Perhaps it should be mentioned that most Christian denominations support this position, as opposed to Young Earth Creationism.
The loudest most annoying Christians/athiests/republicans/democrats/libertarians/&c are often the most unyielding and unforgiving and generally
don't represent the group they claim to. It's easy to lose sight of this.
... The WHAT of [the designs] so overwhelms us that to establish the mere THAT of a designer for them becomes of very little consequence in comparison. ... The real question is WHAT is the world, whether or not it have a designer–and that can be revealed only by the study of all nature’s particulars.
I like this,
however, I think it oversimplifies. That there is so much to know about the world arguably should not distract us from the question of design, and not because it is of any consequence to our physical sciences, and thus any useful material product of them, but because it is an important matter to many concerning their interpretation of what the entire physical world
means. The complexity of the world doesn't entail that its meaning is derivable from an ever deeper exploration into that complexity alone. One has to insist on NOT being overwhelmed by that, and on, instead, encapsulating the complexity wholesale in a conceptual totality, even if that totality is not entirely defined, but instead stretches outward and outward into ever more fine distinctions.
Does this make sense? It is a difficult distinction to convey in words because it represents two very different manners of thinking. One is rightly immersed in the world, the other is rightly holding the whole of the world out at arm's length as though it were a snow globe.
Once we persist on encapsulating the complex world within a conceptual totality, the question of meaning (and thus the matter of a designer) remains unchanged. "What is the working order of the world?" becomes SYNONYMOUS with "What is the meaning of the world?" In both cases, we are asking for the foundation of the world.
What is it?
The matter of what it means, however, is also a matter of what the self means, since world and self is the essential relation at this level. The question, "who are you?" makes no sense when asked to the mechanical world one is immersed in, but it makes perfect sense to ask this at the level of self-and-world. Similarly with the question, "who am I?". In the first case, the answer is mechanical, "you are these sets of physical processes". In the second case, the answer is very different, and people begin describing themselves and the world in terms of creation stories. But you see that AT the level of world-immersion, the creation stories make no sense at all, and this is because they are not being interpreted in the required context.
Now, it is not as though there are really these distinct levels, because what we find is that the whole of the world-immersion level is rather like a fading dream IN THE SENSE that nothing there is, in itself, grounded. The paradox of the Ship of Theseus is an excellent example. It applies just as easily to the self saying "I am this set of processes." The knowledge at this level begins smudging the moment it is asserted, and this is because it begins going over into its opposite, just like the rest of the impermanent world which is fated to do the same, hence, temporarily.
