You: That is a philosophical question.
Philosophical, meaning what? Speculative? Not subject to the discipline of science?
You: My take on it is that the designer chose certain building blocks and laws with which to work. The result is a universe that could be interpreted as evolving over a long period of time (if one operates with a certain set of assumptions). That is to say it only gives the appearance of evolving.
"Certain building blocks and laws...". OK, some of the "building blocks" are the ERVs, and one of the "laws" is that a particular ERV may
1) appear in any one of chimps, gorillas and people, or
2) may appear in all three, or
3) may be in both chimps and people, but not gorillas.
There are hundreds, if not thousands, of these ERVs, and they all follow the same rule. So do other mutations.
This is the exact pattern one would expect from common descent
So part of the "philosophical" answer is that we have the appearance of evolution, but if we hypothesize a designer, it looks the same.
Isaac Newton (in the Principia) had something to say about this: "Hypotheses non fingo" (I feign (to assert as if true) no hypotheses):
I have not as yet been able to discover the reason for these properties of gravity from phenomena, and I do not feign hypotheses. For whatever is not deduced from the phenomena must be called a hypothesis; and hypotheses, whether metaphysical or physical, or based on occult qualities, or mechanical, have no place in experimental philosophy. In this philosophy particular propositions are inferred from the phenomena, and afterwards rendered general by induction.
Basically, you're feigning the designer hypothesis. There is no test for it.
Another oldie but goodie is Occam's Razor:
one should not increase, beyond what is necessary, the number of entities required to explain anything
What you're doing is increasing the number of entities by adding a hypothetical designer.
In summary, the "philosphical" approach you're advocating goes against both Newton and William of Occam!
(to be continued...)
Exactly. And if we're going to bring William of Occam into the discussion, please explain what entity must be introduced to cause the presence of organized matter, i.e. particle matter that retains its consistency from generation to generation. If it is something other than intelligent design, then what is it? IMO the simplest explanation is a single, almighty intelligence, without which all matter would disintegrate into NOTHING. If you have a simpler explanation for the presence of organzed matter I'd like to know what it is.