Incorrect. Many advocates of intelligent design believe in a omnipotent god, and a benevolent god at that. Those two things put together would seem to imply that the human body should have no flaws; that it does so is, at the very least, a relevant point to make.
My car is good, but that doesn’t mean that it’s flawless, or that I expect it to run for every without normal wear and tear, or that it’s impossible to imagine a better car, or that the engineers at Honda are lazy and ought to have been denied a weekend break.
Good by what standard? No animal can philosophize, create, be artistic, write literature, fall in love, explore new horizons, learn about the past, dream about the future, become educated, achieve self-actualization, or do any of the other things that bring the most pleasure to humans. I much prefer having those abilities, and I would not trade them for a squid’s eyeball.
(For what it’s worth, I’m not an advocate of intelligent design. I’m interested in hearing from people on both sides of the debate. In my view, both sides make some good points. And I am not now, nor have I ever been, a member of the Republican Party.)
Taking non-perfection into consideration, though, what purpose do some of these “designs” serve? That is, why would the human body be modeled after flawed designs like the trachea/optic nerve examples you described?
By the same token that IDers reject evolution by saying, “it’s too complex to have happened by chance”, their own arguments are rejected by saying, “it’s too flawed to have been designed.”
For example, certain cars get really crappy gas mileage. This in itself could be seen as a flaw in the design, unless it served a purpose; e.g., a trade-off for higher acceleration or top speed.
All of the flaws that have been pointed out in natural world objects have no conceivable justification to have been designed as such.
To follow that image, I would have to say that the answer in several of the questions is pointing to a company that is still selling cars that do not come with air bags, the early car makers were irresponsible when the speed of cars increased but security did not evolve at the same rate.
The human eye is less impressive than the octopus or the squid one.
Me neither, but that is missing the point, assuming that an intelligent designer is out there leads humans to wonder why if everything was created with a plan is that then we got the spare parts. It is better to then realize that even our human brain has evolved with many issues also. (The position of the birth canal is becoming an issue the bigger the brain is getting and other problems are taking place because of the peculiar evolution of the human brain Schizophrenia: Costly By-product Of Human Brain Evolution? | ScienceDaily)
I still have to see a good point from an ID proponent.
But you’re comparing human engineers to God, which is what many people who believe in ID would consider the “ultimate engineer.” For him to “design” human bodies with so many nonsensical flaws and common problems (back pain since we didn’t always walk on two legs) makes no sense. Why would anyone believe this guy is capable of creating a universe but makes human bodies with useless organs and bones (appendix and tailbone)? It just doesn’t add up. Anyone with the slightest bit of common sense must come to one of two conclusions: ID isn’t real or God is a crappy designer.
The point of the quiz is that evolutionary theory provides plausible, logical answers to those questions which have the added bonus of being predictive of situations involving differing but similar organisms, whereas creationism does not provide answers of remotely comparable quality and applicability. With creationism, for example, there is no logical explanation accounting for the differences between human and squid eyes that goes beyond “God works in mysterious ways.” With evolution, there is.
(“Intelligent design,” my ass. It’s just creationism. Call a spade a spade, imo.)
I don’t really have a dog in this fight, but I think some of the assumptions in this quiz are WAY off base, so I’ll address the ones that seem obvious to me, but stay away from the ones that address knowledge I’m not confident about.
I understand the evolutionary answer here quite well about why it may have evolved the way it did, but I don’t understand how it in anyway relates to the question. The problem is, the answer revolves around one perceived flaw while not necessarily addressing many other possibly advantages of a system like this. For instance, let’s say we have the nose as a purely breathing orafice and the mouth as a purely eating one. We now lose the ability to speak, unless you add a significant amount of complexity and, to a large degree, redundant functionality.
That is, if you come up with an alternative way to handle the problem, chances are there will be some advantages over the way the nose and mouth work now, but chances are there will also be some disadvantages. So, to say tha it is necessarily fundamentally a flawed design by pointing out a single disadvantage without looking at potential advantages of the way it is versus other possibilities really doesn’t prove anything.
Also, if choking IS such a major flaw, shouldn’t evolution have potentially selected against it in such a way? It seems strange to me that if it were such a major flaw that surely one species may have found at least a slightly better solution.
All in all, this seems like a point based on a logical fallacy and bad logic and doesn’t really help the case.
So assuming humans are a perfect design (which, I believe goes against ID anyway, and I’ll address in a second) then that means humans should be able to eat whatever they want and do whatever they want and maintain perfect health? That just doesn’t make a lick of sense to me at all. So a perfectly designed care should be able to run just on tasty cakes shoved in the gas tank too, right?
Again, how does ID not explain this? Woman eats food that’s not good for the baby, she’s designed to puke it up. What would a superior design be, a big neon sign?
I have no idea what the ID response is for this, but this is directly related to aging and, I would think the response would be along the lines that it’s related to the events of Genesis, and not just with Adam and Eve. For instance, I believe it was after the flood when lifespans were shortened, perhaps that was an inclusion of “your body starts to wear out.” If God wants to put an upper limit on how long man can live, doesn’t having stuff wear out over time fit that description?
So, really, this all leads down to a few poorly made assumptions. Let’s assume for a second that God exists and he created life with Intelligent Design. We have no way of knowing why he may or may not have made certain design decisions. Perhaps there’s a trade-off for what may look like better designs that we cannot see; maybe there’s ulterior motives for a perceived flaw that plays a part in the divine plan. Either way, even if it is 100% true, those answers are unknowable without God himself telling us.
And moreover, to address Revenant Thresholds’ point, at least from my Biblical knowledge, even if man WAS created perfect, which I would say would likely be the case from the Biblical account, your logic that because man was created perfect and therefore is still perfect if ID is true doesn’t hold. You have completely forgotten about the Fall of Man and, like one point I mentioned, the change in the upper limit on lifespan. As far as I understand from Biblical Theology, and I’m not exactly well versed in it, that likely caused, and will continue to cause, deviation from the perfect creations that were Adam and Eve.
So, really, I think the point of this quiz looks nice to someone who is adamantly anti-Intelligent Design but, at least on the points I feel I can speak to, it really doesn’t prove anything. HOWEVER, as is clear, even in a case where we assume it is true, some of the important questions are still unanswerable, so really the answer should be the ID isn’t a good theory because it doesn’t provide any useful explanation or predictions, that natural selection doesn’t, in terms of the goals of science to explain how things happened. Why isn’t that enough? What purpose does a quiz like this serve when it’s based on bad logic like, “I cannot think of a good ID explanation, therefore there isn’t one”
No, I was told that God is a civil engineer. Only a civil engineer would put a waste disposal outlet in the middle of a major recreational area.
Regards,
Shodan
I have not paid much attention to “intelligent” design but I did not realize that it argued, as a core prinicpal, that the end design must be perfect.
I have also not paid much attention to which political parties take positions regarding the evolution v. ID “controversy” but is it not the case that there is a fairly large segment of Democrats–the black vote, e.g. (but not limited to that)–which is fairly religiously conservative and therefore comfortable with the whole ID construct? This isn’t just your own anti-Republican bias masquerading as an ID v evolution quiz, is it? Is the purpose of the presentation to ridicule Republicans, or to ridicule ID? If the latter, what’s the point of titling with party affiliations?
From your own cite:
*"But even among non-Republicans there appears to be a significant minority who doubt that evolution adequately explains where humans came from.
The data from several recent Gallup studies suggest that Americans’ religious behavior is highly correlated with beliefs about evolution. Those who attend church frequently are much less likely to believe in evolution than are those who seldom or never attend. That Republicans tend to be frequent churchgoers helps explain their doubts about evolution."*
In general my sense is that these sorts of “quizzes” which purport to ask questions for which the other side has no answer accomplish little. I would not be surprised to find a long list of questions for which evolution has no answer, and I would not be surprised to find that such a list could be compiled by those of us who believe in evolution, much less those who hold to external design.
In any case, it seems to me the more accurate split is along religious and not party lines, even though there is some difference at a political party level. But it seems to me a better title would be “Quiz…and why many church-goers would not take it.” But perhaps better titling accuracy would cost you the opportunity to get in a wee gloat about your political affiliation.
These are easy.
- Because God likes watching anemic people die.
- Because God thought it would be fun if every once in a while people choked to death.
- Because God thought it would be fun if people occasionally missed important things, and because people’s reactions when their retinas detach are hilarious.
- Because God hates America, of course!
- Because God hated America before as well.
- Because puking is funny! Don’t you watch TV? God does.
- Because, as everybody knows, God liked it better when we were tribal. Why do you think he doesn’t do miracles anymore? He doesn’t like that newfangled post-steam-age technology.
- In heaven that’s called “God’s lottery”.
- Because there is nothing as funny as an elderly person losing control of their bowels. Everybody knows that!
- Because God thinks diherria is funny and so God’s punishing people who try to thwart him.
- Because God hates them infidels. Including Jews. You know how it is.
- Because God is greatly amused whenever an old man pees his pants.
- God made it hot, he made it humid, and people still didn’t catch a hint. Still, third time’s the charm.
Mysterious ways? No way; it all makes perfect sense!
One thing to point out is that intelligent design, even when we’re talking about a omnipotent and benevolent designer, doesn’t necessarily mean perfectness of body, but perfectness of fulfilment of design. It may well be that we humans with all our imperfectness actually are entirely perfectly designed as far as the designer goes; that’s precisely why this is an interesting question to ask, because the design allows us to understand the designer. If we find that there are some things which humans do very, very well, then it would make sense to say that an intelligent designer values that attribute; and of course the opposite for things we don’t do well at. As I said, it’s a relevant point to make, not a contradictory one that ends all debate. It leads us to interesting questions. Beyond that, of course, intelligent design does not equal the Christian God, although that seems to be the designer in mind a lot of the time, and even among Christians the extent to which the Fall is remedied by Jesus seems to be still a matter of debate.
I may be mistaken, but as I understand, Creationism and Intelligent Design both assume that God did it, but they go about it in different ways. The Creationism approach is, obviously, the whole bit about how the Earth is ~6k years old and everything was created more or less like it is today. As I understand the Intelligent Design perspective doesn’t have an issue with natural selection, but does have a problem with abiogenesis and speciation and it hinges largely around the concept of irreducible complexity and the claim is that God created the irreducibly complex things and asserts that there is no evolutionary mechanism to account for those. So, sure, it is creationism, because it necessitates a creator, but it is a very different thing from what is usually called Young Earth Creationism.
And on this note, since I’m not familiar with it, can anyone provide a brief explanation about what makes the squid eye necessarily superior to the human one? And if it is superior, how does that discredit Intelligent Design in anyway? If we assume that humans are the pinnacle of God’s creation, how does that necessitate that humans are the best at everything? For instance, there’s countless species that are faster, or stronger, or more agile. Hell, dogs are generally said to have a better sense of smell and hearing that humans, but why isn’t that used as evidence against ID while the squid eye is?
My point there is, design, especially on something as complex as a human is NOT a single objective maximization problem, so as long as you’re picking out specific perceived flaws and wondering why God did it that way, you’re completely missing the point of what design is. Hell, it doesn’t even make sense evolutionarily either. Sure, the single objective of evolution is survival and reproduction, but that’s not achieved by maximizing any single parameter or subset of parameters, it’s always some function of the total set of parameters that determines how successful an organism is.
Fair point, I misunderstood the intention of your post and, in the context of this explanation, I agree with you, and thing that that is an interesting question worth considering. In fact, your point of “perfectness of body” vs. “perfectness of design” is more or less the point I was trying to get after, except you did it much more succinctly that I did.
FWIW, I am aware that ID doesn’t necessarily require the Christian God, but I assume that both because most IDers I know are Christian, and it’s also simply what I’m most familiar with since I am Christian myself.
Are there any ID proponents who are not Christian?
I totally believe in evolution, but this is really masturbatory fun. Not serious and i’m not sure we could get the top biologists or MD and have them vcompletely agree with hard proof on more than 7 or 8 answers.
…and for fun.
- You mean after millions of years evolution came up with “atrition” as the best way to kill bacteria? Why didn’t super-good white cells?
- Because we’re eating food in a way that we were not meant to (biologically). And I don’t think that “food choking” is a major cause of death anyway.
- Because squids are squids and have the bodies of squids and humans aren’t. Why can birds fly by moving theur arm and humans cant?
- Obesity: Cheap fatty food like never before. Depression: WAG, too much free time to think about crap. Really poor people don’t have the time to be depressed, they die too quickly.
- Bacteria that they’d never had. Like lactose-intolerance or sickle-cell, race stuff.
- Because they have a guy inside them messing up their bodies.
- Polution, lead, acid rain, all modern day stuff.
- because evolution sucks. After millions of years the best thing it came up with was sickle-cell.
- Because they’re old.
- Because intead of flushing out the bacteria they keep it inside.
- Happy coincidence. Like finding a 100 dollar bill on the street.
- See 9
- That’s the price of living in Texas.
it’s really disingenious. Many have said that neither ID nor creationism teach prefection and that trade-offs may not be evident.
Is there any other place in the world that people even think about evolution as much as in the Us?
If I was designing a car, and omnipotent, you can bet it would be the best damn car that could ever exist. Think about it, let’s say you are God, and you notice a problem with your car’s design. Snap your fingers and fix the problem before sending it off to the production line.
Honda’s engineers don’t operate under omnipotence - among other things, they have resource restrictions, limitations in scientific knowledge, budget restrictions, and finite time. God would have none of those problems. False analogy.
Making it so those foods don’t harm the baby, either by having the mother’s body filter out harmful substances or making the baby not sensitive to them in the first place. I’d like to think any god would, in the infinite time they have, come up with at least as good solutions as I can come up with in 20 seconds.
The inability of being able answer the questions in a logical and comprehensive way, and the lack of applicability of the answer to other situations, is comparable in both. “Intelligent design” is nothing more than creationism in a desperate search for credibility.
“I.D.” and creationism both say, on some unanswerable, fundamental level, that “God did it.”
Science says: that’s not good enough, and we can–through the scientific method applied vigorously via peer review over many years–find better and more complete answers.
I.D. and creationism will always come back to, “God did it.”
Other countries have a much higher percentage of people who believe in evolution than the US. If you are looking for cites, put “belief in evolution by country” into Google and see what it spits out. Evolutionists have to talk more and talk louder to get the point across, and of course creationists talk back, and around it goes.
Yes, a perfectly designed car could run on cakes. It could run on whatever you want. It’s perfectly designed. But iff that doesn’t make a lick of sense, then follow this logic:
- God is all powerful, all knowing, all loving and perfect.
- God designed all animals, including humans. Indeed, humans are his favourite animal.
- Epic fail on the design of humans.
It doesn’t follow.
Evolution is fact and intelligent design is fantasy.
The quiz is still stupid.
Well, YMMV, but I would wonder then what would an intelligent quiz would be in this context…*
*This is high school level after all.