I'd be really interested to hear from our religious friends here about their thoughts on intelligent design. My biggest problem with the whole concept is just how flawed things are. I often read (in texts that try to disprove evolution) about how the human eye is a perfect example of perfect devine design. Well... I wear glasses. That right there tells me that something ain't quite so perfect!

I'm going to list a few examples here... please feel free to address them individually, or to summarize. :)


Sex & Sewage:
- Isn't it strange that the most fun parts of our bodies are right beside the most nasty bits? Isn't that kind of like putting a septic tank in your entertainment room?

- Why does it take millions of sperm to possibly fertilize one egg? Isn't this kind of a waste design-wise?


Other body parts:
- Why can the human jaw not properly hold all the teeth we've been given. It's rare for someone to not have their wisdom teeth removed eventually, as they don't even surface, are never used, and only cause trouble for the other teeth. I myself developed two cists from the preasure until they were removed.

- When you swallow, breathing is shut down. Seems a rather important function to stop just because you are eating or drinking. Furthermore, the pipes being connected there seems to be very poor design. I wouldn't put one of my most important tubes open and connected to another tube that I constantly put loose and liquid stuff into.

- The coccyx is where our tails would be if we had them. As it is, it's a series of bones that look very much like little vertebrae. There's no muscle to control them, they don't protect the spinal cord, and serve no function to the human body. There's no reason why they should not be fused into a single bone (unless of coure, we actually did used to have tails... in which case it makes perfect sense!)

- Speaking of tails, we actually DO have a tail, but only between weeks 4 and 7 in the womb. It is reabsorbed into the body after week 7. Oddly enough, the genes that cause this pre-tail to grow are the exact same ones that mice have to grow their tails! When a human is born with a tail (and this does happen), it's not because of some mutation that randomly caused a tail, it's because of the lack of the gene that reverses tail growth.

- This is one of the most bizarre. As we develop, we form three sets of kidneys. The first set appears at 4 weeks. They then degenerate, and reform into a new set of kidneys. These degenerate again, leaving a little bit befind for our third and final set of kidneys! Redudant much???

- Good bacteria... you've all heard the term. We need it to properly digest foods and such. Why do we need it? Why couldn't we have been designed to have all the requisite biochemical skills in the first place?



So... just a short list of the human design issues. There's more, and MANY more in other animals. Discuss! :)

I agree!

You can also take the eye. If God had designed our eyes, why do so many people need glasses/contacts? And also, why can't we see a huge amount of the spectrum?

I want some intelligently designed telescope eyes that can see UV light!

Oh ya, I forgot to say this:
I know that "God works in mysterious ways", and it's a perfectly acceptable and reasonable answer, within the context of religion to say that those designs were to make us flawed. I won't argue against that at all. :)

The annoying part about arguing things like ID is that "God did it" is an acceptable answer for IDiots.

Appendix, anyone?



And what's the deal with this extra hair we get around my age...




I also agree with time about eyes. I can't read this from about two feet away but birds have some of the best vision.


Diseases such as gigantism due to pituitary problems.



All I've got.

well, it takes one sperm to fertilize an egg, but sperm are stupid. a lot of them get lost (no lie), and a lot of them die out from the girl's anti-bodies attacking them. therefore, with shooting out a whooooole bunch of sperm at one egg, the chances of fertilizing the egg become much greater.

thanks, health class.

if you had read shroom's long post in the other thread (i know you never read long posts), you'd know that pubic hair, apparently, traps in body odor to make it stronger-smelling because back in the day, body odor used to attract mates.

Yes, those are the scientific explanations and they're completely correct. However, how would you explain those if they had been designed by god? Wouldn't we only need one sperm, and it would be sacred so it could always find a way in? :P

lol'd

I believe in god because matter must have come into existance somehow and in the end matter and a universe and physics and gravity and anything cannot just be created - all the links like the big bang.. the matter must have got there somehow. And i dont believe that a bunch of elements like carbon and hydrogen can just be made into something that has life.

Well... i dont think humans are divine things... if they were divine then there would be no need for any laws or 'the bible' or anything as we'd all be perfect. Humans are specifically not divine or perfect. I don't think anywhere in religious texts it mentions humans being totally divine, just that there are divine aspects to them.

Everything (i believe) on earth is for a reason and its just that our puny and limited minds cannot comprehend it.

To be honest I grow tired of arguements for or against god or for or against evolution... in the end we are here for some reason or another, none of us know or will ever know what happened before the universe or the earth was created and the whole discussion is pointless. What do we gain by TRYING to prove or disprove any of these theories.

Um...I should be writing ten essays for phychology right now so I'll keep it brief...


First of all: Why are things apparently flawed? Biblical answer: the curse.

Second: Why do we share similarities with animals? Answer: because we live on the same earth; in other words, why do cars have wheels?, because they drive on roads.

Third: the appendix is used to store excess "good-bacteria" etc.


Like I said I need to keep it brief, but this is basically the bare-bones of what I will say. I'll probably flesh this out more later. *In a old man voice* Just you wait...just you wait....

who said god has to make everything perfect? :P

Well, my 'religion' is heavily based upon the premise that we are all totally devine. However, the question was really about the "intelligent creator" of the eye, not the end user.

Insight? Greater knowledge?
I hope I'm clear when I say that I did not create this topic to disprove or prove anything. I created it for a discussion one way or the other, but in particular to gain some insight on how intelligent creation can be reconciled against obvious (to me anyways) human flaws.

You'll have to enlighten me... I'm not sure what the curse is. Was this bestowed upon Adam and Eve prior to the forbidden fruit or after (I assume after). If so, were Adam and Eve originally perfect?

LOL... I dunno if your car wheel analogy works. Cars have wheels so they can move at all... not because of roads. But anyways... you bring up an interesting point about why we are similar to animals. Do you believe that if we ever met aliens, that they would share similarities with us as well?

And if we met these aliens, would they believe in the same God as Christians do? Or is Earth the only planet that has been "enlightened"?

Yeah I'm Christian, and I think the intelligent design thing is pretty much BS :P

Although you can't deny that the process of the sperm fertilizing the egg and all that is the closest thing we can get to a miracle, it's crazy how the process works.

The big bang is a miracle

Yes, Adam and Eve were originally made perfect. Creation was perfect (this is shown in that God called everything "good") After the fall to temptation, Adam and Eve went under spiritual changes, but must have also undergone physical changes (for example they now had a limited lifespan)

This is the chief reason most Christians agree that aliens can not exist. If they do exist then, yes, they would have the same God as we do. Only problem is, it would be rather amazing if they had copies of the Bible.

Indeed. If they had copies of the bible, I have a feeling I would be changing my faith. :)

It's actually an efficient design. Your penis is designed to excrete liquid from your body: why not use the same tube for different reasons? Sure, it could be coming out your forehead, but then you'd have two tubes to take care of, plus you'd look like a dork.

Your camera-phone would be better if it was actually just a camera screwed onto the side of your phone. Why don't we do that?

If it weren't for your tooth brush, I think you'd be glad to cram as many in as possible. Plus "not having enough room" is relative: we just like the way it looks to have straight teeth. We are so homophobic!

Having food go down is more efficient than going up. And having our breathing holes where they are makes it easier to swim without drowning or running into things, like we might if you breathed through your donkey. So it's a good place for both and instead of making ton's of hole's in our heads, to get dirty and infected with bacteria and stuff, we got a few, some that have multiple functions.

It gives the poop hole a nice shape. Seriously, it makes it a shape that is easier to clean. And the reason it's not fused into a single bone is that being slightly flexible makes it stronger.

And for the tail/kidney stuff I'm going to do some research...but until then: 3 and 7 are important numbers to the Christian faith :)

I really don't think that pointing out problems in human design will suffice in disproving ID arguments. When there's always a "God did it" counterargument, there's nothing to debate about. I've just about given up debating about religious matters.

Indeed. That one was more of a joke than anything. :P

It's not just about having straight teeth. Most people can't even use their wisdom teeth, and those teeth can actively destroy other teeth. As I said, I developed cysts from the presure of mine. My friend Nick ended up with a cracked molar due to the presure. For many people they come in sideways, or never break the surface at all. They are teeth we don't use.

Ya, you could be right about that. Makes sense. :)

It doesn't have anything to do with the shape or structure of the 'poop hole'. That's defined by various muscles attached to the pelvis and upper legs. Most biologists think that it's yet another part of the human body that is slowly evolving out of us, as we no longer have need for a tail.

Here's something I don't get about that: why would we loose, or evolve out of, something that, while we don't use it, doesn't hinder us in any way.

i think you mean lose rather than loose?

and we don't evolve out of things that don't hinder us. that's a lot of what this topic was talking about.

like tailbones, public hair, facial hair, etc.

Yes, that would fit with the theory...so why do

?

I'll let Shroom answer that one, since I wasn't involved in the conversation :)

but, in the past, things that used to be harmful might not be harmful to us anymore. the conditions we live in now are much different than our very distant ancestors'.

First, we must understand how adaptation, survival due to that adaptation, and the passing on of the adapted genes creates the gradual evolution of a species. We've gone over this countless times... and although not everyone believes it, I think we all understand it.

Elements that we no longer need to survive, or at all... eventually fade away. This takes a MUCH MUCH MUCH longer time than an adaptation. It's because the genes are still being passed on... but survival, or lack of it, is not helping or hindering these now useless genes. There is no system to keep them in check, so the gene sequence itself begins to degrade. Again, this happens over a VERY LONG time.

It's kind of like if you save a JPG over and over and over. The compression makes it a little worse and less understandable each time. This is esentially what is happening. Data gets lost here and there (as it always does), but there is no system to keep this loss in check. Ie: if data gets lost or mutated or whatever, there is no increase or decrease in the survival rate... so the lost data remains lost but passed on.

This is why we still have qualities about us from when we and Apes had a common ancestor. A few of them are:

- muscles under most hairs on our bodies (not head or face), that were once used to raise our hair to create warmth and stave off predators (when we had more fur)

- muscles behind our ears which are now mostly useless... but they used to allow us to move our ears around to hear better and locate noises more easily

- the leftover base of a tail

- a jaw that once held more grinding teeth


plus many more....

"If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning."-a smart fellow

I agree with that.

Seems out of context here though.

If they were originally created ''perfect'' then surely Eve wouldn't have made the mistake, or ''flaw'' of falling into the serpents trap ?

You cannot be perfect without being able to choose imperfection.

his argument trumps yours tbh

seems to me a perfect person couldn't ruin their perfection.

Well, this is one of those contradictory things that we just have to place into the realm of "faith". It's like the question "Can God create a rock so big that he can't lift it?". Of course he can. And of course he can't.

So can a perfectly perfect human have the capability of being imperfect? Of course! And of course not!!!

But wouldn't that deem them imperfect? :o

It's a definite paradox.

mmhmm

well, a perfect person could ruin their perfection, but they wouldn't choose it because it would make them perfect.