Perhaps designed to mutate and evolve, or perhaps that was a limitation in the source materials, but there are some beautifully engineered living systems on our planet.
What I was looking for but didn't find in the article was an explanation (or even a hypothesis) for how this mechanism evolved. One of the things I find most fascinating about evolution is how seemingly irreducible complexity in nature always turns out to have a some path of mutations and adaptations that led to the current state. For instance, the canonical example of 18th century teleology, the eye, was touted as being so unimaginably complex that there's the only conceivable explanation for its existence was design, yet today we have a clear picture of how that organ arose from simple photorecptive cells. My guess in this instance? The friction plates that their ancestors have and the other species have got bumpy, then they got more bumpy, then they interleaved.
A perfect example is the eye. An organ of great complexity, but one that is very easily explained by logical evaluation, as well as existing living creatures and fossils: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nwew5gHoh3E
If you're a software engineer, I hope you understand how procedural systems and algorithms can transform data and functions. Similar processes take place via chemistry and biological interaction. Conway's Game of Life is a good example of a simple system giving rise to complex interaction and patterns.
Complex beauty can arise from the interaction of systems, but if you say to yourself that it "must have been engineered by something greater than me", you settle in your mind, and shortcut around critical thinking and never progress toward understanding. And that's a great, great shame.
I agree with you about patterns and mathematics - also beautiful, but cold (sorry, best I can explain it).
But when we see a complex physical problem, and then see a nicely designed and implemented real-life solution - there I think my "engineered" theory has as good a chance at being correct as does the theory that says it just sprang up from 100 million years of evolution and random mutations (both of which I agree do occur).
You may think that it is a necessary defect, but the squid eye, which evolved independently to end up almost identical to its vertebrate counterpart doesn't have it. The nerve fibers and blood vessels run behind the retina.
When I'm told the algorithm is really just a random collection of instructions, assembled through an unguided process, that just happens to be work...that strains belief. But even accepting that, I'm still left with instructions, language, symbols, and interpretation. And these can only be produced by intelligence.
Something as simple as the characters we use to write code means nothing unless meaning is ascribed to them, and meaning can't arise from a strictly meaningless process (evolution, chemical interactions, etc). I think the simpler, and truer explanation for why these systems appear engineered, is because they are.
Like a Saturn V rocket, or an AC induction motor.
Things that make you proud to be an engineer.
Maybe whatever created these gears was being tortured by an evil master until it made something satisfactory.
I really can't say for sure...
Mind you, I'm an atheist, so this is just my understanding of the argument.
Looks like this for is as in "because", he is telling you why he belives, because of "beauty like this". You can only say you do not believe this evidence implicates that.
E.g., avoiding ivory tower planning and instead using empirical, in-the-wild A/B testing.
Mutation and genetic drift play a role in evolution, but are not the sole source of changes.