I have been thinking about the highlights of the year 2018 especially about which idea or claim really astonished me the most in its lack of logic, absurdity or it itself being an oxymoron… While there have been many candidates, Dr. Lents’ claim about the so-called human errors based on his book, where he claims Bad Design = No Designer and therefore evolution must be true, made the top of my list as the most outrageous claim of 2018…
Here is why:
- Do we even assume by analyzing bad or a faulty designs that there was no designer?
Imagine an engineer analyzing some sophisticated optical device who finds an error in its design. Does he automatically come to a conclusion that the optical device had no designer? Of course not. He logically comes to the right conclusion that there had to have been a designer who made an error or mistake. - Now let’s just assume that the engineer who has found that error in the optical device contacts the designer about the error but the designer disagrees and says that there are no errors in the design because the optical device was design for the optical performance. How could such a disagreement be resolved? The designer of the optical device tells the engineer who thinks he has found the error in the optical device to design a better one with a better performance. Wouldn’t that be reasonable? Anybody can come up with claims that the design or the device has errors but unless that it is proven by some empirical, testable evidence, like in this case a better device with better optical performance, the claim of faulty design remains solely in the relm of speculation or the opinion of the engineer, doesn’t it?
Dr . Nathan Lents has recently published a book on the supposed body human errors. I haven’t read it but he has been very outspoken about his claims that the human body has many design errors and therefore could not have been designed by an Intelligent Designer. The claims like that are not new, including the supposed bad design of the human eye…
So, by applying the same analogy as in the case of the supposed faulty design of the optical device above, let’s see if Dr. Lents could prove his claim other than assuming that “bad design = no designer.
Could Dr. Lents design a better, more efficient eye than the human eye? We all know he is not going to even try it. But let’s assume that he claimed that he could but he is too busy reviewing Behe’s new book “Darwin Devolves”… Could he even design a better, more efficient human eye? Unfortunately not… because recently it has been
experimentally proven that the human eye easily detects 1 photon of light and therefore its design is optimal…
So, unless Dr. Lents is able to design a human eye that can detect a half of the photon of light, and be able to process it as such by the human brain, whoever designed the human eye can rest assured…
But this is not the end of the human eye design story…
The same experimental data that has proven that the human eye can detect even one photon of light suggests that the human eye could possibly “detect or see” the light photon in the quantum superposition…If this data is verified, as it looks it is going to be, what would that really mean? Well, without trying to sound overly dramatic, this very fact could mean that our perception of reality was totally wrong…just to put it lightly…
This very fact, if verified by further experiments, would not only drive another nail into the coffin where Darwinism has been buried for many years…
Dr. Lents claim that human erros = bad design = no designer, especially in case of the supposed bad design of the human eye deserves to be nominated, in my view, as the most illogical and absurd claim of 2018 by any of the Darwinists.
Has anyone found a more outrageous claim?
Given that you have not read the book, how do you know Lents has made these claims?
Elsewhere he has claimed that he is not making a “bad design” argument in his book.
It’s a theological question more than a biological one. What we need to hear from ID/creationists is why there are suboptimal designs, and why these designs fall into a nested hierarchy. The lack of an explanation is quite telling.
If it’s a theological question why do you need to hear anything from ID/creationists?
There’s a nested hierarchy of sub-optimal designs? Where has it been published?
Because for ID to be logically viable one must have an undesigned designer at some point , and such an entity is among the proofs of a deity.
Good question.
ID/creationism is based on theology, so we would expect to hear something on why a supposedly omnipotent designer would use sub-optimal designs.
As to the nested hierarchy, there are thousands of phylogenies published in various scientific journals. I found over 1 million hits for the search term “phylogeny” at Google Scholar.
I don’t think that the argument is that bad design means non designer. It is that if the designer can design something as complex as the universe, why would he design life forms with so many sub-optimal features?
And then, of course, since we all know that the designer that IDists are really referring to is their inerrant God. Admitting that there are any errors in the design of living organisms would require them to admit that their God was not inerrant, and that is something that they cannot do. The alternative is to admit that their God intentionally designed us with numerous flaws.
Now, I am going to rest my myopic eyes, pack up my bags carefully so as not to aggravate my hernia and scoliosis, and drive home before it gets dark and my night-blindness kicks in.
Don’t forget to flex that extensor coccygis muscle that spans a fused joint in your tailbone. 😉
Usually the response of creationists and ID advocates to a “bad design” argument is to declare that we cannot know the objectives of The Designer. so the argument is invalid. Until you bring up junk DNA. Then they get very upset at the idea that there is any junk DNA. Why? Because the Designer that they have in mind wouldn’t allow any, because that would be bad design.
Joe,
Would you put your reputation on line and commit to an evolutionary prediction that Dan Grour made by saying about junk DNA?
“If ENCODE is right (about junk DNA being less than 20% in human genome) evolution is wrong”….something like that…
If this claim turned out to be false, what would you do as a seeker of truth, as I presume you are?
You wouldn’t decide to move on to another… possibly false claim, would you?
Have you been banned from reading the Peaceful Science and Evolutionnews?
The human extensor coccygis muscle is even found in Gray’s Anatomy. It’s existence, origin, and insertion are fact.
Mung,
Even Swamidass thinks that the “bad design” argument is foolish…
I was going to give him credit for some kind of rational thinking but unfortunately his ego took the best out of him…
ENCODE is correct when they say 80% of the human genome does something, according to their criteria. The problem is that their definition of “does something” includes junk DNA. Junk DNA can do something and still be junk DNA.
I had hoped you haven’t had any comprehension issues…
Gray’s Anatomy? Isn’t it some kind of a show on HBO?
You probably don’t get it what is going on at TSZ…
Read my question to Joe again or do not interupt!!!
What comprehension problems? Look at what you quoted. The human extensor coccygis muscle does span a fused joint in your tailbone. This is fact.
I read your question, and I pointed out the flaw in your question. ENCODE didn’t measure the amount of junk DNA in the genome. They measured the percentage of the human genome that does something, which is different than being functional. Even Dan Graur pointed this out, which you can read here:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3622293/
I have to agree. At best it means a sloppy designer or the design is fine but it wears out like my car tires and it breaks down…Unless intelligence intervenes and replaces the parts of a well designed system, it will break down…
What if I happen to somehow prove this fact to be wrong?
You have dignity, right? You are not some kind of naive person who thinks that truth is being taught at universities and in text books, right?
The crucial point is that positing evolutionary mechanisms actually explains why some functional structures are nearly optimal and others are sub-optimal. Positing a designer does not explain that.
If you prove that the extensor coccygis muscle spans a joint capable of flexing then I will happily withdraw my claim.
No, I would not go that far. I could be wrong about how much junk DNA there is in the genome, and Dan could be wrong, without common descent (“evolution”) being wrong.
Now, let’s get back to the topic in the OP. Do you have any comment on the point I made, about how creationists and ID advocates are wildly inconsistent in their response to Bad Design arguments, when you compare their response for most characters with their response for Junk DNA?
Interesting. I’ve read a plethora of ID related material and I’ve never read in it that ID requires an undesigned designer. Do you have a reference?
I only asked for one. The one that published the nested hierarchy of sub-optimal designs. If you can’t point me to anything specific please just say so.
The most obvious one is the nesting of suboptimal eye designs. Everything with a backbone has an inverted retina while everything without a backbone (e.g. squid) has a forward facing retina.
Fair enough! Let’s not mention it again! We have been wrong many times before… lol
You are probably right… There is a fair bit of inconsistency on the theme and I feel your frustration…
So…on this very point, I sympathise with you… If it makes you feel better, you win! 🙂
My response is that if you can scientifically identify the presence of poor design you can scientifically identify the presence of design.
Of course! I don’t think that is what Joe is trying to say…I might be wrong though…
Some designers are better than others. If the alleged designer substitute of evolutonary theory is natural selection, well, now you’re in the position of having to explain why natural selection is both a good designer and a poor designer, and that is what is incoherent.
Is natural selection great at designing eyes and not so great at designing knees?
You didn’t provide an example of a nested hierarchy of suboptimal eye designs. Aren’t you an actual biologist?
Natural selection is can produce both good and bad designs because natural selection only selects for what is good enough. Therefore, sub-optimal designs (e.g. Rube Goldberg systems) are expected.
It’s your client Mung! I’m soooo glad…
All you need to do is establish that if that is the result of Design, then the Design must be piss-poor design. So if a Design advocate wants to call it Design, they have to face up to the poorness of the design. There is no step needed where the evolutionary biologist has to conclude for Design first.
It means that all the cats we see may actually be dead!
Exactly.
Nah, it means that all cats are actually both alive and dead when we our retinas first detect them.
Every come across where it says it doesn’t require one when it discusses the attributes of the source of design?
Care for me to lay out the logic? It starts out: there are two kinds of intelligent designers those that are intelligently designed and those that are not.
Hey J-Mac,
Does the human eye perform calculations of quantum mechanics in order to detect those single photons?
🤣😂😂🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣😂🤣
the-who-designed-the-designer-argument-demolished-in-three-easy-steps
reminder-about-who-designed-the-designer
who-designed-the-designer-part-trente-deux
who-designed-the-designer-the-mirrors-of-infinite-regress-facing-off-against-each-other
/answering-the-who-designed-the-designer-objection-yet-again
intelligent-design/who-designed-the-designer-vs-a-burning-matchstic
does-the-designer-need-to-be-god
miracles
It’s not as it it’s hard to find this stuff. I suspect it’s simply that the most reliable way of not finding out things is to not look for them in the first place.
Dembski:
Undesigned designer is required by UD, even if they don’t know the identity they know it’s undesigned.
Mung,
Why don’t you ask at UD, especially KF, if the designer was designed?
…
It’s clear from KF’s screeds that even asking the question is illegitimate.
Apparently its great at designing eyes, and also bad at designing eyes.
Same with knees.
Indeed. There are many obvious improvements that we can see but evolution cannot:
http://nautil.us/issue/24/error/top-10-design-flaws-in-the-human-body
Out of interest, do you have any ideas why your designer choose a backwards retina sometimes and most of the rest of the time did not?
That explains a lot.
picture from here
Which designer?
And experience tells us that designers don’t always latch on to the optimal design on the first go round and some methodologies even encourage doing only just what is good enough. Therefore, sub-optimal designs are to be expected.