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.
But I intend to reply (w/o flames...)
Cheers!
g_w: Is the designer primarily an engineer at all?
v_a: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.
g_w_2: 1st misunderstanding. What I was trying to imply was that maybe the designer was not trying to engineer anything (in the sense of efficiency, elegance, etc.) but was perhaps trying aesthetic or artistic taste. According to the designer's own standards.
g_w: 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.
g_w_2: You *appear* to be making a couple of assumptions here, which, though reasonable, remain arbitrary. For all you know, the designer put in elements like the recurrent laryngeal nerve as a kind of "flourish" or signature; or like the tail fins on a 1950's-era chevy. You are implicitly assuming that everything that is there, was put there with an explicit function. Supposedly intelligent designers (but here opinions may differ) also created the Edsel. :-)
And for that matter, there's always Picasso.
g_w: 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?
If the original design was for vastly different conditions, things which now look anomalous might have made sense at the time.
g_w:What if the designer made life forms and walked away (semi-Deist view) and subsequent evolution has screwed stuff up?
v_a:Has no bearing on the recurrent laryngeal nerve; it's invariant across all the vertebrates.
g_w_2: That depends on what point in the process the designer walked away; for example, with invertebrates.
g_w:What if other supernatural agents have corrupted things since the original design?
v_a:Purely idle speculation in the absence of evidence. Again, has no bearing on the routing of nerves.
g_w_2: No more idle speculation than assuming that an intelligent designer was necessarily guided primarily by notions of efficiency; or assuming (say) vestigial hind leg buds in seagoing mammals is a mistake, instead of a 'tip of the hat' in honor of another designer's work.
But for some reason, you appear to ignore that your assumption that an intelligent designer is motivated by efficiency and economy is ITSELF an assumption. On certain presuppositions, it is defensible; but you have no way of 'checking' those presuppositions.
g_w: What if the original design was for conditions far different than we have now?
v_a: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.
That raises an entirely different issue of the "ontology recapitulates philogeny" type; and an interesting observation from software engineering. Think of class inheritance. It may be that, for the sake of software re-engineering, you may "kludge" a subclass from a higher-level class, even though it involves certain inconveniences, because of certain other advantages related to disk space, not wanting to add new class libraries, etc.
What you point out about the laryngeal nerve being "evolutionary" since the heart in fish is far forward, and as the embryonic development differs from species to species, could also be taken as an economy of "design"--using a standard template for embryonic development.
Not insisting this is the case, but without getting to discuss with the designer, you won't always see why things were done.
Off-topic segue...Urban legend has it that when a Cuban pilot defected to Florida with a Russian MiG during the Cold War, the US military engineers were *astounded* at how carefully the plane had been built, apparently with the goal of making it impervious to EMP. (Vaccuum tubes etc. instead of solid-state electronics, and so on.) So this figured into US estimates of the Soviet willingness to engage in nuclear war. As it turns out, after the Cold War ended, we found out the *real* reason for the primitive electronics: the Soviet electronics industry was not able to make enough of the advanced parts to high enough tolerance to be reliable for military use. So instead, they used a brute-force approach with low-tech.
Point being, what might seem *obvious* on inspection of a design after the fact, might be an *artefact* of completely different design goals or constraints.
g_w: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".
v_a: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"?
g_w_2: See above. Maybe the designer liked the fetal development sequence so much, it was decided to keep the essentials of the process, regardless of the resultant (minor) anomalies.
g_w: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" ?
v_a:More idle speculation, in the complete absence of any evidence for it.
g_w_2:Not *idle* speculation, as it presents a plausible alternative to your strawman of "if it doesn't make sense to the criteria *I* subscribe to, as an elegant solution, it CANNOT have been the result of design."
v_a: 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.
g_w_2: Not necessarily true. Nice swashbuckling type debate points, but you are *assuming* that your notions of compactness and elegance are the same ones the intelligent designer had in mind. Yes, it is a *reasonable* assumption, and one that can be defended as a reasonable assumption ("why would an engineer want to do it like that? it would be more elegant, economical, etc. to do it like this instead."). But it remains an assumption, until you know what trade-offs and effects the designer had in mind.
That is why I said you had been *jumping to conclusions*...
Cheers!