Why is the Intelligent Designer so inept?

For those wishing to combine theology and/or religion with their science, there's a forum for that: [forum=-34]The science forums (and this thread *is* in a science forum) are reserved for scientific discussion.

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--	Percy
	EvC Forum Director

Yup! Loved your version of the Lord's Prayer.--Percy

I'm wondering if this thread should really be there... any defense raised will almost certainly be theological in nature. What do you think? I have no objections to a move...

That would be surprising, since I'm British and have never even been to the USA.My kidneys are not failing. They failed. They were put right by medical science. If not for steroids I would never have lived to see my tenth birthday. I suffered from nefrotic syndrome. It can indeed be related to food, specifically food allergies, but it can also arise spontaneously. In my case, no food allergy was ever implicated. Even if it had been caused by a food allergy, don't you think that an intelligent designer might have taken in to account the fact that his creations were going to need to eat? I was nine years old when I developed NS. My parents always made sure I had a very good diet. Actually, it's more usual for NS to present in infants about 2-3 years old. What exactly do you think is so wrong with their diets?NS is not a lifestyle illness and your insistence that it is is, frankly, quite patronising.Of course I was one of the lucky ones. I was born after the advent of anabolic steroids, so I got to live, unlike the millions of kids before me, who had died slow wasting deaths from NS, an especially horrible way to go.So, getting back to the point here, what can we deduce about our designer from all this?He is unable to design a set of kidneys that can reliably do the job they are supposed to do. So he is not a complete idiot perhaps, but certainly not omnipotent/omniscient.orHe deliberately designed the kidneys in such a way that they would malfunction and kill millions of little kids in an unpleasant way. So he is a cruel bastard who kills children.Neither of the above is especially impressive. They certainly don't inspire any desire to worship the designer. I would quite like to kick his ass though.

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Mutate and Survive

Thread moved here from the Miscellaneous Topics in Creation/Evolution forum.

Which doesn't prevent me from pointing out that such an approach is inherantly invalid as a method of investigating nature.But all of the apologetic twisting about possible motivations for an "intelligent" designer that would account for all of our flaws, while departing completely from any sort of rational and objective discussion (because literally any "explanation" that can be imagined has equal validity in the face of no evidence), we can make a few judgment calls about any supposed "designer."1) If the "designer" did not actually specifically design each individual organism, but rather is the divine watchmaker and simply kicked the whole thing off and sat back to let life form and evolve through natural causes with no concern for ethics but rather a goal of creating a resilient and diverse strain of life that manages itself and adapts to environmental contraints with a focus on life itself surviving as opposed to individual species...well, that designer did a good job according to those goals. But that designer does not match up with the brand of ID that typically springs up, which is nothing more than a new name for Creationism. This is not a personal deity, and is compeltely contrary to the account of Genesis.2) If the "designer" did specifically Create each species, we can conclude that since each feature must have been added on purpose, the designer is either incompetent or cruel. Either he's an idiot and couldn't recognize an efficient and well-made design if he was staring it in the face, or he purposefully added flaws to cause suffering. Since other organisms exist that do not posses many of the flaws human beings do, it can be concluded that despite having the ability to resolve many of our design flaws, the designer chose specifically not to. Was he stupid when he gave me extreme nearsightedness, or was he just being mean? We also know that, since the designer apparently made every effort to disguise his efforts and leave no actual evidence of what he did (except of course to a single nomadic middle-eastern population, not in the form of evidence but of oral tradition), he must be a trickster deity, akin to the Norse Loki.The latter is indeed the purpose of this thread, and I fail to see any further conclusions about any such designer based on the evidence (such that it is). You can equivocate over possible motivations for "building character" and causing growth through hardship, but that really just means he's being cruel since he could have Created humanity with the desired personality traits already built-in. The whole thing frankly becomes a ridiculous exercise becasue we aren't basing any of this on evidence but rather on any imagined untestable hypothesis that comes across our minds. As I said before, if you claim the designer made a perfect design that corrupted after a fall, or that the flaws were built-in to cause growth through adversity, I can just as easily claim that a malevolent unicorn did it just to watch us squirm. We have the same amount of evidence in that regard. I don't see any reason why we should not. That's the problem with apologetics I was pointing out - you can come up with literally any purpose for design that enters your mind, and they're all going to be equally valid becasue there is no evidence of the designing itself. It's the same argument I can use against any theist - you can choose any number of deities to exist, with any set of properties desired, because they all have the same amount of evidence supporting them: none.If the designer of humanity intentionally made us this way, he is either cruel or an idiot. There is no other way to explain the continued existence of the appendix, the imperfect human eye when far better natural examples exist, or our other flaws. Feel free to exclaim that it's intended to make life a challenge, but all that amounts to is a deity that is indifferent to human suffering and death. What would it say about me if I poked out a baby's eye so that over its lifetime it could "grow through adversity?" Wouldn't that make me a disgusting, sadisting fuck? If I designed and created a sentient, pain-feeling robot with specific design flaws that ensured it would spend its entire existence in constant pain, without the ability to see its surroundings even though it has optical sensors, and ensured its memory would begin to fail and its accumulated personality would degenerate over time just so that it could "grow from adversity," doesn't that make me about the most evil bastard you've ever heard of? What if I made him start out with an efficient design that lacked the constant suffering, but "corrupted" him into his "fallen" state the moment he disobeys me even a little? What if I made all of his offspring carry the same design flaws becasue of his disobedience? Wouldn;t that make me a really sick, vindictive asshole? Even if this "growth" was intended to earn an eternity in heaven where all the design flaws get fixed and everybody is happy, I made the rules for how to get into heaven in the first place, so all of teh suffering required to earn it is still my fault.So how exactly is the supposed designer not either cruel or an idiot?If we're assuming the Christian deity most often believed in, the one who "loves" humanity and is supposedly "good" and "all-knowing," how does this match up with a design that contains egregious flaws? Is he cruel and uncaring, forcing us to suffer to "grow"? That doesn't match up with the whole benevolence part. Is he a moron who for all his miraculous reality-warping powers simply couldn't pass a basic engineering course? That doesn't match up with the omniscience. So how do you rationalize this? The only way I see is to compeltely stop using the Bible as a literal guide, and to understand that such a deity would not design humanity the way we are. On the basis that in 100% of every ID argument I have ever participated in, the cdesign proponentists were actually Christian Creationists.But feel free to include them, as it certainly fits the purpose of this thread - id human beings were specifically designed, the designer is either an idiot or an asshole. The silly flaws in the human body don't really leave room for anything else if you assume specific creation. Except that he apparently made really shitty eyes with a fraction of the resolution or spectrum detection of our digital cameras. And the issue isn't that he was capable of making eyes at all, it's that he gave human beings a really crappy set, but gave other species better eyes that don't suffer from the same flaws. It points to either a lack of design at all, a stupid designer, or a cruel designer. The point is not to say that we have "higher technological abilities" than a designer, but to point out that an intelligent designer, particularly an omnipotent and omniscient one, would not do such things unless he was being intentionally cruel.Again, we can start practicing apologetics some more and say "well, the designer made us perfect, but then the devil who is cruel corrupted the perfect design after the Fall" or any such other imaginary scenarios, but the fact is there is no evidence suggesting such things - I could just as easily attribute the whole thing to my malevolent unicorn.If we look only at the evidence we posses regarding the human body, we can easily see that any designer would have had to be either stupid or unnecessarily cruel. And as a rule, I never attribute to malevolence what can just as easily be attributed to incompetence.

Hi, Rahvin. Well, I’ll grant you this, for sure. But, the incompetency argument is the same: it’s just one of the many equally-valid possibilities. Your first two posts seemed to be pushing it pretty strongly, so I challenged it. It wasn’t my intent to become an apologetics troll. I apologize if I misinterpreted you at all or put words in your mouth. I was really trying to avoid going directly for the traditional Christian God, because of this very argument. I wanted to start from the single assumption of some form of Designer, and see what could be inferred. If we assume that there is a Designer, I think we can both agree that it couldn’t realistically be simultaneously omniscient, omnipotent and omnibenevolent (?) in the strictest sense of those words. You’ll get no argument from me about that. I have no objections to this. Again, no objections.But I wasn’t assuming specific creation, either. I figured a Designer that made humans by redesigning apes was also valid. Well, again, assuming specific creation and strict omni-qualities, I have no objections. But, in the absence of those assumptions, it’s not possible to make any sort of inference at all about the cause or purpose of our designed imperfections.-----Now that I understand better where you’re coming from, it seems that we’re not really in disagreement about anything here. Amazing how short a debate can be when both sides are logical.

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Darwin loves you.

This bugs me. It's not you at all (because I think we do agree at least for the scope of this thread), it's the entire thread itself - our basic axiom here, that there is a designer, is itself an illogical violation of parsimony. That's why "both sides" can be logical. I mean really, there are nearly unlimited possibilities when you don't have much solid data. We know that human beings are far from ideal designs - very, very far - but even within that constraint, nearly infinite numbers of "explanations" can be conjured up by simply assuming that we are designed. None of those explanations differ too far from either "imcompetent" or "intentionally cruel" when special creation is also assumed, but the simple fact is that this thread's topic is entirely set up for subjective interpretation becasue it cannot be based on objective evidence that doesn't exist.This I suppose is the major flaw of the "if there was a designer, he must have been an idiot" argument. It begins by assuming the logically unfounded conclusion of the opponent, and is essencially an appeal to consequence (in that the argument is still intended to convince the audience that there is no designer because such a designer would need to be stupid). I'd much rather stick with the "where's your evidence of a designer" argument, as it forces the cdesign proponentist to meet the burden of proof by providing evidence of any design at all. Such "evidence" has thus far been extremely easy to refute, and while it never convinces the cdesign proponentist to concede, the undecideds in the audience are typically aware of which side is full of shit.I have few problems with non-Creationist Intelligent Design (the blind watchmaker designer), I simply find no evidence of it. I do have a problem with Creationist IDers, because their version of ID still involves special Creation, something that is astoundingly easy to refute.Of course, for those who do believe in a watchmaker-type designer who designs life as opposed to designing each "kind," we're still dealing with an assumption based on personal credulity rather than objective evidence, and it's still a violation of parsimony without objective evidence to support it. But that's far better than insisting on a magical designer who pops life into existence in a few short days, invalidates evolution and basically everything else in all of science, and generally requires their deity to be either an incompetent boob or an royal asshole.

Why wouldn't you call it perfect?IMO, the fact that it DOESN'T require design nor a Designer makes it perfect.An imperfect system would almost require guildance.

Hi, Rahvin. I don't really mind it: I love hypothetical speculation. I actually started out wanting to be a science fiction writer, and got into real science when I started studying to make my work more realistic. Consequently, I never published a story or anything, and I ended up studying insects. Of course, it's kind of annoying that debates like this thread can't logically go anywhere in particular. Oh well.

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Darwin loves you.

I look at it in a different light myself. We whip the cdesign proponetists at our game (science) time after time. Here we get to beat them at their game (apologetics). On-lookers get to see the cdesign proponetists whooped eight-ways-to-Sunday, and the cdesign proponetists can make no claim to our having home field advantage. You write some damn fine posts.

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KindlyWhen I was young I loved everything about cigarettes: the smell, the taste, the feel . everything. Now that I’m older I’ve had a change of heart. Want to see the scar?

I see a lot of people arguing that a designer would not have designed us with all the flaws in our bodies which lead to bent backs, unfocused eyes, faulty memories, premature death, etc. The prevailing attitude seems to be that any designer who would choose such a design must be cruel or incompetent. If you assume that the designer thinks like most of us do then I agree, but I see no reason to go with this assumption. As a simple example, the designer could like one of today's scientists doing behavioral studies ... "hmmm, if I create thinking creatures with the following attributes and drawbacks then I wonder how their lives will turn out. What will be their hopes and dreams? What kind of a civilization will they build? Let’s find out."Do I think such a designer is likely? Not really. Any kind of a designer who put together a universe which follows the laws of General Relativity, quantum field theory, and whatever the hell it is that unifies them probably thinks in a totally different way than your average human. To subscribe any kinds of human motivations to such a designer seems a bit arbitrary to me. But that makes it even harder to say whether the drawbacks in our mortal bodies are evidence for or against a designer . I really don’t find such arguments very convincing.

The drawbacks that we have are easily explained by the evolutionary view, and therefore by my theory about the intelligent designers. They bend over backwards to conceal themselves, and give everything the appearance of having natural causes. If we have interventionist designers, their intervention is either so light as to be undetectable, or they design to give the appearance of non-design.So, our back aches are because it's necessary to give the appearance that we became bipeds by an imperfect process of random variation and natural selection in ancestral quadrupeds, and a few intermediate looking fossils have been laid down to encourage the view. In addition, we see clever work in our genomes, like the apparent fusion of ape chromosomes into chromosome 2, for example, and many other features.This theory doesn't tell us why the designers wish to conceal themselves, merely that they do. One prediction is that, if they're completely effective, we'll never see any evidence for them.I think that my theory of omphalism explains all the evidence (but not the motive beyond a desire to be invisible to any careful observers). It can be summed up thus:The designers always design within the parameters of evolutionary possibility, and are therefore undetectable.If this thread assumes an interventionist designer or designers, then I think that my theory is by far the best one. Without the assumption, the evidence also fits a non-interventionist "front-loader" designer(s) of the universe, and, of course, no designers at all (the parsimonious explanation that I prefer as a working basis myself).I suppose we can now enjoy speculating as to why they might make such great efforts to conceal themselves. Over to you, Bluejay!

Right, including the 'Rhaivin'gs of ungrateful, blasphemous whingers.I'ts easy to bag things that you don't understand, it seems to be a human trait.So cavediver, give us an example of one of your creatures. I'll give you a leg up,
I'll assume that that you are the brightest person in the world, most knowledgeable in biology, computer science, physics, chemistry and mathematics. And We'll also provide the dust that you need to create your beings.So far the best you can do is an idiot robot; so can you improve on this?

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Granny, the way I see it is that you have been blessed with the miracle of life. Your kidneys might be dodgy but you've still got a good brain. Why not use it in a positive way and move forward rather than begrudgingly ponder on what might have been?Tuesday before last, just as I arrived home, I had a visit from a good friend. As we were sitting talking, I noticed that he, for the first time, was seriously contemplating his imminent death. He was into the 14th month of his 12 month terminal prognosis, a failed liver. He already looked dead, not being a doctor, but I wouldn't have given him 30 more days.His phone rang, it was the hospital calling him to let him know they had a liver for him. I drove him straight to hospital. He gets out tomorrow 10 days later, with a new lease on life.All thanks to the bumbling fools made according to the 'idiot plans'.(cavediver EVC 2008).

Have you thought this through, Lucy? Had the designer done a better job when designing Cavediver, then Cavediver would be able to design something better than an idiot robot, wouldn't he?