INTELLIGENT DESIGN: An Engineer’s Approach

I work in the software industry, and I can tell you that there comes a point where it is necessary to stop and do radical rewrites. You do not keep on fiddling and fixing forever or you end up with a complete mess. I suspect it's the same in engineering - all the car manufacturers I've heard of bring out new models every so often.Also there's the business of transferring technology. Something that works in one application gets copied into other places where it's useful. That doesn't seem to happen very often in nature - at least it doesn't seem to be done intentionally.So I'd say that your analogy falls down on a cuple of points. What we see is more like what we'd expect evolution to produce than a designer.

Homology is NOT explained by chance. It is a necessary consequence of common descent that there should be homologies. That is why they are better evidence for evolution than they are for design.

To reply to your comments, the only thing likely to remain stable in the medium term is the interfaces to low-level libraries. TO expand, while the lower level libraries might be retained in a rewrite of higher-level code, they too are subject to the same pressures. As expanded functionality is required they, too, become more complex up to the point where a rewrite or replacement is needed. Sometimes a replacemement is desirable for other reasons, too - because something better at an even lower level has become available.
(As an aside one of the supposed benefits of Object Orientated languages is that the underlying implementation can be changed while retaining the same interface.)On the other point I think that you are making a serious mistake in carrying the analogy so far to talk of "compilers". (And arguably misreading the analogy even there - DNA is arguably more akin to an interpreted programming language). I was making a general point on the nature of a design methodology that relies on continually modifying existing designs. An intelligent designer would have the option of "going back to the drawing board" and starting afresh - and would likely find it desirable to do so on occasion. Evolution does not have that option. Therefore if, as it seems, that option has not been taken the evidence favours evolution over intelligent design.

I think that DNA has syntax only in a fairly limited sense. There are four symbols and "rules" on how these are translated into amino acids. There are "stop codons" which stop transcription. There are other factors involved which somehow control which areas of DNA are transcribed, also the products of some genes somehow affect transcription activity. It's a complicated process and very much an interaction between the DNA and it's environment. And that is pretty much the limit of my knowledge. YOu'd need a developmental biologist to tell you the details.On your other point, I am not suggesting "retracting" a design. The lifeforms based on that design could certainly be allowed to continue. What I mean is that a "new generation" of lifeforms with some radical redesign work would be expected appear from time to time. There comes a time when just tinkering with the current models gets to be more trouble than it's worth.

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ok, I think we're arguing in circles. Let me see if I can make my point without any subtlety: I see a number of arguments on this thread saying that life cannot be designed because the designer didn't do a good job. I'm pointing out that in an evolved world, or more generally, a world that arose by purely natural causes, there is no such thing as 'good' or 'perfect' or so on.

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This is far from clear.The most sensible reading is that the imperfections we see are consistent with evolution. But that would hardly help your case.

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There is no such thing as right or wrong. You may *feel* like something is right or wrong, but only because certain electro-chemical reactions take place in your brain.

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Either you are confusing moral judgements with practical judgements or you are asserting that given an evolutionary view it is necessary to deny that humans are thinking beings capable of design. Either argument would need a considerable degree of support.

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So it is logically inconsistent to make any sort of value judgements about a non-existent designer.

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Obviously if humans can think and design it is possible to think of biological systems as if they were designed and conclude that the design is poor. Therefore there is no logical inconsistency except in the case of people who deny their own ability to judge designs. here is no logical inconsistency in taking a position as true for the sake of argument - indeed the reductio ad absurdam is a logically valid form of argument.