God the Abortionist

I got a kick out of this paragraph from Jim Holt's speculations on the intelligent designer in the New York Times today:

And why should the human reproductive system be so shoddily designed? Fewer than one-third of conceptions culminate in live births. The rest end prematurely, either in early gestation or by miscarriage. Nature appears to be an avid abortionist, which ought to trouble Christians who believe in both original sin and the doctrine that a human being equipped with a soul comes into existence at conception. Souls bearing the stain of original sin, we are told, do not merit salvation. That is why, according to traditional theology, unbaptized babies have to languish in limbo for all eternity. Owing to faulty reproductive design, it would seem that the population of limbo must be at least twice that of heaven and hell combined.

Arguments like these, of course, won't change the mind of anyone who is convinced that God is the intelligent designer. But I think it would be interesting to see what would happen if a student raised points like these during a classroom discussion on intelligent design. Something tells me that this kind of "free inquiry" wouldn't be tolerated for very long.