NOTE:This post originally appeared earlier, on May 8. It has been plagued with spam – noxious spam. I have erased it from its original site and moved it up to here because the points it makes are serious ones and hopefully a slight change in url will eliminate the garbage thrown at it.

Intelligent Design theory has been attacked as unscientific, offering a false alternative to evolution. I think this criticism is mistaken. ID can be scientifically evaluated.

Most scientists agree that to be considered a scientific hypothesis, a theory must be testable. A theory that can not be rebutted is not scientific. Advocates of Intelligent Design claim life’s wonderful complexity, and its creatures’ amazing fine-tuning to their environment is evidence of deliberate intent. One way to evaluate the argument is to look for evidence of flawed design.

At first glance the evidence looks bad for ID theory. Consider the human back, source of so much pain and suffering for so many people. Backbones work well for four legged animals, but poorly for us two leggeds. Sort of like a Microsoft first release. One might imagine a competent designer would have done a better job.

Anyone noticing their cat or dog can drink and breathe at the same time might be forgiven a moment of envy, because we cannot. Cats and dogs never need the Heimlich maneuver. Sometimes we do. This seems a case of flawed design.

The arcuate cruciate ligament in our knees is enables us to walk upright. Unfortunately, its positioning makes it very susceptible to damage. Four leggeds do not have this problem. Might better design have relieved us of it?

Every human eye has a blind spot, caused by a nerve that goes through the retina. No good audio-visual designer would design equipment with this feature. Why might an intelligent designer have done so?

The ‘circle of willis’ is a circle of arteries and veins surrounding the brain stem. It regulates the blood that nourishes our brains, and so is vital for our existence. It is also susceptible to failing under high blood pressure, resulting in strokes. These veins are among the thinnest in the human body but a good designer would presumably have made them thicker, and less likely to burst.

Women give birth through the pelvis, a barrier that has caused the deaths of many women and infants. The design solution seems obvious: make pelvises wider. Alternatively, locate the birth canal elsewhere or enable women to lay eggs, or equip them pouches like marsupials, so very tiny babies can grow larger safely. It works pretty well for kangaroos.

Then there is the male prostate gland, which is wrapped around the urethra. As men age it generally enlarges, making it difficult, painful, and sometimes impossible to pee. A good designer might have been expected to make it lie along side the urethra.

This list could be lengthened considerably. We have wisdom teeth when it seems wisdom would have eliminated the teeth. The appendix seems something largely unnecessary except occasionally to get inflamed, burst, and kill us.

These signs of bad design challenge ID theory, but to be honest, they hardly rebut it. They only rebut the argument that the designer is omnipotent, omniscient, and good; characteristics the ID hypothesis need not posit. They are imported theological assumptions. For the theory to withstand criticism, at least one of these traits has to be lacking, but a designer might still exist.

A designer supported by the evidence might be sadistic, incompetent, or lazy. Based on Genesis, we might choose laziness, or at least exhaustion, because that account claims we were made the sixth day and God needed to rest the seventh. Omnipotence can definitely be eliminated as a characteristic of the designer. But Genesis is not scientific, so let’s stick with the physical evidence.

To say, as intelligent design advocates do, that the apparent fine-tuning is evidence of intelligent design enables us to rehabilitate the theory, and keep it in scientific contention. Like an archeologist exploring the ruins of an unknown people, using the styles and designs of their artifacts to deduce their interests and skills, we can tell a great deal from looking at what is well designed in us, compared to what is not, at what is finely tuned and what is simply “good enough.”

One characteristic stands out, providing an important clue to the nature of a hypothetical designer: our sexuality. No other mammalian life form is so focused on sex, nor do any others have so many nerve endings so arranged that sexual activity is their source of greatest physical pleasure. Most females of other species come into heat when ready to conceive, and otherwise are uninterested in sex. This is not true for humans.

This evidence is powerful, but for some probably disturbing. Our hypothetical Designer appears more interested in our sex lives than in our eating, breathing, drinking, walking, or other activities necessary for our existence.

If ID is true, we can now offer an educated hypothesis as to why we were designed: to produce pornography. Why else the unusual sexual characteristics we have as humans, characteristics not needed to reproduce? Why else the prominence of sex related sites on the web? A scientific theory of intelligent design offers powerful evidence that High Hefner and Larry Flynt may come closer to serving the will of their Creator than did either Jesus or Buddha, who reportedly both practiced celibacy.

The most likely alternative to this hypothesis is evolution.