I hear from evolutionists all the time that the human body is riddled with poorly designed structures. The most commonly cited example is probably the “backward wired eye” but I've heard many, many other examples. Their allegation is that no intelligent designer would ever create such a structure. On the other hand, since evolution is all about “descent with modification,” it makes perfect sense that these structures were piecemealed together over many generations and so their “poor” design is evidence of evolution.
I've always scoffed at these arguments. To me, it seems much like armchair quarter backing. How credible is it when an overweight couch potato screams at the TV telling the professional quarterback how to play football? It's easy to ridicule the design of the eye but even with all of our technological advances, we aren't able to produce anything that even comes close to it. Nothing we have built can compare to the human body. No lens is as perfect as the eye. No computer is as powerful as the brain. No tool is as versatile as the hand.
Of course, technology is improving all time. Maybe someday, we will be able to build a computer that can compete with the brain. When that day comes, I'll welcome it. It's more evidence that the brain is the product of design!
But there's another flaw in this argument. Is seemingly poor design really evidence against design? Let me tell you a true story. My daughter just recently moved her bedroom into the basement. She has a nice, 29 inch, flat screen TV mounted on one of the walls. When I was unhooking the cable from the TV, I realized there was a plastic tab right next to the cable jack. I'm not sure what purpose it served by being there but its presence presented a problem. I could barely get my fingers around the cable to unscrew it. While I was unscrewing it, I could only turn it a fraction of a turn each time. I got so frustrated at one point that I almost grabbed some pliers to break the tab off but I was afraid it might crack the back cover.
So I ask you, what intelligent designer would put a piece of plastic right there whose only purpose seems to be to impede screwing and unscrewing the coaxial cable? The only reasonable conclusion then is that the TV evolved.
6 comments:
You asked: "...what intelligent designer would put a piece of plastic right there whose only purpose seems to be to impede screwing and unscrewing the coaxial cable?"
Well, considering the "intelligent designers" on earth do not claim to be a "perfect" god--they do inevitably make mistakes. However, Christians claim their god is "perfect" and his design is "perfect" ergo--we should be "perfect"--but we are not.
See the difference?
A is for Atheist,
Thank you for visiting my blog and for your comments.
I see what you're saying but I really don't see a difference. There are a couple of things going on here.
First, your comments do not rebut my point. To say that “no intelligent designer would do it that way” is not evidence against design since the same criticism could be made of an object that we all know was designed.
Secondly, there is also my point of the armchair quarter back. I said that I don't see a purpose for the plastic tab. However, I know it's not there by accident. The engineers that designed the TV put it there intentionally. From my limited knowledge, I can say it's poor design but the purpose it serves my be important.
Finally, the human body is immeasurably more complex that a TV. Human invention and technology has come a long way but soon some new TV or some other medium will make current TVs obsolete. It's hard to imagine, though, that any human invention will be able to compete with the human body. Atheists can complain about some seemingly poorly designed structure in the body but no one can build anything better.
Thanks again for visiting. Please come back.
God bless!!
RKBentley
An intelligent designer might be an imperfect designer. On the other hand, we might not recognize the wisdom of certain design tradeoffs, and mistakenly think that we would be happier with different tradeoffs (to be sure, an omnipotent Designer could presumably come up with designs that don't involve tradeoffs, that don't have to accept costs or imperfections in one area in order to perform better in another -- but that's probably a different question).
But take, for example, "the eye." The reversed retina is a feature of the vertebrate eye, present in humans, dogs, dolphins, trout, etc. It is not a feature of the box-camera eye of squids and octopuses. If we're invoking common design, we wouldn't expect different designs for the retina in cephalopods and vertebrates. If we're invoking optimal design, it's not clear why the "right-way round" retina is optimal for all cephalopods while the "inverted retina" is optimal for all fish, regardless of ecological role. What evolution explains is less "why the vertebrate eye is imperfect" than "why the same set of features is common to flounders, sharks, minnows, frogs, toucans, primates, etc. while a different set of features is common to all octopuses and squids." All vertebrates share a last common ancestor that had evolved one sort of box-camera eye; all advanced cephalopods had evolved from a different last common ancestor with a different sort of box-camera eye (this ur-cephalopod presumably shared a very remote common ancestor with the ur-vertebrate, sometime in the Precambrian, but that common ancestor would have had very simple eyes).
Now, I don't know about the cable jack in your daughter's room, but many oddities of design in human artifacts are the result of constant re-designs of parts of the original design (e.g. Microsoft products are notorious for containing vestigial, nonfunctioning code from earlier versions: the new code was added but the old, superseded code was never entirely removed). Mutation and natural selection tend to work the same way with biological structures: features of new species arise as modifications of features of old species, rather than being reinvented from scratch. Hence, e.g. the rather different structures of pterosaur wings, bird wings, and bat wings reflect this principle, regardless of how "perfect" or "imperfect" one regards them as being.
Steven J,
You said, “An intelligent designer might be an imperfect designer. On the other hand, we might not recognize the wisdom of certain design tradeoffs, and mistakenly think that we would be happier with different tradeoffs (to be sure, an omnipotent Designer could presumably come up with designs that don't involve tradeoffs, that don't have to accept costs or imperfections in one area in order to perform better in another -- but that's probably a different question).”
You already seem to have answered your own question – namely that we might not recognize the wisdom of certain designs. I already know the plastic tab was there intentionally. I might say it's an imperfect design but maybe the designers put it there precisely to prevent the cable from being easily moved. I know that sometimes people simply string the cable across the floor. Someone walking by might trip on the cable and cause the cable jack to become broken.
You said, “But take, for example, "the eye." The reversed retina is a feature of the vertebrate eye, present in humans, dogs, dolphins, trout, etc. It is not a feature of the box-camera eye of squids and octopuses. If we're invoking common design, we wouldn't expect different designs for the retina in cephalopods and vertebrates.”
We wouldn't? Why not? It has been the lament of many evolutionists that design is TOO explanatory. If structures are the same among two groups that's compatible with creation. If structures are different between two groups, that's also compatible with creation. There's no reason God must or must not create structures any certain way.
You said, “Now, I don't know about the cable jack in your daughter's room, but many oddities of design in human artifacts are the result of constant re-designs of parts of the original design (e.g. Microsoft products are notorious for containing vestigial, nonfunctioning code from earlier versions: the new code was added but the old, superseded code was never entirely removed). Mutation and natural selection tend to work the same way with biological structures: features of new species arise as modifications of features of old species, rather than being reinvented from scratch. Hence, e.g. the rather different structures of pterosaur wings, bird wings, and bat wings reflect this principle, regardless of how "perfect" or "imperfect" one regards them as being.”
There are a couple of principles at work here. First, according to creation, God originally made everything perfect. Adam, for example, was designed to live forever. It was only after sin that the Curse and death came into the world Over many generations, mutations have crept into the once perfect design. Organs and structures may lose function until what was once a perfect design now seems like a poor design.
Secondly, there is also the real possibility that vestigial organs (or noncoding DNA) are not left overs but are functioning structures whose purpose has not yet been identified.
As always, thanks for visiting. God bless!!
RKBentley
Robert, you said,
"It has been the lament of many evolutionists that design is TOO explanatory. If structures are the same among two groups that's compatible with creation. If structures are different between two groups, that's also compatible with creation. There's no reason God must or must not create structures any certain way."
Exactly. I really don't know why evolutionists continue to try and pretend they know how God WOULD have designed, and then attempt to use it as evidence. It's always complete speculation. You can't even predict how another human being will design something. You can have your opinion of how God SHOULD design something, but it's merely your opinion. And you can also argue that our eyes, for example, would be more effective if (insert reason here), but like RK says, you're merely reaching for perfection since we have not even come close to designing something as advanced as the thing we're complaining about.
RK, thank you for also mentioning our imperfect state of being along with the world. Atheists are constantly assuming since God is perfect, that creation should also be perfect. They can't seem to understand the Biblical concept of the fall of man.
Todd,
I liked your quote from the evolutionist who said, “The big point is that the nested hierarchical structure supports common descent, and is evidence against design, because a designer would have a far larger repertory of modules to swap in as needed. For instance, why doesn't man have the eyes of an owl, the speed of a cheetah, the hearing of a dog?"
You're absolutely right that there is a certain amount of arrogance we see in evolutionists. They have no problem telling us how poorly the body is designed and how they would have done it if they were God. Ha! It was just a few years ago that evolutionists were saying how poorly DNA was designed since 95% of it was “junk” (left-over, non-coding DNA). We're beginning to see now how wrong they were on that one.
Concerning the point made by the skeptic in your quote, I would say that, with our advanced intelligence, we can see better than any owl, travel faster than any cheetah, and hear better than any dog. And by the way, humans are the top predators on the planet who have always hunted and killed all other creatures no matter what their size, strength, speed, teeth, or claws.
Thanks for your comments.
God bless!!
RKBentley
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