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Bad Design Equals No Design: A Perfect Example of Self-Refuting Argumentation

Gil Dodgen
December 5, 2006
Intelligent Design
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Check out this essay by Jack Woodall in The Scientist:

Intelligent Design: The Clincher — A butterfly explodes the theory

Follow Woodall’s argumentation to its inevitable implications:

If I were the perfect designer I would invent a perfect world in which nothing could possibly ever go wrong or present any challenges or adversity. But then my world would be hideously boring and meaningless (and there would be nothing to learn, because learning takes effort, and effort means challenge and adversity), so I would no longer be the perfect designer of a perfect world.

I couldn’t win for losing, and in either case (a “perfect” world or an “imperfect” world) my design would be imperfect, and therefore would not be designed.

Comments
Suggesting that a butterfly is evidence of bad design is perhaps one of the worst arguments against Intelligent Design that I have ever heard. Here is the punch line of the article.
So here you have an insect that depends for its very existence on a fragile chain of circumstances that is easily broken by bad weather, changes in exposure to grazing due to human intervention and disease, loss of its unique food plant, and loss of its protector ant species. If I were to design such a silly system I'd at least choose the most abundant, hardy species of ant to host my caterpillars, and ensure that they could feed on other plants beside thyme, and at other stages than the bud. To me, the case of the Large Blue is conclusive disproof of the theory of intelligent design.
This does not show bad design. The original design of the butterfly allowed it to adopt to a variety of environments. After many generations of living in a fixed enviroment the genes that would allow it to adapt to other environments were lost through neutral drift and reductive evolution. When the environment changed the butterfly no longer had the genes it needed to adapt - and so went extinct. Now a question for the Darwinists. Why didn't the butterfly evolve new traits to allow it adapt to the changing environment before it went extinct?Jehu
December 4, 2006
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