Intelligent design? You must be joking.
Since I'm up at 4:30 am with my cold (been up since 3:30, actually), I might as well rant for a bit.
This early early morning, I'd like to comment on an aspect of creationism/intelligent design I've only seen addressed a few times. (Most recently, I read Christopher Hitchens' book God Is Not Great and he had some things to say that prompt this.)
I just have to wonder how people who believe in intelligent design (and even those who think a deity guided evolution) get away with insulting their deity that much. I mean, seriously, if I was a deity sitting up there and everyone was saying that I'd designed the human body, I'd be doing some serious smiting. I'd be breaking out the lightning and the plagues and crap, 'cause...dude, the human body is a kludge, if I ever saw one. Heck, it's a few steps away from a bloody Rube Goldberg machine!
Let's take a quick look at just a few of the body's oddities. For example, as andrastewhite noted recently, our sinus cavity must attempt to drain uphill. This does not, as you might guess, work particularly well, and I suspect many folks on my flist suffer as a result.
How about the fact that our breathing apparatus is tied to our food intake? You'd think that avoiding choking would have been a sensible thing to do, wouldn't you?
Then there's the human eye, beloved of creationists who claim it's too complex to have occurred by chance. Um...it's installed upside down and backwards and has a blind spot. This creator is apparently a lackwitted idiot who I wouldn't trust to put together a set of bookshelves.
And I could go on for days about the human reproductive system, of course. I think, though, that I'll stick with the classic example: the human head. Human beings are born too early, because our heads are too big to get out otherwise. (In fact, scientists are wondering if the large numbers of c-sections will cause an increase in human head size.) And doctors refer to the first three months of life as the "fourth trimester," because in other mammals, at that stage of development, the kid is still inside its mother!
(And as I noted yesterday, while pregnant, the mother's immune system is depressed to the point of being halfway to useless, in order to keep from destroying the parasite in her body. You'd think a deity could come up with a better idea than that!)
Of course the human body is also loaded with dead ends (e.g., wisdom teeth, the appendix) that clearly would never occur in any elegant design. So, take your pick: Either a deity had nothing to do with it or else said deity is a blithering idiot.
::hack, cough, sneeze:: On that ranty note, I'm going to go inspect the medicine cabinet and try and figure out a safe combination of drugs for a pregnant woman with panic disorder who needs to be able to watch an active small child in a few hours. ::heavy sigh::
This early early morning, I'd like to comment on an aspect of creationism/intelligent design I've only seen addressed a few times. (Most recently, I read Christopher Hitchens' book God Is Not Great and he had some things to say that prompt this.)
I just have to wonder how people who believe in intelligent design (and even those who think a deity guided evolution) get away with insulting their deity that much. I mean, seriously, if I was a deity sitting up there and everyone was saying that I'd designed the human body, I'd be doing some serious smiting. I'd be breaking out the lightning and the plagues and crap, 'cause...dude, the human body is a kludge, if I ever saw one. Heck, it's a few steps away from a bloody Rube Goldberg machine!
Let's take a quick look at just a few of the body's oddities. For example, as andrastewhite noted recently, our sinus cavity must attempt to drain uphill. This does not, as you might guess, work particularly well, and I suspect many folks on my flist suffer as a result.
How about the fact that our breathing apparatus is tied to our food intake? You'd think that avoiding choking would have been a sensible thing to do, wouldn't you?
Then there's the human eye, beloved of creationists who claim it's too complex to have occurred by chance. Um...it's installed upside down and backwards and has a blind spot. This creator is apparently a lackwitted idiot who I wouldn't trust to put together a set of bookshelves.
And I could go on for days about the human reproductive system, of course. I think, though, that I'll stick with the classic example: the human head. Human beings are born too early, because our heads are too big to get out otherwise. (In fact, scientists are wondering if the large numbers of c-sections will cause an increase in human head size.) And doctors refer to the first three months of life as the "fourth trimester," because in other mammals, at that stage of development, the kid is still inside its mother!
(And as I noted yesterday, while pregnant, the mother's immune system is depressed to the point of being halfway to useless, in order to keep from destroying the parasite in her body. You'd think a deity could come up with a better idea than that!)
Of course the human body is also loaded with dead ends (e.g., wisdom teeth, the appendix) that clearly would never occur in any elegant design. So, take your pick: Either a deity had nothing to do with it or else said deity is a blithering idiot.
::hack, cough, sneeze:: On that ranty note, I'm going to go inspect the medicine cabinet and try and figure out a safe combination of drugs for a pregnant woman with panic disorder who needs to be able to watch an active small child in a few hours. ::heavy sigh::