fgarb writes:
But that makes it even harder to say whether the drawbacks in our mortal bodies are evidence for or against a designer . I really don’t find such arguments very convincing.
The drawbacks that we have are easily explained by the evolutionary view, and therefore by my theory about the intelligent designers. They bend over backwards to conceal themselves, and give everything the appearance of having natural causes. If we have interventionist designers, their intervention is either so light as to be undetectable, or they design to give the appearance of non-design.
So, our back aches are because it's necessary to give the appearance that we became bipeds by an imperfect process of random variation and natural selection in ancestral quadrupeds, and a few intermediate looking fossils have been laid down to encourage the view. In addition, we see clever work in our genomes, like the apparent fusion of ape chromosomes into chromosome 2, for example, and many other features.
This theory doesn't tell us why the designers wish to conceal themselves, merely that they do. One prediction is that, if they're completely effective, we'll never see any evidence for them.
I think that my theory of omphalism explains all the evidence (but not the motive beyond a desire to be invisible to any careful observers). It can be summed up thus:
The designers always design within the parameters of evolutionary possibility, and are therefore undetectable.
If this thread assumes an interventionist designer or designers, then I think that my theory is by far the best one. Without the assumption, the evidence also fits a non-interventionist "front-loader" designer(s) of the universe, and, of course, no designers at all (the parsimonious explanation that I prefer as a working basis myself).
I suppose we can now enjoy speculating as to why they might make such great efforts to conceal themselves. Over to you, Bluejay!