Argument from poor design

From Conservapedia
This is the current revision of Argument from poor design as edited by DavidE (Talk | contribs) at 12:57, 12 August 2011. This URL is a permanent link to this version of this page.

Jump to: navigation, search

The argument from poor design (also called the dysteleological argument and the argument from dysteleology) is an attempt by evolutionists to refute creationism and intelligent design by pointing to supposed design flaws in creation, e.g., the design of the prostate. The gist of the argument from poor design is that an intelligent designer would not have designed life to have such flaws.

The argument from poor design is fallacious for the following reasons:

  1. It is self-defeating, since under evolutionist theory, any supposed design flaw would have been eliminated by natural selection.
  2. It does not take into account the advantages that supposedly poor designs offer, such as those afflicted with sickle cell anemia having immunity from malaria.
  3. Even if a poor design were shown, it would not counter the other aspects of creation that are unarguably the result of good design; since an absolute rule can be disproved by a single counterexample, a single showing of a biological feature that is unarguably designed and designed well suffices to disprove the argument from poor design.
  4. What appears to be poor design could actually be a result of the Fall of Man. As CreationWiki notes, such "flaws" are actually "a result of deterioration, resulting from Man's Fall."[1]
  5. God did not design organisms to be perfect. To do so would be to create an equal of Himself.


  1. Functional integration indicates design, from CreationWiki