Yes...though I'd say that the teleological folks have emotional reasons to judge an ever-so-specific deity (who they already believe in) to be a conveniently minimal hypothesis. Which is a good example of a usually-necessary heuristic - pushing complexity, costs, unknowns, and other unhappy things far enough away (in real or metaphorical space/time) that you don't have to worry about them now.

> FWIW, the only empirical...

All the budget requests for sextillions of organisms, simulated for billions of years, were rejected. So, unfortunately, some large corners had to be cut...