The View From 1776

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The following is the second part of an essay by Jon Koniecki, who is a senior product design engineer for a major supplier of laboratory equipment and supplies, with over 35 years experience designing medical and industrial instruments and controls. He has a Master’s in biomedical engineering and graduated Magna Cum Laude from a highly ranked school of engineering.

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A Product Designer’s Perspective on Intelligent Design - Part 2
By Jon Koniecki

“Proofs” of Evolution Consequence of Good Design Practice

Stephan Jay Gould’s famous essay on the panda’s thumb illustrates fundamental misconceptions regarding design.  In this essay he argues that the panda’s thumb could not possibly be the product of intelligent design because it is a kludge whose only redeeming quality is that it works.  The object of product design is to create something useful with a minimum expenditure of time, labor and material.  In any design the number of possible implementations is limited only by the imagination of the designer.  Any implementation that “works,” i.e. fulfills the desired function, is a good design, regardless of how it offends Gould’s aesthetic sensibilities.  Moreover, the most cost effective solution in implementing a feature is a simple modification of a part already needed for a different function.  Since the panda’s thumb is a simple extension of a wrist bone, it is, by the actual criteria used by designers, an elegant design.

A new product design never really starts with a purely blank sheet of paper.  A review of the technical literature and competitive products must first be done to assess the current state of the art.  Unless justified by cost or performance, using other than an existing design needlessly increases the risk of schedule slippage – resulting in lost sales – and product malfunction – resulting in safety hazards.  A designer can also minimize the cost of introducing a new product by focusing his time and effort on only those features that differ from existing products.  A consequence of this practice of design reuse is that products exhibit a hierarchical classification structure as product characteristics diverge with differing functions – a so-called “Evolutionary Tree of Descent.” This “form following structure” characteristic of good design practice is clearly seen in the ecological principle of “one species, one niche.”

Because of this practice of design reuse, a characteristic of good designs is adaptability to meet a wide range of situations.  Designing in a large capability of variation into organisms (microevolution) enables a viable breeding population to survive under changing circumstances.  The significant fact in the case of the peppered moth is that both varieties remain despite drastic changes in the surrounding environment.

Also as an existing design is adapted to perform new functions, “vestigial” functions appear.  To boost manufacturing volume efficiencies, a fully featured product is designed.  Components not needed for “economy” versions of the product are then omitted during manufacture.

Evolution Lacks Empirical Content

In contrast, Evolution has no place in a legitimate science curriculum since it lacks the empirical content that allows a scientific theory to say anything, and it consequently does not fit the orthodox criteria of “prediction and control” as the hallmarks of scientific method.  The theory of evolution remains incomplete, as we have no mechanism of variation.  We cannot explain why the existing species or organisms have the particular structures that they possess, nor are we able to predict what new forms will spring from them.  Nor is the problem of the origin of life solved.  In its irrational denial of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, Evolution evades rather than resolves the problem of origins posed by this law.  The plausibility of Evolution instead depends upon a blatant exploitation of ambiguity in its key concepts like “science,” “species,” and “random”, bogus methodology, and disregard of disconfirming evidence. 

The concept of “randomness” is characterized by the absence of order.  The plausibility of organized structures, like living organisms, arising by chance from “random” processes is equivalent to that of the governor of Wisconsin winning the Megabucks® lottery.  The mathematical odds of anybody winning are one in 35 million, yet people do in fact win the lottery.  While it is certainly mathematically possible for the governor to win as well, who in their right mind would believe that the lottery was not rigged?  “Randomness” is an anthropomorphism.  We say that a process is “random” if it is analogous to a human acting arbitrarily.  Therefore, to dismiss a relationship as “random” is equivalent to saying that there is no relationship to investigate.  Organization cannot therefore arise from “random” processes since any organizing process is, by definition, not “random.” In their assertion that highly structured organisms can originate through “random” processes, Evolutionists introduce a self-contradictory concept that, through the logical principle of material implication, can validly lead to any conclusion whatsoever. 

Examples of “micro-evolution,” the inherent variability within species that is expressed by homozygote subpopulations within the heterozygote parent population, are used to prove that “macro-evolution,” the transformation of species into entirely new kind of organisms, actually occurred.  Genetic mutations are rarely benign, much less beneficial.  Antibiotic-resistant mutant bacteria strains are missing critical components of their metabolic machinery and cannot compete successfully against normal strains under natural conditions.  As documented in Forbidden Archeology and other sources, numerous human remains and artifacts have been found throughout the geologic column, supporting the Genesis accounts of the Creation and Flood.  Other key concepts in Evolution, such as “science,” “evolutionary descent,” “natural selection,” and “geologic column,” are defined in terms of the phenomena they attempt to explain.  Consequently, propositions in Evolution reduce to meaningless phrases like “only Evolution is scientific because only Evolution is scientific,” “organisms have similarities and differences because they have similarities and differences,” “organisms survived because they survived,” and “organisms lived when they lived.”

Religious Motivation of Evolution

The Dover decision also noticeably ignored the religious motivation behind the promotion of Evolution.  Exploiting Newton’s failure to accommodate God’s provisional grace in his mechanics, Evolution was first proposed by Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744-1829) to discredit the power and influence of the Roman Catholic Church prior to the French Revolution.  Likewise, Evolutionists’ insistence upon “natural” explanations is a groundless ad hominem attack on Roman Catholicism’s use of miracles.  Ignored in the argument was the fact that a universe that God cannot control is one that man cannot control either, thus rendering science an exercise in trivial pursuit.  Curiously enough, Lamarck, who pioneered the study of invertebrate anatomy and physiology, was forced to conclude by his investigations that there was no evidence of evolution ever having occurred among the invertebrates.  R. L. de Vilmorin, a member of a long-established family of French seedsmen, showed that Darwin’s argument for natural selection in nature did not correspond with the actual actions of animal breeders.  He pointed out that the best results in breeding plants came from choosing a line of plants on its average performance rather than on the basis of selecting individual parents.  Darwin’s chief protagonist, Thomas Henry Huxley, “Darwin’s bulldog”, ironically pointed out that the infertility of the products of crossing different though allied species had no possible explanation if the species had a common origin.  Despite widespread opposition among the scientific community, Evolution prevailed because Darwin’s “survival of the fittest” better rationalized the prevailing business practices than the earlier Calvinist Doctrine of Election.  Scientists who opposed Evolution simply did not get their research funded, as is the case today.

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