I'll spell some of them out, I think you'll get the drift.
the hypothetical designer is not a good engineer.
1. Is the designer primarily an engineer at all?
2. If so, was the designer acting IN that capacity when making life-forms as we know them?
3. Do the life forms as we know them accurately reflect the original designs? ("It's life, Jim, but not as we know it.")
a. What if the designer made life forms and walked away (semi-Deist view) and subsequent evolution has screwed stuff up?
b. What if other supernatural agents have corrupted things since the original design?
c. What if the original design was for conditions far different than we have now?
d. If the designer made life forms as an engineer, and you think present conditions reflect the environment for which they were designed, AND there was no skulduggery since then, do you know the intended purposes for the life forms as they were designed, both ultimate and proximate? Think of some of the engineering school challenges to build vehicles to get ultra-high gas mileage...I bet they'd *suck* on crash-test ratings. But they weren't trying for safety anyway. Or for another example, "Build a working suspension bridge entirely out of toothpicks" or "Design and build a working electric car for under $1000".
e. Are these the final designs or is the earth a workshop or proving ground where various ideas are beta tested, or prototypes made for "proof of concept" ?
Etc. Etc. ad nauseum.
And no, I don't consider this nitpicking. Some of the objections are a hat tip to Christian theology, since the complaint is that ID is Christian creationism in drag; if you think this, than it is only fair to at least raise an eyebrow towards other purported factors which are brought in by Christian theology. And the other objections are something most any competent project manager would consider when beginning an engineering project.
Cheers!
All the same, I'll assume you are familiar with some of the facts discussed there.
Me: the hypothetical designer is not a good engineer.
You: . Is the designer primarily an engineer at all?
Primarily? Who knows? But I would say that engineering is one aspect of "intelligent" design. The recurrent laryngeal nerve, for example, has never been justified on any rational design basis; it's simply and unambiguously a stupid design.
2. If so, was the designer acting IN that capacity when making life-forms as we know them?
If one claims that the design is intelligent, then yes, the aesthetics of engineering enter into it. Particularly using as few parts/materials as possible, not over-complicating things. Evolution predicts a Rube Goldberg sort of "design", which is what we find in the examples I cited.
3. Do the life forms as we know them accurately reflect the original designs? ("It's life, Jim, but not as we know it.")
Who knows? What bearing does this have on the recurrent laryngeal nerve?
a. What if the designer made life forms and walked away (semi-Deist view) and subsequent evolution has screwed stuff up?
Has no bearing on the recurrent laryngeal nerve; it's invariant across all the vertebrates.
b. What if other supernatural agents have corrupted things since the original design?
Purely idle speculation in the absence of evidence. Again, has no bearing on the routing of nerves.
c. What if the original design was for conditions far different than we have now?
See above re: the recurrent laryngeal nerve. The evolutionary explanation for its circuitous path is that in fish the heart is much further forward than it is in tetrapods. In the embryo, the nerve starts out OK, then is constrained by the topology of it and the aorta as the heart and aorta move away from the laryngeal area.
d. If the designer made life forms as an engineer, and you think present conditions reflect the environment for which they were designed, AND there was no skulduggery since then, do you know the intended purposes for the life forms as they were designed, both ultimate and proximate? Think of some of the engineering school challenges to build vehicles to get ultra-high gas mileage...I bet they'd *suck* on crash-test ratings. But they weren't trying for safety anyway. Or for another example, "Build a working suspension bridge entirely out of toothpicks" or "Design and build a working electric car for under $1000".
How about simply "connect the brain stem to the larynx"? Or, "connect in a way that won't lead to anomalies after evolution has moved things around"?
e. Are these the final designs or is the earth a workshop or proving ground where various ideas are beta tested, or prototypes made for "proof of concept" ?
More idle speculation, in the complete absence of any evidence for it.
Etc. Etc. ad nauseum.
And no, I don't consider this nitpicking. Some of the objections are a hat tip to Christian theology, since the complaint is that ID is Christian creationism in drag; if you think this, than it is only fair to at least raise an eyebrow towards other purported factors which are brought in by Christian theology. And the other objections are something most any competent project manager would consider when beginning an engineering project.
None of your apologetic says a thing about how any competent intelligence could design the recurrent laryngeal nerve.
Keep in mind the nerve is a stand-in for hundreds of examples of bad design. Easy to explain in evolution, not so easy to reconcile with competence.