Calling something bad design without discussing the actual problems it causes is mere name-calling or unsupported opinion. I submit that if you can't make a claim that something is hard to maintain, unreliable, hard to understand, incorrect, fragile, etc... then it is not bad design.
The claim that it is "bad" because it doesn't fit in to a certain paradigm is at best a valid claim that it is inconsistent with the rest of the codebase and therefore hard to work with. At worst, it's cargo-cult engineering; doing something a certain way because it's said to be "good" without understanding why.
"I submit that if you can't make a claim that something is hard to maintain, unreliable, hard to understand, incorrect, fragile, etc... then it is not bad design."
That's not really true either - it just means that the claimant probably lacks the experience to recognize whether or not it's bad design. Even people who are right for the wrong reasons can still be right.
The claim that it is "bad" because it doesn't fit in to a certain paradigm is at best a valid claim that it is inconsistent with the rest of the codebase and therefore hard to work with. At worst, it's cargo-cult engineering; doing something a certain way because it's said to be "good" without understanding why.