Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

Design arguments Does bad design mean no design?

Denyse O'Leary
November 11, 2006
Intelligent Design
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In Of Designers and Dunces, Roddy Bullock entertaininglyly addresses the claim made by Professor Donald Wise of the University of Massachusetts that defects in the human body show that there is no design in nature.

Unwise person: I’ll admit it’s art, but it’s bad art.

Wise person: But you will agree that it is the work of an artist. Yes?

Unwise person: No.

A “bad design” claim, if sustainable, might come better from a medical doctor than a geologist, but medical doctors do not appear to be among materialism/Darwinism’s fans.

Comments
@Zachriel:
You have created a false dichotomy. The opposite of “design” is not “random”. Because a phenomenom may exhibit a pattern you perhaps do not recognize, you want to fill this Gap with Intelligent Design.
Notice, never did I say the opposite of "design" was "random". What I did say is that natural language texts (texts written by human authors) are examples of designed artifacts, and randomly generated texts (such as assigning words numbers, then mapping these words to a printout of galactic radio readings) are examples of non-designed artifacts. This isn't even controversial. Now, you seem to be implying that I said: "all non-random artifacts are designed" when I said no such thing. The statement isn't reflective; random = non-designed does not lead to non-random = designed. Instead, specified + sufficiently complex + contingent (we could throw in non-random, but it becmes redundant after the first three) = designed.Atom
November 12, 2006
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The BDA ("bad design" arguement) is the one Ddarwinists use when they can't defend their religious myth. The arguement isn't even evidence for evolution, but an arguement against God. By using this type of logic, Darwinists show that there are only two options: special creation or evolutionism. However, when use the same logic, Darwinists shout and scream and say that we created a false dichotomy. Seems like the dychotomy is ok when it works for the Darwinian totalists, but the same mindset is not ok when used against unguided evolutionism.Mats
November 12, 2006
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For my last post: We DON'T know how or why the Nazca lines were made. *Atom
November 12, 2006
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@Mark Frank, Zachriel: The fact that Zipf’s law applies to natural language texts is an empirical discovery. Zipf had to know which texts were natural language and which were not before he could discover the law. It also applies to some natural phenomena such as earthquake magnitudes. (http://www.hpl.hp.com/research/idl/papers/ranking/ranking.html) The idea that you can detect design simply by looking at some mathematical properties of an outcome is, of course, core to the ID proposition. But in the end it has no justification. You have to look at the specifics of who might have designed the outcome and why. You both should read more carefully what people actually write. My point is simple: artifacts can contain information properties that act as signs of design. Mark Frank seems to argue that this is never the case without prior knowledge of motivation, but that is simply false. The Nazca Lines in Peru form a counter-argument. We how or why they were made, and even the who is surrounded in conjecture and mystery. But the specified shapes matching those of geometery and biology leave no doubt to the fact that they were designed. I only used Zipf's law as an example, not because it is a perfect filter for detecting design (see Dembski's EF for that), but because it is an imperfect, relatively simple statistical feature you can check against as a possible sign of design and because it is something removed fromthe ID debate, so I figured it wouldn't be too controversial. As both point out, it allows false positives in (so Dembski's filter is better) but as a rough test, it works. And no prior knowledge of intention was needed. Artifacts themselves can contain markers of design.Atom
November 12, 2006
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Jehu wrote, “It seems to me that those who argue bad design go to such extreme lengths to nit pick what is so obviously such brilliant design that it is a miracle.” I agree with you. I think the whole “bad design” argument against a designer is just the worst thing going. I tend to think that many (not all…but many) people who advocate, “bad design means no design” have never worked on anything with their own two hands – if they did, they would encounter a lot of bad design (although as I said, once it’s understood from soup to nuts, most of these bad designs can be seen as optimal) But really, you don’t look at a poorly built part and conclude no designer! Just as you can’t look at common descent and conclude no design. Common descent seems to strengthen design IMO. The only ones I’ve heard of using bad design in modern times are Darwinists, and I think they do so dishonestly. I do think the BD shtick can be used as an argument against a “perfect” or “benevolent” God, if you believe God is the designer. However, if you make that intellectual leap of faith (a small one, IMHO) and conclude there is a God, then you have the Bible, which explains why we seem to encounter BD in nature. Whatever the case, design is design is design.shaner74
November 12, 2006
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For the Christian, the Bible explains dysteleology in light of the introduction of sin into the world and it's subsequent deleterious effects, via free moral agency. i.e. things now are unlike they were when originally created.Scott
November 12, 2006
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It seems to me that those who argue bad design go to such extreme lengths to nit pick what is so obviously such brilliant design that it is a miracle. Biological life is far too complex to explain without design. At least Anthony Flew and Francis Crick realized this. The idea that selective pressure could give rise to all of the variety, complexity, and novelty that we see is a hoax that spawns from the desire of man to deny God and nothing more.Jehu
November 12, 2006
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This is how I look at it: No one said the design had to be "perfect", or even if it started out "perfect" that it had to remain that way. Mark Frank: I don’t accept that idea at all. I think you can only recognise if something is designed by hypothesising something about the designer’s intentions or plans. That sounds like a personal problem to me. However "The Privileged Planet" does exactly that. The authors hypothsize that the designer's intentions were to have observers to scientifically discover the design. Mark Frank: My “better” design is very straightforward. The nerve goes straight from the brain to the larynx. I look forward to some imaginative explanation as to why it needs to go all the way round the aorta and back . How do you know your design can even be accomplished via the reproductive and development mechanisms available?Joseph
November 12, 2006
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This just for fun—when Moses in effect accused the Designer of some bad design, the Designer in effect said OK but it’s still design (Exodus 4:11-12): “Who hath made man’s mouth? or who maketh the dumb, or deaf, or the seeing, or the blind? have not I the LORD? Now therefore go, and I will be with thy mouth, and teach thee what thou shalt say.”Rude
November 12, 2006
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Mark Frank wrote: “Well of course you can always say there is some mysterious factor we have not taken into account. My “better” design is very straightforward. The nerve goes straight from the brain to the larynx. I look forward to some imaginative explanation as to why it needs to go all the way round the aorta and back.” There is no “mysterious factor” involved. This is the bottom line: none of us can design and build a living creature, therefore none of us are truly qualified to label a design as either “good” or “bad” - never mind actually use this determination in an argument against a designer.shaner74
November 12, 2006
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Mark Frank Well of course you can always say there is some mysterious factor we have not taken into account. My “better” design is very straightforward. The nerve goes straight from the brain to the larynx. I look forward to some imaginative explanation as to why it needs to go all the way round the aorta and back . From a design POV I'd guess it's because it simplifies the assembly process and allows the greatest amount of flexibility in the end product. Let's say that you know ahead of time your design has to easily accomodate necks varying from none (fish) to a giraffe (meters). Early in the assembly process you make all the basic nerve connections and the nerves themselves are designed to simply lengthen as required. Later in the assembly process you can add a neck (or not) and there doesn't have to be any modification of the nerve pathways laid down earlier. This accomodates all kinds of spatial separations in the eventual end product while never needing to complicate things by having more than one basic layout. It appears to be a simple engineering tradeoff between assembly simplicity and amount of nerve fiber required. Instead of having a whole bunch of different initial layouts tailored to the end product you simply waste a little nerve fiber in order to preserve the commonality in the earlier embyryonic stage. This fits well into a front-loaded design where you begin phylogenesis with a single cell that has the potential to become anything from a single celled protozoan to a fish to a giraffe. In order to simplify the design you'd need to keep as many things in common between disparate organisms as possible. That's why humans and bananas have about 50% of their DNA in common. It wouldn't be feasible to have the initial cell (which I term a "phylogenetic stem cell") contain a wholly unique genome and development process for each different end product. You'd need to consolidate as much as possible. So there.DaveScot
November 12, 2006
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As if you could design it better? I’ve often thought to myself when looking at something I didn’t personally design, “this design is just rubbish” That is, until I actually get hands on and start working on it. More often than not, something that appears to be rubbish will turn out to be the only way something could have been designed, but you just don’t realize it until you understand it 100% - and I mean 100%. When I see these “bad design” comments about biology made by those who couldn’t dream of designing it themselves, it just makes me cringe.
Well of course you can always say there is some mysterious factor we have not taken into account. My "better" design is very straightforward. The nerve goes straight from the brain to the larynx. I look forward to some imaginative explanation as to why it needs to go all the way round the aorta and back .
You can distinguish designed from non-designed objects based on information properties of the subjects under discussion. For example, natural language texts (which are designed) will adhere to Zipf’s Law, whereas randomly generated text (undesigned) will not.
The fact that Zipf's law applies to natural language texts is an empirical discovery. Zipf had to know which texts were natural language and which were not before he could discover the law. It also applies to some natural phenomena such as earthquake magnitudes. (http://www.hpl.hp.com/research/idl/papers/ranking/ranking.html) The idea that you can detect design simply by looking at some mathematical properties of an outcome is, of course, core to the ID proposition. But in the end it has no justification. You have to look at the specifics of who might have designed the outcome and why. Zipf's law is an excellent example. You can't use it to detect design per se. You can only use it to test the hypothesis that this is natural language spoken by people for common purposes (it wouldn't work if they were playing a word game) . But this is a long, long story....Mark Frank
November 11, 2006
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I can command my eyes to read a musical score, and command my fingers to play a Chopin etude based on that information. I can command my eyes to read a book on mathematics, and command my fingers to write computer software based on that information. This seems like pretty good design to me, even if my fingers and eyes do eventually get tired.GilDodgen
November 11, 2006
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I have never followed the arguments that bad design means no designer. The comment about the AMC Gremlin is instructive. I do think it presents problems for certain theological positions like a beneficent deity, at least it does for me. There's just too much suffering, but that is not a problem for biology.bj
November 11, 2006
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“Famously the nerve that connects the brain to the larynx goes round the aorta (even in Giraffes - adding an unnecessary 14 feet). That’s nothing to do with conflicting constraints. It is just a rubbish bit of design.” Statements like this just kill me. As if you could design it better? I’ve often thought to myself when looking at something I didn’t personally design, “this design is just rubbish” That is, until I actually get hands on and start working on it. More often than not, something that appears to be rubbish will turn out to be the only way something could have been designed, but you just don’t realize it until you understand it 100% - and I mean 100%. When I see these “bad design” comments about biology made by those who couldn’t dream of designing it themselves, it just makes me cringe.shaner74
November 11, 2006
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SuricouRaven wrote: "3. For the religious, its more of a problem. ID (publicly) doesn’t say anything about the mysterious designer. So this designer is permitted to make mistakes or cut corners. But Christianity is quite clear: God is perfect. God couldn’t make mistakes, or design humans badly. Thus, God couldn’t have designed humans, for they are full of mistakes. If God designed humans, I wouldn’t need my glasses." I don't understand why this is a problem for Christians. God's perfection does not compel Him to produce designs that function perfectly according to your our my specifications. Following your logic, the death of God's creatures is also impermissable. Your view requires that God's creatures live forever in perfect health and I guess they ought also to be omniscient and omnipotent since that would be "perfect design".russ
November 11, 2006
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I wish that the bad design argument would be given up. Who knows the nature of the designer? After all there is the possibility that the designer has a cruel sense of humor. That might explain death, but there might be other reasons the designer invented death, after all. Perhaps the designer builds in imperfections to teach us a lesson. Who knows? It might be more honest if those who argue for bad design means no design were to say, if I were inventing the human eye I would do it differently, so there is no designer that did what I would do. A designer cannot ever be shown to not exist since the designer could always hide the evidence that they are designing, the way a murderer hides their crime by making it seem as if caused by something or someone other than themselves. This is why I do not get Dawkins argument for no design as opposed to there being no evidence of design. Why cannot god exist and hide his presence from empirical detection as test of faith for example? It is a mistake to say there is no intelligent design. There is no way to know this.paulm
November 11, 2006
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It looks like my other comment got lost somewhere, so here it goes again. @Mark Frank: You can distinguish designed from non-designed objects based on information properties of the subjects under discussion. For example, natural language texts (which are designed) will adhere to Zipf's Law, whereas randomly generated text (undesigned) will not. No knowledge of "intention" would be necessary to separate the designed from undesigned texts. Only when discussing optimal design will questions of intention come into play. And again, all relevant design contraints must be taken into account before you can objectively call something a "bad" design. Without that knowledge of constraints, your judgment is irrelevant. You might want to use caution in your hasty judgments, or else you may end up arguing that the inverted retina of the eye is also rubbish design...Atom
November 11, 2006
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That’s nothing to do with conflicting constraints. It is just a rubbish bit of design.
And you have complete knowledge over any and all possible contraints (or lack thereof)? Obviously, you cannot. Therefore, you cannot judge whther or not the "bad" design is really just a case of constrained optimization.Atom
November 11, 2006
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@Mark Frank: I disagree. You can detect design based on principles of information theory and probability, quite separate from considering questions of intention. For example, designed text will adhere to Zipf's Law where as undesigned (random) text will not. No knowledge of the text itself (other than its statistical properties) are necessary to distinguish the two. Now when it comes to questions of "bad" design, intention comes into the picture. You do not have full knowledge of all design contstraints when you look at a designed feature, so how can you judge whther it has attained the contrained optimum? You can't. To pretend otherwise is illogical. You bring up a nerve, but why not bring up the inverted retina of the eye? You are making the exact same argument.Atom
November 11, 2006
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"Bad design equals no design" is a theological argument, not a scientific one. It assigns attributes (specifically perfection) to a hypothetical designer where there is no scientific or logical basis to assign those attributes.DaveScot
November 11, 2006
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Atom - you are creating a straw man. Famously the nerve that connects the brain to the larynx goes round the aorta (even in Giraffes - adding an unnecessary 14 feet). That's nothing to do with conflicting constraints. It is just a rubbish bit of design. So the designer is less than perfect. Does that stop it being design? If you accept the Dembski idea that specification can be deduced independently of the designer's purposes, then presumably it doesn't matter if the design is totally incompetent. I don't accept that idea at all. I think you can only recognise if something is designed by hypothesising something about the designer's intentions or plans. In that case poor design can be a problem because it may be so poor you can't deduce that there is any intention behind it. Suppose that Gremlin car had wheels that fell off after a few miles. It would be hard to decide whether it had been designed at all - or was the result of freak error on the assembly line.Mark Frank
November 11, 2006
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I think another response to this might be that while a design might be good, it can be used improperly. This is particularly true considering we ourselves are intelligent agents, and can choose to utilize our own bodies or the environment around us according to their designs, or contrary to them. If I use the mouse on my computer as a hockey puck, and it breaks as a result, it isn't correct to say it is 'poorly designed'. In the same way of we treat our bodies poorly, we can't then complain about their poor designs. Of course not all design issues arise from user error; some of it stems from the decay that seems to be built into the universe. It would seem in this case the only alternative to the poor design argument here would be an eternally unchanging universe; and we would have to expect that such a universe was the intent of the designer, which appears not to have been the case as much of the universe depends on decay to sustain itself. And that brings up what is the critical point of all this, that is the intent of the designer. If I, as a designer, build something to serve a certain purpose for a while, and then simply decay back to a certain state after that purpose is completed, is the object in question 'well' designed or 'poorly' designed when it ceases to function after serving it's intended purpose? Of course as we consider intent, we begin to move away from those questions science can actually answer.jhudson
November 11, 2006
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SuricouRaven: Or, orgainisms were createdly perfectly but no longer are. (That is the historical Torah based view.) Dr. Dembski refers to it as "Dysteleology". In any case, the anti-design argument leads to "A perfect designer would have created us optimal in every sense, even when there are conflicting contraints (he should also bend logic somehow to satisfy all conflicting constraints simultaneously), and made us indestructable." And this, obviously, does not follow from any first principles I am aware of.Atom
November 11, 2006
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Oh, let me sum this one up, its an arguement that I know well. 1. Animals, including humans, are full of flaws. Everything from cells that turn cancerous for no good reason to an appendix that bursts to such little things as spots. Hair that collects paracites. Eyes that stop focusing with age. Brains that eventually fail, leading to dementia. Joints that suffer arthritus. Some of these, like the teenage acne, would be trivial for any designer to fix. This is evidence against design. 2. However, this does not mean humans were not designed. It just means the designer, if any, didn't do a perfect job. Look at things designed by humans: Many of them are appallingly badly designed, but still they are designed. 3. For the religious, its more of a problem. ID (publicly) doesn't say anything about the mysterious designer. So this designer is permitted to make mistakes or cut corners. But Christianity is quite clear: God is perfect. God couldn't make mistakes, or design humans badly. Thus, God couldn't have designed humans, for they are full of mistakes. If God designed humans, I wouldn't need my glasses. 4. There is an equally religious counter-arguement for 3, the old 'God works in mysterious ways' - if God appears to have made a mistake, then He must have sone so with a purpose in mind that humans just have not yet realised.SuricouRaven
November 11, 2006
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Anyone who says that bad design means no design has never owned the 4-cylinder model of the AMC Gremlin car.Larry Fafarman
November 11, 2006
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