Sunday 12 September 2021

The Bad Design Argument

 In the study of the history of life on the Earth, there are two and only two reasonable explanations. Either a mind - AKA intelligent agent - played some role in directing evolution over the past 4 billion or so years, as claimed by Intelligent Design theory (ID), or else there was no intelligence involved and life evolved by random chance, natural selection, and other unguided, natural processes, as held by modern Darwinists. Any proposed alternative must be one or other of these, and of course, any mix of these two is still ID at some level. 

At some point in debates about Intelligent Design, you will likely hear comments about how badly the human body (eye, hand, reproduction, etc.) or some other animal is designed. A brief statement will usually follow to the effect that, "God would have made a better design if he was the designer, therefore there is no designer and evolution is true." This presumptive "logic" can come in different guises, usually with along with some supposed examples of "bad design". However, for a variety of reasons, which I will explore, this is a bad argument.

The "bad design" argument is usually brought up by atheists or materialists who do not believe in God. Yet here they pretend to know what God should have done, based on their own ignorance of the design and of any relevant theology. The hubris and irony here are thick! They assume a series of "bad designs" and suggest that those must have come about by an unguided, and hence imperfect, process; i.e. Darwinian evolution. Note however, that even if their examples of poor designs in life were true, even poor designs require a designer! An incompetent designer is still a designer and the "no designer" conclusion does not automatically follow from the "poor design" judgement. ID theory does not require that the designer be the God of the Bible, even if he is the obvious candidate.

Nevertheless, such summary judgements about "bad design" are usually also wrong in the sense that a detailed study often shows that the particular feature in question is in fact a good design for reasons not appreciated by the accuser. One example is the supposedly "reverse wired" human eyeball, where the optic nerves are in front of the retina, thereby blocking some of the light. The human appendix is another example offered as an unnecessary evolutionary left over serving no purpose. These and many other "bad design" claims have been refuted. See this article for some examples.

This raises another point; the person making the "{bad design" call is usually just passing along some meme that he has read or heard and has no real understanding of the biology or physiology in question, much less the alternative explanations. Thus it is often merely an argument from ignorance. A wiser approach would be to learn more about the feature or design in question before passing judgement on it.

In general and especially in engineering design practice, it is impossible to judge someone's design without knowing the design specifications and constraints behind it: the purpose, capabilities, cost, schedule, regulations, available materials, limitations, and so on imposed on the design process and resulting product. As an erstwhile systems design engineer, I can state unequivocally that there is no such thing as a "perfect design". All designs are an attempt to optimize some aspect of the designed item within the constraints of the project. All designs can be "improved" by additional effort and cost, but once a design is deemed "good enough" it is usually released to meet the schedule. 

All designs also involve trade-offs among various parameters and constraints. Without knowing all of those, it is unwise to judge the resulting product or process. Of course, we all complain about products that don't work properly, or that break because they were cheaply made. But those are human-designed products, none of which come close to the complexity and integrity of even the simplest living creature. Humility is therefore a better starting place in judging the fitness and merit of any human design, and even more so for designs found in nature. Indeed, more and more these days engineers are looking at design in nature for ideas on how to improve their own products.

Another point is that no designed thing operates in a vacuum, apart from the rest of the world. Everything is part of some larger system which it must interact with and perform within. Every living thing is part of a broader ecosystem where it plays different roles, and those interactions raise additional constraints that need to be taken into account from the design perspective. For instance, in principle, herbivores could be made faster or more powerful than the carnivores preying on them, but then the carnivores would die out, unbalancing the ecosystem. From the herbivore perspective, they might feel they are poorly designed, but a higher level viewpoint shows that ecological balance is more important.

Since the "bad design" argument is usually an attack on Theism, some additional things may be said about their ultimate target: God and (usually) Christianity. Note that God never claimed that creation was "perfect", he only judged it as "very good". Perfection apart from God is not possible. Moreover, once creation was completed, things started to go down hill quickly, initially due to the Fall and the entrance of sin into the world, which messes with everything (see Genesis 3). 

Moreover, due to entropy, all of the created world, including humans, began to break down and collect imperfections. As with any designed item, wear and tear, environmental effects, usage past its best-before date, abuse, and other realities cause even well-designed things to stop working, break down, or work poorly. Some seeming design problems in humans can be traced to errors finding their way into our genome. For example, humans cannot make Vitamin-C due to a genetic defect, and of course, many diseases can be traced to errors that have crept into our genome over time.

The next time you entertain (or are tempted to make) this "bad design", anti-ID argument, think first and ask yourself, "What have I designed so that I can judge a complex system like the human body?", or "Have I examined the design constraints and purposes for this particular item being judged?" That should slow down the negativity and allow the debate or discussion to proceed in a more useful and meaningful direction. By all means, keep up the discussion, but please base it on defensible evidence and reasonable arguments.