>> No sane Designer would have designed it this way.
>
> Other than your belief that you would have done things differently, what
> is the basis for this claim?

OK, well sanity is something that medical professionals cannot strictly 
define, even for human subjects. So let's leave that out.

What I can say is this: If we had some idea *why* the designer designed 
life, we might be in a position to debate whether the way life works 
matches this goal or not.

ID helpfully omits to specify what the motivation was. With no design 
goal, we can't say a lot. Similarly, ID helpfully omits to specify 
anything about the designer (or designers) at all, so we have nothing to 
go on.

What we /can/ say is that no /human/ designer would have designed life 
this way. But that's probably obvious from the fact that humans have 
never designed anything even approaching the complexity of life. But, 
more particularly, artefacts designed by humans exhibit certain specific 
qualities.

Most obviously, man-made devices are highly discrete in their design. 
The task to be performed is split up into separate subtasks, which are 
performed by lots of little independent, orthogonal units, even if 
that's a less efficient way of doing things.

Compare the computer and the human brain. (No, the don't do the same 
thing. The resemblance is vague at best. But, very loosely, you could 
claim that both are giant signal processors, essentially.)

A computer has a CPU, connected by a narrow bridge to a completely 
separate RAM. It has several I/O devices, sometimes with their own CPUs 
and RAMs, needlessly duplicating functionality already present. In 
short, it is a collection of complex systems connected by simple 
interfaces. (Here "complex" and "simple" are obviously relative terms.)

Now consider the human brain. Rather than having one lump of tissue that 
receives sensory inputs, and a separate lump that stores memories, and a 
separate bit that compares one to the other, and another bit that 
generates motor outputs, what you /actually/ find is that all these 
circuits are all tangled up together. There are no "memory neurons" and 
"comparison neurons". Rather, the brain's ability to compare things or 
to remember things is an emergent property of a large network of more or 
less identical neural components, wired up in different combinations.

A human designer would have built a brain with lots of separate 
compartments. Evolution has built one with lots of related and some 
unrelated functions all tangled up together.

So, we can conclusively say that a human wouldn't have designed this 
organ this way. If we actually knew something about the hypothetical 
designer of ID, we might be able to test that claim as well. (But, 
helpfully, we cannot.)

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