To cite just one example, "suboptimization" in living things, including DNA, is, in fact, shortsightedness on the part of researchers. Claiming some of DNA is "junk" as some researchers have, is simply wrong. Such DNA constructs regulatory RNA used to control the cells development.
Some non-coding DNA does serve other functions, no one argues that point. That was well-known before the phrase "junk DNA" was ever coined.
However there have been a number of experiments done where large sections of non-coding DNA were removed or replaced with randomized sequences and the organisms were unaffected. (Example:
Megabase deletions of gene deserts result in viable mice : Abstract : Nature)
These sections clearly serve no vital function. The health of the organism is completely unaffected by their loss. Why, if they serve no purpose, would a "designer" bother with them?
The fact that living things share common "building material" certainly does not prove evolution. Rather, it is evidence for a Creator who reuses design patterns.
"Common design, common designer"
I hear this one a lot. However, the wings of a bird, bat, pterosaur, and dragonfly are, so it's claimed, all designed by the same designer as well, even though their forms are drastically different.
Different design, different designer?
Another concept of design that I've seldom seen acknowledged in these type of debates is that, in things we know are designed, the designer can - at any time - go back and scrap the original templates and completely rebuild its designs from the ground up. Evolution, however, would never permit such a thing to happen, because evolution is simply a matter of population genetics and is restricted by the laws of physics and phylogeny.
In evolution, you cannot have an entire suite of functional mutations arise all at the same time as though choreographed to achieve a certain end. Despite what some assert, evolution would never permit one kind of animal to suddenly change into something completely different.
Designers, on the other hand, are not hindered by such rules, especially if they use magic powers instead of natural processes because then there are no rules at all. A designer like a god would be able to create anything it wants, any way it wants, and it would be able to go back and completely change its creations design any time it wanted to. Its creations would
not be expected to fall into any nested hierarchy because they would not be the result of common ancestry, and the relationships of said creations wouldn't even have to make sense.
A nested hierarchy like this:
which is found by sequencing the genomes of various species, is not what we would expect from a designer. No designed objects that we currently possess (AFAIK) could be made to fit such a tree, let alone one that is confirmed through multiple fields of research (trees like the above are confirmed not only through genetics but also through morphology, physiology and embryological research). The ancestral patterns that emerge through studies of such things as genetic orthologues are patterns of descent, not design.
To claim that "
The fact that living things share common "building material" certainly does not prove evolution. Rather, it is evidence for a Creator who reuses design patterns." is a non-starter. Human designers to not "reuse design patterns" as a hard and fast rule, and supernatural designers, as I explained above, would have no reason to at all.
