Continuing with James Barham’s The Best Schools interview with design theorist Bill Dembski – who founded this blog – on who bad design is a problem for and how.
TBS: How do you explain suboptimal or bad design? Do you have a scientific explanation for such instances of design?
First off, let’s be clear that design is rarely, if ever, optimal. The problem is that all designs involve compromise among competing objectives.
WD: The reason we put the adjective “intelligent” in front of the noun “design” is not to stress that the design we find in nature is optimal or good or morally acceptable. Rather, it is to underscore that the design we find in biology and in the universe more generally is actual. Richard Dawkins opens his book The Blind Watchmaker by stating “Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose.”
For Darwinian biologists, all such design is merely an appearance. The “intelligent” in “intelligent design” underscores that we’re not just dealing with an appearance of design, but rather with actual design.
So while the question of suboptimal or bad design may be interesting, it is not central to intelligent design as a scientific program, which in the first instance is interested in looking for evidence of design überhaupt. That said, it will be helpful to bring some clarifications to this discussion, especially since the problem of bad, and even malevolent design, is such a stumbling block for many people in accepting ID.
First off, let’s be clear that design is rarely, if ever, optimal. The problem is that all designs involve compromise among competing objectives. They are multicriteria optimization problems, and the problem with multiple criteria is that there is no unique way to rank criteria.
Take a coat hanger. What is the best coat hanger? One that is strong, resilient, and extremely light. Okay, try a titanium coat hanger. But now you’re paying a lot of money for the coat hanger. If one of your criteria of optimality is cost, then you’ll probably forgo titanium and go with the plastic Walmart specials.
Leaving aside the issue of multicriteria optimization, one might still point to certain biological systems and argue that they could have been designed better. But even this is typically far from clear.
One Darwinian favorite is the inverted retina of vertebrates. The wiring is backward, and any self-respecting designer, we are told, would have designed it differently.
Whenever I hear such criticisms, however, what I don’t hear is a concrete redesign plan that, when implemented, actually demonstrates the superiority of the new design. It’s one thing to speculate about how to make something better. It’s another thing to actually do it. Evolutionary biologists are notorious for mounting arguments from imagination, where it’s enough to imagine some improvement without actually implementing it. And for them, such an argument always trumps design.
Evolutionary biologists are notorious for mounting arguments from imagination, where it’s enough to imagine some improvement without actually implementing it.
With the inverted retina, there are actually good functional reasons for it. I recount that in my book The Design of Life, coauthored with Jonathan Wells (Foundation for Thought and Ethics, 2007). Briefly, a visual system needs three things: speed, acuity, and sensitivity. To achieve sensitivity, retinal cells need a copious blood flow. Putting nerves and blood vessels in front of the light sensitive cells allows for just that. Nor does this block light, because Müller glial cells serve as fiber optics that bring the light without distortion to where it needs to be.
Okay, what about parasites and nasty critters that inflict pain on others? Even here, one finds that the designs are quite remarkable—the parasites seem designed to do a number on their hosts. Yes, but what sort of designer would have done this? Read my book, The End of Christianity. Natural evil is a problem, but it is a problem for theology and not for intelligent design per se.
Next: Dembski’s conception of ID
See also:
Bill Dembski on the problem of good
Bill Dembski on young vs. old Earth creationists, and where he stands
Bill Dembski on the Evolutionary Informatics Lab – the one a Baylor dean tried to
shut downWhy Bill Dembski took aim against the Darwin frauds and their enablers #1
Why Bill Dembski took aim against the Darwin frauds and their enablers Part 2
Bill Dembski: The big religious conspiracy revealed #3
Bill Dembski: Evolution “played no role whatever” in his conversion to Christianity #4
So how DID Bill Dembski get interested in intelligent design? #5b – bad influences, it seems
So how DID Bill Dembski get interested in intelligent design? #5a
So how DID Bill Dembski get interested in intelligent design? #5b – bad influences, it seems
Bill Dembski: Trouble happens when they find out you mean business
What is Bill Dembski planning to do now?
What difference did Ben Stein’s Expelled film make? Dembski’s surprisingly mixed review
Bill Dembski on the future of intelligent design in science