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What would counter-arguments from the Jewish perspective be to arguments like the ones in this video against intelligent design? The basic premise is that humans, Earth, and the universe are, in fact, quite stupidly designed and have many flaws.

I have a few of my own counter-arguments already (namely, that nothing is without flaw except for God, and thus no matter how we were created there would be some flaws — all things considered, life is far more miraculous and intelligently designed than not), but I am curious what we can put together here.

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  • We don't know the purpose of creation, so saying the design is bad is a bit superfluous. There are also problems of language like "good and bad design" and the entire concept of design in general. – rosenjcb Dec 26 '14 at 0:38
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    Who says that "intelligent design" is what Jews believe? – Daniel Dec 26 '14 at 0:44
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    I encourage answers to clarify how their response is "from the Jewish perspective". – Double AA♦ Dec 26 '14 at 1:10
  • @Daniel Elaborate...? – WhoKnows Dec 26 '14 at 2:21
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I once heard the following from Rav Aharon Lopiansky. He basically said that any such suggestion of "If G-d really made the world, it should have been like such and such" is making the assumption that when G-d creates a world, He does it in exactly such a way. Saying "If I created the world, I would make it like such and such" shows nothing, because that has no bearing on how G-d creates a world. And we have no model of how G-d creates worlds to compare our world to. So the assumption of the question, that if G-d created the world it would be exactly like X, is baseless.

Additionally, R' Lopiansky added that we believe that it is more of a revelation of G-d's complete perfection that He can create a world which has so much fragmentation - there is an unveiling of G-d's perfection from within the disparity.

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  • Can you please elaborate on your second paragraph here? Might have an answer in there... :) Thanks! Good stuff otherwise. Put what I was thinking in much better words... – WhoKnows Dec 26 '14 at 18:12
  • According to this, wouldn't the intelligent design idea be COMPLETELY useless, even if not being used as a proof in the strictest sense of the word? – Gavriel Dec 27 '14 at 19:32
  • @Gavriel No - despite everything else, the world as it is is an incredible statistical anomaly. They are two separate points. – Y     e     z Dec 28 '14 at 3:06

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