Why don't bad design arguments work?

[Mung]

@NLENTS

You are definitely in a better position to judge the intentions and purposes of every section.

I said nothing about your intent. Did you intend the section to contain an argument for common descent?

You wrote:

@NLENTS

I have resisted saying that my book is written as an argument against ID because it wasn’t written that way. I believe that strange quirks are best explained by common descendent and so, implicitly, they argue against design insofar as design is offered as contrary to common descent. So, much of the content of my book, I believe, challenges ID, but that doesn’t mean that it’s written as a direct challenge to ID. If that were my goal, just about every sentence of the book would be written differently and I would have chosen different examples. Many good books refuting ID have been written. My book was written for an audience that already accepts evolutionary theory. Although it wasn’t written to challenge ID, the content of the book does pose challenges because, as you note, these quirks are rather easily understood from the point of view of common descent. Without that perspective, they are conundrums.

Now if as i go through the book, and read section by section, and find no argument that this or that “quirk” is best explained by common descent, then what should I conclude?

We probably have a different opinion about what it means for common descent to be a better explanation.

I am talking, so far, about a specific section in the book. Are we on the same page about what section I was reading and referring to?

Where, in that section, is anything better explained by common descent? And if common descent is a better explanation, what is the alternative explanation that it is better than? The perfect design explanation? The intelligent design explanation. The what would a perfect God do explanation?