I think the key difference between design and things that evolve without
design is that things that are designed exhibit *foresight* on the part of
the designer.
Consider two complex objects, one of which arose by a process of cumulative
selection by a "blind" selector and a "blind" producer of variations from
which selection is made, and one of which is designed by a being with
sufficient knowledge of his materials, methods, and desired results that he
is able to simply straightforwardly design (and make) the object. If the
evolved object went through a long and richly varied evolutionary history,
and if it is quite complex, it will, almost *certainly*, show *marked*
differences from the functionally similar object that was produced by the
type of designer described above.
To give a specific example, consider the human male vas deferens, which runs
from the testicles to the prostate. Its only function is to carry sperm from
the testicles to the prostate. An intelligent designer would simply run the
vas deferens directly from the testicles to the prostate, because he would
have the foresight to see that running it, say, up to the throat and then
back down to the prostate would be silly and wasteful and even harmful.
But, this is not what pure naturalistic evolution would necessarily do. If
the testicles had once been in a different location relative to the
prostate, and if their current location had been arrived at by evolution,
then, depending on the accidents of genetics and fitness on the way to the
current anatomy, there could easily be an evolutionary slope where
*immediate* fitness was improved by genetic changes that would *ultimately*
result in a *loss* of fitness (in a different and, of course, unforeseen,
environment).
This seems to be, in fact, what has happened: The vas deferens goes up to
the *bladder* area, and then it goes *over* the ureter from the same-side
kidney, and only *then* heads for the prostate. This is instantly and
trivially explainable as a result of a series of evolutionary steps, each of
which the environment "judged" as improvements, but which, in the process,
incidentally produced a situation that *no* intelligent designer would
create *unless* his intention was either something *other* than the fitness
of the organism (such as fooling reason-oriented scientists into believing
in evolution?).
Why does this happen in evolution? Because it has no foresight, not even
unto the next tenth of a second. It *cannot* predict the consequences of its
changes. But, a designer, working without the limitations of an
absolute-zero IQ, can easily avoid such things as the absurd routing of the
vas deferens.
As this example illustrates, there are *empirical* consequences of the lack
of foresight in evolution. Such "design errors" are to be *predicted* for
any complex organism that has had a richly varied evolutionary history. They
are *not* to be predicted on the basis of design theory. In fact, we should
expect there to be *no* mistakes on the part of an intelligent designer. We
should expect that on those very rare occasions when we found something that
appeared to be a design error, closer examination would show that it makes
perfect *design* sense after all.
Instead, what we find is that, far from being *rare*, such "design errors"
are quite common, *and* that, with extremely few (if any) exceptions, closer
examination does *not* show them to make good design sense.
Put another way: If you find something that looks like it was designed by an
intelligent designer, and yet it has fairly obvious and intractable "design
errors," you are almost certainly looking at something that *evolved*, not
something that was designed by a very knowledgeable designer. On the other
hand, if you find something that looks like it was designed and which, while
being *just* as complex (if not more complex) than the evolved object, is
nevertheless apparently *free* of any design errors of any sort (e.g., the
vas deferens goes directly to the prostate), then you very likely *are*
looking at something that was in fact designed. Look for foresight in the
"design" of things. If you don't see it, even after a close look, then it
was either evolved or designed by a designer who did not really know what he
was doing. If you *do* see foresight, freedom from "design errors," through
and through, then you probably *are* looking at design.
Unfortunately, these considerations do not *always* apply, because, if the
evolutionary history of an object is smooth and "straight-line," and if the
object did not have to be "remodeled" in significant ways during its
history, then, in *that* case, too, there will be few (if any) "design
errors."
However, not all is lost. If we examine an organism that is, let us suppose,
as complex as a human being, and find that it does *not* have any of the
"design errors" typical of such a complex being, then we should be able to
infer, with a fairly high degree of reliability, that it did indeed have
just such a smooth and relatively uneventful evolutionary history.
But, life itself, on Earth, *all* appears to be the result of evolution, for
precisely the reasons given above. There seem to be, throughout all
well-studied organisms, "design errors," all the way down to the very lowest
levels. Many of these "design errors" are "locked in" because genetically
nearby variations all exhibit less fitness for the organism *at the moment*.
An intelligent designer, seeing that better ways are readily available, and
*not* having to worry about fitness, could simply *design* organisms to be
free of these "design errors."
Since we would expect a designer to do a *vastly* better job of designing,
and since the "design errors" we see are *exactly* of the type that indicate
*total* lack of foresight, *total* lack of intelligence, we have to conclude
that there is almost certainly no designer and that life almost certainly
*did* evolve.
To make my point with just a little further empirical significance: I
*predict* that nearly all complex organisms that are found and that appear
to have a long and varied evolutionary history (as indicated by fossils,
etc.) will *also* have a goodly number of "design errors" of the sort
described here, "design errors" showing a lack of foresight and intelligence
on the part of any alleged "designer." I also predict that any complex
organism that does *not*, even upon critical examination in detail, exhibit
such "design errors" will also appear in evolutionary terms to have
ancestors that changed smoothly and more or less directly from some much
more primitive organism to the current organism. To test this theory, all
that is needed is to find some organisms that seem to be free of such
"design errors" - if any can be found - and then look for what should be
their evolutionary history as indicated by fossils and still-living
offshoots from the same remote-past organism.
In any case, I predict that there will be found to be a correspondence
between the number and severity of such "design" errors with the apparent
smoothness and directness of the evolutionary history.
Organisms that apparently have evolved from life in one environment to life
in another radically different one should exhibit more of such "design
errors" than organisms that evolved *initially* in that environment. Thus,
we should expect to find *more* of such "design errors" (and likely more
serious ones) in whales than in fish (in general; other factors *are*
involved, so this correspondence may not be perfect).
Of course, there is a certain weakness in this proposal. Design theorists
are very careful *not* to have a theory. That is, they are very careful
*not* to specify a design theory that their alleged designer uses, *not* to
specify *what* he is supposedly designing things for, and so on. Thus, we
cannot *deduce* from design theory that the designer will *not* design
organisms in such a way that they will appear to have *just* the type of
apparent design errors that would be predicted by evolution. Because the
designer is a perfectly arbitrary construct, designer theory makes no *real*
predictions at all as to empirical facts.
That is, because of the *fundamental* flaws in design theory, it is
*essentially* non-testable (in its present forms). Given one set of
empirical facts, design theory does not allow us to *infer* another set of
facts. For example, we cannot infer by the application of designer theory
that plants and animals could be bred to produce not only new varieties but
new species (such as cabbage and cauliflower, which were bred from the same
initial plant). The non-testability of designer theory means that, no matter
*how* grossly badly "designed" an organism is, it does not refute designer
theory.
But, it doesn't support designer theory, either, and it *tends* to count
against it. Evolved things are characterized by an apparent lack of
foresight in their "design," and we would *expect* an intelligent designer
to have *at least* the foresight and intelligence of a current or
near-future genetics engineer. This does not seem to have been the case with
life on Earth.
Therefore, I conclude that the designer theory, while *theoretically*
empirically vacuous, is only compatible with empirical facts by great
straining and gnashing of teeth, while the apparent "design errors" of all
known life are not only compatible with evolutionary theory, they are to be
*predicted* on the basis of it (though, without detailed knowledge of a
particular organism and its *future* environments, we cannot predict the
*specific* "design errors" that will occur in its future).
--Chris C
Now is the time for all good people to come to.
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