FR Debate: Intelligent Design vs. Birth Defects, Can They Be Reconciled?

Discovery Health & Multiple Medical Sites ^ | 11/11/05

[Wolfstar]

Each year in the United States, about 150,000 babies are born with birth defects ranging from mild to life threatening. While progress has been made in the detection and treatment of birth defects, they remain the leading cause of death in the first year of life. Birth defects are often the result of genetic and environmental factors, but the causes of well over half of all birth defects are currently unknown.

Following is a partial list of birth defects:

Achondroplasia/Dwarfism	Hemochromatosis
Alpha-1 Antitrypsin Deficiency	Huntington's Disease
Anencephaly	Hydrocephalus
Arnold-Chiari Malformation	Klinefelter's Syndrome
Ataxia Telangiectasia	Leukodystrophies
Blood coagulation disorders/Hemophilia	Marfan Syndrome
Brain malformations/genetic brain disorders	Metabolic disorders
Canavan Disease	Muscular Dystrophy
Cancer: Neonatal, newborn, infant and childhood	Neural tube defects/Spina Bifida
Cerebral Palsy	Neurofibromatosis
Cleft lip and palate	Niemann-Pick Disease
Club foot/club hand	Osteogenesis Imperfecta (brittle bone disease)
Congenital heart disease	Phenylketonuria
Conjoined twins	Prader-Willi Syndrome
Cystic Fibrosis	Progeria (advanced aging in children)
Down Syndrome	Sickle Cell Anemia
Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome	Spinal Muscular Atrophy
Eye, ear and speech defects	Tay-Sachs Disease
Fragile X Syndrome	Tuberous Sclerosis
Gaucher's Disease	Turner's Syndrome
Genital and urinary tract defects	Wilson's Disease

Some birth/genetic defects, such as near-sightedness, are mild and do not affect the person's ability to lead a normal life. Others are so severe that the person has no chance to even live. Efficiency and economy are part of intelligently designed systems. If the "design" of human systems is so intelligent, why do tragic inefficiencies such as the following occur at all? Warning, the linked photos are graphic medical images, and are very, very sad.

Conjoined twins, i.e., monozygous twinning in which there is fusion of the twins. The popular term is "Siamese" twins. This happens when identical twin embryos become fused together during the very early stages of development. Conjoined twins occur in an estimated one in 200,000 births, with approximately half being stillborn. Here are links to three photos of severely conjoined twins:

Photo 1: one head, two bodies

Photo 2: essentially one torso between two babies

Photo 3: profound fusion

Neural tube defects are are one of the more common congenital anomalies. Such defects result from improper embryonic neural tube closure. The most minimal defect is called spina bifida, with failure of the vertebral body to completely form, but the defect is not open. Open neural tube defects with lack of a skin covering, can include a meningocele, in which meninges protrude through the defect. Here is a link to a severe neural tube defect.

Photo 4

Defects of the head/brain: In the linked photo a large encephalocele that merges with the scalp above is protruding from the back of the head. The encephalocele extends down to partially cover a rachischisis on the back. This baby also has a retroflexed head from iniencephaly.

Photo 5

The form of neural tube defect in the next linked photo is known as exencephaly. The cranial vault is not completely present, but a brain is present because it was not completely exposed to amniotic fluid. Such an event is very rare. It may be part of craniofacial clefts associated with the limb-body wall complex, which results from early amnion disruption.

Photo 6

Congenital and pediatric neoplasms: One type that can occur is a teratoma. The next linked photo shows a large nasopharyngeal teratoma that is protruding from the oral cavity.

Photo 7

Tumors: In the next linked photo there is a large mass involving the left upper arm and left chest of the baby. This congenital neoplasm turned out to be a lymphangioma. This baby and the one in Photo 9 were essentially riddled with cancer before birth and shortly afterwards.

Photo 8

Next is a gross neuroblastoma arising in the right adrenal gland. It is the most common pediatric malignancy in infancy, and 75% of cases are diagnosed in children less than 4 years old. These tumors most often present as an abdominal or mediastinal mass.

Photo 9

[Wolfstar]

Not one perfect specimen of anything.

Might be, what what about efficient? Isn't a design which is intelligent also efficient?

[From many - one.]

Evolution has no direction.

[zeeba neighba]

Why do species go extinct? How does that jive with evolution?

[Wolfstar]

I also think the design can be corrupted by external forces,such as chemicals in the food chain,background radiation,and who knows what else.

Yes, that's true, but why?

[cornelis]

Good question. But some basic starting points here:

From the Darwinian p.o.v.: Fitness doesn't mean the unfit should survive. Nature absolves its own inefficiencies.

From the logical / existential p.o.v.: Evidence of an opposite is not proof that one or the other doesn't or can't exist. It does not follow that evidence of hot water means there is no cold water, or that evidence of death means there is no life.

From the ancient p.o.v. there are two principles that are fundamental (they still hold this view that chaos and complexity are complementary universal principles

From the monotheistic p.o.v. evil is not a divine principle; evidence of evil points to other causes. There is also a distinction between moral and nature evil.

And finally, no matter which is preferred, evil still there exists. To be human, we are designed to struggle against it.

[xzins]

This shakes your faith in religion.

I'm not sure it has anything to say about ID other than that, like a car running down with age, natural processes have an impact on design.

Why does it shake your faith?

[Ghost of Philip Marlowe]

Sounds to me like you just want to launch another 500-post thread of visceral attacks between two fundamentalist-type religions.

Why is this on breaking news? Go to a smoky corner to start your bar fights.

[Tom Bombadil]

My understanding is that intelligent design theory pivots on the principle of irreducible complexity at the molecular level. To proponents of ID, IC describes molecular processes and systems that fail when any element of the process or system is defective or missing. It seems to me that birth defects could be potential illustrations of such failure.

Does the existence of birth defects prove that any potential designer wasn't very intelligent? Good question. Does the existence of death do the same thing?

[zeeba neighba]

Also like saying Picasso's cubist period can't be art if Grant Wood's American Gothic is?

[lonestar67]

I often start my arguments backwards to draw attention to flawed assumptions. Assumptions are the predicates of arguments. So by starting backwards, I was hoping to draw your attention to this assumption-- not to be unfair to you.

In any case, the deformities of children are based upon human preconceptions of what is "normal" and appropriate.

This reminds me of a debate I had with an atheist who said, "How can you believe in Christianity when its evidence comes principally from a prostitute?"

The nature of the evidence may be very much the point. Our rationality has problems. Our sense of "normalcy" has problems. God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise. I strongly believe this is a transcendent purpose within the intelligent design. This means that deformities (as we see them) are part of that ironic process whereby we recognize our limits of judgment.

We would do well to withhold our judgments against any human being-- no matter the degree of discrepancy with out own expectations.

I also suspect that the grisly mutilation of Christ in the crucifixion process was very much a reminder of our shallow habits of judgment and a deep reminder of what makes a being human.

[TN4Liberty]

I agree, but am interested in philosophical underpinnings of those who believe in intelligent design.

No you aren't.

[heartwood]

I'm not sure Wolfstar was ridiculing - they are tragedies that disturb one's faith. You don't even need ugliness or deformity to haunt you - I miscarried two children who died of genetic defects - and on ultrasound they were exquisite, the most finely made things I have ever seen. Why were they created to die so soon?

It's not just defects in design - it's design carried out perfectly. Tigers. Tapeworms.

God send the day when the lion lies down with the lamb and there is no more weeping.

[Wolfstar]

Well, "Intelligent Design" is nonsense, but your illustration above is just another variation on the 'Problem of Evil' (i.e., how can God be all-powerful, all-knowing, all-good and yet permit evil to exist).

I don't see it in terms of good and evil. If the word "intelligent" is paired with the word "design," then that conjures in my mind ideas of efficiency. It's that which I am trying to get to, not religious connotations.

If intelligent design is to be taught in schools as a an alternative scientific theory, I want to understand its underpinnings

[RightWhale]

Everything is efficient if it moves, and everything moves. In physics, mechanics, efficiency is a number that can range considerably between zero and one. It is a measure of work done versus energy that is used, with some energy always being wasted. Even Congressional energy results in something eventually being moved.

[AntiGuv]

Why doesn't the designer design his design so that natural processes do not have an impact on the design like a car running down with age?

[From many - one.]

First of all I do not buy into the ID argument at all.

Nevertheless, if we look at human designed items we find flaws, despite the fact that we fancy ourselves intelligent.

It is the concept of a benevolent God that is challenged by unwarrented suffering. The two Christian perspectives that I am aware of are:

1. God's ways are not man's ways..in my view a non-answer

2. It's all Adam's fault.

[Rightwing Conspiratr1]

We will never understand everything He allows.

Agreed, but what does that have to do with the concept of intelligent design?

That you (we) aren't intelligent enough to understand the purposes of the designer. Isn't that a given?

[NVD]

This article obviously is referring to genetic mutations. But, what is a mutation? Since each gene is a code of instructions, a mutation is akin to a typing error a changed letter here, a spelling error there. But, this poses a problem for the evolutionary philosophy; if you introduce a missing phrase or spelling errors into a report, it is unlikely to make the report more understandable. As we can see in your post, most mutations are harmful, and sometimes lethal, so if the mutations were to accumulate, wouldn't the result be devolution?

[From many - one.]

Down's syndrome kids are not suffering. Wolfstar is referring to children who are.

[Wolfstar]

Allright. Now we have the stated reason for the thread.

Actually, no. I've made my point several times. If intelligent design is going to be taught in the schools as an alternative scientific theory, then what are it's underpinnings? How does the theory reconcile defects in the world around us?

The theory, as I understand it, posits that the design of the universe -- well, I think it's best of those who espouse the theory and understand it better than I do would define it.