Why is the Intelligent Designer so inept?

Hi, Rahvin Warning: this thread contains lots of unfounded speculation. Forgive me (any reader) if this sounds a bit macabre, but nature (or the Designer, in this thread) already had a mechanism in place for removing the faulty parts in a population---natural selection. So, the interesting thing is that all the good, life-saving work of the doctors has the unfortunate consequence of allowing the “defects” to persist in the population; whereas the inate creation of our Designer removes these.This seems to indicate, if we’re assuming a Designer, that the Designer had the interests of the population in mind more than the individual. After all, the Designer’s mechanism preserves the population’s health at the expense of the individual. So, our Designer is omnibenevolent towards populations, but not towards individuals, and we see it as cruel because we got shafted for it (cruelty is in the eye of the beholder, perhaps?). So, perhaps we should be looking for evidence of a right-wing, communist, eugenicist (even eusocial?) Designer, instead of a left-wing, human-rights-activist, due-process-and-tax-breaks-for-everyone Designer.Seems to me, that’s what the Old Testament’s God was all about. So, the ancient Hebrews could possibly have been more correct in their protrayal of the Designer than the modern Christians and IDists?It could also imply that the Designer is, in fact, a population itself, as Bluegenes has suggested somewhere else. Of course, this begs the question: why, then, is intelligence a quality of individuals, rather than of populations?-----Well, I guess my idea kind of assumes that a population Designer couldn’t have created a defect-free population, either. Oh well: still some bugs to work out, I guess.Perhaps the Designer still has to obey thermodynamics. That could also explain why somebody had to “pay the price” for our sins: you can’t get something for nothing, right? Hey, so far, it sounds fairly consistent with Christian theology and Old Testament history.

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Darwin loves you.

So far as we can observe, advanced intelligence is a quality of populations rather than individuals. Our kind of intelligence could only evolve and exist in a social animal. Collectively, we're intelligent, but a human without input from others wouldn't exhibit much intelligence.Of course, that needn't apply to the designers. I use the plural just on the basis of probability. We don't know how many designers there are, so pick a number from one to a trillion at random, and we can see that the probability of a lonely designer is slim. Polytheism is far more likely than monotheism, but we come from monotheistic cultures, and tend to use the singular "designer" with ridiculous cultural subjectivity, a bit like those people who believe that God speaks only English!I can't really agree with your speculation on the designers, because the only thing we can know about them is that they want their work to appear as if they didn't exist, and nature produces their designs. We could only learn more about them if they made mistakes, and they don't appear to have, which is why the more conventional schools of I.D. thought can never present evidence.My intelligent design theory is the only one which has as much evidence going for it as evolutionary theory does. (It's the only one with any evidence, in fact). That's because any evidence for evolution backs the theory of designers who want their work to appear to be evolution. I can't go wrong.So your suggestion that the designers appear to favour populations over individuals doesn't really hold out. They must make it appear so, because mutation and natural selection would have that effect, and it's their disguise.

Why would you call god a deity that has lied to you or used deception on you and your friends/loved ones(throwing out evidence here and there pointing to life coming about on itself, by itself)? Why do we have to respect it instead of giving it the deserved "f*ck you".For all the evidence we have, god would be not only an idiot, but a sadistic idiot, who kills millions of innocent children in his attempts at disguise. Edited by Agobot, : No reason given.Edited by Agobot, : No reason given.

So God is incapable of creating fingernails that are both unbreakable and useful in all circumstances? Or how about just breakable in cuircumstances where you would want them breakable? So God is incapable of creating universal joints that are stable? SO God is incapable of creating eyes that are robust - he is forced to make eyes delicate to perform their function? So God is incapable of providing the pleasure of eating without requiring that nutrients be distributed around the body? And God is incapable of creating bodies that do not need nutrients? What seems to be nonsense, Buz, is your idea of a god so restricted that he had to work within the confines of a human understanding of engineering...Edited by cavediver, : No reason given.

Surely you couldn't possibly devise anything more pleasurable than eating all of the delightfully designed foods to stimulate our innovative taste buds, not to mention the luscious aromatic plants and foods to satisfy our intelligently designed smell senses.

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BUZSAW B 4 U 2 C Y BUZ SAW.
The immeasurable present eternally extends the infinite past and infinitely consumes the eternal future.

I'll take a stab at that if I may. It would be quite nice if eating all of the delightfully designed foods;a) Didn't make me fat, with the most delicious foods tending to be the main offenders.
b) Didn't have to include killing God's animal creations if I want to eat meat.
c) Wasn't an absolute requirement in order to avoid starvation.
d) Never resulted in allergic reactions.
e) Never included the risk of ingesting poisonous substances.It would also be quite nice if those "luscious aromatic plants" didn't all seem to come with their very own plant pest to make growing them so difficult. Another one of my squash plants has gone down with bloody mosaic virus today. Of course, for me it's just a pain in the arse. For a subsistence farmer it could spell disaster. Why does God have to make these things so complicated?

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Mutate and Survive

The assumption is that god wants us to believe in him through faith rather than know from evidence that he exists.If that is what he wants, then he would simply be withholding evidence. That's different than lying and deceiving. You don't have to respect it. Whatever dude

Cavediver, the reason this thread is a looser for you is that if you were the designer, you'd design, not for the creature perse, but you'd design to suit yourself as supreme majesty of your creation for your purpose and pleasure as owner, designer and operator of the universe.Some potters are known for their concept of beauty and function. Others are known for their concept. If we here at EvC all had the ability to create and design I'm sure there would ba quite different concepts of design. The designer is the one who determines what's the best design for whatever purpose in creating. I've cited flaws in your ideas from my POV as your concept of design may not be precisely what you see as a designed creature.No one can deny that there's a whole lot of evidence for the argument of design in the universe and particularly here on planet earth. To say it's all indicative of idiocy is an idiotic allegation on your part. From my POV, this thread is a p. poor demonstration of intelligence on your part, having so little appreciation for the wonders of all that is observed.

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BUZSAW B 4 U 2 C Y BUZ SAW.
The immeasurable present eternally extends the infinite past and infinitely consumes the eternal future.

Cavediver could your designer make fingernails that were so unbreakable that he/she/it could not break them themself?

You're quite right, Buz. If I were God, I would be an evil overlord But to be honest, I couldn't begin to match the sadism evident in the god of the Old Testament as he is portrayed there Au contraire, Buz - I deny it I never knew that wonder-appreciation was a marker for intelligence But anyway, I have more wonder than you can possibly imagine - wonder at the physical/mathematical law that gave rise to our Galaxy, our Sun, our Earth, and me! In fact, wonder doesn't begin to scratch the surface of what I feel. And if there is a god behind that physical law, I will give him the respect due for a work of genius But the guy who poofed everything into existence 6000 years ago... well, he's an idiot. As the evidence shows Edited by cavediver, : No reason given.

I'm sorry cavediver, but you exceeded that maximum allowed 5 smileys per post.

Sorry, what with Buz's comments, I was thinking that I actually was God, and as we all know, His smiley allowance is slightly higher...Won't happen again...Edited by cavediver, : No reason given.

Ahem.I deny that there is any objective evidence that has been presented that solidly supports an argument of design in the Universe, and particularly here on planet Earth.Every argument I've ever seen for design has thus far been a violation of parsimony and based entirely on personal credulity.The "Wow, it's complicated" argument is silly, because complexity does not necessarily imply design (in fact, for an engineer, the opposite is true).The "it couldn't have happened by itself" argument is nothing more than personal incredulity and unfounded assertion. Idiocy at its best.The "irreducible complexity" argument has been dismantled and destroyed so many times that few even bring it up around here any more.If you think you can do better, and would like to back up your statement above, then please make a thread in the Science forums.

It seems that many here are in agreement that the Designer cannot be simultaneously omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent based on the "designs" we see in nature.But, do you think that, assuming a Designer, the evidence supports a Designer that is simultaneously omnipotent, omniscient and omnimalevolent? Or, do you think we have to strike a middle-ground somewhere and consider the Designer just regular "benevolent," "malevolent" or "neutral-mal/benevolent?"I would personally tend to put my money on "neutral" or "slightly benevolent," perhaps even regular ol' "benevolent," because an omnimalevolent (or even just regular malevolent) Designer would have designed us so that every step we took, we'd break a toe; every food item we imbibed would poison us or make us gag a few times, and would taste bad on top of it; and every smell would be offensive to our noses; and, on top of all that, we'd have senses that would never become dulled to pain or bad smells. The God we have at least gives us eventual relief from these things some of the time.Or, perhaps somebody thinks it's even more cruel for the Designer to let us live in comfort, think things are good, praise Him as magnificent and benevolent, then, for no reason, smite us with cataracts and wisdom teeth?

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Darwin loves you.

I am the contra evidence. With all the cursing and swearing towards god, i should have died a thousand times by now. Nothing in my life has changed for the worst in the last 5 years and i have no reason to complain about my life at all. I just cannot stand being a witness to suffering(whether it's human or animal) and naturally place all the blame on god. Although non-existant, god is good vent for my anger at the injustice, suffering and death of innocent living creatures(human or animals). Amen