[explaininjs]

Why are you assigning malice? Just because the omnipresent being designed things a particular way but wishes to be known on faith rather than an explicit name tag doesn’t mean he’s “screwing with us”, as you seem so want to repeat.

Frankly I don’t even know what point you’re trying to make. I was very clear in my goal for this thread, and it has very clearly been achieved to any onlooker. If you’re too deep in your argument to see it… yes, precisely.

[gjm11]

I'm not "assigning malice". I'm just observing that the hypothesis you're pushing here is of an omnipotent being going out of its way to make us draw wrong conclusions. You can call that malice or benevolence or caprice or anything you like; I'm not particularly concerned with the motives of this hypothetical deceptive superbeing. But the hypothesis is of a deceptive superbeing, one that goes out of its way to have the universe not look as if there's a superbeing in charge of it.

(At least to whatever extent your statue example is meant to reflect the actual world. As I said: if in that example you want me not to conclude that the statue was likely made by an intelligent being even though in fact it was, you will need to go out of your way to hide from me all the evidence there would naturally be of intelligent potentially-statue-making beings like yourself.)

If you don't like the specific phrase "screwing with us" then by all means substitute something like "trying to make us draw wrong conclusions".

It seems to me that whether something is clear "to any onlooker" is a thing for the onlookers to decide.

[explaininjs]

The evidence is clear to anyone with eyes: the intricately designed statue. It should be obvious to anyone that it was created, as it was for millennia across the entire world. It’s only after centuries of forced re-education that people began to think the dust randomly settled in the shape of a beautiful statue.

[gjm11]

I'm not sure whether your statue is meant as an analogy for the universe as a whole, or life on earth, or what. But whatever specific thing you have in mind, it's obviously false that "only after centuries of forced re-education" that people began to think ... well, anything, actually. Because then what motivated the "forced re-education" in the first place?