Dummy Designer

This is the best article about intelligent design I’ve ever read (via Kottke) :

But if we can’t infer anything about the design from the designer, maybe we can go the other way. What can we tell about the designer from the design? While there is much that is marvelous in nature, there is also much that is flawed, sloppy and downright bizarre. Some nonfunctional oddities, like the peacock’s tail or the human male’s nipples, might be attributed to a sense of whimsy on the part of the designer. Others just seem grossly inefficient. In mammals, for instance, the recurrent laryngeal nerve does not go directly from the cranium to the larynx, the way any competent engineer would have arranged it. Instead, it extends down the neck to the chest, loops around a lung ligament and then runs back up the neck to the larynx. In a giraffe, that means a 20-foot length of nerve where 1 foot would have done. If this is evidence of design, it would seem to be of the unintelligent variety.

Such disregard for economy can be found throughout the natural order. Perhaps 99 percent of the species that have existed have died out. Darwinism has no problem with this, because random variation will inevitably produce both fit and unfit individuals. But what sort of designer would have fashioned creatures so out of sync with their environments that they were doomed to extinction?
[. . .]
And why should the human reproductive system be so shoddily designed? Fewer than one-third of conceptions culminate in live births. The rest end prematurely, either in early gestation or by miscarriage. Nature appears to be an avid abortionist, which ought to trouble Christians who believe in both original sin and the doctrine that a human being equipped with a soul comes into existence at conception. Souls bearing the stain of original sin, we are told, do not merit salvation. That is why, according to traditional theology, unbaptized babies have to languish in limbo for all eternity. Owing to faulty reproductive design, it would seem that the population of limbo must be at least twice that of heaven and hell combined.

…but that’s just the setup. These two sentences, in my mind, make up the brilliant punchline of the piece :

It is hard to avoid the inference that a designer responsible for such imperfections must have been lacking some divine trait — benevolence or omnipotence or omniscience, or perhaps all three.
[. . .]
Of course proponents of intelligent design are careful not to use the G-word, because, as they claim, theirs is not a religiously based theory.

So ID proponents should have no problem with someone questioning the motives of the “designer” behind creation. After all, we’re not talking about the supposed embodiment of love who had his son murdered for us, but some anonymous soul who put our species together the way a child build something out of Legos. Perhaps those who find themselves on the losing end of a battle against “intelligent design” should lobby to have the “theory” given a more appropriate name. I suggest “indifferent design” or “ignoble design”.


posted by greg on February 21, 2005 @ 8:40 am

28 comments

  1. It wasn’t God. It was the Grays. I never noticed taht they leave the question open of who the “designer” is. How very coy of them.

    Something they never address: any intelligent designer would have given us TWO pairs of extraneous nipples. Yeah!

    Comment by Joe — February 21, 2005 @ 10:05 am

  2. This is a must read, I have emailed it to everybody I know… if it is right it is the story of the war…

    Suburban Guerrilla

    IN MEMORIAM
    Today I’m going to do something a little bit like journalism, except I haven’t done any real follow-up. Still, it’s an important issue, and I’d like any Google maestros reading to help.

    Go to your local newspaper site, or TV station site, and do a search for “local man woman killed wounded Iraq”. Weed out the duplicates, total the numbers, and then check them against the casualty lists, because there’s something funny going on here.

    I started to notice something several months ago. The local papers would interview the mother of someone killed or wounded in Iraq, and more often than not, there’d be a bitter aside: “Of course, for some reason, he’s not included in the offical totals.”

    Somehow, that struck a chord. And the thought crystallized: They’re lying about the numbers. Think about it – it’s absurd to think they wouldn’t, considering everything else they’ve done.

    So I started reading. Here’s what I’ve found.

    Comment by Al Hill — February 21, 2005 @ 10:29 am

  3. In Memoriam

    Comment by Al Hill — February 21, 2005 @ 10:32 am

  4. Oh man, this intelligent design stuff is drivin’ me nuts. I just had an encounter with someone at my blog who claimed that “the fossil record makes a mockery of the evolutionary theories”.

    Comment by Dave — February 21, 2005 @ 12:30 pm

  5. I really enjoyed reading this.
    Thanks.

    Comment by Stephen — February 21, 2005 @ 2:33 pm

  6. Not-So-Intelligent Design

    The other day, Air America’s Marc Maron, talking about opponents of the theory of evolution in general, and “intelligent design” proponents in particular, said that the essence of their analysis could be stated thus: It’s all so complicated. I don’t…

    Trackback by Past Peak — February 21, 2005 @ 2:35 pm

  7. one name comes to mind as the crusher of the intelligent design theory is

    Philosopher Daniel Dennett

    Comment by sgo — February 21, 2005 @ 4:22 pm

  8. God is a bad engineer.

    Comment by Unstable Isotope — February 21, 2005 @ 5:12 pm

  9. God is the pinty haired guy in the Dilbert comic strip.

    Comment by kamachanda — February 21, 2005 @ 6:04 pm

  10. There are a few problems with the “Dummy Designer” post. The arguements are about as rational as the creationists’. So men have nipples? So there’s a nerve that seem uneccessarily long? Uhmmm. that’s about as conclusive as “because it says so in the good old King James.” There is a middle ground where rational thought is able to accept a certain portion of faith and science. A good read on the origins of the universe from one of the greatest scientific minds also details a very good expalnation for the existence of God. Stephen Hawkings “A Brief History of Time”. Science doesn’t set out to disprove religion nor is religion in contradiction to science. People who choose to be on the far ends of the debate miss out on a lot fascinating science and a lot of miraculous wonder at our world and universe. If anything, those that profess to know the “truth” on either side of the arguement are as foolish and blind as they claim the other side is.

    Comment by robbo — February 21, 2005 @ 7:30 pm

  11. OK. One more point about this laryngeal nerve. If you believe in evolution there is still something of an intellegence to the process. Survival of the fittest removes weak and unsuccessful traits and species. That’s the gist of evolution right? Well just becuase you can’t see the intellegence of a certain design doesn’t mean it’s sloppy or illconceived. If this nerve is present in all mammals and is, in your opinion, overly long then there must be some evolutionary reason for its length. If it were an unsuccessful trait it would have been weeded out by now and certainly wouldn’t be present in all mammals. Perhaps you just don’t see the intellegence involved in survival of the fittest either.

    Comment by robbo — February 22, 2005 @ 7:54 am

  12. Robbo,

    If it were an unsuccessful trait it would have been weeded out by now and certainly wouldn’t be present in all mammals.

    Unfortunately this isn’t how evolution works. It only weeds out bad traits and rewards good ones. It doesn’t care a bit about things that are neutral. This nerve is inefficent from a design point. But it really has no effect on a functioning mammal. It’s design is good enough, and that’s all evolution can promise (case in point the human eye).

    The point the blurb was trying to make is no intelligent designer would set it up that way, but evolution could easily lead to it. How you ask? Well the first mammals were very small, the ineffecient path of the nerve isn’t a big deal in something the size of a mouse, as mammals grew the path of the nerve became larger with them. Since, evolution has no reason to weed this out (it functions just fine) it ends up being effective but inefficient.

    If you’re a geek, just compare it to the x86 line of desktop processors. As they’ve evolved over time, they have been cruftier and cruftier as more and more has been added on. Eventually they will reach a point where they can’t adapt any more and they go extinct. The same thing happens in nature.

    Comment by Andrew — February 22, 2005 @ 8:48 am

  13. The problem with intelligent design is in order for it to work, you have to assume that God is a doofus.

    In fact, that’s the problem with religion in general…

    Comment by Roddy McCorley — February 22, 2005 @ 10:14 am

  14. Yeah, I tore that page out of the NYT magazine for keeping. But how about that depressing poll on the left margin? Only 16% of Democrats accept evolution w/o Gawd. 51% appear to be outright creationists. This is the “progressive” party in this country. 51% of them think the Invisible Cloud Being snapped his holy fingers and made humans appear as you see them today.

    Pure eye-popping, jaw-dropping, heart-stopping stupidity. At least countries in the Middle East have poverty and lack of education as an excuse for their comparable levels of religiosity (and what does that say, that we’re on a par with them when it comes to standing out like a sore thumb next to the rest of the world?). We’re just utterly fucking brain damaged here.

    Comment by The Vile Scribbler — February 22, 2005 @ 11:09 am

  15. Andrew, those are good points. I guess I didn’t state my point clearly. My point is that both sides of this issue rely on basic assumptions that are not provable. The assumption that God doesn’t exist because “I would have designed it better” is as flawed as the Creationists view that “because the Bible says so” it must be. Has anyone here ever created a fully functioning universe that can support life? Until you have how do you know you would have done it differently? I personally like my nipples thank you very much. And to the Creationist – How do you know God didn’t provide for evolution as a means to an end? Did He come down and show you the blueprints during Sunday services. Both sides of this issue keep trying to rely on religion, for or against, like religion was the problem. It’s dogma that’s the problem. On both sides of this issue. Resorting to debating faith is a flawed way to argue the point. When you attack someones faith that person will effectively shut down. Convincing someone that their faith is absolutley wrong is not likely to happen. just like creationists trying to convince you that your faith in evolution is wrong. However, convincing someone that within their faith there may be another way to look at things is entirely possible. So again I say have a few problems with the logic of the post. To resolve this issue both sides need to stop looking for the killshot to the other side’s beliefs. It is only going to be resolved through openmindedness on both sides. I will grant you however, that the creationist side has a lot more opening to do.

    Comment by robbo — February 22, 2005 @ 11:42 am

  16. VileScribbler – what part of the world would you say we “stick out like a sore thumb” against? Would that be Europe, where regular church attendance is higher than here in the US? And a majority of people claim a faith in God? Just curious why you think anyone that doesn’t disbelieve the same way you do is showing “Pure eye-popping, jaw-dropping, heart-stopping stupidity.” I would think with that kind of dogmatic approach you and Pat Robertson would actually get along pretty well.

    Comment by robbo — February 22, 2005 @ 12:01 pm

  17. I’m not sure what statistics you’re looking at, dorko, because everything I’ve ever seen indicates that America’s level of religiosity is comparable to fundamentalist Muslim countries, and that Europeans frequently express bewilderment at the level of intensity of our belief.

    Ah, yes. The old false equivalence bullshit. Paint anyone who’s not in the milquetoast middle with you as a fanatic. Those damn nutcases on the extremes! Why can’t they be nice and flexible like you, huh?

    Sure thing, dumbass. On the one hand, the scientific method and all that has been accomplished by using it. On the other, a bunch of knuckledraggers who think humans appeared about 6,000 years ago when a vaporous being in space with a human-like personality made them magically appear. Who can say for sure which is most likely accurate? What a dilemma! I guess, then, the only sensible view to hold is something like “My point is that both sides of this issue rely on basic assumptions that are not provable.”

    In other words, because we can’t say with absolute certainty that one is true and the other false, we have to suspend all judgment and genuflect before whatever idiocy people can come up with. (Might wanna catch up on your David Hume for a lesson on the chimera of trying to pin down “absolute” knowledge.) So, I take it you don’t ever act in your daily life without absolute knowledge, huh? You never make up your mind based on the best info you have at that moment, based on what’s most likely in your experience?

    But actually, I don’t have a problem with “anyone that doesn’t disbelieve the same way [I] do”. That same poll had a third option, which happens to be the official position of the Catholic Church – namely, that evolution is a fact, but God set the process in motion. Okay, fine. Believe in whatever loophole you want, as long as you’re not trying to turn science class into bible study. It’s just a shame that, on this issue, the Catholic Church, that noted bastion of progressivism and liberal politics, is actually more liberal than half of American Democrats.

    Comment by The Vile Scribbler — February 22, 2005 @ 2:44 pm

  18. Vile,
    WOW. I seem to have struck a nerve. There IS a great deal of evidence to support evolution, there is scant, and extremely flawed evidence to support creation, that is the way to address this. Not like the post by saying, God’s an idiot because I’d have made it better or by calling someone names. Do you think calling me a “dumbass” or “dorko” will help you win me to your view, or anyone else for that matter? Do you think vitriol and agressive language are the best approaches to resolving issues of people’s fundemental beliefs? This is exactly the point I was making. By the way – I said several times that I do believe in evolution and that I think the creationists don’t have much of a leg to stand on. But as much as you have faith that your view is correct so do they and name calling will get no where. So yes you can fault me for being concillatory, fault me for looking for common ground, fault me for being milquetoast if you like but I live in the real world where unfortunately there is a growing belief that creation is based on sound science. I would no more want intellegent design taught in biology than I would want alchemy taught in chemistry, but if I were to go into a school board meeting calling the creationists dumbasses I’d get nowhere. And if I said creation is wrong because I have nipples that I don’t need I’d get nowhere. There are much more effective and appropriate ways to make the point than that. Dumbass.

    Comment by robbo — February 22, 2005 @ 4:11 pm

  19. Robbo,

    Your points are well-taken, but let me clear up one thing about this post. The point of this post isn’t to mock religion, but to call “bullshit” on the argument that Intelligent Design isn’t a religious theory.

    The ID argument largely states that creation is so complex and intricate that there’s no way it could be the result of an “accident”. The inner workings of life are so complicated that they could only be the result of a designer. In order to make their “theory” palatable to non-Christians, IDers are adamant that the glowing praise of “the designer” has nothing to do with god or religion.

    If every aspect of creation was the result of decisions made by the designer, then why can’t we question some of the imperfections that exist in every sphere of life? If the arguments about ID are to be taken at face value, then the designer in question shouldn’t be above criticsm. Unlike god, the designer isn’t omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent, or benevolent, right?

    Well, wrong. Because the idea that the designer isn’t god is a big charade. To pretend that ID is a scientific theory completely divorced from religion is a lie and everyone knows it. The fact that you were offended by this post proves my point.

    The presumptive designer behind ID is obviously god and any efforts to put alternative “theories” about the creation of life on earth into science classes are unconstitutional efforts to inject religious teaching in public schools. I respect people’s rights to believe what they want, but I’m not going to sit idly while some people try to sneak their religious beliefs into the classroom. The trickery that ID proponents will resort to in order to put religious propaganda in front of children is shameful.

    Comment by greg — February 22, 2005 @ 5:16 pm

  20. Greg is right. ID has nothing to do with science and everything to do with religion. They just try to use the language of science to disguise their agenda. Scientists are smart enough to know what is science and what isn’t, but unfortunately most people are confused on this point.

    Comment by Unstable Isotope — February 22, 2005 @ 5:30 pm

  21. Greg,
    THANK YOU! That is the point that has been missing from this post. You have made it excellently and as I have pointed out that is the way to make this case instead of calling bullshit. THANK YOU THANK YOU for taking it to the rational point it needs to be and not the irrational. I wasn’t so much offended as I’ve said now several times I BELIEVE IN EVOLUTION. What did bother me is that the calling bullshit with bullshit doesn’t work. The point needs to be made exactly as you just did. I live in a very red area of a red state and this may actually be something I feel called to address in my son’s school system at some point. The issue has been raised before. Calling bullshit with the fundies just doesn’t get you anywhere. You have to support it with rational evidence based reasons.

    Comment by robbo — February 22, 2005 @ 5:38 pm

  22. Greg,
    Thanks for also keeping this on a civil tone.

    Comment by robbo — February 22, 2005 @ 5:41 pm

  23. Who designed the designer? Did he make us before or after we made him?

    Comment by Kermit — February 23, 2005 @ 12:41 am

  24. *sigh*

    Dorko, being that I’m blowing off steam here, I don’t really care if you’re offended or if I’ve convinced you of anything. By the way, quit saying you “believe” in evolution. It’s not a belief to be taken on faith. You examine the prodigious amounts of evidence supporting it, and accept it (if you’re intelligent) or reject it (if your family tree has no branches). Framing it as a “belief” plays right into their hands.

    Calling bullshit with the fundies just doesn’t get you anywhere. You have to support it with rational evidence based reasons.

    Jeepers, Pollyanna! You’re right! All we need to do is confront the religious nuts with scientific evidence, and they’ll see the light of reason! Why didn’t anyone think of this before?

    Oh. That’s right. Because religious faith acts as a sort of cement, preventing anything that could cause mental discomfort from penetrating. But hey, if you’re feeling all idealistic and optimistic, knock yourself out.

    Comment by The Vile Scribbler — February 23, 2005 @ 6:23 am

  25. Vile,
    There’s the name calling again. Pardon my syntax for using the word “believe”. But, apparently “civil discourse” is not part of your vocabulary. Since you’re blowing off steam I will too. The only thing that has “offended” me is being called names by a cynical, retarded dumbfuck like you. I tried to keep this on a civil level and each time you brought it down to name calling. Well you little prick, I can act like a pissed of 12 year old too. Polyanna my ass. Go fuck yourself.

    Comment by robbo — February 23, 2005 @ 10:07 am

  26. As an evolutionary biologist I have a few thoughts:
    Evolution is a process of change through time. The point of this post was that many aspects of living things only make sense in light of the historical perspective provided by evolution. If you were to design a giraffe from scratch, you would never make the laryngeal nerve the way it is. It only makes sense if it evolved from a simpler system. Similarly, if you look at the comment above out of context, it seems like an odd way to go about discussing a topic. However, if you consider the history of exchanges preceeding it, it makes more sense.

    Given that evolution is change through time that entails a history, saying you believe in evolution is like saying you believe that the Civil War occured. Personally, I think the Civil War did happen, even though I can never “prove” it. All the evidence we have is entirely consistent with the Civil War, just like all evidence is entirely consistent with life on earth having evoloved over billions of years. Someone can claim the Civil War did not happen, but that claim would never be part of a responsible history class. Similarly, any claim that life has not evolved over billions of years has no place in a biology class. To reject the long history of life on earth you basically have to reject all of science. For example, you have to reject things like dating of rocks based on radioactive decay. And to reject that you have to claim that we don’t understand atoms as well as we think we do. And to reject that, you would have to explain to lots of people in Japan that their ancestors were not, in fact, killed by an atomic bomb. The nice thing about the truth is that it is self-consistent. And science works by looking for inconsistencies that allow you to reject a hypothesis. This makes science a wonderful process for uncovering truth. Religions track record in this regard? Not so good. Religion can have the spiritual side of things, but it should take Intelligent Design and stick it in the closet of shame next to its other attempts to explain the natural world like The Great Flood, the Sun Revolves Around the Earth, and the The Single Rib Theory of Womanhood.

    Natural Selection is the process by which evolution occurs. People often conflate the two, but it helps to remember that evolution is what happened and natural selection is the mechanism that made it happen. Natural selection is often described as survival of the fittest, and, although this obscures many of the subtleties of the process, this captures the competetive nature of it. The important point is that natural selection can only work on the variation that is present at the time. In regards to the giraffe’s long nerve, the proper mutation that would have allowed for the shorter nerve probably just never occured. Certainly if a mutation occurred that made the shorter and more efficient nerve and left everything else the same, that would be favored and would eventually become the normal condition for giraffes. Its the same reason horses haven’t evolved wheels despite our best efforts to breed faster horses. Wheels would be much more efficient and faster, but a mutation that substitutes wheels for legs simply has not occurred and probably never will. The design of animals is constrained both by their history and the chance nature of the variation that is available. Natural Selection cobbles together solutions that are slightly better than the alternatives at the time. Designers optimize, particularly if they are intelligent. It is a big difference that shows up in many ways. The point of the post is that if you look at Intelligent Design scientifically (that is, as a hypothesis that makes predictions that can be tested), it is very easy to reject. That stands in stark contrast to evolution by natural selection.

    Comment by TJonBergman — February 24, 2005 @ 7:20 am

  27. See, dorko? Name calling is fun, isn’t it?

    But seriously – I made serious points in my posts, with a few insults tossed in for seasoning, and you apparently didn’t have much to say in response to them. If you’re that easily rattled by a little rudeness, good luck keeping it together if you ever have to try to talk sense into fundamentalists in your son’s school district someday, and you get to watch all your “rational evidence based reasons” bounce right off their concrete skulls.

    Comment by The Vile Scribbler — February 24, 2005 @ 10:22 am

  28. Go, TJonBergman, Go! Totally bitchin’ post. Just keep your hands off my favorite pet theory, the single Rib Theory of Womanhood.

    Comment by Joe — February 24, 2005 @ 1:06 pm

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