Intelligent Design’s idiotic designer
So, i’m stealing this straight from BoingBoing, who’s linking to the NYT, but what can i say, it’s near and dear to my heart and I want to share:
Boing Boing: Intelligent Design’s idiotic designer
A fantastic editorial in this weekend’s NYT shreds the idea of “Intelligent Design” (a pseudo-scientific, crypto-Christian-fundamentalist way of talking about Creationism without mentioning God) by taking apart the incompetence and foolishness of the supposedly intelligent designer.
In mammals, for instance, the recurrent laryngeal nerve does not go directly from the cranium to the larynx, the way any competent engineer would have arranged it. Instead, it extends down the neck to the chest, loops around a lung ligament and then runs back up the neck to the larynx. In a giraffe, that means a 20-foot length of nerve where 1 foot would have done. If this is evidence of design, it would seem to be of the unintelligent variety.
Such disregard for economy can be found throughout the natural order. Perhaps 99 percent of the species that have existed have died out. Darwinism has no problem with this, because random variation will inevitably produce both fit and unfit individuals. But what sort of designer would have fashioned creatures so out of sync with their environments that they were doomed to extinction?
The gravest imperfections in nature, though, are moral ones. Consider how humans and other animals are intermittently tortured by pain throughout their lives, especially near the end. Our pain mechanism may have been designed to serve as a warning signal to protect our bodies from damage, but in the majority of diseases — cancer, for instance, or coronary thrombosis — the signal comes too late to do much good, and the horrible suffering that ensues is completely useless.
And why should the human reproductive system be so shoddily designed? Fewer than one-third of conceptions culminate in live births. The rest end prematurely, either in early gestation or by miscarriage. Nature appears to be an avid abortionist…
In the words of MC Hawkings: Fuck the creationists.
February 20th, 2005 at 9:18 pm
Here’s a mind bender
How could have an intelligent designer invented creationists?
February 20th, 2005 at 11:33 pm
What I find funny is how the author uses such obscure examples as a looping nerve to prove the point. How about saying the human body was poorly designed because it doesn’t have critical backup systems such as two hearts! Duh. However, wouldn’t it be horrifically sad if humans were the smartest things in the universe?
February 22nd, 2005 at 4:17 pm
I actually like the argument he makes about pain and suffering, personally.
As for humans being the smartest beings in the universe, well, we don’t know the answer to that, but even if they were, that doesn’t mean they always will be. In a universe this vast, the chances for life springing up elsewhere are incredibly likely. Hell, even our own solar system, which once seemed to be devoid of life except for us, is looking more and more interesting with each new discovery. The latest reports from Mars indicate the possibility of at the very least bacterial life still surviving in caves, and studies of some of the larger moons of the gas gients have given hints that our planet’s formation was not as unique as we might think.
With this many opportunities for life out there, even if we were currently the smartest race out there, there’s no guarantee we’ll survive.. and in time, either our descendants or those of another race elsewhere in the universe will rise to that spot. So I’m not too worried for the future of intelligent life in the universe. I *am* a bit worried about the future of intelligent life down here on Earth, though.
March 5th, 2005 at 5:07 am
Intelligent life?!?!??!
On Earth?!?!?!
Jesus Marimba, WHERE–?!?!?!
June 7th, 2005 at 4:44 pm
I have enough insight to realize that the human race (on average) is pretty piss poor. I’m not saying that Darwinism is true, but it seems like there are more and more people today that should have *died off*. Blame that on society perhaps, but I hope that people will see enough reason to broaden their intelligence. The more you learn, the more you realize how much you don’t know. Studying Physics and Engineering, I can still say, what does it hurt to believe in a God? So long as you keep it to yourself.
So, ten out of ten for style, but minus several million for good thinking, yah?