I doubt these images, as horrible as they are, really shake anyone's beliefs in God or Intelligent Design. These cases you show are exceptions, not the rule.
All I can say is that if this is the best you can do it is pretty sad.
I was responding to the "exceptions, not the rule" statement. That they're exceptions makes it all better, I suppose. As long as you're not one of the exceptions.
Birth defects are not by design, they are defects in the building process.
What's makes you think they're not by design; how do you know?
Anything a human can design can be built improperly. A complex computer can have a hardware "glitch" in the manufacturing. A single car out of many can have been built wrong though the design is sound.
All true, but beside the point. Unless you're asserting that humans were designed by humans.
I have never heard a genetic specialist say that birth defects were from "bad design".
So?
It almost always happened because of some external environmental issue or because there were certain recessive genetic traits that ended up showing up.
The jury is still out on the effects of "external environmental issues," but "recessive genetic traits" are part of the design by definition, aren't they?
Given how complex human life forms are it is amazing it doesn't happen more often...
Why?
I was responding to the "exceptions, not the rule" statement. That they're exceptions makes it all better, I suppose. As long as you're not one of the exceptions.
I am a little confused what you mean here. How does making it the exception all the better? Let me sort of repeat myself by saying that given all the babies ever conceived (not necessarily born) sometimes the building process can go wrong. It doesn't mean they were designed that way but it means that the building process went wrong. Can you clarify your statement of "That they're exceptions makes it all better"?
What's makes you think they're not by design; how do you know?
I was responding to the pictures where none of these babies lived. I do not know if they were designed to be this way or not but my guess is they were not. Do not get me wrong. I am not attempting to belittle people who do live but who are... let's say "conjoined twins" or they are born with birth defects that either make them blind, mentally retarded, or whatever. But up until recently (last 200 years) many children with severe birth defects did not live. Even "small" birth defects by today's standards would have made life difficult before modern medicine. A baby born blind in a mudhut in ancient Europe or Asia would not have lived very long would they?
So that is my only clue that these defects were not by design... because if they were they would have lived much longer.
All true, but beside the point. Unless you're asserting that humans were designed by humans.
No I am not asserting that they were designed by humans. To put it in cold... callous, industrialized terms, humans were the manufacturers, not the designers or engineers. When two humans make a baby they do not sit around and decide which nucleic acid comes first in a chain of DNA. "Gee Betsy, you sure the adenosine should go before the guanine?". Nope that doesn't happen... Humans do the building (ok... women do 99.999%). Now sometimes the manufacturing process goes wrong correct?
The jury is still out on the effects of "external environmental issues," but "recessive genetic traits" are part of the design by definition, aren't they?
When I say "external environmental issues" I don't just mean mercury in the water. It could be a large number of factors such as the stress factor on the mother. Still how can you say the jury is still out? How many medications do you read that says "Do not take if you are pregnant"? Do I have to post the millions of cases where pollution and stress caused many birth defects? With all due respect your proverbial jury has decided this a long long time ago.
You are correct about genetic recessive traits being "part of the design". But autosomal recessive disorders, where the baby has a disorder because both mother and father have the recessive gene and passes it on, can be quite fatal. Take for example the very terrible disease of Tay Sachs. There is no cure and fatal for children.
I cannot say if this is by design but for something like Tay Sachs to happen, both parents have to have it and then they have to pass it on to their children. About 1 in 30 persons of Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry carries the Tay Sachs gene (see:http://www.lpch.org/DiseaseHealthInfo/HealthLibrary/genetics/recessive.html).
For a baby to get Tay Sachs both parents would need to have the recessive gene and then both would need to pass it on. Statistically it ends up as being the exception that the baby suffers from it, not the rule.
Given how complex human life forms are it is amazing it doesn't happen more often...
Why?
Because the process of creating a baby (or any life) is very, very complex. There are many, many places in the building of a baby where things can go completely wrong. Not to mention that the DNA sequence is quite long and if a mistake is made in even a small place in the sequence during replication(depending on where it is) the baby may not live.