Editing Argument from poor design (section)

== Overview ==
[[File:Fitness-landscape-cartoon.png|thumb|right|Natural selection is expected to push fitness to a peak, but that peak often is not the highest.]]

The argument runs that:

# An [[Omnipotence|omnipotent]], [[Omniscience|omniscient]], [[Omnibenevolence|omnibenevolent]] creator God would create organisms that have optimal design.
# Organisms have features that are suboptimal.
# Therefore, God either did not create these organisms or is not omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent.

It is sometimes used as a [[reductio ad absurdum]] of the well-known [[Teleological argument|argument from design]], which runs as follows:

# Living things are too well-designed to have originated by chance.
# Therefore, life must have been created by an intelligent creator.
# This creator is God.

"Poor design" is consistent with the predictions of the [[scientific theory]] of [[evolution]] by means of [[natural selection]]. This predicts that features that were evolved for certain uses are then reused or co-opted for different uses, or abandoned altogether; and that suboptimal state is due to the inability of the [[heredity|hereditary]] mechanism to eliminate the particular vestiges of the evolutionary process.

In [[fitness landscape]] terms, natural selection will always push "up the hill", but a species cannot normally get from a lower peak to a higher peak without first going through a valley.

The argument from poor design is one of the arguments that was used by [[Charles Darwin]];<ref>[[Charles Darwin|Darwin, Charles]]. ''[[The Origin of Species]]'', 6th ed., Ch. 14.</ref> modern proponents have included [[Stephen Jay Gould]], [[Richard Dawkins]], and [[Nathan H. Lents]]. They argue that such features can be explained as a consequence of the gradual, cumulative nature of the evolutionary process. [[Theistic evolutionists]] generally reject the argument from design, but do still maintain belief in the existence of God.{{citation needed|date=January 2017}}