That was the question a commenter asked at the ID Facebook page.
He added,
Since I work in a medical field, I come across lot of stupid design due to which patients are suffering quite a lot.
and asked “Can a intelligent designer make a mistake too?” Good question.
The obvious answer is yes, of course. One problem is that we use the term “stupid” in different senses. Government policies are often designed by intelligent people (the bullet train no one rides or the bridge to nowhere come to mind). These policies get called “stupid” if they cost a lot and do little good.
But the reasons they turned out that way do not boil down to simple stupidity. Indeed, the Machiavellian machinations that go into creating some of the epic messes politicians have gotten us into today would require a genius to comprehend as a whole. So yes, it is stupid, and yes it is design.
However, our commenter wishes to talk about medicine. He didn’t spell out what he regarded as stupid (or no) design, so I must make do with situations that have been considered such, the two most obvious being “vestigial” organs and junk DNA, neither of which turned out to be what was claimed.
Of course, the commenter might also mean that defects happen, hostile life forms attack, and things wear out and die, but that is the nature of the universe we live in. Or he may mean that designs are, at best, not perfect but only optimal. Optimal in the sense of the best available package, not one that meets every possible need or want (which usually doesn’t exist).
Given what the human body must do over something like 75 or more years, I wouldn’t have picked it to argue a case for stupid design. Thoughts? – O’Leary for News