Introduction:

One of the most common objections to the idea that biological life has been designed by a benevolent creator is the presence of biological systems that are less than ideal. This is the very objection addressed by Michael Berhow in his book, Dysteleology: A Philosophical Assessment of Suboptimal Design in Biology.

Berhow begins with a brief introduction to the topic of suboptimal design in biology. Strictly speaking, this is a critique of ID that points to less-than-ideal features of biological systems. One proposed example of suboptimal design is the presence of blindspots in the human eye. An omnipotent and omni benevolent being would never create such flawed creatures, and so many take this phenomenon to be a defeater of the existence of such a being. Others take it merely as a demonstration that this being did not deliberately design creatures with these features, preferring to believe that these features arose out of naturalistic processes, in which case suboptimal design is merely a defeater of ID.

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