Being sick this whole entire week, I haven't wanted to post anything, because I wasn't sure I could write something that was coherent. But, it got me to thinking about some of the claims of the intelligent design advocates that claim that we were designed by a master designer. Some of them argue, for instance, that the eye is exquisitely designed and perfectly so - which, incidentally ignores some pertinent facts about the eye, but whatever.
So, when we get sick, what does that mean about our design? As I am acutely aware of right now, having our core temperature rise above its normal value by as little as a few tenths of a degree can cause some serious issues - headaches, nausea, etc. Knowing that bacteria and viruses can invade our designed bodies and increase our temperature, a good designer might try to keep this from happening or design a system that would not allow it to cause so much distress. There's no doubt that god would know this and would have had the ability to design us to avoid these issues.
Now, asserting that we were designed does not necessarily mean the design was perfect, which some ID advocates do hold to. But, when applied to god, what does this mean? It means that god intentionally gave us a sub-optimal design. god intentionally created something that was imperfect. There's some theological issues with that for sure. This also starts to get into murky territory for the theist when we start to talk about the fact that god was ensuring suffering for humans which destroys god's claim to omni-benevolence.
