INTELLIGENT DESIGN: An Engineer’s Approach

Designed by a blind watchmaker, maybe.Cars, chairs and golf club designs have evolved in a trail-and-error approach. Designs that work or are popular get reproduced and improved. Are you suggesting that God is not omnipotent and has to work like Edison in his lab trying 1000's of designs and material to find what works. If God was omnipotent he would reach for the design and material that works on the first iteration.The products of nature overwhelming bear the marks of a untold number of trail-and-error experiments; not designed from the beginning by a omnipotent being. Try putting some meat on that thought. I think you may come to the opposite conclusion. What are you saying here? God needs to avoid appearances of impropriety? Huh? Why does a "good God" need to keep secrets.Edited by iceage, : No reason given.Edited by iceage, : No reason given.

Limbosis, I can think of at least one more possibility - a work of collective self deception based on natural ethnocentrism and innate need to explain the world.

First Creationism and ID are supposedly two different things so you should be sayinig creation and ID.Creationism is a religious myth no more valid or practical than say... native american creation myths. Why should we just give creationism special status? Should we teach all creation myths.Now for ID. Biologic a new ID research lab associated with the Discovery Institute, recently was quoted as saying So you want to teach youngsters about ID when the proponents are just starting doing "lab science"? Traditional science has several centuries of history and you want it to share teaching time to some philosophy that has not led to single usable scientific discovery and who practitioners are now just putting on white lab coats?Edited by iceage, : Fixed quotesEdited by AdminNosy, : topic warning

Can you move a mountain with your faith?We can't create a self sustaining fusion reaction so does that mean the sun is powered by coal? We can't create a diamond (yet) in the lab does that mean diamonds don't exist.

Ya I should have google'd that first.I also suspect that within a decade or so humans will have achieved sustained fusion.

No! Evolution is a replacement for ignorance and superstition.

You do not need to give a sex education primer to illustrate your flawed "argument from incredulity". However, of all the possible complex workings of life you could have selected, the sexual apparatus is perhaps the weakest case of design intelligence.As an mechanical engineer I can think of some improvements.First make the damn thing fully retractable to keep it out of harms way. Redundancy for the sperm batteries is a great idea but couldn't it be better packaged to prevent damage. True redundancy would have provided some spatial separation, one swift kick or club impact and its all over.Swinging in the breeze convection is a bit simplistic for thermal control and it depends to heavily on ambient conditions. I would have opted for some sort of active fluid cooling or conduction like is used new milspec designs. This would free up the packaging constraints which am sure would please marketing.The tip covering on the primary male component seems to be not fully functional. Recent field evidence shows that it makes the owners more susceptible to disease. I hear some user groups have long recognized the uselessness of this tip covering and have advocated the removal as part of a cultural tradition.Also, the prostate redirection valve appears to have reliability problems before the warranty period is over, and typically requires some cleaning out.Most the owners of the female model have difficultly identifying the intelligence in the monthly loss of blood and debilitating cramps. The scheduled flushing provides protection from disease but couldn't some other fluid be used beside blood.The female opening size is often inadequate to deliver the end product and often tears on delivery. Some times the end product gets stuck in this restricted area and dies. From my understanding this feature was purposefully flawed intelligently - evidently the chief engineer wanted to make some sick point.There are other design inadequacies with the female apparatus but I cannot comment in too great of detail since I have not personally been an owner.Now the most important critique....From a systems point of view perhaps the greatest design flaw is the designed-in ability of the male owner to take liberties of the female owner's apparatus without necessarily the female consent or approval.If I was developing a list of requirements at the top of the list would be mate choice control for both owners. Mate choice is very important feature and highly desirable and tends to make for better ordered societies. I could think of a number of failsafe designs that would prevent unwanted male intrusion. Maybe this was another one of those intelligently but intentionally flawed designs - again to make some sort of point, not sure.

No such thing as perfect, but there is a concept of better, or more relative "good" or more "perfect" than others.For example, we can identify certain abilities in some animals that are better than others. Many, many of these abilities far exceed human abilities so they are "better" than ours. Whoaa... You just leaped from functional good to issues of ethics. This may have something to do with you flawed thinking. Nevertheless I can make a similar claim:"There is no such thing as right or wrong. You may *feel* like something is right or wrong, but only because the Intelligent Designer designed you that way." Ditto... "you are the way you are according to how the designer designed you". One can make logical conclusion of nonexistence, like the way one can dismiss Zeus, leprechauns and haunted houses. You must have arrived at this conclusion mystically because logic was not at work.Now I have always felt that the best antidote to the ID philosophy is show how particular designs are very good and complex - but also outrageously cruel and arbitrary. And then ask, what does that say about the Intelligent Designer?The ultimatum outcome of that thought experiment is that the Designer is Evil, or at least arbitrary, which does not fit well with the larger (often tacit) philosophy of ID.