The argument between those who accept blind evolution and those
who accept intelligent design is usually carried out on scientific
grounds. Thus, the intelligent design advocates have cleverly
managed to bring the debate to the home territory of the blind
evolution advocates in an attempt to put them on the defensive.
(Whether there arguments there are good or bad is not a subject
for this discussion.) Perhaps the tables should be turned:
argue on religious grounds. I believe that, in a Christian
world-view there are strong arguments against intelligent design
because of what it tells us about God. Basically, the issue
that must be addressed is "Why did God do such a lousy job?"
The intelligent design advocates range from
(a) those who believe there was
practically no evolution through
(b) those who believe God has pushed
evolution in certain directions to
(c) those who believe God simply
started things and evolution ran on its own.
The last group are actually blind evolutionists. They may
disagree on the origin of the universe or how life began, but
these are separate questions from evolution. Still, they
must deal with the question of why God did not intervene in evolution
and so arguments related to (b) may be relevant.
Let's begin with (a), the case of practically no evolution.
Among the questions that need to be answered are
Why
are there disease organisms?
Why
are there bad genes that cause diseases?
Why
are human beings so poorly designed for upright posture?
Questions for (b), directed evolutionists, are also questions
for people in the first category but not necessarily conversely. Some
of the design flaws could certainly have been avoided. To
cite just one example, consider the structure of the eye. Because
of the placement of blood vessels and the retina, various problems
such as macular degeneration arise. This is certainly avoidable
with better placement as the eye of the octopus shows. A
simple evolutionary push could have led to an improved design
for eyes that would reduce the chances of blindness in old age.
Perhaps God could have intervened to prevent the evolution of
some disease organisms or bad genes, but one could argue that
this is unreasonable if we want to have evolution. In that
case, why didn't God avoid these problems by sidestepping the
whole process of evolution and just designing the whole biosphere?
Obvious answers to these questions are "vindicitiveness
for what happened in the Garden of Eden" and "limited
competence in the design of universes". Of course one
can simply say that God is beyond us and we cannot expect to understand
His motives but we should trust Him. My answer to such a
god is the same answer I would give to someone who is torturing
me while telling me I should trust him.