Nathan Lents on the imperfection of the human body (it’s evolution, of course)

I have no idea what you are trying to say here. Coyne does not believe in God, and does not believe any animal was designed. This is what he says.

Dating back to Darwin himself, the “argument from poor design” holds that examples of suboptimal structure/function demonstrate that nature does not have a designer.

And here’s a half-hour Center for Inquiry talk, clearly based on his book, in which Lents discusses how the flaws in the human body instantiate evolution. It’s not just that there are flaws—which support the notion that natural selection doesn’t produce absolute perfection, but simply the best result available given the existing genetic variation—but, more important: those flaws are understandable as the result of our evolution from ancestors who were different from us.

I actually agree that poor design is a theological claim and it isn’t good theology. So I would not use that argument in that language.

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I think poor design is not always a theological claim.

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What if stated as “if this were design, it would be poor design”? Is that a theological claim?

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How about, “this is what we got stuck with by natural selection, how can we fix it to live better lives” Is taking vitamin C really so bad?

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Happy to give @NLENTS a plug:

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Sorry everyone, I somehow missed both this thread and Coyne’s post, even though I subscribe. Anyway, good times, lol

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Josh, I have a feeling that this is still just a semantic disagreement. The argument from poor design is mostly just in support of common descent. I agree that it doesn’t directly weaken ID, or at least not necessarily, but that’s because the proponents of ID are prolific goal-post-movers in terms of what their position can/should and cannot/should not explain. The result is that half of the DIs criticism of my book are summarized as “it’s not really poor design!” and the other half is, “intelligent design doesn’t mean perfect design!” By making their position unassailable, they’ve also made it unsupportable by anything (except faith).

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Yes ID proponents don’t like your book because it shows that that the “Designer” isn’t very intelligent, competent, nor compassionate. If a loving, compassionate, competent God guides evolution, He isn’t doing a very good job.

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Well I think that is what Josh means by saying this is a theological argument (comment on how/why/how good God did something), not a scientific one. But, while it may or may not be a sound theological argument (neither you nor I care about that anyway), it is an effective rhetorical one because they have no answer for why the designer did or allowed these things, while we don’t have to face that question at all. Behe seems to allow for both the “perfect pool shot” (where all genetic information is pre-loaded) or the regular influx of new information as God creates new “kinds.” Either way, he has to contend with the questions of why, while he was at it, God didn’t also fix X or eliminate Y, when these quirks or seams, as Josh calls them, are both objectively suboptimal and easily fixable (for an omnipotent intelligence). What gives away the weakness of their position, in my view, is the double-speak I mentioned above.

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It is possible that this is a semantic or rhetorical difference, but in this case I think it matters. I’m not entirely clear on where our disagreement is demarcated either.

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I also fear that if we work it out on the forum now our debate we be uncomfortably boring!

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Hi Nathan
I should read your book first but here are two thoughts. How much do we know about human designs to really access the trade offs? When you and I discussed eukaryotic cells last week you agreed there were limits to how much we understood.

From a more theological standpoint maybe the problems were created for us to discover and fix.

Well if that’s the case, then these really are examples of “bad design.” As for “not yet knowing enough,” of course that could apply to some things, but it can’t possibly apply to all of them. Plenty of the examples I discuss have no upside, no tradeoff.

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I guess I need to read the book to comment further :slight_smile: I look forward to the debate.

Kindly list some of the advantages of scurvy. TIA.

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Scurvy might have slowed colonialism down.

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Yes you should read it, I enjoyed it . Order on Amazon. Ask for the PS discount.

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And decrease the spread of syphilis to Europe. :sunglasses:

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as the backward retina?