My wife is an intelligent designer — she’s just finished a couple of Halloween costumes for the grand kids. And she says that men have nipples because it makes them cute.
If ID is right and evolution is wrong, how do the ID-ers explain the plethora of extinct creatures, whose fossils have been found by the billions. Were these big time mistakes God made while going through His learning curve?
“Hmmm. Didn’t get that right, did I.” WHAM! “You’re dead. Now let’s try something else.”
Good old persevering God. He kept at it until He got it right. But considering how Man has been such a colossal disappointment, God may not have gotten it right, after all.
Well, given how poorly designed the human body is, they very least they could do would be to change the name of their made-up, specious non-theory to ‘Incompetent Design’ or ‘Badly-Botched-Together Design’.
Ah, no, you see, it’s not bad design, it’s just that we don’t understand the criteria.
And that’s the problem with ID - in one word: unfalsifiability. In slightly more words: no matter what objection you can possibly raise against ID, it’s just too easy to weasel out of by saying “Well, the designer may have a different perspective to ours”.
In any case, I’ve found it very difficult to get anyone to tell me what ID is; there’s a lot said about what it isn’t (i.e. “it isn’t creationism”, “it doesn’t attempt to identify the designer”, etc).
So, an ID approach to the issue of male nipples would probably be something like:
-It arises out of the common construction method implemented for both male and female humans… this common construction method (as opposed to having completely different developmental processes for each sex) is evidence of… DESIGN! Because… ummm… how could something so complex happen by chance?
Of course if we did have completely different developmental processes for each sex, then that would also be evidence of… DESIGN! Because… ummm… how could something so complex happen by chance?
I am still waiting to find out where the intelligent designer was before there was a place to be, and design in. To exist one needs a place in which to exist,unless place and being are the same. I wonder was intelligence also design?
It could be taught in a philosophy or religious studies* class; I don’t think the students in either of these are expected to personally invest in what they learn.
*That would annoy the ID folks more than simply excluding it from the curriculum, because “ID isn’t…”
The linchpin of ID is the notion of irreducible complexity - the belief that there are biological mechanisms, particularly at the molecular level, that couldn’t have evolved in a step-by-step fashion because they’d have served no purpose if only some of the parts of the mechanism had been in place. Ergo, the need for a designer to come up with the whole concept in advance and implement it all at once.
There’s clearly a bunch of problems with this idea, starting with whether the examples they give of irreducible complexity (e.g. the clotting cascade) really are irreducibly complex, and ending up with assorted theological critiques of the Designer. But irreducible complexity is what ID is all about.
I understand that much, but that being the case, it’s hardly bringing anything to the table that wasn’t previously served up unpalatable and lukewarm by creationism.
I thought this forum was Great Debates? What I’m seeing mostly is a buncha folks all on the same side patting each other on the back and laughing about how great they are, except of course for post #9 in which there is some burbling only loosely connected to the subject of the OP, no surprise there.
Anyway:
[quote=OP]
According to intelligent designer believers… why do men have nipples?
That is, why do they believe that a god that seems so opposed to sex for fun would stick two utterly useless nubs on a guy’s chest?[/op]
I think I see the problem… by no means all IDers argue that the Designer is opposed to sex for fun. This whole “making shit up and attributing it to the other side” seldom comes out well.
No, more of a case that no-one is actually expecting the ID side to bring anything to the debate, and they’re busily slapping each other on the back and going “Men’s nipples! Haw haw! That sure told 'im!”, amid the usual ration of strawmanning and well-poisoning.
Btw, have I ever mentioned how hubristic I find the term “God of the Gaps”? Ol’ Isaac Newton was modest enough to review his whole life’s work as one of sitting on the seashore going “Ooh! Shiny!” every time he saw a pretty shell or pebble, while the ocean of truth lay undiscovered before him. Now we’re all convincing ourselves we know practically everything. I guess that means we’re all smarter than Newton these days.