(no subject)
I'm sure all my readers are familiar with the various arguments of intelligent design - priests masquerading as a well-read, learned biologists jumping around saying we're all to complicated and intricately produced that we mustn't have evolved by chance, but at the will of some "intelligent" designer. More often than not, these priests do not play poker, bet on horse races or understand the stock market.
We constantly hear arguments for and against this "scientific theory", that often sound like the following dialogue:
priest: look at flagella - an outboard motor for cells? Preposterous!
layman: oh yes, but look at our backbone, surely if someone designed that, and they were intelligent, they'd have done a better job.
evolutionary biologist: furthermore, good sir (i believe darwin would have used "good sir"), consider all the physical evidence from the various comparative anatomy and DNA, computer modeling of evolving population dynamics and other such well published bodies of facts.
et cetera, ad infinitum and homo erectus.
Today I heard a different, and possibly superior argument against "intelligent design" (or at least the "intelligent" part - and it also wasn't so much an argument, that's just what I decided it should be). It was in a physics lecture discussing the imaging of Conical Diffraction - a very particular and peculiar phenomenon whereby a circularly polarized, or unpolarized beam of light, shone though "Hamilton's Diabolical Point" (an interestingly named spot on a biaxial crystal) turns into a circle at the other end.
In other words, a particular beam of light, shone on a particular spot, on a particular crystal turns into a ring of light. I know what you're all thinking - "wow". And you're also probably thinking "Why do I need to know this? What practical application is there for it?".
Well, you see, you'd be exactly right in asking those questions, because many have, and do, and can find no practical application for it.
The circumstances I've presented you with now beg, of the intelligent designers, the answer to this riddle: "Why would an intelligent designer put something into their universe, that doesn't occur anywhere naturally, and has no useful application?"
We constantly hear arguments for and against this "scientific theory", that often sound like the following dialogue:
priest: look at flagella - an outboard motor for cells? Preposterous!
layman: oh yes, but look at our backbone, surely if someone designed that, and they were intelligent, they'd have done a better job.
evolutionary biologist: furthermore, good sir (i believe darwin would have used "good sir"), consider all the physical evidence from the various comparative anatomy and DNA, computer modeling of evolving population dynamics and other such well published bodies of facts.
et cetera, ad infinitum and homo erectus.
Today I heard a different, and possibly superior argument against "intelligent design" (or at least the "intelligent" part - and it also wasn't so much an argument, that's just what I decided it should be). It was in a physics lecture discussing the imaging of Conical Diffraction - a very particular and peculiar phenomenon whereby a circularly polarized, or unpolarized beam of light, shone though "Hamilton's Diabolical Point" (an interestingly named spot on a biaxial crystal) turns into a circle at the other end.
In other words, a particular beam of light, shone on a particular spot, on a particular crystal turns into a ring of light. I know what you're all thinking - "wow". And you're also probably thinking "Why do I need to know this? What practical application is there for it?".
Well, you see, you'd be exactly right in asking those questions, because many have, and do, and can find no practical application for it.
The circumstances I've presented you with now beg, of the intelligent designers, the answer to this riddle: "Why would an intelligent designer put something into their universe, that doesn't occur anywhere naturally, and has no useful application?"