Bozo design

I was thinking about my April 30 post God and Homo sapiens, a report on University of California Irvine professor, Francisco J. Ayala, a former Dominican priest who argues that, "If God has designed organisms, he has a lot to account for” in a moral sense. It's kind of the argument, How could a good God create evil? I think enough theologians through the ages have dealt with that question (albeit not very convincingly) that we don't have to revisit it here.

My argument is practical, not moral. If a designer was intelligent enough to create nuclear fusion, dark energy, hummingbirds, 17-year cicadas, etc., then how come she botched so many things that a moderately bright 5th grader would have done better? A competent engineer, given adequate resources, designs things to work, not just OK, but damn near perfectly. So, given infinite resources, how come the intelligent designer sort of cobbled things together? I'll give only one example - the placement of the human trachea in front of the esophagus requires that every drop of liquid, every crumb of food traveling toward the stomach has to pass over the windpipe. In theory a little manhole cover comes down and covers it up, but not always. That's why thousands of people die from choking on a morsel of steak, etc. Can you say Heimlich? Assuming that an intelligent designer designs organisms to live, not to die from trivial accidents, this constitutes an argument against intelligent design. If you can't accept evolution, your choice isn't ID, but BD, Bozo Design.