Karsten Pultz, author of Exit Evolution, responds to an anti-ID prof at the University of Oslo:
In a recent article, “Evolutionary flaws disprove the theory of intelligent design” (Glenn-Peter Sætre, Centre for Ecological and Evolutionary Synthesis, Titan.uio.no, March 11, 2020) the main argument is that bad design in nature makes it impossible to believe in intelligent design. While evolution has produced marvels it has also produced a number of examples of bad construction (it always makes me smile when the neo-Darwinists use words like “construction”).
The logic behind the examples of bad design as evidence against ID, is that if a feature in nature has flaws, it cannot have been intelligently designed. The same logic, applied to the old Jaguar I once owned, would suggest that because it had mechanical design flaws, it could not have been intelligently designed and must necessarily be a product of random processes.
Because the human birth canal is narrow, because food, water and air follow the same route before they split into either the stomach or the lungs, and because we have wisdom teeth, life must be the product of random mutation and natural selection. A designer would never have made mistakes that would make it dangerous to eat and for women to give birth, therefore evolution is a fact.
I have previously commented on on a Danish site on the exact same bogus arguments raised by a Danish biologist, Jan Gruwier Larsen, in his book Uintelligent Design (Un-intelligent Design). My counterargument was and still is that any intelligently designed apparatus will necessarily contain engineeringcompromises. Within the material world it is not possible to make any contraption flawless, especially if the task is to make machinery that can perform multiple functions. Oddly enough, he made the point that women’s narrow birth canals are the compromise that enables women to also be good runners. His argument invalidates itself because an engineer would need to make the exact same compromises. There are constraints in the physical world, and the result will be engineering compromises no matter whether you adhere to natural selection acting on random mutation or intelligent design.
The point the neo-Darwinists are making when addressing the issue of so called bad design is this: We cannot ourselves produce living organisms, but if we could, we would have done a better job because we are intelligent designers.
Of course nothing can speak to the soft-hearted as well as this Norwegian article does, harping on the fact that women in the Third World die more often while giving birth. And of course that is not a valid argument against ID. First of all it’s not a question to raise in the field of biology, since it is a philosophical question whether the designer was incompetent, evil, or if something in the creation went wrong at some point. The argument seems like that of a child who reasons that, because life is hard, there is no God.
I am baffled that these arguments come from a professor, Glenn-Peter Sætre who is, as it says, one of Norway’s most prominent evolutionary scientists. It seems rather unintelligent to play on emotions in an argumentation regarding the causal explanation for life.
Imagine if ID folk did the same, arguing that because flowers are beautiful they must have been created by God. It’s articles like this that make it obvious that the academics who adhere to materialism have stopped doing science. In this the 21st century, it’s the ID researchers who actually are doing science.
Because I have some connection with the ID movement in Norway, I can see clearly see that this attack ont ID is fueled by fear of the thriving Norwegian ID community. Recently a foundation, BioCosmos, was established with the help of a generous donation by a Norwegian shipowner. BioCosmos is meant to help promote ID and, to judge from this reaction, it is beginning to look like a real threat to the neo-Darwinian paradigm.
See also: Dane Karsten Pultz: ID Is Now Thriving In Europe