Unintelligent design - Forum

By now we've all heard the theory put forward by proponents of "intelligent design." It's the proposition that some being of infinite intelligence, supreme power, and, I can only assume, massive ego created our universe and the life in it. They're not saying this being is God, but the job description implies there are no other serious candidates for the position, needing just the qualification "only those of unfathomable mystery and a deep, booming voice need apply" to clinch the deal.

Recently serious consideration has been given by the State Board of Education of Ohio, where I currently live, to include intelligent design in the science curriculum, making Ohio the latest battleground in the war between evolution and creationism. Since these camouflaged creationists were creeping up so close to home, I decided to examine intelligent design in the same manner as its proponents. That is, without any scientific proof or peer review but with a healthy dose of imagination and chutzpah. After hours of research on the Internet and twice that long trying to rid my computer of pop-up ads and unbidden pornographic Web pages, I came to the only logical conclusion: If there was any sort of plan for everything, it was the most unintelligent design possible, worse even than, say, a televange-list's hairstyle.

Let's examine intelligent design's two major premises. First is the belief that this all-powerful, all-knowing being who is not God (to avoid sexism let's call this entity Brenda) created the universe specifically to make it hospitable for life. Intelligent design proponents call this the anthropic principle. Fair enough. Brenda creates the heavens and the Earth. But how intelligent is her cosmological design? Not very. For one thing, everything is too far away. Fourteen billion light-years to the edge of the universe, and getting farther every second? Puh-lease! How are we supposed to get there when Brenda has set the cosmic speed limit below that of light? That's not very good planning. Even nearby Andromeda, the closest galaxy to our own Milky Way, is 2.2 million light-years away, one heck of a long commute. If he started today, Dick Clark would look old at the end of the trip.

Within our immediate neighborhood things don't improve much. The nearest star to our sun is Proxima Centauri, 4.3 light-years distant, with no rest stops, gas stations, or convenience stores between the two. To make it even more challenging, there's no air ... in my opinion a very serious oversight.

Our own solar system, while relatively compact, is still a traveler's nightmare. It takes our fastest probes years to reach the outer planets, and once we get there we find frozen rocks or giant balls of gas. Even with a bit of elbow grease, new curtains, and a lot of redecorating advice from the Home and Garden Network we still wouldn't want to set up housekeeping on Neptune or Saturn.

The inner planets are almost as inhospitable. Mars may only be friendly to microbial life. Venus is caught in an endless loop of a runaway greenhouse effect, and Mercury's surface temperature is over 420 degrees Celsius, although they say it's a dry heat. For us, at least in the foreseeable future, Earth is our only home. I'd have to say the design of our universe is not only unintelligent, it's cosmo-illogical.

The second major premise of intelligent design is that life, especially Homo sapiens, is too complex to have just happened. It was to produce us that Brenda supposedly used the lion's share of her wisdom and power. But are we any better than if we had "just happened?" Were we built from the best blueprint? Did the builder even bother to look at the plans before starting work? And did she use the finest materials available, or did she underbid with an eye to buying on the cheap, thinking no one would be the wiser, like some sleazy, fly-by-night home improvement company or government contractor? I'd say she was indifferent at best. The design of Homo sapiens is extremely unintelligent.

Let's look at the facts. To begin with we're bipedal. That means when we're young we fall down a lot. And when we're old we fall down a lot. I'm neither, and I fell down twice yesterday. When we're not falling down we're very slow, unable to outrun predators even with $300 athletic shoes. In the upright position we're constantly banging our heads on door jams and tree limbs and anything else above the level of better designed quadrupeds. No, bipedal was not the smart way to go.

Second, we can't breathe water. Why is that important? Think about it--what lunatic would make us so we can only breathe oxygen, then put us on a planet which is 75 percent water? Hello? Anybody home in there? Brenda gave us a useless organ like the appendix, but couldn't throw in a couple rows of gills? All knowing, indeed.

Third, there's the problem of sexual reproduction. Requiring two people to make offspring is so inefficient. And painful. And messy. Sexual reproduction breeds nor only children, it breeds resentment. As my wife is always quick to point out, the male's contribution to the process is insignificant, can be accomplished in just a few minutes, and unfortunately usually is. The female then spends the next nine months in discomfort awaiting the birth. The male, on the other hand, blithely gets on with his life of drinking beer, bragging about his fertility, and enduring no pain greater than the slight inconvenience of being told by his wife how he should try carrying all that extra, unbalanced weight around on a bipedal body without falling down.