Dan Barker on The argument from design
Barker argues that the appearance of design in nature is explained by evolution, and that the natural world shows as much evidence of poor design as good.
Dan Barker, as a former evangelical preacher who spent years proclaiming God's design in creation, brings a convert's perspective to this argument. His rejection of design is informed by his own deconversion — he once found the argument compelling and now regards it as a textbook example of confirmation bias. Believers see design because they are looking for it, not because it is there.
In Godless and in his numerous debates, Barker argues that evolution by natural selection fully explains the appearance of design in biology. Complex structures arise gradually through the accumulation of small, heritable variations, each preserved because it confers a survival advantage. No designer is needed — only time, variation, and selection.
Barker also emphasises the evidence of poor design — the human spine (poorly adapted for upright walking), the blind spot in the human eye, the sharing of the airway and food passage (a design that kills thousands through choking each year). These features are exactly what evolution predicts (good enough, not perfect) and nothing like what an intelligent designer would produce.
“The design argument works only if you ignore all the evidence of non-design — the cruelty, the waste, the suffering built into the very fabric of nature.”