designed the system of nature, and then has to intervene in its regular workings he must be an incompetent architect. Reply: This argument would only be true if God designed a system in which he should never intervene—in which he should never answer prayers or reveal himself in special and spectacular ways. If you acquired a newly-built house and found it had no bathrooms, that would indeed reflect badly on the architect. For the concrete design of the house would lack what it unquestionably ought