Is there a legitimate argument for design?

Hi Omnivorous,Crows have also been observed casting hard nuts onto the busy road to have cars smash them. Then they fly down and eat them.Using us humans as a makeshift nutcracker.

My point is that if you try to reason from the fact that they have this one thing in common to the inference that they have a similar mode of production, such reasoning fails every time that we can test it. Helicopters don't hump. Birds aren't made in factories. Helicopters don't undergo ontogenesis. Bees aren't assembled from pre-existing parts. Helicopters aren't produced by a process of reproduction with variation acted on by natural selection, and no-one has come forward claiming to be the inventor of the bat.If a form of argument fails sometimes, it is not conclusive. If if fails every time we can test it, it is not even suggestive; or if it suggests anything, it's that we should believe the opposite of its conclusion.

Corvids are amazing creatures that have fascinated me for many years. The literature on corvid intelligence is considerable; a fine intro is Mind of the Raven by biologist Bernd Heinrich (1999), which helped draw modern researchers' attention to corvid intelligence. As noted in my post on New Caledonia crows, their tool making is exceeded on this planet only by our own and is far more subtle and complex than that of chimps who fish for termites with a stick.I have a friend named Manitou who lives in an Audubon aviary in northwestern Connecticut. He was captured as a fledgling and imprinted on humans, and so cannot be released into the wild.Ravens, like many corvids, can recognize individual human faces. Manitou also recognizes our voices as we approach the aviary by trail. He vocalizes excitedly: if we tarry too long looking at the peregrine or the kestrel, he complains loudly.We usually spend a half hour or so outside his enclosure, exchanging quorks and croacks and clicks. I can pop my jaw joints resoundingly, closely imitating one of his sounds; he peers at me intensely and answers in kind.One day this past winter we offered him some dehydrated chicken strips, the first time we'd done so. He stashed them in the snow drift at the front of his enclosure. When we finally started to walk away, he began vocalizing frantically; we looked back and saw that he had excavated a small fillet of fish from his cache and held it against the wire fencing. We walked back but didn't take his fish.He regarded us for a moment, apparently concluded we couldn't reach the fish, then with a few deft motions used his beak to notch the fillet so that a corner could be pushed through the fence. I've rarely been so moved: the sense of contact was powerful. We refused again, with genuine thanks.The next time we visited, we had nothing for Manitou, and he was clearly disappointed. After visiting him, we hiked for a while and then returned. My companion offered him a long cylindrical curl of birch bark as a consolation toy. He took it, studied it for a moment, then tried to return it. Alas, it could only fit through the fence end-first, difficult for him to achieve while clinging to the fence. So he hopped down, trimmed it from a cylinder to a ring, hopped back up and offered that back to my companion. He took care in trimming the bark to maintain the round band of material.There's a mind and personality in there, and our recognition of that is mutual: I'll eat his fish if he doesn't have a theory of mind He's clearly as excited to see his friends as we are to have a raven buddy. I feel guilty if I let too much time go by without a visit to Manitou.

Results of his experiments to establish human intelligence have been disappointing ...

... but the sample is small.

Avian intelligence continually amazes me. Here is a photo of my two family members. (Both bred in captivity)Your story of Manitou is wonderful.

I say there is not a legitimate argument for design. 3% of humans are born with a major defect. Toyota has a better QC program than this.

If that number was 0%, would you then think that was evidence of design?

Sometimes a defect is a "feature". Just ask MicroSoft.

What would be the feature of a six legged human baby?

I suppose you could say that an intelligent designer wanted to create trees but animals and humans were the result of his creation errors.

No CS, but I say .0001% would be .

Well now I'm confused.3% error = not designed0% error = not designed0.0001% error = designedHow does that makes sense?

Insects have six legs and they're arguably more successful that humans. The reason we don't have six legs is because we evolved from tetrapods, not because it's a bad "idea".So what's your point? Flaws indicate design?

zr, recently in the news there was a story about a baby born with 6 legs. CS, what do you think is an acceptable error for the design of humans?