quote:
The examples offered so far are all against a perfect designer, not an intelligent designer.
All real designers make trade offs and probably all have done some bodges in their time. I certainly have in the software field. The world we see is consistent with this kind of designer - but ONLY with one whose bodges and trade offs look exactly like evolution has taken place.
The constraints on the designer seem to be the ones that would naturally be imposed by evolution - for example, the inability to change fundamentals of the design once they are in place. In real life, designers often aren't constrained in this way - for example, the development of a new business software package doesn't always start by modifying an existing one - in fact the biggest improvements are often got through starting over. Likewise Microsoft have traditionally re-written large chunks of the operating systems in each generation.
Likewise the 'unnecessary features' are consistent with evolutionary histories - for example, the vestigial legs and vestigial ear muscles in whales.
Likewise the building and re-building that happens during development of an embryo is consistent with evolutionary history. Development and loss of an embyonic fur coat in humans for example, or the re-plumbing of the circulatory system.
I cannot believe that there was a designer who explicitly designed things to look evolved.
This is for me the strongest argument against ID.
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