You: Not correct. Who the designer is does not matter as to whether something was designed. We can look at a car and know it was designed by some human being without knowing the human beings name or the purpose of his particular design.
I don't follow your analogy. We already know, for a fact, that the car was designed by a person (or persons). We don't know this from looking at a car; we know it because we independently know the history of technology. If an ancient person, (or a New Guinea Cargo Cultist) saw a car, they might very well infer Divine Design.
What are we able to say about this hypothetical designer? All I've seen so far is that it has lousy quality control, and that it likes to mimic Darwinism.
My point was that since design is a purely ad-hoc hypothesis, there are no limitations on what can be imputed to the designer. We could use some independent lines of inquiry here.
No, my analogy is correct. Even if you saw a new gizmo in a store or on the street you would not think it occurred by chance. We know that certain things are made by men, and are not the products of nature.
What are we able to say about this hypothetical designer? All I've seen so far is that it has lousy quality control, and that it likes to mimic Darwinism.
Oh please, could you make a single living cell? I don't think so. So we certainly can say that this designer is a lot smarter than us. Therefore you cannot criticize the design if you yourself cannot understand it or do better. Further, it is beyond science to ascribe motives to a design. It can tell how something works, but not why someone made something. The motives of even a human designer can be quite unintelligible. Someone may create a new product to make money, another may do so just because he thought of it and wanted to see if it would work, another might have done it to benefit humanity. The motive of the designer is thus beyond a scientific discussion so it is a false objection.
As to mimicing Darwinism, I don't think so. Species were around long before Darwin. Perhaps it would be better to say that Darwin tried to fit the theory to what he saw in nature but did not quite succeed.