The Designer Was A Dipshit
David Barash wipes the floor with "intelligent design" in the LA Times:
Current believers in creationism, masquerading in its barely disguised incarnation, "intelligent design," argue similarly, claiming that only a designer could generate such complex, perfect wonders.But, in fact, the living world is shot through with imperfection. Unless one wants to attribute either incompetence or sheer malevolence to such a designer, this imperfection — the manifold design flaws of life — points incontrovertibly to a natural, rather than a divine, process, one in which living things were not created de novo, but evolved. Consider the human body. Ask yourself, if you were designing the optimum exit for a fetus, would you engineer a route that passes through the narrow confines of the pelvic bones? Add to this the tragic reality that childbirth is not only painful in our species but downright dangerous and sometimes lethal, owing to a baby's head being too large for the mother's birth canal.
This design flaw is all the more dramatic because anyone glancing at a skeleton can see immediately that there is plenty of room for even the most stubbornly large-brained, misoriented fetus to be easily delivered anywhere in that vast, non-bony region below the ribs. (In fact, this is precisely the route obstetricians follow when performing a caesarean section.)
Why would evolution neglect the simple, straightforward solution? Because human beings are four-legged mammals by history. Our ancestors carried their spines parallel to the ground; it was only with our evolved upright posture that the pelvic girdle had to be rotated (and thereby narrowed), making a tight fit out of what for other mammals is nearly always an easy passage.
An engineer who designed such a system from scratch would be summarily fired, but evolution didn't have the luxury of intelligent design.
Admittedly, it could be argued that the dangers and discomforts of childbirth were intelligently, albeit vengefully, planned, given Genesis' account of God's judgment upon Eve: As punishment for Eve's disobedience in Eden, "in pain you shall bring forth children." (Might this imply that if she'd only behaved, women's vaginas would have been where their bellybuttons currently reside?)
On to men. It is simply deplorable that the prostate gland is so close to the urinary system that (the common) enlargement of the former impinges awkwardly on the latter.
In addition, as human testicles descended — both in evolution and in embryology — the vas deferens (which carries sperm) became looped around the ureter (which carries urine from kidneys to bladder), resulting in an altogether illogical arrangement that would never have occurred if, like a minimally competent designer, natural selection could have anticipated the situation.
There's much more that the supposed designer botched: ill-constructed knee joints that wear out, a lower back that's prone to pain, an inverted exit of the optic nerve via the retina, resulting in a blind spot.
And what about the theological implications of all this? If God is the designer, and we are created in his image, does that mean he has back problems too?
In a letter to the editor, forwarded to me, Ben Akerley asks (what should be) the obvious:
David P. Barash's scathing indictment of oxymoronic ID (Intelligent Design) immediately brought to mind one of the favorite stories that America's great agnostic orator, Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899) used to tell his audiences: A devout clergyman one day pointed out a crane to his young son explaining that God, in his infinite wisdom, had designed his short legs and long, slender bill to enable him to catch fish easily. Then the little boy protested quizzically, "I understand God's goodness as far as the crane is concerned, but father, don't you think the arrangement a little tough on the fish?"Of course ID also begs the unanswerable question that if creationism explains all origins, who designed the designer?
The joke goes like this:
Three engineers are arguing about what background a Creator must have to have built a human body. "He must have been a mechanical engineer," said one, "because, look at the joints, the hydraulics of circulation!" A second nerd disagreed vehemently: "Nonsense! He was a chemist! Look at the subtlety of nerve transmission and of oxygenation of the blood!" The third, I think, was closer to the truth, though: "He was a civil engineer. Who else would put a sewer line through a recreational area?"
If you *really* want to make the ID people squirm, then just point out fake sex in parthenogenic species: whiptail lizards of the genus Cnemidophorus have only females. An individual's fertility increases when another lizard engages in pseudomale behaviour and attempts to copulate with it. These lizards' nearest relatives - the ones most similar to them in geography, genetics, anatomy and biochemistry - are sexual species. The hormones for reproduction in these others are stimulated by sexual behaviour. Now, although Cnemidophorus are parthenogenetic, simulated sexual behaviour increases fertility. (See: Crews and Young 1991: 'Pseudocopulation in nature in a unisexual whiptail lizard', Animal Behaviour 42: 512-514; Crews and Fitzgerald 1980: 'Sexual behavior in parthenogenetic lizards (Cnemidophorus)', Proceedings of the National Academy of Science 77: 499-502.)
Imagine the horror: *Totally natural, sin-free, "designed" homosexual behavior!*
Radwaste at July 1, 2005 5:39 AM
'Pseudocopulation in nature in a unisexual whiptail lizard'...
I think the art of blogging may just have undergone its own moment of supreme ecstasy. Radwaste, your post is so delicious even my morning coffee suddenly tastes better.
modestproposal at July 1, 2005 7:06 AM
It concerns me a great deal that the issue of "first cause" is never given a second thought.
Everyone's favorite atheist curmudgeon agrees!
""My father taught me that the question, Who made me? cannot be answered, since it immediately suggests the further question, Who made God?" That very simple sentence showed me, as I still think, the fallacy in the argument of the First Cause. If everything must have a cause, then God must have a cause. If there can be anything without a cause, it may just as well be the world as God, so that there cannot be any validity in that argument. It is exactly of the same nature as the Hindu's view, that the world rested upon an elephant, and the elephant rested upon a tortoise; and when they said, "How about the tortoise?" the Indian said, "Suppose we change the subject." The argument is really no better than that. There is no reason why the world could not have come into being without a cause; nor, on the other hand, is there any reason why it should not have always existed. There is no reason to suppose that the world had a beginning at all. The idea that things must have a beginning is really due to the poverty of our imagination. Therefore, perhaps, I need not waste any more time upon the argument about the First Cause."
Not that I don't enjoy the idea of a self-designed God with chiseled abs and an 11 inch penis.
Jake at July 1, 2005 11:04 AM
About "First Cause":
This issue generally illustrates the limitations of the observer more than it sheds light on the issue of "creation". Consider this: there is no such thing today. Conversions occur, but no new material appears in commonly-observed processes; WE define what is "new" by a set of arbitrary guidelines. A "new" car is actually a configuration of truly ancient elements. While it is true that physicists observe interesting reactions on sub-microscopic levels, there is still considerable debate as to what conversions appear there; there is *still* no support for making something out of nothing.
The average person has made no time for considering this, even to the point of realizing that no *belief*, however carefully thought, can match reality - it can only approach it. This is easy to see in responses to questions of odds and probabilities; for instance, there is no such thing as "certainty" except in the attainment of a *defined* state. These two things are the principal blocks people have when comprehending "first", or other, "causes".
There are many words people use without considering the noise they just made; one of them is "origin".
In addition, please be aware that I have lost the credits for the person or persons who brought the whiptail lizard to my attention; it has been several years since it first appeared in argument. Please feel free to Google for attribution!
Radwaste at July 1, 2005 4:38 PM
Yo Amy, this is not meant to criticize your lifestyle choices. But remember to move carefully through the world.
Crid at July 1, 2005 5:06 PM
ERR 3
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