Design flaws in organisms indicate evolution, not intelligent design

[Compassionist]

The existence of design flaws in living organisms is often cited as evidence for evolution by natural selection rather than intelligent design by an all-loving, all-knowing, and all-powerful deity. If such a being existed and created life intentionally, we might expect optimal design yet what we see instead are structures and processes that are inefficient, prone to failure, or even harmful.
Here are some significant biological design flaws that point to evolution rather than perfect design:
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1. Human Birth Canal vs. Big Brain
Flaw: Human babies have large heads due to our large brains, but the human pelvis is narrow for bipedal walking.
Result: Childbirth is extremely painful and dangerous a leading cause of death historically.
Evolutionary Explanation: Our ancestors evolved larger brains and upright walking separately, leading to a dangerous compromise.
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2. Wisdom Teeth
Flaw: Most people don't have room for third molars, causing impaction, infections, and pain.
Result: Many need surgery to remove them.
Evolutionary Explanation: Our ancestors had larger jaws due to diet, but modern humans' jaws shrank faster than tooth evolution could keep up.
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3. Human Retina Is Backward
Flaw: The photoreceptor cells in the human eye are behind layers of neurons and blood vessels.
Result: Creates a blind spot and reduces image quality.
Evolutionary Explanation: The eye evolved incrementally, not from a clean-slate design.
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4. Recurrent Laryngeal Nerve (Giraffe Example)
Flaw: This nerve travels from the brain to the larynx, but loops around the aorta.
Result: In giraffes, it travels over 15 feet instead of a direct path of a few inches.
Evolutionary Explanation: It's a leftover from fish ancestors, where this path made sense. Evolution modified existing structures rather than redesigning from scratch.
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5. Human Menstrual Cycle
Flaw: Humans shed the uterine lining even if not pregnant, wasting resources and causing pain.
Result: Menstrual cramps, anemia, mood changes.
Evolutionary Explanation: Other mammals reabsorb the lining. Our approach may have evolved due to pathogen risks in internal fertilization.
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6. Shared Path for Food and Air
Flaw: The esophagus (food) and trachea (air) share an entrance.
Result: Risk of choking a leading accidental cause of death.
Evolutionary Explanation: The throat evolved in stages, without foresight.
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7. Human Spine and Back Pain
Flaw: Our spine is an S-curve not ideally suited for upright walking.
Result: Many people suffer chronic back pain, herniated discs, etc.
Evolutionary Explanation: Our ancestors were quadrupeds. The upright posture evolved later, leading to inefficient structure.
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8. Brain Vulnerability and Mental Illness
Flaw: The brain is highly energy-consuming and prone to many dysfunctions.
Result: High rates of depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, etc.
Evolutionary Explanation: Natural selection favored reproductive success, not mental wellness or long-term wellbeing.
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9. Knee Joint Design
Flaw: Knees bear immense strain, especially the ACL (anterior cruciate ligament), which often tears.
Result: Common injuries in sports and aging.
Evolutionary Explanation: Knees evolved from quadruped ancestors, not optimally engineered for bipedal running and jumping.
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10. Genetic "Junk" and Mutations
Flaw: The genome is full of non-coding or redundant DNA and is prone to harmful mutations.
Result: Genetic diseases, cancer, and congenital defects.
Evolutionary Explanation: DNA accumulates "baggage" over time. There's no intelligent editing or streamlining process.
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11. Susceptibility to Cancer
Flaw: Cells divide for life but are prone to mutations that cause cancer.
Result: One of the top global causes of death.
Evolutionary Explanation: Cell division is essential for life, but natural selection can't eliminate all cancer risk especially after reproductive age.
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12. Human Psychology Biases
Flaw: We are prone to cognitive biases (e.g., confirmation bias, tribalism, overconfidence).
Result: Misjudgments, discrimination, and conflict.
Evolutionary Explanation: These evolved to enhance survival in specific environments, not to produce truth-seeking rationality.
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If we were designed by an omnibenevolent, omniscient, and omnipotent being, such flaws are impossible to justify. Evolution by natural selection, on the other hand, explains these quirks and imperfections as the result of a messy, blind, trial-and-error process where old parts are tweaked, not replaced, and survival/reproduction, not perfection, is the end goal.

[otseng]

What you and several others here on this forum are promoting in ignorance, unwittingly or otherwise, is the satanic notion

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[A Freeman]

Genesis 6:5 And "I AM" saw that the wickedness of man [was] great in the earth, and [that] every imagination of the thoughts of his heart [was] only evil continually.

Psalm 53:1-3
53:1 <To the chief Musician upon Mahalath, Maschil, [A Psalm] of David.> The fool hath said in his heart, [There is] no God. Corrupt are they, and have done abominable iniquity: [there is] none that doeth good.
53:2 God looked down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if there were [any] that did understand, that did seek God.
53:3 Every one of them is gone back: they are altogether become filthy; [there is] none that doeth good, no, not one.

Matthew 7:11 If YE then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask Him?

Matthew 25:40-41
25:40 And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done [it] unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done [it] unto me.
25:41 Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand (those playing the goat), Depart from me, ye cursed, into Everlasting Fire, prepared for the devil and his angels (all those that do not DO God's Will):

Luke 9:55 But he turned, and rebuked them, and said, Ye know not what kind of spirit ye are of (Rev. 12:7-9; Matt. 8:22).

Romans 3:10-12
3:10 As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one:
3:11 There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God.
3:12 They are all gone out of The Way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one.

If someone is offended by having the truth pointed out to them that they are promoting something that is clearly satanic (evil) -- which is what got all of us sent to this prison-planet reform school for the criminally insane in the first place -- then please learn to destroy your ego before it destroys YOU (the REAL you; the extraterrestrial spiritual-Being inside the human body you see in the mirror).

The Bible is literally replete with references to this planet being a prison, filled with evil/sinful people (aka criminals), who are literally on death row awaiting imminent execution unless, of course, we change our sinful/evil/criminal ways, i.e. REPENT.

Matthew 4:16-17
4:16 The people which sat in darkness saw great Light; and to them which sat in the region and shadow of death Light is sprung up.
4:17 From that time Jesus began to preach, and to say, REPENT: for The Kingdom of heaven is at hand.

Hopefully the few of hundreds of references indicating our own individual and collective insanity serve as a reminder why we've been COMMANDED not to judge one another or things we know very little or nothing about (Matt. 7:1-4), including alleged "design flaws" in organisms.

The only flaws here on Earth are in our minds, and of our own making.

[Difflugia]

There is not one single shred of evidence indicating there is a "design flaw" in any living organism. That doesn't mean there aren't issues that were caused by ignorant and arrogant human tampering and our propensity to destroy our natural environment instead of LEARNING to work WITH nature. It also doesn't mean there aren't parts of our natural surroundings that we simply don't understand; there obviously are MANY things which are either misunderstood or not understood at all. But our ignorance of our own arrogance blinds us from this very obvious truth.

So, are you a biological inerrantist? This just sounds like inerrancy apologetics, but with meat instead of the Bible.

[Jose Fly]

no one has EVER demonstrated that random mutations can somehow create new information, or improve existing information

Oh yay, we get to play this old game again!

How are you defining and measuring "new information"? For example, how do you determine which of two genomes has more "information"?

[The Barbarian]

nature January 2013
Applying Shannon's information theory to bacterial and phage genomes and metagenomes
All sequence data contain inherent information that can be measured by Shannon's uncertainty theory. Such measurement is valuable in evaluating large data sets, such as metagenomic libraries, to prioritize their analysis and annotation, thus saving computational resources. Here, Shannon's index of complete phage and bacterial genomes was examined. The information content of a genome was found to be highly dependent on the genome length, GC content and sequence word size. In metagenomic sequences, the amount of information correlated with the number of matches found by comparison to sequence databases. A sequence with more information (higher uncertainty) has a higher probability of being significantly similar to other sequences in the database. Measuring uncertainty may be used for rapid screening for sequences with matches in available database, prioritizing computational resources and indicating which sequences with no known similarities are likely to be important for more detailed analysis.

Shannon's equation shows that every new mutation in a population increases information. And that's where it matters. Evolution is not something that happens to individuals; it happens to populations.

[rob4lynn]

[Replying to Compassionist in post #1]

From an atheist view, it is understandable that these inconsistencies would be there. From a view of a creator, these changes are grace, and there is a plan to redeem creation. Actually it is amazing to me to see everything within the universe would be built on similar building block structures. While some may point to evolution, I would say that making everything from the same building blocks would be the sign of intelligent design.

If we look at what the Creator was seeking, it was the ability to have a relationship with a being that was created in its image. If I make a creation that has no choice but to submit, then I cannot hold a relationship with that being. It has no choices. If I create a world and a being that has choices, then there is always the choice that it will not choose the path that I know will be best for it. I allow for the possibility that my perfect creation, from which I rested after 6 literal days, would be set on a different path when my creation did not go the path that I knew would be best for the creation I made.

This introduces within it the start of opposition, and thus suboptimal use of the resources built within the plan.

This would make the perfect creation deviate.

And your question is probably why would the creator do this. Because without choice, then there is no expression of love. Obedience can only exist within the realm of choice. Because the choice was disobedience, it introduces into the world subversion of the intended use of all of creation, and thus the fall of humankind, and then destruction ensues.

What is more interested is that matter cannot be created nor destroyed, which actually goes to a point that creation happened and then reduced from there. Generally as science sees, decay is the state in which things exist. Thus leading to a conclusion that things don't necessarily evolve, they devolve from the current state. If there were things such as evolution, you would expect the human anatomy to have some evidence of change even over thousands of years. Granted people's heights, muscular size and so forth could have "evolved". But generally bone structure, organs and so forth do not miraculously change.

[Carnivalfaces]

[Replying to rob4lynn in post #66]

How is it that what you just said is anymore believable than Santa Clause lives at the north pole?

[Clownboat]

From an atheist view, it is understandable that these inconsistencies would be there. From a view of a creator, these changes are grace, and there is a plan to redeem creation. Actually it is amazing to me to see everything within the universe would be built on similar building block structures. While some may point to evolution, I would say that making everything from the same building blocks would be the sign of intelligent design.

You could say that, but it doesn't actually point to intelligence. It would point to a possible lack of creativity that I wouldn't expect a universe creator to have though.

If we look at what the Creator was seeking, it was the ability to have a relationship with a being that was created in its image.

Which creator god concept are you referring to and why would it have a need to have a relationship with created beings? If you are talking about the Christian god concept, then created angels already existed and creating more beings wouldn't seem necessary.

If I make a creation that has no choice but to submit, then I cannot hold a relationship with that being.

I don't see how that follows. Obviously, I didn't create my dog, but it does not have a choice other than to submit to me and our relationship is just fine.

If I create a world and a being that has choices, then there is always the choice that it will not choose the path that I know will be best for it.

I acknowledge that if you were to create such a world and beings, that they would have a choice to not choose some path that you had intended. Not sure what you creating worlds has to do with design flaws though. Would you create these beings and then call them perfect, or would you create them with flaws?

I allow for the possibility that my perfect creation, from which I rested after 6 literal days, would be set on a different path when my creation did not go the path that I knew would be best for the creation I made.

Then you need to look inward and figure out why you failed to make a perfect creation, not blame the creation for not being perfect.

And your question is probably why would the creator do this. Because without choice, then there is no expression of love.

I acknowledge that you don't believe there can be love without choice. I see nothing to debate.

Obedience can only exist within the realm of choice. Because the choice was disobedience, it introduces into the world subversion of the intended use of all of creation, and thus the fall of humankind, and then destruction ensues.

Why would a perfect creation disobey its creator? That doesn't make sense to me.

What is more interested is that matter cannot be created nor destroyed, which actually goes to a point that creation happened and then reduced from there.

That doesn't follow. Matter cannot be created nor destroyed, but that doesn't point to a creation event. It only points to a known fact about matter if we are being honest.

Generally as science sees, decay is the state in which things exist. Thus leading to a conclusion that things don't necessarily evolve, they devolve from the current state.

This must be rejected due to observed evolution (I'm not discounting how things have devolved of course though).

If there were things such as evolution, you would expect the human anatomy to have some evidence of change even over thousands of years.

Evolution is the change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations and this is an observed fact that occurs. The theory that explains how this works (the theory of evolution) is falsifiable and is able to be shown to not be the best explanation for what happens if something better can be presented.

For evidence that humans have changed, see vestigial structures or vestigial organs as examples to get you started.

Granted people's heights, muscular size and so forth could have "evolved". But generally bone structure, organs and so forth do not miraculously change.

You need to not think in terms of miracles. For example, if the environment for the population of animal X were to change, say the primary food source was dying off and the remaining food source was smaller and faster than the previous, the animals within the population that were smaller and faster than the others would have a better chance at surviving and producing offspring. Fast forward in time and now the population is smaller and faster than it once was. After enough time of getting smaller and faster, the population will appear different than the population it evolved from.

Perhaps we would now look at one population and call them White Tail and the other Pudus, but both of them evolved from a population that may not be found on earth any longer. The theory of evolution is not miraculous and doesn't require miracles. Just small changes to take effect over time within a population.

[Bible_Student]

Just because someone has a few desires for changes doesn't mean they're qualified to determine whether those changes will actually be beneficial in terms of completeness. I believe that a product's creator is the one who defines when their product is "complete" with reference to the purpose for which it was designed and created. If a product works according to the purpose for which it was designed and created by its creator, then it is perfect.

A human being cannot decide what a perfect human being is, since humans didn't create themselves. In fact, if an evolutionist finds flaws in an organism that "functions effectively," the most they could say is that under current conditions, that organism is flawed from their personal perspective, and that those flaws will have arisen at some point for some unknown reason, under unknown circumstances and ... Whose fault would it be?

Deut. 32:3 For I shall declare the name of Jehovah.
Do YOU attribute greatness to our God!
 4 The Rock, perfect is his activity,
For all his ways are justice.
A God of faithfulness, with whom there is no injustice;
Righteous and upright is he.
 5 They have acted ruinously on their own part;
They are not his children, the defect is their own.
A generation crooked and twisted!

... Or maybe that they would like its design or functioning to be different... mmmh. Try and make your own.

[Clownboat]

Just because someone has a few desires for changes doesn't mean they're qualified to determine whether those changes will actually be beneficial in terms of completeness. I believe that a product's creator is the one who defines when their product is "complete" with reference to the purpose for which it was designed and created. If a product works according to the purpose for which it was designed and created by its creator, then it is perfect.

This is false. In your scenario, the product would be deemed to be good enough for its purpose, but that doesn't necessarily make the product perfect like you claim.

A human being cannot decide what a perfect human being is, since humans didn't create themselves.

Umm.... humans do create themselves. My wife and I created two humans as a matter of fact.

Either way, you seem to be wrong once again.
A human being can in fact decide what is a perfect human, but that determination is meaningless because the decision is arbitrary and wouldn't necessarily apply to the human next to them. They may still have what they consider a perfect human in their mind though and may even observe people that they consider to be perfect.
I could also consider my wife to be perfect without having had to create her. Therefore, arbitrary feelings about perfectness have nothing to do with creating the said thing or not like you claimed.

In fact, if an evolutionist finds flaws in an organism that "functions effectively," the most they could say is that under current conditions, that organism is flawed from their personal perspective, and that those flaws will have arisen at some point for some unknown reason, under unknown circumstances and ... Whose fault would it be?

If the evolutionist that you are talking about is a Muslim, the who would be Allah.
If the evolutionist is a Christian, the who would be Jehovah.
If the evolutionist was an atheist, there would be no who.
Why are you asking this question? The answers seems self evident after all.

<snipped some irrelevant scripture verses>

... Or maybe that they would like its design or functioning to be different... mmmh. Try and make your own.

This seems to be an emotional response, but perhaps I am missing something. Make debate points and they will be addressed. How you feel matters not in debate.

Be well!