Over 95% of life forms that have ever lived have gone extinct, they got thrown on the scrapheap of failed designs.
All extinct life was successful in that it initally replaced something "inferior", something less suited to survive, less adaptable. Failed in that either they were replaced by a newer model or simply died out completely for one reason or another. Are humans really taller now than even a hundred years ago?
Adaptation doesn't have an ultimate "design" and seems incongruent with any sort of creationist first cause. Like god didn't know...
I do agree on the whole.
0.02