Stumble it!Evolution News & Dysteleology
posted in Intelligent Design by themaiden |I am always rather amused when creationists take positions like the following:
All of these arguments make two false assumptions: (1) that the designer must only make things which are pain-free and have no suboptimal features, and (2) that the design is indeed suboptimal. In short, all of these dysteleological arguments about pain or suboptimality are theological arguments which do not make a dent in the scientific theory of design. As Dembski says in response to the “Incompetent Design” song, “yes, the performance is poor, but poor design is not the absence of design.” These Darwinists are making theological objections (to which many religions have very good theological answers) which have nothing to do with the scientific theory of intelligent design.
Evolution News & Views: Dysteleology and Intelligent Design: If Only This Were a Spoof
The amusing part is that in common usage and understanding crappy design strongly implies a crappy designer. To defend God, God must be turned into an incompetent boob. Nice.
That is the amusing part, but there is a scientific part. These are not purely theological objections, as Luskin (who authored this Evolution News and Views article) would have it. The charge that these are purely theological objections brushes under the rug an important consideration. That consideration is this: Designed objects are, more or less by definition, designed to do something in particular. This means that there is a relationship between an object’s design and its effectiveness for a particular purpose. There is a lot of slop in the calculation, but this basically means that the more effective an object is at performing a particular function the more likely it is that it was designed specifically to perform that function. This also means that as the fit between form and function becomes messier, as efficiency drops, so does the likelyhood that the object, or system, was specifically designed to perform the function it performs.
An absolutely perfect fit implies design a lot better than a workable, but messy, fit. It is possible to dig a post hole with a fork, or a pair of chop-sticks, just as it is possible to dig a post hole with a shovel. But compare the relative efficiencies at that task and which was more likely to have been designed to dig post holes?
Biology has a lot of forks and chop-sticks digging post holes, and not very many shovels. The sum total of the evidence then implies design, or not-design?
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