NOT_SO_INTELLIGENT DESIGN, A Tally

Lazydawg wrote in what struck me as almost an orgy of irony-

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Any intelligent designer would put the vulva -- entrance to the tract that must bring forth new life, must incubate the transition from zygote to blastula to multicellular to multiorgan organism -- in the direct gravitational path of the anus -- responsible for the deposition of undigestible foodstuff and processed toxins. No intelligent designer would have the toilet run directly into the oven. Even the most inept DYI house-renovating soul would not have to think to steer clear of that sort of mistake.

From an anthropomorphic point of view, in the spirit of the above passage, I think it might have been even better to have placed the vulva on a shelf in the library. The minor adjustments so delicately suggested are a moot point which might well be endlessly debated by aesthetic perfectionists who are naturally disposed to unjustifiably assuming perfection in an intelligent designer and think that to not find it is proof of the absence of such an entity. Which of course it isn't.

There may be a range of multiverses and our intelligent designer is not garuanteed to be in the A-stream much as we might like to think otherwise. There could be a universe where Lazydawg's adjustments to the female pelvic floor have been adopted although I wouldn't like to comment on the repercussions at this moment in time. I can imagine some awkwardnesses particularly at certain times just as Lazydawg has imagined others at others.

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Dont let spendi scare us off. Like Shakespeare said, his words are S&F,SN.
How about vestigial organs and body structures like the Hips of a python? Do these serve a purpose and hence signify an Intelligent Design? or are they truly vestiges of a former lifestyle?

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fm wrote-

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Do these serve a purpose and hence signify an Intelligent Design?

I understood the EV (evolution theory) had no room for such man-made idea as "purpose". The word implies design surely. EV says that all life is one long useless waste of time and that each organism has its forbears to thank for its existence, immediate ones primarily, in this vale of suffering and woe brought about by the selfsame force which caused it to be. The hips of a python being of very little consequence except to those who study such things as a way of getting a living or relieving moments of boredom. They might well drive pythons into frenzies of lust just as the hips of humans do to those subject to such base animality but that is by-the-by to a refined intellectual aesthete who has conquered those low undignified urges.

Neither case impinges on ID in any way.

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real life wrote:

stuh505 wrote:
A beetle with elytra migrates to the island. Where it came from the elytra were very helpful, but on this particular island they are not helpful because there is a special frog that is very good at snatching them out of the air when they fly. So the beetles learn to only walk, which works out fine because there happens to be plenty of nutrients accessible by walking on this island. The beetles with functioning elytra probably tend to use their wings to fly, and thus die, so this gives natural selection for beetles that have non-working elytra. Evolution provides this natural obvious answer to the question of why they have non-functioning elytra. ID does not.

Too funny.

A single beetle arrives on an island where he is at a distinct DISadvantage (hmmm, not looking good for Evolution, but wait.......) due to a previously unencountered predator, Frogus Specialus ( no frogs where he came from? or they were just all really clumsy, not special? ).

Despite the fact that he's now a sitting duck (ok beetle) he manages to multiply greatly over many generations until his descendants 'learn' to walk only (thus going against their natural instinct and breeding) instead of flying.

Eventually, some of his descendants turn out to be 'handicapped' i.e. their wings won't open, but it works to their advantage since the family is walking now. ( I'd say it was oddly providential , but that's probably not allowed, right? Still it reminds you of a Hollyweird movie.)

So the handicapped beetles overcome their situation and FINALLY after (how many?) generations, there is a 'survival advantage' and Evolution has done it again.

More likely it is the other way around. There needs to be selective pressure to maintain a metabolically expensive feature such as flight. On the mainland, any beetle with a mutation that affects its ability to fly is likely to be eaten. On an island with no predators and plenty of food within walking distance, beetles with mutated elytra can survive as well as there normal siblings, and they don't waste energy flying. Same principle applies to blind cave fish with non-functional eyes. BTW, beetles don't have to "learn" to walk since that is an innate capability, and there were probably millions of beetles on the island, not just one.

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patiodog wrote:

Any intelligent designer would put the vulva -- entrance to the tract that must bring forth new life, must incubate the transition from zygote to blastula to multicellular to multiorgan organism -- in the direct gravitational path of the anus -- responsible for the deposition of undigestible foodstuff and processed toxins. No intelligent designer would have the toilet run directly into the oven. Even the most inept DYI house-renovating soul would not have to think to steer clear of that sort of mistake.

Yes, and unspayed female dogs are subject to pyometra (infection of the uterus). The urethra is poorly designed also, prone to bacterial contamination whcih causes painful bladder infections. And you guys have to contend with the problem of the urethra being constricted by an enlarging prostate gland. That is incredibly un-intelligent design.

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Speaking of "blind cave fish" , all the cave dwellers with vestigial eyes are most closely related to species on the surface in the immediate geographic areas that they appear. Cave fish from Africa have no relationship to those from Mammoth Cave in Ky. However, many different species demonstrate "convergence" i their morphology.

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Well they are likely to aren't they seeing as how they all have more or less the same environmental conditions to work with and the same determined exigencies of life forms.

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So Spendius, what's the deal with vestigal phylogeny being expressed in ontogeny?

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both chick and human embryos go through a stage where they have slits and arches in their necks that are identical to the gill slits and gill arches of fish. This observation supports the idea that chicks and humans share a common ancestor with fish. Thus, developmental characters, along with other lines of evidence, can be used for constructing phylogenies.

http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evosite/evo101/images/embryo_comparison.gif

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If you observe a chick's development, you will find that the chick embryo may resemble the embryos of reptiles and fish at points in its development

http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evosite/evo101/images/chickogeny.gif

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I prefer to draw a veil over those times.

They do mature you know

http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/img/life/rooster_061103.jpg

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spendius wrote:

I prefer to draw a veil over those times.

They do mature you know

Is that the angle you like?

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Not always.

I can do others.

It depends how I'm feeling.

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stuh505 wrote:

real life wrote:
A single beetle arrives on an island where he is at a distinct DISadvantage (hmmm, not looking good for Evolution, but wait.......) due to a previously unencountered predator, Frogus Specialus ( no frogs where he came from? or they were just all really clumsy, not special? ).

This is just one hypothetical example of many possible ones. But going from this example:

I didn't say a single beetle. It's more like a migration of at least several thousand. Of course there are different predators in this different area. Alternatively it could be that the predator migrated to the area or evolved better ability to catch the flying ones.

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Despite the fact that he's now a sitting duck (ok beetle) he manages to multiply greatly over many generations until his descendants 'learn' to walk only (thus going against their natural instinct and breeding) instead of flying.

That's not what I said, you ignoramus. Most of the beetles are killed off quickly. The ones with defective wings, or who's offspring are defective for genetic reasons, tend to stay alive with higher probability. Thus the gene for defective wings is passed on.

As a founding member of the Special Frog Evolutionists Club, I am curious about such things:

Did our patron, the Special Frog, only eat the beetles when they flew?

Was she too dainty to eat them off the ground? (It would seem as if a 'survival advantage' would be conferred to Frogus Specialus if easy pickins were available nearby on the ground without much effort.)

Terry wrote:

More likely it is the other way around. There needs to be selective pressure to maintain a metabolically expensive feature such as flight. On the mainland, any beetle with a mutation that affects its ability to fly is likely to be eaten. On an island with no predators and plenty of food within walking distance, beetles with mutated elytra can survive as well as there normal siblings, and they don't waste energy flying.

I see. (RL's brow darkens) So you deny the existence of the Special Frog, eh? How dare you.

Yet ........ (RL pauses, then says graciously) in evolution, it is not the details that matter (whether the beetle actually faced a predator or not).

As long as evolution is the answer, we don't care what the questions are , do we?

One may postulate that the exact opposite conditions prevailed from what another has supposed. As long as we agree that evolution occurred no matter what.

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Terry wrote:

And you guys have to contend with the problem of the urethra being constricted by an enlarging prostate gland. That is incredibly un-intelligent design.

Some also have to deal with hernias since the testes initially develop with the abdomen. Their migration through the abdominal wall can leave weak spots.

Not too good a design either.
P

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Quote:

Did our patron, the Special Frog, only eat the beetles when they flew?

Was she too dainty to eat them off the ground?

In my example, the Special Frog is much more likely to catch beetles that fly, yes. This could be for any number of reasons. It could be that the frog lives in high up areas that only the flying beetles tend to visit. Or it could be due to an enhanced optical ability to recognized small high-contrast objects moving at fast velocities, an adaptation for catching flying insects. Or it could be due to the method in which it catches the beetles, such as a spider's web that can only catch flying things, or a sticky tongue that is less effective when the insect is on the dirt.

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As long as evolution is the answer, we don't care what the questions are , do we?

The principles of evolution are fundamentally simple, and this invariably allows for innumerable possible factors to have the same higher order effect which boils down to the same evolutionary response.

The invariant higher order cause we are talking about here is that beetles with wings, for some reason, get killed faster than beetles without wings.

Surely you must be able to agree that many naturally occuring situations will meet that basic criteria. From that point, all that is needed is DNA and replication. There's really nothing that can be argued there, either. There is just no rational way to deny evolution, it's a mathematical certainty, which is so effective that we can use it to evolve solutions to math problems.

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RL is just screwing with you because he has no equivalent explanation re beetles that have fused elytra covering a perfectly good 2 pair of wings. Hes unarmed Creationally. Hes also unarmed in the discussions regarding biogeography and limited ranges of divergent species and ring species.

Why there is so much that hes unarmed over, its quite alarming that he can spout off his beliefs and try to cobble evidence to support.
RL's arguments have always been based upon finding (or trying to find) faults in explanations of evidence, while having no evidence of his own.

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Vestigial structures are the remnants of those that were once fully functional in an organisms ancestors but are now greatly reduced owing to a change in the descendants utilization of its niche. Our own appendix is a vestigial structure on teh cascum that owes its being to a time when our grandpappies were more herbivores. The vestigial structure is no longer preserved by natural selection and they become gradually deconstructed. They do give us very strong evidence of the course of evolution.

Its a bitch of a stretch for creationism because vestigial structures imply common descent and , by extension, unintelligent design.

Spendi, try to keep up, Creationists , Of which there are more members here than those of "your own" own brand of schizo phrenic ID, tries to argue that things were created "fully formed" and at one time. If you have trouble with the concept, Im sure RL can explain his beliefs to you.

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fm,

might I ask you to clarify your intent on the purpose of this thread? it seems a bit like fanning the flames between spendius + rl vs the rest of us, and it's not like we need any more evidence for evolution.

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stuh505 wrote:

fm,

might I ask you to clarify your intent on the purpose of this thread? it seems a bit like fanning the flames between spendius + rl vs the rest of us, and it's not like we need any more evidence for evolution.

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fm wrote-

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Its a bitch of a stretch for creationism because vestigial structures imply common descent and , by extension, unintelligent design.

What's the difference between intelligent design and unintelligent design in this context. Both are design and thus imply a designer.

Obviously I accept neither proposition. I should imagine that nothing in the organic world could be reasonably argued to be perfect. Thus the "tally" of the thread's title is everything in the organic world and picking items is merely a function of the socialisation of the chooser and likely to be an attempt for the chooser to parade his own knowledge as being superior to that of others.

Notice how fm uses the word "unarmed" about rl and "schizophrenic" about me. Both are ungentlemanly and basically consist of an assertion that fm is "armed" which he isn't and not schizophrenic which he is.

And rl is asserted to be "screwing with you" (another assertion") and thus, by implication, fm is not which is just as untrue. He also asserts that rl's asserted "unarmedness" is "alarming" which is another assertion the self-serving nature of which is taken for granted.

I am instructed to "try to keep up" which is another assertion, as is the whole paragraph on "vestigial structure" , and, again, implies that fm is keeping up which is another assertion. Another false one too. The only thing fm is keeping up on is what he says he is keeping up on. He is one long, seemingly endless, assertion in the service of self praise.

I don't know for sure where rl is coming from. He may well think that Creationism is good for society, or some integral part of it, rural life say, and argues accordingly as a barrister would for a client. To assume that's not a possibility in an assertion and an ignorant one to boot.

rl does write quite well and has a nice sense of humour, a thick skin and a toleration of others which all suggest a pretty good boozing companion which serial asserters never are. From what I have seen, on here and in life, anti-IDers should be avoided socially. They are intolerable and if any example of mistakes in design are looked for it is the continued existence of such tiresome and un-cooperative individuals which seems to me to dwarf all other teleological explanations drawn from the non-human world. To allow them an input into an educational policy affecting millions of kids seems to me to be a blunder of catastrophic proportions.

I have no difficulty with the concept that things were created fully formed. It is understandable by anybody and to imply I might have difficulty with the idea is again another self-serving assertion and an attempt to suggest that understanding it is the hallmark of high intelligence is too fatuous to discuss.

stuh wrote-
it's not like we need any more evidence for evolution.

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fm,

might I ask you to clarify your intent on the purpose of this thread?

I clarified the likliest possibility earlier stuh.

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it's not like we need any more evidence for evolution.

Absolutely. No question about it.

"It's no go the Yogi man
It's no go Blavatsky
What we want is a bank balance
And a bit of skirt in a taxi."

Education is about preparing people for life. Of course it is a compromise. The range of intelligence and other factors demands that as does the range of roles people will need to play as adults. They are not all going to become academics which is what fm seems to be arguing for on the basis that he thinks he is one, which he isn't, even if the sign on his letterheads and office door suggest otherwise. The number of teachers required and the salaries they are payed garuantees that very few of them are going to academics either.

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Stuh, its a great point you raise. However, believe me, Im not attempting to raise flags in front of spendi, gunga, nor RL.. Im instead, trying to merely compile a list from our own experience and information sources about the, dum-ass,the vestigial,the genetic dead-ends, the evolutionary "work arounds" that have made it possible for life to exist on this planet.
"Unintelligent design" is not a lessor degree of "perfection" as spendi wishes it to be, it is , instead a totally environmentally and hyperfecundity driven mechanism, that, while not able to plan, is able to impose results. It is, thatn which imposes the rules of development in evolution , which is 'Do something different with what's already there"

This thread could go on as a one sided tally, a "no it isnt, yes it is" debate, or a mixture of the two.

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spendi

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Education is about preparing people for life. Of course it is a compromise. The range of intelligence and other factors demands that as does the range of roles people will need to play as adults. They are not all going to become academics which is what fm seems to be arguing for on the basis that he thinks he is one, which he isn't,

All I can remind you spendi is thatSomeone has to train the mining engieneers and economic gelogists, just so they dont go wandering about like a bunch of Creationists trying to find oil or ilmenite. I get undergrad enrollments in the general geofield(when I used to taech undergrad field courses) at about 75% theistic evolutionists and "IDers". In grad school its winnowed down considerably and I raise the points with students all the times, cause, undeniably , I have an agenda that has no room for voodoo where large amounts of investment capital are on the line with any project (not to mention that people could get hurt or killed)

All I can say is that spendis familiarity with "Academics" may have ended with a Danny DeVito movie or else hes associated with a "liberal arts" college where legacy enrollment trumps actual merit.

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NOT_SO_INTELLIGENT DESIGN, A Tally

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