Slothful induction occurs when someone doesn't focus on where the majority of the evidence is pointing, and instead they will find a reason to go with the opposite conclusion. "Lazy induction", basically means, they focus on one or two pieces of evidence but will ignore the overwhelming majority percentage of evidence and where it points to.
This fallacy is what all arguments pertaining to "bad design" in life, are. They are all based on taking one area of a particular designed system of anatomy, and basically selectively choosing the area they think is badly designed such as the blind spot, then IGNORING the 99.99% of things the eye is designed very well to do.
So the tactic is basically the same for any system in the body, they find something they believe it badly designed (but usually they just don't understand the anatomy very well) then they ignore the HUGE LIST of things that system does marvellously well and is designed brilliantly to do, and just focus on one or two complaints that they have, then infer the astronomical non-sequitur that "therefore this organism is badly designed."
In fact logical rules would only allow you to infer that that one particular thing is badly designed, NOT the whole of the organism's anatomy. And you could only conclude that if you proved it was badly designed, but it turns out that all of the popular arguments atheists argue for bad design, is their own ignorance of anatomy.
Example 1, the pharynx/larynx. With the design of your throat you can do many successful things it is well designed to do such as chew, swallow, speak, whistle, shout, whisper, smile, frown, breathe, eat and drink from one entry-point, and forget that we can viably drink upside down, eat upside down, forget that we can spit, laugh, lick, taste, sing, sneeze, cough, regurgitate, belch, Bork, and forget the perfect structure of the voice-box, where we can successfully change the tone of our voice and how audible it is. If you were to ignore all of the evidence highlighted in blue and ignore the whole structure is all a neat package including aesthetics, and if you were to just focus on the fact that we can potentially choke. (the evolutionist's/atheists complaint) then you have just committed slothful induction fallacy by ignoring the majority of the evidence pointing to incredible design.
Example 2 is the eye. The incorrect complaints are usually two, atheists complain about the wiring of the retina and the blind spot. In reality those are not badly designed if you look into it properly, but look at just some of the things the eye is very well designed to do;
- succesful light-penetration of nerve net through clever Muller cells that collect light from largest possible surface area of the retina.
- Successful refreshment of the photo receptors through the choroid.
- we can see in colour
- we have the software to take the elemental colours and interpret all of the subtleties thereof when merged.
- The lens and eyeball is self-washing, unlike when you have spectacles.
- We can change the focus of our eye, and see in immense detail and clarity.
- We can adjust to the dark by the pupil opening. (humans are diurnal not nocturnal so this would be more advantageous for nocturnal animals so the design seems to be limited but a cat's pupil opens fully which is why you see their eyes glowing, which is the layer behind the retina.)
- The eye lid can stop dust from entering our eye and it doesn't get heavy because it is the correct weight for the muscles.
- We have the exactly correct types of fluid in the eye such as the rhodopsin. It is very sensitive to light and perfect for low light conditions. (correct materials)
- correction of aberration.
- Neat, and beautiful structure.
- The software in the brain to create vision,
This is of course only what the camera eye in humans does successfully as a design and there are dozens and dozens more viable designs of eye which enable sight, of which I am not qualified to give you the list of the likely 200 more well designed things our eyes do.
If you were to indulge atheist reasoning you are to forget all that evidence of design and just focus on an irrelevant blind spot or the direction of the photo receptors, atheists would argue.
CONCLUSION: Isn't it obvious that any system the atheists points to, s/he is deliberately selecting the one thing they believe that system is not designed well to do, but ignoring the 99.99% of things it does do well? And to compound that logical error the complaints they argue usually turn out to not be valid.
Isn't it much more likely that given 99.9% of our bodies are designed well, that it's more probable atheists are taking a small percentage of things they BELIEVE are poorly designed, and jumping to the conclusion they are poorly designed? Isn't it more likely that the small percentage they argue is their own error and the figure of 99.99% is then explainable to us if we infer that the figure is actually 100% because the atheist complaints are negligible?
Because when you think about it if a chess master has a game of chess and wins and you think he made two errors, if it is he who is the chess master, isn't it more likely that you as a fan made an error and the small percentage of errors you thought were errors, were actually not?
If we look at the design in life, the designer is atheists would have to admit, coming up with 99.999% fantastic design, so then isn't it more likely it is 100% if the designer can invent those designs?
The blind spot, if it were truly a bad design, would mean most people would be aware of it hindering them in some way. The fact an atheist has to get a piece of paper and a pen and show you how the blind spot exists, is the very evidence that their complaint is negligible, for nobody would need to be shown why the blind spot on a car's side mirror is a problem because they would already know why it was a problem, proving logically by deductive reasoning that the blind spot in the human eye is negligible. So then that is one error the atheist makes, to use the rhetorical device called, "playing it up", to INFLATE the significance of the blind spot when in actual fact it has no significance at all because it does not impede our sight. Nor does the wiring of the retina, it actually helps to refresh the photo receptors from the choroid by placing them close to the blood supply. The Mueller cells then help to take all light from the retina's surface by capitilising on the total surface area which is actually an INCREDIBLE bit of genius by the inventor of your eyes because the light is collected and the nerve net that would impede it is then negated.
