What interests does “poor design of the human body” rhetoric serve?

Missed this from last summer but looking at it again raises a question: A review of Human Errors: A Panorama of Our Glitches, from Pointless Bones to Broken Genes. by Nathan Lents that indulges in outdated claims with impunity:

If it’s all that bad, why are there so darn many of us? Why are we supposed to be destroying the planet instead of dying out?

In his new book Human Errors: A Panorama of Our Glitches, from Pointless Bones to Broken Genes, Nathan Lents, a professor of biology at John Jay College, CUNY, has demonstrated that the human body can’t possibly be considered the product of an intelligent designer. Rather, its flaws tell the story of evolution. No intelligent designer would have put our retinas in backwards, left us with the stump of a tail, deprived us of the ability to make the vitamins and nutrients we need, or sent our recurrent laryngeal nerve on such a circuitous path. No intelligent designer would have filled our genomes with genes that don’t work and viral carcasses of past infections. These and our many other defects are explained only by the quirks of evolution.Harriet Hall, “” at Science-Based Medicine

One of the interesting things about this type of rhetoric is that it doesn’t need to be in sync with anything in particular and it can be repeated indefinitely without facing challenges.

Given that it is incorrect and doesn’t make sense, we might be wise to ask, what interests it serves.

See also: Nathan Lents is still wrong about sinuses but is still writing about them

Does Nathan Lents, author of a “bad design” book really teach biology? A doctor looks at his claims about the human sinuses

and

Bad design of the human mouth enables us to speak

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