Designed Intelligently?

No, I don't think so. Look around and you don't see an intricate, interbalanced puzzle of infinite complexity, which could have been cobbled together only by some unseen, all-powerful intelligence or force. That's absolutely ridiculous on its very face, without even making the most shallow of observations. But the Christian Right wants it that way. What better way to use a secular system of law and government against itself than to come up with a faux secular, apparently scientific approach to use to shove their religious agenda down the throat of everyone who is not like them. It's not good enough just to be a Christian; you've got to go out and force everyone else to be one, too.

Let's just look at humans, just people. If we're designed intelligently, then I've got a few questions:

Why is there cancer? Is this part of a larger plan, and if so, what exactly is that plan? Why is it built in to some, and not others? Is the following argument then to be that cancer victims have been chosen, that they are to blame, or are being punished? Or that maybe cancer is some kind of wonderful divine invitation to end your time on earth and come on up to the Celestial Main House? Intelligent design says that there's something other than random organic chemical replication and inevitable molecular error and mutation going on here, that there is both awareness and purpose behind these things. So why do babies and children and grandparents get cancer? Why is there horrible, degrading, dehumanizing pain and suffering with cancer? What's the intelligently designed purpose for that?

What is the purpose of the appendix?

Why do men have nipples?

Why do humans have body hair? An evolution-oriented person might be able to easily see how a few hundred thousand years ago a coat of long, thick hair would be a great defense against both weather and predators, but over time the need for it and consequently its characteristics have altered, no wait, have evolved. What is the intelligently designed purpose for back hair and armpit hair. What does God have in mind for pubic hair?

If there is an intelligent designer out there, then what are spitting cobras for? What are poisonous frogs and toads and spiders and snakes all about? What is their purpose in the grand scheme? Why are there flesh-eating viruses and Ebola and Marburg?

If the overall Intelligent Design argument is that things are so complex that only a conscious effort could have made them that way, then what does it say about the consciousness that put forth that effort? Things are needlessly complex, incredibly sophisticated for no apparent reason. If we are/were intelligently designed, then why aren't we and everything else so much more simple and easy to understand? Why is it that one drug which helps you, when combined with another drug that will help you, turns them both toxic? If we're designed intelligently, why can't we drink seawater, since that's what covers most of the planet?

Sit through The Hitchikier's Guide to the Galaxy, and you'll see just my kind of intelligent design. Manufacturing, now that's plausible to me. We do it now with cloning and gene manipulation, in vitro fertilization and genetic tools to achieve scientific and product ends. Intelligent manufacturing is perfectly plausible to me: at some point way back a-when, the Creator or Creators whipped us all up, got us constituted and formed, and then set our reality into motion. But where are they now? There is no clear sign of them at hand, and I haven't heard any talk from Intelligent Design on where the hand of the infinitely complex Creator is right now, and how it is manipulating our realities and our conditions. If this is so, then we've been left on our own. We were created/made, and that was that. We've been toddling along on our own since then, whether it was 6000-odd years ago, or 13-15 billion. Either way, that sort of gap has to allow for some time to adaptation to the environment, to the challenges of just being in the world around. And that would lead us to physical, genetic, identifiable and traceable changes in who and what we are based on responses to the surroundings, right? And that just leads us right back to evolution.

The Doonesbury piece from December 18th was quite good, where the old, white, probably respected, learned, educated guy was asked which tuberculosis vaccine he'd rather have, the new or the old one. After all, the old one wouldn't deal with the changes the organism had undergone since the introduction of drugs to combat its presence. The new drug is for the new version of the threat, the disease that has EVOLVED in response to the threat to its own existence and ability to reproduce itself. So which one do you go with: the new treatement option and without saying it impugn your entire creationist dogma, or the old drugs and suffer quietly, maybe even die, knowing that you're standing up for something important and maybe actually correct? You choose wisely, eh?