You don’t need an enhanced brain to deal with an improved retina. You are utterly changing what he said so you can fight it. That isn’t cool.
Take another example: Richard Dawkins demonstrates laryngeal nerve of the giraffe - YouTube <– video
The laryngeal nerve goes on a stupid path in our bodies. When you look at a giraffe, it takes the same path, but owning to the giraffe’s neck, it goes on a needless 6m detour.
If God existed, and wasn’t stupid, He would have done it better.
You’re ignoring the point as well.
What is different in the universe if a 6m nerve instead is 4cm?
You think the majesty of creation would grind to a halt if that was changed? Look, you want evidence we aren’t designed, you are given an utterly stupid eye mistake and a nerve a 150 times the length it needs to be. We are based on a million little changes, and we can’t redesign just because our necks are getting longer. We have to slowly adapt to where we are, with variations on what we got.
Arguing that this universe is as good as it could be is utter nonsense. Two examples above show that.
You are arguing past me, not with me.
I am not looking for evidence that we are designed. I don’t know what gives you that idea.
I never claimed that this universe is as good as it could be. In fact, I said:
Not at all; I don’t agree with your point.
(There is also a chance that I don’t get your point at all; this could be my fault, your fault, or a combination of the two.)
Can you demonstrate this? Do eagles suffer information overload because their visual acuity is too great? Do bats suffer information overload because their auditory acuity is too great? Your claim seems to fail.
Yes; the current design matches real-world needs fairly well. That’s what you expect from intelligent design…AND what you expect from evolution. The problem we’re showing you is that the real facts contradict the idea of intelligent design, because the design is goddamn loopy! The design is bad. It isn’t “secretly optimized,” under criteria that only an omniscient mind could perceive; it is suboptimal.
Evolution explains that perfectly well, but creationism fails completely to deal with it at all. As I said, way back in this thread, Darwin answered ALL of these questions, over 150 years ago.
If I’m still missing your point, please try to restate it more clearly.
Please define “computing power” and provide a cite. I am fairly certain that balance, and for that matter locomotion, do not involve the higher brain functions.
Actually, it is a problem; information overload is a significant problem that we and other animals have developed means to deal with. For example, our visual system is built to ignore anything that stays the same, and pay attention only to changes; this reduces the amount of information we need to deal with. For example, the eye only clearly sees a small spot at its focus; the rest is a low-information blur, which is just enough to see movement (change) and be drawn to it.
Of course this doesn’t mean that improving the senses would be bad; it just means that you want to improve the whole visual system and not just a part of it. You wouldn’t want to make your muscles ten times stronger without improving your bones, either, unless you want to break most of your bones when you stretch in the morning.
These two posts kind of work together… Bodily activity does require brain support. Not “higher brain functions,” but it is a necessary cerebral function. (Some of it is farmed out to the spinal cord.) So, yes, the erect stance has some additional metabolism cost.
And, aye, improved visual acuity would have to be accompanied by additional brain processing power (or compensating short-cuts such as mentioned: disregarding elements of the visual field which don’t change.) And these things aren’t free; there would be an energy cost.
Still, if a bird-brain can cope with the heightened resolution of an eagle’s gaze, it wouldn’t seem to be too expensive in terms of brain size, brain power, and metabolism cost.
None of this seems to support dataguy’s ideas. The human erect stance provides enough advantages – a wider field of view, and hands free to hold weapons or tools – that evolution developed it. If it weren’t profitable in terms of differential survival, we wouldn’t have it. And if improved visual acuity provided a survival bonus, then, over time, we will likely evolve in that direction.
(Or else, y’know, invent eyeglasses and telescopes and things.)
I agree that there are some things that could be improved upon. And allow me also to state real quick that I am a militant evolutionist. I do not have even for one moment a doubt in my mind that evolution is true, and I strongly condemn creationism as beyond pseudoscience, and I do not support any “compromise” whereby creationism as taught as an “alternative” to evolution.
That said, the Catholic church, while it does not actively support evolution, does not oppose it, and has stated that evolution is not inconsistent with their beliefs. So I use evolution as a part of my argument in defense of the engineering of “God” on that basis. If they suddenly disavowed evolution, I would cease my end of the debate, because without evolution the design certainly does make little sense.
My argument is working under the assumption that most evolutionist Catholics support, that God developed evolution to inject some dynamism into his base creations. It can lead to some Theseus’ Ship debates in one sense, but still.
Reformed branches are another matter entirely, but suffice it to say I’m not referring to them in my defense.
First, you don’t have to agree with my point, but I appreciate you at least responding to it.
I think one of the problems in communicating here is that you, and others, are intent on forcing everything into a creationism vs. evolution framework. I’m not engaged in that argument here. The premise of the post is that God created the world and the discussion is a critique of God’s engineering skills. Do we agree on that much?
As for my views on creationism vs evolution, I’m content to just say “I don’t know”. And I view this division as a false dichotomy. There are other ways of looking at things. From some of these alternate viewpoints, both of these things can be true. So, I’m not interested in arguing whether one or the other is “true”. I’m more interested in whether either one constitutes a complete explanation, which neither does to my satisfaction.
One of the problems with the creationism vs. evolution argument is the terminology. Evolutionists reject any mention of “design” or “intelligent design” as a synonym for “creationism”. I don’t see how evolution as a process automatically excludes the notion of design, if you take a broader view.
As for stating my point more clearly:
The post by Der Trihs seems to understand my point just fine. Whether is supports my idea is another issue.
Maybe my point would be clearer to you if you didn’t insist on pursuing an argument that I am not participating in.
David Hume took care of this topic over two centuries ago: Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion.
Well… How can “God created the world” not be taken as a “creationist” statement? At least I hope you can see why some of us have thought you were espousing creationism in some form.
But, going straight to what you want to discuss… Well… What is there to say? The “engineering” in this world, specifically of living organisms, follows a path that is significantly different from real human engineering.
Yes, human engineers start with prototypes, and improve them. The progress of automobiles, for instance, has obvious pseudo-evolutionary features. “Survival” is reflected in sales figures. The Edsel was a horrible mutation that was completely unfavorable to survival. The VW “Beetle” was nearly as successful as the Coleoptera have been in the animal kingdom.
But one thing that human engineers have, which evolution does not have, is foresight. Human engineers can look at features consciously, deliberately, and with purpose in mind. Evolution doesn’t.
So, if God is an engineer…he’s a really stupid one! His skills are nil! Imagine a Boeing engineer, designing a new jet, by altering the wings outward, or inward, or upward, or downward, in ten thousand random variations, and keeping the ones that don’t crash! Human engineers don’t do this!
Another problem: intermediate forms. Yes, human engineering has a few instances of retention of features that no longer serve any purpose. The classic example is having the engine in front of a car, because we were used to horses being in front of the carriage.
But God should have the sense to strip out useless features. The hidden thigh and leg bones of snakes and whales is a classic example. As I said above, do nuclear reactors still have andirons? Yet the animal kingdom is rich with this sort of pointless retention.
If God is consciously behind evolutionary engineering, then he is an absolute and utter incompetent.
Instead of design, evolution seems to work on a process of “heritability” of traits. This is obvious, since evolution works on a process of heritage. Darwin didn’t know about DNA or genes, but he worked out the need for “gemmules,” or quanta of heritability of traits. He was able to see, simply by studying nature – and by studying artificial breeding of livestock – that heritability was not infinitely divisible, but quantified. Evolution works in “chunks.” Today, we know those chunks to be chromosomes and genes.
Human engineers don’t work this way. (Well, again, yeah, there is some “cut-and-paste” involved…) Human engineers don’t typically work this way. They envision solutions; evolution simply uses a “scattershot” approach, trying every conceivable combination of features until something survives.
So… I’m probably still shooting well wide of your mark, but, as far as I can see, God is an “engineer” the way storm-clouds are “sculpted.” The fact that, every now and then, you see a cloud that looks like a duck does not mean that someone consciously shaped the cloud to look that way.
Really? Not to sound like a jackass, but, do you have a cite?
I always thought the engine was in front to provide extra protection in crashes (once speeds started to increase), and to increase front-end weight in the early (pre metal body) cars that had some stability issues, so they wouldn’t land on their back ends, like an overloaded trike.
They both could be fringe benefits unrelated to the actual reasoning (and the Benz Motorwagen has larger wheels in back, presumably to prevent this anyway), which is why I’m curious.
Well, I just Googled, and didn’t find anything. It’s one of those truisms that I’ve heard repeated a hundred times, and thought was true. Why else would we do something as dumb as put the engine in front…then transmit the power all the way to the back again?
Anyway, even if it isn’t true at all…there is a principle in human engineering of doing some things “the way we’ve always done it,” because it is known to work. Naval engineers were resistant to steam power; once steam power was prevalent, they resisted moving from pistons to turbines… There is some element of “cut and paste” in engineering design, even today in the age of computer assisted design.
My point was only that the difference between evolution and real “intelligent design” (i.e., human engineering) isn’t entirely clear cut. Engineers use some “evolutionary” methods. But they also use intelligent methods, which nature absolutely does not and can not.
(I raised this point, even though it sort of cuts against me, out of an attempt at integrity. I want to try to cover all the bases.)
The omnipotent Engineer, huh? Kinda like that. Yet you limit omniscience to three dimensions. Bound as our bodies and thoughts are by the fourth dimension of time it can be easy…far too easy…to accept our current status as the engineered form intended. Other posters brought up Darwin and evolution. Rightfully so.
We are the creations of God knows who or what endowed with a creative spirit to perpetuate our ideas and ourselves in an infinite array of permutations. Created in his image as Genesis says. Let’s think about that for a second. Does that mean engineered with ten fingers and ten toes. Seems rather simplistic. No, I believe the creator created creators. Endowed with the ability for self improvement of design. The means of upgrades may be natural selection, environmental, mutations, etc. But the end game is our endeavors to become Godlike.
And if we don’t blow ourselves up we will. So, to answer your question. We are perfectly engineered things. Or rather will be. Think of it this way. We’re version 1.0 and the perfect being, God, is version infinity. Just takes time. But again that’s by our measure. To one outside the bounds of time the end product is already achieved. Your confusion is based on a temporal status - living in the now.
:dubious: I’m on the edge of my seat waiting for an explanation of how the world would be the worse without the guinea worm.
This makes much better theology than 99% of all other theology. It’s kind of Zen, but it is elegant. Life itself has only one purpose: to improve itself. Non-sapient life can only improve itself by differential survival, but sapient life can improve itself by differential inspiration.
As Martin Luther King Jr. might have said, we’re being judged by the content of our thoughts, not by the color of our chromosomes.
The other good point of this observation is that it isn’t scientific, per se, and thus isn’t either threatening or threatened by science. It’s a spiritual insight, and, as far as I can see, a benign one. It doesn’t contradict the values of humanism, but is comfortably compatible with them.
Or my favorite example, which I sometimes bring up when a Xian is prattling about “The wonders of God’s Perfect Creation”: sickle cell anemia. If a first year premed student came up with a “cure” (for malaria) which condemns half of the chidren born in a malaria infested area to a slow and painful death, depending on whether they’re homozygotic either for AA or BB, and didn’t even do much of a job of immunizing the 50% that are heterozygotic (who still get malaria, but survive, miserably sick but surviving, long enough to reproduce) that premed student would be laughed (or sneered) out of med school. Supposedly this “god” created several millions of insect species that don’t carry malaria; why not just create the the mosquitos the same way?
True. From sifting through Wiki pages I get the impression early early steam powered automobiles had the engines in back because they were so large and obstructed vision, and early purpose-built “motocycles” stuck with it, or mounted them underneath the chassis. But eventually conversions of carriages to combustion engines were made, and that’s the simplest place to put it, and those were more common than building one from scratch.
Damn, I had no idea such a simple concept I never even thought about was so interesting.
Not a good engineer. The human waste lines empty in the middle of a recreational area.