Inane Design

This is one of those topics that drive me crazy, this intelligent design thing. Because it's just, well, stupid.

I mean, if I understand it correctly, intelligent design postulates that living organisms are too complex to have developed the way they have by pure chance; there must, say the ID pundits, be a guiding force behind all of this to explain the complexity and beauty of life.

I postulate the precise opposite: that living organisms are too complex, too messy to have any kind of intelligent designer behind them. I believe that to say that there was some kind of force, some designer, that had an actual hand in directly creating human beings (or cows, or frogs for that matter) is to insult that designer, to insinuate that she isn't nearly as bright as one would like to think she would be.

Ask any engineer: the best designs are the simplest ones. The more complexity you add to a system, the more vulnerable you make it. And we living creatures are so complex--in many cases, so unnecessarily complex--that anyone who engineered us should be ashamed of herself. Unless, of course, that designer was Rube Goldberg.

Think about it. The appendix? Stupid and useless. A brain so big that it often gets us killed during childbirth but which we only use a small percentage of--and yet which can't regenerate should the important bits get damaged? Beyond stupid. Genetic material that breaks down on a regular basis? Stupid, stupid, stupid.

I know that there are people who find the concept of being descended from apes as insulting. I, on the other hand, find the idea that someone or something would have not only chosen, but actively planned, to create creatures with as many fundamental flaws as we have to be what is truly insulting. I expect more from my God, and I think you all should, too.