Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

“Incompetent Design” — to the tune of The Battle Hymn of the Republic

William Dembski
January 16, 2007
Darwinism, Evolution, Intelligent Design
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Darwinism
Evolution
Intelligent Design
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Apparently the design was not so incompetent as to render these Darwinists incapable of composing (dare I say “designing”) this song and then performing it (yes, the performance is poor, but poor design is not the absence of design):

Comments
I think calling something "bad design" is a very subjective thing. I think the point many people try to make (even though it may seem unreasonable to you guys) is that designs created by evolution are limited to using/modifying what was already there. For instance, whale fins are using modified hand bones, but they also work perfectly as a design for the whale. This isn't a bad design, but it is a modified design vs. a redesign. Evolution is limited to modified design, and I think people don't expect the workings of a designer to be limited to modified design. (vs design from the ground up) I think it's a subjective opinion to say that something like boat that was built using nothing but the parts from a Volkswagon Bug is not as well designed as something like a ski boat that was designed from the start to be a boat. Both function well enough to be boats. It's just that one shows signs of having once been useful for another function. The real point is that evolution is limited to the refurbished technique and ID makes no explanation as to why either technique should be expected.Fross
January 17, 2007
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While their song may have been humorous, I don't think it holds any intellectual weight. I think the biggest problem with their argument is that it assumes a static view of creation...that a designer created each individual creature, which never changes. But even the most ardent of creationists hold to a dynamic view of creation which allows micro-evolutionary changes within a species. Thus, their argument fails on this account alone and these supposed "flaws" are more evidence for the devolution of species.nickmanderson
January 17, 2007
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Hi everyone. Forgive me for sounding stupid but what effective responses do Design Theorists give to accusations of bad design?
That is the subject of an essay I intend to publish. In brief, would a Perfect Designer make something as perfect as himself? One can see this poses a truly interesting question!!!scordova
January 16, 2007
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"You can only know if the design is “bad” if you know the purpose of the designer. Think about this: A poorly designed fuse does not break. The perfectly designed one does." Oh, that is a perfect example. I must remember that. Thanks.Jason Rennie
January 16, 2007
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“Hi everyone. Forgive me for sounding stupid but what effective responses do Design Theorists give to accusations of bad design?” You can only know if the design is "bad" if you know the purpose of the designer. Think about this: A poorly designed fuse does not break. The perfectly designed one does.tribune7
January 16, 2007
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"Hi everyone. Forgive me for sounding stupid but what effective responses do Design Theorists give to accusations of bad design?" I think the simplest response is to note that an accusation of bad design presupposes a complete understanding of the purpose something is put too. Lots of "sub-optimal" designs only look that way until you understand what the design actually aimed at. Look at DRM in music. Utterly suboptimal if your concern is freedom and ease of use of your music. Yet not so if you are a record company. Look at planned obselence is appliances so that consumes upgrade to the new model. Crappy design eh ? Not really. The entire argument hinges on understanding about the purpose of the design that those levelling the argument do not have. Not that I expect clear thinking from such people anymore. I have realised they don't really care about evidence or reason or logic, they just care about attacking things that threaten a materialist worldview. They are religious fundamentalists of the worst sort. I wonder how soon they will start bombing churches ?Jason Rennie
January 16, 2007
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Don't drop that protein "baton", could be an example of bad design. http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-01/sjcr-cst011607.phpMichaels7
January 16, 2007
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Dacook, I remember there being an argument as well that deleterioius mutations are mounting at a pace that is unsustainable at current trends regarding a billions of year scenario. Regarding the spine, the hips, pelvic bones and the angles, they're at optimum for both walking upright, standing and sitting positions. Anyone ever see a chimp ride a horse for long distances and rope a steer? another horse? a calf? When discussing materialist evolutionist opinions about "poor designs," one does not need to look to hard for another evolutionary opinion of optimum evolution. For an article referenced in 2004 Nature: http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=256348&page=1 "Evolutionary biologists have generally credited humans' ability to run as an offshoot of our ability to walk on two feet."
The peroneus brevis tendon, ...elongated tendons in the human body that the authors argue provides critical spring as a person runs. In apes and chimpanzees, the same tendons are much shorter, says Lieberman, and don't offer the same kind of spring-loading action. Then there is the gluteus maximus — the unusually large muscle humans carry at their rear. Why such bulk in back? Lieberman says it's for running and, again, this feature is less pronounced in our evolutionary ancestors.(gee evolution argues for both bad and good design - schizo) "When we walk, we barely use the gluteus maximus," he said. "As soon as you start running, it plays a vital role to keep you from falling — it stabilizes your trunk." Other features the authors list that help us run include the arches in our feet, which offer spring in our step, and broad surface areas of our joints, which help distribute the shock of impact from running — at least enough for ancient man, who didn't run on pavement and who never lived much longer than 40 years. The upper body, meanwhile, carries its own made-for-running designs,(is this not hilarious, evolution arguing "made-for-running designs") including wide shoulders — good for swinging arms from for balance as we stride — and lighter forearms that are easy to move back and forth. Even our heads are equipped for running, they say, as a large ligament stretching from our spines to the back of our heads acts to dampen the oscillation of our heads as we plod along. Finally, our ability to sweat is unmatched with our estimated 3 million sweat glands. Couple that with the fact that we aren't very furry and you have a cool, running machine. Jogging for Supper Bernd Heinrich, a world record holder in the ultra marathon and biologist at the University of Vermont in Burlington, says the authors' points make sense. "Most of us don't do much running so it may not feel natural, but it feels natural to me," he said. "Not much is new here, but I think they bring together a lot of evidence so it all fits into a pattern."
Only materialist evolutionist can both argue an optimal evolution and bad design at the same time. It is optimally evolved, but if designed it is bad. "You'd never beat a chimp in a 100-meter dash, but you could never get them to run a marathon," he said. "And they wouldn't like trying." Because chimps were not designed to do so. Anyone hear of the Transcendent 3100? This athelete ran for 59 days: http://www.srichinmoyraces.org/Members/martin_milovnik/ Anyone remember the Race Across America events? Cyclist race almost non-stop, 22hrs/day for nine days to be in top competition for possible victory. A World famous, 3000 mile journey. http://www.raceacrossamerica.org/Default.aspx?tabid=170 Swimming marathons anyone? So, we're designed well enough to run, swim, sit for hours, bike, hike, drive, fly and well... Hey humans can lift large weights too, up to 575lbs. But elephants can lift larger weights than us, so we're not optimally designed. Yeah, imperfect design. ID does not have the answers. Evolution explains it all.Michaels7
January 16, 2007
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o consideration.a5b01zerobone
January 16, 2007
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ID proposes that certain things in the universe are the result of intelligent cause(s), or mind(s). It is important that we be able to distinguish between the scientific concept of ID, and the philosophical and theological implications we draw from it. Now if we were to look at this from a Christian perspective. We would have to take The Fall inta5b01zerobone
January 16, 2007
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BTW, it looks like you guys finally worked the kinks out of the site. I'm viewing it in IE right now and it looks PERFECT. I love the new look, so much more chic. (And the preview function now works terrific, no more white on white!)Atom
January 16, 2007
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(yes, it was Robert Shapiro -- Guess I should have done my homework before posting: really it wasn't THAT hard to go over to the Veritas web site and look it up, LOL)jb
January 16, 2007
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@a5b01zerobone: all of the above. There is an article on Evolutionnews.org today about "dysteleology arguments" (why can't penguins fly?)... From the article: "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. "Atom
January 16, 2007
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From #42: "I just…I don’t understand what the hang-up is on the identity of the designer..." I don't get that either. I listened to a debate between Dr. Dembski and a Dr. Shapiro (Robert?--can't remember the first name) on mp3 from a Veritas forum. Dr. Shapiro kept going on about how you have to say who the designer is in order for ID to be science. I remember thinking "huh? who made up THAT rule, and how did they come up with it?!"jb
January 16, 2007
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Hi everyone. Forgive me for sounding stupid but what effective responses do Design Theorists give to accusations of bad design?a5b01zerobone
January 16, 2007
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The song reminds me of Dr. Sanford's book on genetic entropy which I just finished reading a couple of days ago. Perhaps we develop arthritis, bad teeth, heart disease, and the multitude of other ills that afflict mankind because our genome has degenerated so far since it was created. Dr. Sanford makes a good case for the accumulation of deleterious mutations far outpacing any possible benefit from beneficial mutations over time. Darwinism actually works in reverse. The reason these guys have bad backs and teeth is that their DNA has accumulated so many errors over the generations since the code was first written.dacook
January 16, 2007
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“The point is that, using a theory of ID, I have no idea how and why the designer designed things. Whether he wore a dunce cap or got summa cum laude in design school, I have no idea.” I just…I don’t understand what the hang-up is on the identity of the designer? How does not knowing who/what the designer is affect whether something is designed? Do we say, “well this is designed, but since I don’t know who did the designing, I will assume it’s not designed”?? “Perhaps the tonsils or the appendix are not good examples.” I’ve noticed most of NDE’s “good examples” turn out to be not so good after all. You wind up picking and choosing to make a case against design. For example, criticizing the appendix while ignoring molecular machines.shaner74
January 16, 2007
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bdelloid But a Theory of Evolution does provide explantory power in understanding the existence poorly adaptive characters. Right. No one has a problem with random mutation and natural selection working to undo an intelligent design. That's just the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics in action. It's to be expected. Frankly it's a bloody miracle that life still exists at all in the presence of random mutation and natural selection. It's a clear testimony to the elegance of the initial front-loaded genome billions of years ago that it got life this far with so many obstacles in the way.DaveScot
January 16, 2007
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Hi DS, The point is that, using a theory of ID, I have no idea how and why the designer designed things. Whether he wore a dunce cap or got summa cum laude in design school, I have no idea. But a Theory of Evolution does provide explantory power in understanding the existence poorly adaptive characters. Perhaps the tonsils or the appendix are not good examples. I find the birth process probably one of the most shocking, however. In primitive cultures, one can expect that many women die in child birth. A theory of common descent explains why this is the case.bdelloid
January 16, 2007
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correction... far from perfection.Smidlee
January 16, 2007
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The irony is the Darwin "designed" theory of evolution was mostly wrong with all but one point. Since the Theory of Evolution has some many imperfection that it has to be correctly often it must be of poor design or exactly of no design. So does this mean those who singing this song are going to resign for science itself is far from imperfections.Smidlee
January 16, 2007
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Fross,
His dog could have done it faster
Dogs run fast than humans, so do Cheetahs. They also use four legs instead of two. However, I doubt a Cheetah could run 350 miles nonstop, and I am not aware of a dog running 350 continiuous miles either.
I’m not saying that our spine is useless or even that it’s a “poor” design. It still has a few holdovers from being derived from a quadraped spine ...
Such as? Apparently you think you could do a superior job? Face it, the human spine may not be designed for sitting in an office all day, but it is great for bipedalism.Jehu
January 16, 2007
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Fross wrote:
’m just saying that the sinuses are designed to drain properly from a quadraped design. Our bipedal stance isn’t quite the perfect match for our sinuses. Our spine design (based on the quadraped design) is more prone to injury from a bipedal stance as well.
For the sake of argument let's say you are right. What does that tell us about the theory of natural selection? If natural selection is guiding our evolution then why did we develop these disadvantages? Why didn't natural selection weed out these disadvantageous mutations? Bipedalism is not as advantageous for survival as quadrupedalism. Quadrupads can move faster, it is more efficient, and easier. The difference between apes and humans is not something which can be explained by natural selection. The "missing link" has never been found for good reason. The quadruped body of an ape is efficient, any gradual change into a bidped would cause serious harm and be highly inefficient. There is the claim that australopithecus is the missing link, that it was part ape and pat human, that it was bipedal. But when investigated we find that the so called australopithecus remains are a human constuction from various sources from various times and that even the construction is easily shown not to be a part ape part human. This article from Brad Harrub (Ph.D. in neurobiology and anatomy) does a good job of exposing the fraud: http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs2004/0825lawrence.aspmentok
January 16, 2007
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His dog could have done it faster :) I'm not saying that our spine is useless or even that it's a "poor" design. It still has a few holdovers from being derived from a quadraped spine, but nothing that threatens reproductive success, so it's really no biggie.Fross
January 16, 2007
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Fross, Endurance runner Dean Karnazes has run 350 continuous miles, foregoing sleep for three nights, recently he ran 50 marathons in 50 days. I didn't see him griping that his spine was deigned for quadrapedalism.Jehu
January 16, 2007
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I had an additional thought about this whole question of "poor design". It seems increasingly the case that DNA is incredibly well designed. That there are layers of complexity in there that make in incredibly efficent and multifaceted. If this argument from bad design means there is no designer, then the incredibly good design in DNA is evidence for a designer. Although I doubt we can expect people in the Darwinist camp to be willing to be this intellectually honest or consistent. But what do you expect from religious fanatics. I wonder how long before they start suicide bombing churches ?Jason Rennie
January 16, 2007
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Fross,
’m just saying that the sinuses are designed to drain properly from a quadraped design. Our bipedal stance isn’t quite the perfect match for our sinuses.
What? So if I get down on my hands and knees my sinuses will drain better?
Our spine design (based on the quadraped design) is more prone to injury from a bipedal stance as well.
Our spine is not based on a quadreped design. It is designed for bipedalism and it works great. I would like to see you come up with a better design. Any body part, no matter how well designed, is susceptible to injury if missused and stressed in an unnatural manner.
Why would you call this Darwinian stupidity? I thought common descent could be accepted as part of ID.
As far as I know, ID is compatible with common descent. However, most IDist I am aware of who accept common descent take a teleological perspective which does not require pretending that brilliant design is really just shoddy evolutionary adaptation.Jehu
January 16, 2007
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H.H. The tailbone? Left over from when humans had tails? That is a joke. Humans never had tails. As for the tailbone or coccyx as it is properly called, it is the base of your spine and where muscles attache that are used in defecation and childbirth.Jehu
January 16, 2007
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Jehu "Also, claiming the appendix is vestigal or poorly adapted is an example of Darwinism as a science stopper. A recent article in Scientific American states [...]" There's a gaping contradiction there!trystero57
January 16, 2007
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Fross, "I thought common descent could be accepted as part of ID." Many of us IDers totally accept common descent. Some don't.bFast
January 16, 2007
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