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Unintelligent Design
by Gary Marcus - Huffington Post
Thanks to Ken Bromberg for the link.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gary-marcus/unintelligent-design_b_110082.html
Unintelligent Design
Lost amid all the recent discussions of intelligent design -- including Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal's decision this past Friday to sign a bill that allows teachers in his state to "supplement" classes on evolution with talk of creationism -- is one simple basic fact. The human species isn't intelligently designed.
When you get right down to it, from an engineering perspective, the design of the human mind (and for the matter the human body) is a bit of mess.
Take, for instance, human memory, and the trouble we often have in remembering even the most basic facts -- where did we put our keys? Where did we park our car? Because our brains so often blur our memories together. Human eyewitness testimony is often no match for even a low-rent survelllance camera, and memory can fail even in life-or-death circumstances. (6% of all skydiving fatalities, for instance, are from divers that forgot to pull their ripcords),
Our troubles with memory in turn lead to an unending litany of problems that the psychologist Timothy Wilson collectively refers to as "mental contamination", in which irrelevant information frequently, ranging from the physical attractiveness of political candidates to random numbers on a roulette wheel, subconsciously cloud human judgments. If an ugly child throws an ice-filled snowballs, for instance, we judge that child to be delinquent, but when an especially attractive child does the same thing, we excuse him, saying he's just "having a bad day." A study published earlier this month showed that people's moral judgments are more severe when made in a disgusting, soiled pizza-box filled office than when in an office that is neat as a pin; another, which appeared just last week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows that voters are more likely to favor school policies if the balloting takes place in a school than if it takes place in an apartment building. We may aspire, as Aristotle thought, to be "the rational animal", but in reality the flotsam and jetsam of barely conscious memory frequently intercedes.
At this point, 30 years after the Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman and his late collaborator Amos Tversky started documenting a rash of fallacies in human reasoning, the idea that the human mind would be "perfect in His image" is as outdated (and narcissistic) as the idea that the solar system would revolve around the planet earth.
Imperfections riddle the body as well; the human spine supports 70% of our body weight with a single column, where four might have distributed the load better (greatly reducing the incidence of debilitating back pain), and the human retina is effectively installed backwards, with its array of outgoing neural fibers coming out of the front rather than the back, saddling us with an entirely needless blindspot.
The only theory that can really make sense of these needless imperfections is Darwin's theory of natural selection, which holds that humans (and all other life forms) evolve through a blind process known as descent-with-modification, in which new life forms represent random modifications of earlier life forms -- with no central overseer to guide the process. Such a random process can, over time, lead populations of creatures to become more adapted to their environment, but it is also vulnerable to getting stuck, in the sort of good-enough-but-not-perfect solutions that mathematicians call local maxima.
A local maximum is like a moderately high peak in a rugged mountain range that is filled with other peaks, some of which are considerably higher; a peak at the top of the treeline, when there are plenty of snow-capped peaks that loom considerably higher. The process of natural selection is vulnerable to such limits for two reasons: it is blind, and it generally takes only small steps; as such, it can easily get stuck on low-lying peaks that are impressive but well short of the highest possible mountaintop, designs that are "good enough for government work" but far from perfect.
Darwin gives a natural explanation that indicates poorly-designed features should be common in biology. The theory of intelligent design, in contrast, has a serious problem explaining such phenomena: an intelligent designer that could perceive the whole landscape could just pick us up and move us to higher ground. That this has never happened is clear testament both to the wisdom of the theory of natural selection and the implausibility of intelligent design.
The problem with the Lousiana law is not just that it seeks to mix church and state, a situation that the Constitution's framers rightly sought to avoid, but that it is predicated on the assumption that creationists have a reasonable theory with which to counter evolution with - where in truth they simply don't.
-- Gary Marcus, Professor of Psychology at New York University, is the author of Kluge: The Haphazard Construction of the Human Mind.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gary-marcus/unintelligent-design_b_110082.html
Unintelligent Design
Lost amid all the recent discussions of intelligent design -- including Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal's decision this past Friday to sign a bill that allows teachers in his state to "supplement" classes on evolution with talk of creationism -- is one simple basic fact. The human species isn't intelligently designed.
When you get right down to it, from an engineering perspective, the design of the human mind (and for the matter the human body) is a bit of mess.
Take, for instance, human memory, and the trouble we often have in remembering even the most basic facts -- where did we put our keys? Where did we park our car? Because our brains so often blur our memories together. Human eyewitness testimony is often no match for even a low-rent survelllance camera, and memory can fail even in life-or-death circumstances. (6% of all skydiving fatalities, for instance, are from divers that forgot to pull their ripcords),
Our troubles with memory in turn lead to an unending litany of problems that the psychologist Timothy Wilson collectively refers to as "mental contamination", in which irrelevant information frequently, ranging from the physical attractiveness of political candidates to random numbers on a roulette wheel, subconsciously cloud human judgments. If an ugly child throws an ice-filled snowballs, for instance, we judge that child to be delinquent, but when an especially attractive child does the same thing, we excuse him, saying he's just "having a bad day." A study published earlier this month showed that people's moral judgments are more severe when made in a disgusting, soiled pizza-box filled office than when in an office that is neat as a pin; another, which appeared just last week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows that voters are more likely to favor school policies if the balloting takes place in a school than if it takes place in an apartment building. We may aspire, as Aristotle thought, to be "the rational animal", but in reality the flotsam and jetsam of barely conscious memory frequently intercedes.
At this point, 30 years after the Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman and his late collaborator Amos Tversky started documenting a rash of fallacies in human reasoning, the idea that the human mind would be "perfect in His image" is as outdated (and narcissistic) as the idea that the solar system would revolve around the planet earth.
Imperfections riddle the body as well; the human spine supports 70% of our body weight with a single column, where four might have distributed the load better (greatly reducing the incidence of debilitating back pain), and the human retina is effectively installed backwards, with its array of outgoing neural fibers coming out of the front rather than the back, saddling us with an entirely needless blindspot.
The only theory that can really make sense of these needless imperfections is Darwin's theory of natural selection, which holds that humans (and all other life forms) evolve through a blind process known as descent-with-modification, in which new life forms represent random modifications of earlier life forms -- with no central overseer to guide the process. Such a random process can, over time, lead populations of creatures to become more adapted to their environment, but it is also vulnerable to getting stuck, in the sort of good-enough-but-not-perfect solutions that mathematicians call local maxima.
A local maximum is like a moderately high peak in a rugged mountain range that is filled with other peaks, some of which are considerably higher; a peak at the top of the treeline, when there are plenty of snow-capped peaks that loom considerably higher. The process of natural selection is vulnerable to such limits for two reasons: it is blind, and it generally takes only small steps; as such, it can easily get stuck on low-lying peaks that are impressive but well short of the highest possible mountaintop, designs that are "good enough for government work" but far from perfect.
Darwin gives a natural explanation that indicates poorly-designed features should be common in biology. The theory of intelligent design, in contrast, has a serious problem explaining such phenomena: an intelligent designer that could perceive the whole landscape could just pick us up and move us to higher ground. That this has never happened is clear testament both to the wisdom of the theory of natural selection and the implausibility of intelligent design.
The problem with the Lousiana law is not just that it seeks to mix church and state, a situation that the Constitution's framers rightly sought to avoid, but that it is predicated on the assumption that creationists have a reasonable theory with which to counter evolution with - where in truth they simply don't.
-- Gary Marcus, Professor of Psychology at New York University, is the author of Kluge: The Haphazard Construction of the Human Mind.
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Posted: Sunday, August 17, 2008 | PermalinkComments 1 - 50 of 64 |
Reload Comments | Back to Top | Page Numbers2. Comment #231889 by J Mac on August 17, 2008 at 9:23 am
I couldn't even read this article, was it any good? I read the first several lines, and while I think I agree with where it's going I could have no response other than "DUH, did this need to be written?" Other Comments by J Mac
3. Comment #231891 by yesspam on August 17, 2008 at 9:25 am
(6% of all skydiving fatalities, for instance, are from divers that forgot to pull their ripcords),
How do they know?
Other Comments by yesspam
4. Comment #231892 by Count von Count on August 17, 2008 at 9:27 am
Nice article. I hadn't heard the points about human memory raised against intelligent design before (which serves a fairly direct counter to the work 'intelligent').Richard Dawkins illustrates the point about a local maximum rather well in episode 3 of Growing Up In the Universe (which is well worth the watch and can be found for free here).
Other Comments by Count von Count
5. Comment #231893 by J Mac on August 17, 2008 at 9:28 am
HA!Forgot?!
Maybe they DIDN'T pull the cord, but I cant quite imagine how one could forget. Traveling towards the ground at 120mph saying to yourself "gee, I forgot why I came out here, I know I was supposed to be doing something, I just don't remember what."
If this is the case they're letting far to many senile people go sky diving.
Other Comments by J Mac
6. Comment #231894 by Manson on August 17, 2008 at 9:28 am
Clean, clear, intelligent... but at no time overtly intellectual, ivory tower, or condescending.Bravo, sir.
Other Comments by Manson
7. Comment #231902 by Logicel on August 17, 2008 at 9:49 am
Ah, the author penned Kluge! Nice gentle but very firm presentation of the obvious (different styles for different folks).However:
in which new life forms represent random modifications of earlier life forms --
____
New life forms result both from random errors in the DNA code AND from the non-random influence of natural selection.
Other Comments by Logicel
8. Comment #231908 by Szymanowski on August 17, 2008 at 9:59 am
Take, for instance, human memory, and the trouble we often have in remembering even the most basic facts -- where did we put our keys? Where did we park our car? Because our brains so often blur our memories together.Nah, it's because of free will. Or something.
Other Comments by Szymanowski
9. Comment #231928 by Disbelief on August 17, 2008 at 10:23 am
4 spines, cool! Other Comments by Disbelief
10. Comment #231933 by Ailes du Serpent on August 17, 2008 at 10:30 am
Well, the basic premise of the article ("Hey, how's this for a counterargument against ID, we're not so intelligently designed after all, here's example A, B, C ... ") isn't a particularly new one.It IS however a good simple punchline argument to give to the undecided masses to immunize them against creationism. Believers themselves however are mostly too deep through the looking glass, that they rather 'rationalize' reality than scrap their fantasy premise:
The most common creationist retour to the question "If Intelligent Design is valid, how come there is (imperfection X,Y,Z) ?" is something like "Well, obviously it all WAS perfect, but after the FALL OF MAN it became tainted...", and they think that this is an answer at all ("What do you mean you don't understand? It's RIGHT IN the Bible!").
At least it evaporates the farce idea that Intelligent design has nothing to do with religion.
The other possible answers aren't much better either: If you "don't know yet why there is imperfection A,B,C, but ID nevertheless is true, don't worry, trust me, because see here this minor fault in evolution..", you should should up and do more research (yeah right).
But I digress, everyone knows about the tediousness that is arguing with these guys.
Anyway, as I said before, the argument of the article is a nice quick no-brainer against ID to use for the public.
Other Comments by Ailes du Serpent
11. Comment #231943 by Quine on August 17, 2008 at 10:52 am
Comment #231889 by J Mac:I couldn't even read this article, was it any good? I read the first several lines, and while I think I agree with where it's going I could have no response other than "DUH, did this need to be written?"
I find it very well written. IMHO, yes, it needed to be written because it is accessible by people who have not studied all these separate areas that converge to make the case.
Other Comments by Quine
12. Comment #231946 by fizhburn on August 17, 2008 at 10:58 am
Quine,You took the words out of my mouth.
If only there were some way to get the folk -- or rather, that segment of the population that is not active ID obfuscators but thinks ID is a viable alternative to evolution -- to actually read such articles. Readers at HuffPo are a self-selected sample. Maybe if we could get it featured on Little Green Footballs?
Other Comments by fizhburn
13. Comment #231968 by stereoroid on August 17, 2008 at 11:28 am
A more prosaic example of unintelligent design: testicles. Wouldn't they be safer on the inside? Yes, but it just so happens that sperm production is higher at lower temperatures... so we've evolved to have them on the outside, where they're vulnerable to damage. Designed? Well, if that means that skateboarders and Jackass cast members have fewer children, well... that's Evolution, baby! Other Comments by stereoroid
14. Comment #231983 by InfuriatedSciTeacher on August 17, 2008 at 11:42 am
I find a definite need for this article to be written, although to most readers and posters here it falls into the "DUH, we knew that" category. Anything that makes common sense and the varied branches of science more accessible to the deluded masses is important enough to print. Remember, Jindal is a front-runner for the Republican VP candidacy.As for further examples of poor design in humans... one would think the existence of the appendix, who's sole function appears to be to cause life threatening infection, would be a solid enough example for ID proponents. I'm sure the response to that would be something along the lines of "God works in mysterious ways", or a question as to how evolution explains its presence.
Other Comments by InfuriatedSciTeacher
15. Comment #231985 by Michael P. on August 17, 2008 at 11:42 am
Spot on... and, as a Louisianian, I hang my head in shame.Other Comments by Michael P.
16. Comment #231986 by Ex~ on August 17, 2008 at 11:42 am
Well written.Here's a story a fellow atheist told me, it's not my story, but I thought it was a good one:
"When I was in biology class, my teacher took a model of a spine out of his desk. He laid it across two chairs, and pounded on the top, showing us how it was sturdy as a rock, and barely moved. 'How amazing', said the teacher 'perfectly suited to bear the weight of a deer'. Then he took the spine, set it rightside up, and attempted to weight it down with a pile of books. The spine shook back and forth, wobbling frightfully, unable to bear the tension. 'Unfortunately', said the teacher 'this is a human spine.'"
No rational person should really need much more explanation. The spine was built for animals on all fours. That we still use the spine, and we don't have anything more suited for walking upright, is a testament not only to evolution, but a perfect witness against the stupidity of "intelligent design".
Other Comments by Ex~
17. Comment #232026 by fsm1965 on August 17, 2008 at 1:18 pm
Well written, as is the book Kluge.The book explains in more depth how the body and mind, whilst looking "intelligently designed", most certainly are not.
They appear "thrown together" by an amateur engineer. Exactly what would happen if evolution (with no foresight) would end up with, not the best, but a workable solution to the problems faced by the organism.
One of the examples is of the failure of the mind to be rational: e.g suppose you want a cold beer and were asked what it would be worth if it were fetched from a shop or from someone's house. Rationally the answer should be the same, but the mind would value them differently...
Other Comments by fsm1965
18. Comment #232042 by Johnny O on August 17, 2008 at 2:02 pm
Nice article, but how can they possibly know this...
6% of all skydiving fatalities, for instance, are from divers that forgot to pull their ripcords
??
Other Comments by Johnny O
19. Comment #232044 by Duff on August 17, 2008 at 2:09 pm
YESPAM,I thought the same thing. But, I suppose, there have been a fair number of the "soon to be dead" divers who were observed by other divers, or people on the ground, who having watched this "operation" as it proceeded, were struck by the "fact" that the divers seemed to have forgotten to pull. Maybe most of them pulled, but it was too late. Who knows?
Did we get off topic???
Other Comments by Duff
20. Comment #232049 by Jesus86 on August 17, 2008 at 2:21 pm
A study published earlier this month showed that people's moral judgments are more severe when made in a disgusting, soiled pizza-box filled office than when in an office that is neat as a pin.
This isn't surprising. Context matters. When your social environment is going to hell in a handbasket, you take more severe steps to halt the process. Only a Platonic or Kantian purist would say that moral rules are some crystaline structure that can be known by pure abstract reason, that is impervious to context.
Other Comments by Jesus86
21. Comment #232053 by kkelly on August 17, 2008 at 2:33 pm
20, I probably would also find it unsurprising if it was the opposite; that when lax moral standards are the norm you're more understanding and accepting of violations.
In this case, I think it was visceral disgust evoked by the dirty food refuse that was misappropriated to fuel harsher moral judgements.
Other Comments by kkelly
22. Comment #232066 by Jesus86 on August 17, 2008 at 2:45 pm
21, Thanks for offering an opportunity to elaborate. If the context is perceived as hopeless, you have a point. People in a hopeless social environment tend to give up -- and not only stop punishing violators of the code, but even become violators themselves. Clearly the messy office environment did not evoke this level of hopelessness.Other Comments by Jesus86
23. Comment #232095 by Pattern Seeker on August 17, 2008 at 3:27 pm
If an ugly child throws an ice-filled snowballs, for instance, we judge that child to be delinquent, but when an especially attractive child does the same thing, we excuse him, saying he's just "having a bad day."
...and if an average-looking child throws an ice-filled snowball he's telling you to fuck off!
Other Comments by Pattern Seeker
24. Comment #232120 by sundiver on August 17, 2008 at 4:06 pm
Never understood why the creationists never counter-argue that this is proof that stuff built on the last day of the week has always been crappy... Other Comments by sundiver
25. Comment #232170 by Laurie Fraser on August 17, 2008 at 7:08 pm
Jesus 86 - People in a hopeless social environment tend to give up -- and not only stop punishing violators of the code, but even become violators themselves.
That pretty succinctly sums up the state of well-being in many Aboriginal communities in Australia. It's a telling point, one that affirms that moral absolutism is deeply flawed.
Other Comments by Laurie Fraser
26. Comment #232171 by Jesus86 on August 17, 2008 at 7:16 pm
24,Q: If God is good and all-powerful, why is there evil in the world?
A: He's an under-achiever.
-Woody Allen
25,
Australia is hardly unique. It happens all over the world. The famous Ik are another example. Hopelessness is a terrible thing.
Other Comments by Jesus86
27. Comment #232172 by appaZ on August 17, 2008 at 7:16 pm
The lunacy of the concept of ID is well documented. I have suggested to various backers of this deluded notion that, if the big guy in the clouds made us all to be just like him, then he is in bad shape. Also, if we are supposed to be so unique, made in his image as it were, then why are we so much like everything else. A puzzling, querky, roll your eyes around kind of glance is the best responce I have had to date.Other Comments by appaZ
28. Comment #232177 by Jesus86 on August 17, 2008 at 7:33 pm
The lunacy of the concept of ID is well documented.
Let's not go overboard. The concept of ID is not flawed. It really is a valid criticism that the existence of "irreducibly complex" biological structures would refute of the theory of evolution by natural selection. It just happens to be a fact that no known example of an irreducibly complex biological structure exists.
Other Comments by Jesus86
29. Comment #232178 by kkelly on August 17, 2008 at 7:36 pm
28, Have you learned NOTHING from the 'first cause' argument? Other Comments by kkelly
30. Comment #232180 by Jesus86 on August 17, 2008 at 7:40 pm
29, Let's not confuse the "first cause" argument and the argument from design. ID is a challenge to the latter, not to the former.Other Comments by Jesus86
31. Comment #232182 by kkelly on August 17, 2008 at 7:43 pm
30, I meant that if there was an intelligent designer, who designed it? Intelligent design explains nothing so it is a stupid concept. It would have to be even more complex than life and the universe and would therefore be even MORE improbable to have come into existence. Other Comments by kkelly
32. Comment #232185 by Jesus86 on August 17, 2008 at 7:52 pm
31, Think of it this way --IF we discovered something that was truly too irreducibly complex to be explained as a product of evolution by natural selection, then we would be in a quandary. To reverse the usual Dawkinsian / scientific mantra: However improbable an Intelligent Designer might be, it would be more probable than a theory that has been refuted by the evidence.
In that unlikely event, I would probably hold out for the theory that the "irreducibly complex" biological structure we observe on Earth was probably "seeded" here by very advanced Intelligent Designers from another planet, whose own origins can be explained by natural selection.
But here's the point: at least the god hypothesis would be back in the game, on this score at least. I.e. there would be no more and no less evidence for god than for the intelligent aliens of my hypothesis, so as far as the argument from design goes, it's a draw. (Although lots of other reasons argue against the god hypothesis, too.)
Other Comments by Jesus86
33. Comment #232187 by kkelly on August 17, 2008 at 8:01 pm
Regardless of how improbable evolution on earth becomes as an explanation, an ultimate intelligent designer will always be so improbable as to not be possible. Other Comments by kkelly
34. Comment #232194 by Greyman on August 17, 2008 at 8:15 pm
First you would have to be able to demonstrate that such a thing were actually irreducable complex, as opposed to simply reducible by yet unknown means. How would you determine this? Other Comments by Greyman
35. Comment #232197 by OverUsedChewToy on August 17, 2008 at 8:18 pm
"It really is a valid criticism that the existence of "irreducibly complex" biological structures would refute of the theory of evolution by natural selection."Natural selection can quite easily produce IC systems, there is no contradiction between the two. I would love to hear an exaplanation of how an organism, even if all its parts are 100% IC, would be literally unable to be produced through evolutionary forces.
Also on the subject, this is pretty cool:
http://www.stellaralchemy.com/ice/
Other Comments by OverUsedChewToy
36. Comment #232198 by J Mac on August 17, 2008 at 8:22 pm
If you find something that appears to be irreducibly complex it more aptly proves orgel's second rule than it does god. Other Comments by J Mac
37. Comment #232199 by kkelly on August 17, 2008 at 8:23 pm
35, I don't understand, could you elaborate? Other Comments by kkelly
38. Comment #232201 by Jesus86 on August 17, 2008 at 8:24 pm
33, Now who is the dogmatist?34, You note a genuine difficulty. How would we know something was "irredicibly complex" if we saw it? I think the IDers need to explain what properties an "irredicibly complex" biological structure would have, rather than simply pointing to putative examples in nature. But it would be a major achievement if they were even able to point to a putative example that we could not come up with an in-principle evolutionary history for.
Other Comments by Jesus86
39. Comment #232202 by MPhil on August 17, 2008 at 8:24 pm
But here's the point: at least the god hypothesis would be back in the game, on this score at least.
No, not really - the god hypothesis, as a hypothesis that a supernatural entity brought about something in the observable world never has any explanatory value at all, because the term "supernatural" has no discernible reference, because no mechanism is given or can be described as to HOW such an entity would do something like that. Furthermore - we have all the reason there can be for assuming causal closure of the physical world (conservation of energy and momentum and in extension the second law of thermodynamics - in addition to conceptual reasons), so for all we have reason to assume, no "outside" interference is even potentially possible. Add to that that the idea of a non-spatio-temporal entity, much less an AGENT, ie something with a mind and intentionality has never been explained and - it has been forcefully argued - actually contradictory... and you can see how the God hypothesis never has any explanatory value, not even potential explanatory value.
Intelligent Design from other spatio-temporal agents however has at least a non-zero possibility, it isn't contradictory. But it, even panspermia is so ridiculously unparsimoneous that it has extremely little explanatory value and thus extremely little epistemic possibility. We would need far more data in favour of that hypothesis - in fact we would need data that made all other explanations less parsimoneous or valuable in general before that hypothesis can be rationally accepted.
But, again - the God hypothesis is never even a potential candidate... unless we're not talking about a "supernatural", non-spatiotemporal "god".
Other Comments by MPhil
40. Comment #232203 by J Mac on August 17, 2008 at 8:26 pm
37.I suspect he means in the simplistic meaning usually employed by creationists. Neither half a mouse trap no flagella are useful so they cannot be reduced to a half.
But that whole formulation of IC displays blatant ignorance on the part of the creationist of development and the role of genes.
Half a flagella didn't have to precede a whole one.
Other Comments by J Mac
41. Comment #232204 by kkelly on August 17, 2008 at 8:28 pm
38, okay, ...impossible unless the laws of physics as we know are inapplicable. Is that better? Other Comments by kkelly
42. Comment #232211 by MPhil on August 17, 2008 at 8:44 pm
Half a flagella didn't have to precede a whole one.
Plus - "half a flagellum" (the evolutionary precursors to flagella) didn't have to do the job of flagella... the function doesn't have to be the same. So, half a mouse-trap might have served as simply an artificial elevation, or a doorstopper before - and in the new form it just happened to have the functional properties to perform a certain task - for which it has been used ever since (although not necessarily uniquely for that).
Other Comments by MPhil
43. Comment #232213 by dansam on August 17, 2008 at 8:46 pm
There is a nice list of unintelligent designs of the human here:http://current.com/items/88905207_ben_stein_s_movie_defending_intelligent_design_being_released_april_18th
It may be a little long... but I feel compelled to list them here for people to enjoy.
1. Female pelvis too small for the human baby's head making birth difficult and prone to perinatal injuries to the baby and the mother.
2. Retinal arteries/veins lying on and in front of the retina of the eyes. Many causes of blindness come from this defective design.
3. Wisdom teeth frequently leading to secondary abscesses, occasionally dissecting up into the cranium - resulting in brain abscesses, meningitis, epidural empyema.
4. Larynx too highly placed, leading to common choking deaths.
5. A bony projection, called the Odontoid Process, an extension of the C2 vertebral body like a long finger up to the end of the brainstem. It can easily fracture, especially in rheumatoid arthritis. That leads to death or paralysis of all extremities and inability to breathe without a mechanical ventilator. A simpler rotatory ball-socket joint would have been better and safer.
6. Semi-soft disc material between vertebrae and just anterior to the spinal cord is suited well to quadrupeds. But in humans the upper body weight compresses these and can cause herniations with mild to moderate trauma. There are 6 of these (none at C1-2) in the neck, 12 in the thoracic spine, 5 (rarely 6) in the Lumbar spine. That is 23 flaws or accidents waiting to happen.
7. Hip joints perfectly suited to support human weight if there were four of them or 4 supporting limbs. In a biped, the stress causes extremely common hip degeneration, femoral neck fractures in women and older people. How often do you hear of that in a dog or horse?
8. Knees similarly are not strong enough with the tibial cartilage in two legs for human weight, jumping down, and running. If we had 4 legs it would not be so bad. How often do you see cats with knee problems?
9. Foot and ankle bones are badly designed. Most quadrupeds walk on their toes or the balls of their feet. This puts more weight on flexible tendons, ligaments and several bending joints spreading the stress. With the human foot, we are walking on what is essentially our leg "wrists" and balls of the foot with an arch that is traumatised by walking and standing. When it falls it has an additional problem of severe foot pain. (see flaw #10).
10. In those fallen arches, the plantar nerves are badly placed. Instead of weaving between or over top of bones to their skin sensory receptors, these course "under" the ankle bones, under the arch to the metatarsal joints. When the arch slowly gives way it stretches those nerves and eventually compresses them. This never happens in dogs or cats.
11. Human wrists must extend to provide maximum finger flexion; a major human task is to hold things in our hands. So the wrist flexes a thousand times a day. Problem is that the median nerve runs through a bony trough covered by tough ligaments, the Carpal Tunnel. With every wrist flexion the median nerve is pulled in and out of that canal. The canal is easily narrowed by minor injuries or repetitive use. The nerve is injured causing pain, finger numbness, and weakness in thumb opposition.
12. The Elbow flexes and extends, but an important nerve, the Ulnar Nerve, mostly motor to the muscles of the forearm and hand, goes through the elbow bone. It unfortunately does not go in front of the elbow in the safer soft tissue. It courses behind the elbow which is fine in horses, but human flex the arm at the elbow that pulls and stretches the ulnar nerve in a long course behind the elbow in an "ulnar groove", and additionally, a sitting human often rests his elbows on a table, and that compresses the ulnar nerve. Dogs and cats don't do that.
13. The Brachial Plexus is a cluster of the nerves to the arm that travels through a triangle with the first rib being the bottom, the collar bone in front, and the scalene muscles behind. Also in the triangle is the brachial artery that supplies blood to the arm. Poor posture, hanging by exercise bars from the hands, or throwing balls, cause the triangle to compress either or both structures. This is the Thoracic Outlet Syndrome, the neuronal form when the plexus is injured, and the vascular form when the brachial circulation is impaired.
14. Female urinary opening (urethra), vagina, and rectum all located in a close row so that rectal infection of the urethra/bladder/kidneys, or the vagina is very frequent and can lead to kidney damage as well as damage to the fallopian tubes. The old joke is why is the recreational park located at the sewage outflow pipes?
15. The appendix is a seemingly useless relic of evolution that easily gets infected and ruptures in a life-threatening peritonitis unless removed quickly. A few postulate that it might have bacteria that make certain vitamins. That is unproven.
16. Large veins in the legs, progressively dilating from standing, walking, run the risk of blood clotting when the human sits for a period of time. These veins send those clots north to the heart's right ventricle and directly into the lungs causing pulmonary emboli (clots and lung infarction) that are often fatal.) Quadruped animals rarely die of this. Many humans do.
17. Venous Cavernous Sinuses at the skull base on left and right are large draining veins from the brain. But inside of the vein there is the carotid artery taking blood into the brain, and several important nerves: III, IV, VI that control all eye movements, pupillary diameter, and lens focusing, and V-1, V-2, and V-3 that supply sensation to the eye and face. This venous structure packed with these important structures is infected by sinus infection or pustules in or on the nose. Infection causes the blood to clot (thrombosis) that injures the nerves, makes the eye bulge and swell, and can cause spreading thrombosis into the brain which can be rapidly fatal.
18. Other cranial sinuses such as the transverse are located next to the middle ear that frequently gets infected in kids. The infection spread to the venous sinus and causes thrombophlebitis, the major effect is increased fluid pressure in the brain, venous strokes, and seizures. If all of those venous drainage pipes were internally situated, there would not be such a risk. (17 and 18).
19. Congenital birth defects caused by structures found only in primitive animals (but still in our genes): gills in our embryonic stage may have some left over at birth and a baby may have a partial gill (technically called a branchial cleft cyst.) These can cause pain as the person grows, or develop abscesses. Another is a chordoma, tumour composed of notochord tissue only otherwise found in ancient animals like Pikaea and Amphioxus. It preceded the evolution of the bony spine. We have one in our early embryo stages but absorb it. Sometime absorption is incomplete and notochord tissue (tumour) unfortunately grows in the clivus at the base of the brain.
20. Our abdomen. It houses our stomach, our liver, our spleen, great vessels (aorta) small bowel, and colon. In quadrupeds it is underneath. An attacker cannot easily get to it. The predator has to attack the tougher back and spine. But in the human the belly is sticking out there for some clawed or toothed predator or knife wielding human criminal to take a swipe and eviscerate us.
Other Comments by dansam
44. Comment #232216 by Jesus86 on August 17, 2008 at 8:53 pm
35: "Natural selection can quite easily produce IC systems." I don't think RD would agree with you. I think he admits that Mount Improbable cannot be scaled from the face side, only from the gradient side.39: Creation happened at most once. It is not the kind of event that science can pronounce upon, since it is by definition the setting up of the laws of science, not their subsequent functioning. Admittedly, we have no scientific evidence of creation, and we could not ever have. The best a thesist could possibly have is to prove a lack of any scientific explanation for some natural phenomenon within creation, which would necessitate a non-scientific account. Greyman (#34) points out the real difficulty for such a "proof." But it would be dogmatic and circular to claim that no such proof, or even the underlying observation that would be the basis for such a proof (namely an IC biological structure) is possible. To say that would be to say that the god hypothesis has a probability of 0, which RD expressly, and always, says is not something any scientist can say. (He's right.)
41: See my comment above to 39.
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45. Comment #232220 by J Mac on August 17, 2008 at 8:57 pm
"Natural selection can quite easily produce IC systems." I don't think RD would agree with you. I think he admits that Mount Improbable cannot be scaled from the face side, only from the gradient side.
Are you having fun with your semantic games? They were using two different definitions of IC as I have described above.
Respond to argument please, don't quote-mine.
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46. Comment #232224 by Laurie Fraser on August 17, 2008 at 9:02 pm
43. Jebus! So what was Shakespeare going on about with "What a piece of work is Man..."? Other Comments by Laurie Fraser
47. Comment #232228 by MPhil on August 17, 2008 at 9:10 pm
"What a piece of work is Man..."
While I think it's important - especially in the face of anthropocentrics, theists, IDiots etc - to proclaim loudly that man isn't perfect, and that man is designed exactly as one would expect from random mutation and natural selection... I feel sometimes people go over the top and fail to recognize that the capabilities of human cognition are truly amazing and wonderful.
To think that out of mindless nature arose something that can (at least partially) comprehend the universe - have discussions about cognition, psychology, philosophy, physics, mathematics and whatnot... to have invented all these disciplines in the first place, to use a system of highly sophisticated arbitrary symbols in syntactic order with infinite expressive and descriptive capabilities (and to be unique in that in everything we know)...
... that is a something I think we shouldn't forget either, a true wonder of the natural world, and one we are just beginning to understand - something even far more marvellous than the unweaving and understanding of the rainbow.
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48. Comment #232393 by rod-the-farmer on August 18, 2008 at 3:12 am
I am still waiting for Gov. Jindal or his staff to provide details in writing on the exact strengths and the exact weaknesses he sees in both evolution and intelligent design, and all the other alternative(s) he thinks should be taught in school. Has anyone seen anything yet ? From any of these states where this sort of thing was approved ?I think we should all press for this sort of thing. After all, the new school year starts in only a few weeks. How is a teacher supposed to 'teach the controversy' when there is no course material ? Only once they get their plans down so all can see the exact nature of the 'controversy' will we be able to attack it with laughter and ridicule. Oh yes, facts too, but laughter I think will be a big weapon.
Other Comments by rod-the-farmer
49. Comment #232407 by GBile on August 18, 2008 at 4:34 am
Rod,I am with you. Laughter and ridicule is the way to go. Created in 'his' image, with aching backs, myopic eyes, obese bellies and curiously dangling balls. Peeing and love-making with the same contraption.
Articles like this are about facts, not about vague notions like 'strengths and weaknesses'. I suspect they will never come up with examples. Any attempt to provide one has been been succesfully attacked, thus far.
I pity the students who will be robbed of an opportunity to be educated properly. Let us try to support them by laughing at those who attempt to force their ignorance on the next generation.
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50. Comment #232417 by Beusfalus on August 18, 2008 at 5:13 am
Johnny O
If you have a lot of splatted skydivers and the rip cord of their chutes have not been pulled I think it might be infered that they didn't pull the cord.....knowing that the diver forgot might be a step to far.
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1. Comment #231887 by Apathy personified on August 17, 2008 at 9:18 am
They also make grandiose statements like 'The atmoshere at the surface of the earth is transparent to em radiation in the 400 - 700 nm wavelength range, the same wavelength our eyes see - therefore our eyes are intelligently designed. That one really pisses me off.
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