Robert Frost is sometimes cited as being critical of design and theism generally. For instance, one finds the following quote at http://www.pharyngula.org/infidelquotes.php:
I turned to speak to God/About the world’s despair;/But to make bad matters worse/I found God wasn’t there.
— Robert Frost (1874-1963)
And then there is the well known poem about the spider:
Design
by Robert FrostI found a dimpled spider, fat and white,
On a white heal-all, holding up a moth
Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth–
Assorted characters of death and blight
Mixed ready to begin the morning right,
Like the ingredients of a witches’ broth–
A snow-drop spider, a flower like a froth,
And dead wings carried like a paper kite.What had that flower to do with being white,
The wayside blue and innocent heal-all?
What brought the kindred spider to that height,
Then steered the white moth thither in the night?
What but design of darkness to appall?–
If design govern in a thing so small.
But then what is one to make from the following poem by Robert Frost?
They mean to tell us all was rolling blind
Till accidentally it hit on mind
In an albino monkey in a jungle
And even then it had to grope and bungle,Till Darwin came to earth upon a year
To show the evolution how to steer.
They mean to tell us, though, the Omnibus
Had no real purpose till it got to us.Never believe it. At the very worst
It must have had the purpose from the first
To produce purpose as the fitter bred:
We were just purpose coming to a head.from Accidentally on Purpose
by Robert Frost