't say complexity strictly implies design. It does increase the probability that the thing at hand is designed.

No, it is actually very objective. If we see in nature some "cleverly designed machine" like a clock, we know that it is man-made because 1st we know that humans make them, and 2nd it’s because nobody ever observed a clock giving birth to the baby clock, and nobody so far observed in nature fossils of “primitive” clocks upon which today’s clocks evolved. So that’s the main difference of how we know that biological beings evolved and machines were made by man.

I am not sure how many times I will be repeating this : you are already excluding biological beings from the definition of design. therefore you're begging the question of whether they are designed or not.

It doesn’t mean that if there is no intelligent designer that there is no "designer" because nature, from rocks to animals and humans, is designed by natural processes. That’s why rocks/ cliffs look one way in the desert, and the other way under the sea—because they follow the pattern of natural processes that can even be predicted, like when people design alien planets for SF movies.

Again, nothing excludes the possibility of a designer creating stuff through these very natural processes. Therefore, rocks and cliffs that follow these processes can be the intention of a designer all along, or at least a byproduct of his master plan.