Hacker News Reader

Comment by lpat | Hacker News Reader

That's pretty weak argument against intelligent design.

1. The designer does not have to be "omniscient" only intelligent. Some people believe in it's omniscience but I don't think it's a requirement.

2. How do you know that our trachea is not an optimal design when you take into account all the tradeoffs?

3. You're surrounded by items created by intelligent design (us) and all of them have flaws, reused parts and tend to break. Obviously you wouldn't argue based on this that they weren't designed by intelligent beings.

View on HN

> How do you know that our trachea is not an optimal design when you take into account all the tradeoffs?

Because if we were designed from scratch we could have been designed in any optimal shape or form.

> You're surrounded by items created by intelligent design (us) and all of them have flaws, reused parts and tend to break. Obviously you wouldn't argue based on this that they weren't designed by intelligent beings.

Show me an intelligent designer who can literally design the universe, but is still not intelligent enough to avoid these flaws even we can recognize. I don’t think we are intelligent enough to design a completely novel life form, let alone as many as exist on earth in all their forms.

This is all beside the point that there’s no evidence of any kind for intelligent design, only supposition based on nothing more than intuition and feelings.

Flaws is a wrong way to put these things you notice.

Would a perfectly and optimally designed being get no diseases? won't die? won't fall?

I think a perfectly designed being would not require killing to live, would run on sunlight or other direct power sources and be steady state or mostly steady state.

If we ever make silicone man that runs on sunlight then I'll say, "ah, this looks like a being created by a moral intelligent designer".

It's going to be pretty revealing when a creature with such "lowborne morals" as ourselves creates a being that can function and operate without the explicit need to kill something every ~7 days to survive.

I would argue human beings don't need to kill to live right this moment.

But yes, there are a million ways in which the human biology is imperfect.

If our bodies are temples, then whoever made us is probably Nurgle. Nothing else really explains the reproductive organs sharing space with the waste removal ports.

> Because if we were designed from scratch we could have been designed in any optimal shape or form

Only if you assume the designer had infinite time, knowledge and resources. But life on Earth did not have to be created by some omnipotent god who created universe. It only requires more advanced intelligence than us. Although theoretically even we may reach this level in the future with advances in bioengineering.

> This is all beside the point that there’s no evidence of any kind for intelligent design, only supposition based on nothing more than intuition and feelings.

Depending on what you consider "evidence" the same sentence could be said for evolution. There are many arguments in favor of intelligent design like for example no viable mechanism of randomly evolving genetic code. I wouldn't say it's as open and shut case as you make it seem.

Only if you assume the designer had infinite time, knowledge and resources. But life on Earth did not have to be created by some omnipotent god who created universe.

No need to be so coy. Who/what else do proponents of intelligent design believe designed us if not an omnipotent, omniscient, God? Ancient aliens? Deep Thought?

Intelligent design is a code word for the creation myth of the Abrahamic religions.

If there’s some other scientific theory of “intelligent design” you’re referring to, please enlighten me as I’m not aware of it.

> Depending on what you consider "evidence" the same sentence could be said for evolution.

There is empirical evidence for evolution.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com