If God Created Everything, Why Are Things So Unintelligently Designed?

For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So that they are without excuse

This verse emphasizes that no one standing before God will be able to say there was no evidence of his existence and therefore a reason not to follow the law that he has written into their hearts (Romans 2:15). Why? Because of what God made, what he created. The creation itself is proof of God’s existence. Which is just another reason why Christians that adopt evolutionary ideas are contributing to unbelief, as they are agreeing with naturalists by professing that at least parts of the creation have the appearance of having “made itself” so to speak!

The argument is obvious. When someone looks at a building they have never seen before, it is quite logical to assume that the construction of the edifice was the result of a designer. Knowledge of who the builder(s) is/was or how exactly they did it are not required to understand that there was a creator of the building. Even if the building doesn’t suit your own particular style, taste, or needs, there is no reason to believe such design was produced without intelligence.

But if it is so obvious that the world around us was crafted by our Creator God, why do we see such a rise in atheistic beliefs today?

But if it is so obvious that the world around us was crafted by our Creator God, why do we see such a rise in atheistic beliefs today? Because we now have an intricate and powerful system through education and media that systematically beats those concepts out of young minds from a very young age. One of those methods attacks it directly: when evolutionists produce material that argues that nature exhibits many examples of “unintelligent” or flawed design, which supposedly proves evolution vs. creation.

Arguments Against Intelligent Design

I recently came across just such an article by Bjarne Røsjø (Communication Advisor at the University of Oslo) called “Evolutionary flaws disprove the theory of intelligent design.” Now an astute observer should note that even the title of the article shows it’s grounded on shaky footings indeed; evolution is without a plan. So there is a huge contradiction with the claim that there are “flaws” in evolution if evolution itself is deaf to advice, blind to observational assistance, and dumb in its ability to voice a preferred outcome, since flaws are a deviation from something planned or designed.

As usual, Røsjø attempts to champion the “proven” idea of evolution against the intelligent design (ID) theory and gives several examples of “unintelligent design” as proof that they are rather, examples of evolution.

Unintelligent Design Flaws in the Human Body?

The author starts by describing the “poor construction” of the human body, which highlights a pet peeve of mine. Evolutionists often use inappropriate terminology (like the word construction) when describing what they profess to believe, namely, relating random process evolution in a way that alludes to an intelligent thought process behind it.

For starters, construction requires a builder. Random processes may provide a result, but things put together with no intelligence behind it should not be described as a construct. And also, in a mind brought about by evolutionary forces where “survival” is the name of the game, who is to say that something is “poorly” constructed anyway if its somehow able to survive in its environment?

One of the several “flaws” in humans that the article mentions is that eating can be dangerous because food and air enter through the same channel, which instead of being seen as optimal design engineering, is deemed a poor design.

The windpipe is luckily equipped with a small valve or flap–the epiglottis–that stops food from entering it, but the epiglottis sometimes closes too late. The result is that food enters your trachea, where it can cause fatal choking.

What’s Luck Got to Do with It?

If the human body needed a separate “device” and the space to house every system needed to survive, we would likely have bulky, cumbersome, and quite monstrous bodies indeed!

But if the vast majority of the billions of people on earth throughout history have been able to live just fine with just one windpipe and an epiglottis, obviously “luck” has little to do with it. If the human body needed a separate “device” and the space to house every system needed to survive, we would likely have bulky, cumbersome, and quite monstrous bodies indeed! It makes far more sense to believe that the engineer able to design such a streamlined system is brilliant beyond imagination. In fact, if evolutionary scientists could make a system as sophisticated and well designed as most of the constructs they criticize as poorly designed, they would likely win prestigious awards! Also, just because a machine might break down doesn’t mean it wasn’t well designed.

The article also quotes another supposed proof of poor design where Dr. Sætre criticizes women’s birth canals as being too narrow, making childbirth both painful and more dangerous than in other species. He goes on to state how evolution has “equipped humans with big brains” but has also solved the problem of a small birth canal by “allowing humans” to give birth at a “more premature state than in related species like the chimpanzee and the gorilla.”

Biblical History Explains “Bad Things”

But the article does not take into account that the Bible gives us a very clear explanation for the suffering caused by sin after the fall, including childbirth.

I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children . . . . (Genesis 3:16)

Notice his assumption that the idea of evolution has been proven ignores biblical history and again implies that this was the result of a non-design. It also reveals the real argument here: the assumption that the author could have done it better if he had designed the system himself.

“Poor” Designs Are Still Designed!

Even evolutionists would have to concede that constructions that are admittedly deemed lesser designs do not qualify as proof that there was a designer behind them. If we compare, let’s say, a WW II US Sherman tank to a German Panther, we can easily see that they aren’t even the same class. The Panther outperformed the Sherman in almost every way critical to the armored combat of the day (speed, firepower, range, armor, and defensive design), but the fact that the Sherman wasn’t as effective did not mean that it wasn’t a designed creation (and the fact that they outnumbered the Panther’s production at a rate of 5 to 1 was an overwhelmingly positive factor for the Allies).

Is ID Unscientific and a Marginal Phenomenon?

Like most of the critiques, the article states that the theory of evolution can explain all the supposed “unexplainable” examples that ID theorists propose, and that ID supporters go on and on regardless if “their arguments are refuted time and time again.”

Instead of referring to the greatness and creativity of God’s design for every single individual kind of creature, including the specialized differences in their eyes, the article provides an evolutionary overview of how some eyes in different species are considered (in his opinion!) better than the human eye.

But again, since these arguments come from an evolutionary perspective, they don’t take into account the biblical explanation of God’s diverse creation. For example, the eyes of an octopus may have a significantly different make-up than the eyes of humans or hawks, and evolutionists can debate what they feel is the optimal design of each, but as entertainer Buddy Davis often sings; “It’s designed to do what it does do, what it does do it does do well!” (especially in the unique environments they live in).

God designed all living creatures to reproduce according to their own kind and with specific characteristics to their kind, and this debunks the affirmation that random processes over time came up with different types of eyes, or lungs, or ears, etc. that are better than in other species, or that perform in a “subpar” fashion.

And God said, “Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds: livestock, creatures that move along the ground, and wild animals, each according to its kind.” And it was so. (Genesis 1:24)

And again, it ignores true Biblical history, of how because of man’s fall, we introduced pain and suffering in the world through our sin. We live in a sin-cursed world, so biblical creationists would expect to find degraded, malfunctioning, or corrupted mechanisms in living things caused as a result of the fall of Adam.

Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, ‘You shall not eat of it, cursed is the ground because of you;” in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. (Genesis 3:17–18)

Science Deniers?

The impression given by the author is that,

[T]he leading representatives of the major faiths in the world accept modern science. They realize that it is unreasonable to believe that the Bible should function as a textbook that trumps everything we have developed in knowledge and technology over the last 2000 years. It is not necessary to take the stories and parables of religious works literally, thus becoming a science denier.

But the Bible is true and historical, and it explains how things were created by God and for his glory.

The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork. Psalms 19:1

And there isn’t a scientific fact, properly interpreted, that contradicts a plain reading of the Bible. It is only evolutionary interpretations of facts we see in the present that contradict what the Bible clearly says. Belief in the story of evolution, which has never been observed, cannot be duplicated in a laboratory, has no historical documentation, and actually breaks laws of science (such as the Law of Biogenesis) is truly an unscientific worldview!

This type of criticism against design is in fact not a scientific argument. Rather it is a theological argument that states, “God doesn’t exist and if I were God, I would have done it differently.”

Ultimately, this type of criticism against the obvious intelligent design found in nature is in fact not a scientific argument. Rather it is a theological argument that basically states, “God doesn’t exist and if I were God, I would have done it differently.” It dismisses biblical history and the effects sin would have on an original “very good” creation outright, while assuming the critics themselves have superior knowledge about how to design a multi-level, interlaced, functional biosphere placed in a physical universe consisting of billions of various factors that would contribute to it and its inhabitants functioning together properly.

How to Understand the Unity in Diversity

It’s easy to understand why those who abandon the authority of God’s word are left floundering in their explanations as to how to understand the complex world we see around us. There is great beauty but also great ugliness in this world. There is good and evil, pleasure and pain. But only the Christian worldview can account for all of it and provide a personal solution to life’s secrets and its ultimate challenge, which is the fact that anyone who is honest with him/herself is faced with a great dilemma.

While all of us gain the benefit of all of the good things life provides, we have also contributed to the evil in the world through our sin. And in order for true justice to come about, we will all have to face judgment one day when we die. Only those who have accepted Jesus Christ as their Savior (the one who has taken our penalty) will have been acquitted of their crimes against the Creator and be free to live with no condemnation with him for the rest of eternity.

And that incredible plan of salvation was also planned out by the Master Designer himself, the true Creator God of the Bible.