Even if theism is a failure, it's still superior to atheism

[polymath257]

[quote='polymath257' pid='2121261' dateline='1665704924']
Well, the argument is that the complexity is such that no natural system could produce what we observe. 

That's not at all the argument. Your formulation above in bold is clearly a negative assertion, and negative assertions generally can't be proven. All variants of the design arguments are either analogical (e.g. the universe is analogous to intelligently designed machines + the analogy is strong enough to warrant a designer of the universe) or inductive (the designer hypothesis is a better explanation of available data than all competing hypotheses).

You're also making the implicit assumption that natural selection and the design hypothesis/theism are incompatible, needless to say that you need to provide very good justification of such an assumption.
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No, I am not. At the point that mutation and natural selection can produce the observed complexity, the God assumption simply becomes irrelevant.

If you want, the God assumption can be seen as an assumption that is neither provable nor disprovable from the earlier assumptions. But then, no argument from design would be necessary.

In general, giving evidence of design isn't as easy as many seem to think. Among other things, it requires knowing enough of what can happen *without* intelligent interference to justify the necessity of such interference. On the other hand, it is often found that things that initially *look* designed can actually be the result of natural processes.

So the upshot is that the 'look around' argument simply doesn't get to the conclusion.

I can say the exact same thing about evidence of walls existing, or any other basic belief that we acquire through perception. In short, your objections to the appearance of design invariably lead to skepticism.

And, again, you're assuming that something being the result of natural processes explains away design. You need to actually justify the explaining away -the option of guided evolution is always available to the theist, so you basically did nothing to refute the design argument.

And at that point, design becomes an unprovable and can be dispensed with.

Yes, and what is wrong is that AI robots do not reproduce with mutations and are not subject to natural selection.

So, your only objection to my parody analogy is that AI robots don't reproduce ...........? We already have self-replicating malware that can modify its behavior to avoid detection (look up polymorphic virus), does that mean such malware doesn't warrant a programmer who wrote the malware ?
 
and let's say we managed to produce AI robots that can reproduce and can evolve through natural selection, does that mean we never existed .......?

No, but more than their mere existence and complexity would be required to prove our existence.

My point is that the argument from design is incapable of proving its conclusion. You are, in essence, arguing the contrapositive.

Actually, I would say that the existence of something is ultimately determined by whether it can be detected in principle. So, yes, the detection of the wall through the senses is *precisely* why I believe they exist. It is part of the definition I use for 'existence'.

And your definition is plainly ridiculous. Absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence. That something is undetectable just means we can't detect it, and that empirical observation isn't enough to justify the assertion that it exists.

But there are times when absence of evidence *is* evidence of absence. For example, if I fail to detect an adult african elephant in my room, I can conclude that there is no adult african elephant in my room. Why? Because if such an elephant existed in my room, I would be guaranteed to detect it. So, in that case, absence of evidence *is* indeed evidence of absence.

But going deeper, if the detection is impossible even in principle, what does it even mean to say that something exists? I could then equally well argue that undetectable unicorns exist in my room. Who is to say otherwise?

if it is silly to say that there are undetectable unicorns in my room, then it is equally silly to say that anything else that it truly undetectable can be said to exist.