Unnecessary complexity is, which life is riddled with. The crazy route of the laryngeal nerve, for example.
I see nothing in your link which suggests that the routing of this nerve is needlessly complex. In fact, I’d wager that if this organ seems needlessly complex, it’s quite likely due to the observer’s limited understanding of biology. On the whole, I think it’s more reasonable to assume that our understand of anatomy is incomplete, rather than immediately concluding, “Ah, this organ is overly complicated. There cannot possibly be any purpose to this complexity.”
But for the sake of argument, let us assume that it is indeed overly complex – that we know it’s every single function, and that one can devise a simpler organ without any loss of functionality or robustness whatsoever. At best, this would imply a suboptimal design. This is not, in and of itself, conclusive proof that there was no designer. One might philosophize about the nature of this designer, and one might question why a suboptimal design was employed, but the conclusion that there was necessarily no designer is not yet warranted.
There will never be conclusive proof by looking under every rock, and every proton unless we find God’s signature. And even at that, would we know it, if we see it?
Okay, then lets drop the “conclusive proof” requirement. We don’t even have reasonable proof that there was no designer under such circumstances – especially with our extremely limited understanding of how the human body functions. It takes a certain kind of hubris to look at these body parts and say, “Bah. I would have changed this or that” without acknowledging the very real possibility that your untested changes would have some adverse effect on the whole.
Well, most certainly. And let’s not forget, the bodies we have today are the result of millions of years of natural selection, mutation and adaptation. It’s clear there are parts of our bodies that are vestigial (coccyx, Darwin’s tubercle) and some which can even be problematic (appendix, wisdom teeth).
Waxing philosophic or theologically about the possibilities and likelihood of intelligent designer can be fun, but from a scientific standpoint, there’s no basis at all to even form a hypothesis on what to even look for to gather any evidence for such a thing.
Whatever science uncovers, will by definition be part of the natural world. This is what I mean, by “if God exists, why did he make the universe appear as if he didn’t?” Despite the beauty, complexity, or the presence of intelligent life which requires the deceiving “just so” laws of physics, there’s nothing that screams “This is clear evidence of a creator!”
So, on that ground, intelligent design is out of bounds, for now and arguably forever, in the realm of science.
You are seriously claiming that a nerve going 7 feet down only to turn around and and travel another 7 feet back up the neck of a giraffe, only to end a few inches from it’s starting point is not “needlessly complex”
nm, got the question backward… it’s too late for decent comprehension.
I am saying no such thing. Rather, I acknowledge that it is complex, and that the issue which you raised is a conundrum. I also recognize that organs typically fulfill multiple roles and that they interact with each other in subtle, little understood ways. Hence one should not be so hasty as to insist that it must surely be “needlessly complex” – not unless you fully understand the nature of its functions and interactions with other organs and systems.
It is far from being a conundrum and although you may not personally understand how they function that does not mean that science does not.
This structure is needlessly complex, and yes it’s interactions with other organs and systems is well known.
The only way this path makes any sense is if it was a less circuitous in an earlier evolutionary form as it is in fish.
Nonsense. Certain interactions are well known. There are still a great many mysteries about the human body, especially when it comes to the subtler functions at the molecular level. To say that we completely understand every possible function of this organ, as well as its every interaction with every other system in the human body… well, that goes beyond hubris.
We know the function of peripheral axons and nerves, there is no reason to take it to the absurd level of molecular level interactions, unless you have even the slightest evidence that there is some alternative function it would say that your argument is “Nonsense”
I would say that the charge of “hubris” is better applied to creationists, they are the ones that claim that some super being created at least 200,000,000,000 Galaxies containing around 200,000,000,000 stars each.
Of these 40,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars one special planet was given life, where he tortures his creations as a test to who will be treated well in some permanent afterlife?
Yet it is “beyond hubris” to believe you have a basic understanding of the peripheral nervous system?
That kind of thing can be found in some integrated circuit designs, and there is a technical term for them.
Routing error.
You don’t have to know the full set of requirements for a chip to see that someone screwed up.
I wonder what the explanation for the poor design of the human eye is, especially since the eyes of certain creatures (squids IIRC) are done right. Maybe God is a squid.
We’ve got to distinguish true, designed complexity from apparent complexity that comes from simple rules, with Conway’s “Game of Life” as a perfect example. Preventing this poor design would require more complexity than allowing it, given that it clearly does not significantly affect chances for reproduction.
What can be easier than descent with modifications? Natural selection is a given.
The important consideration for a topic like this is that everything is natural selection. There are any number of motes of space dust that could have become planets, but they just happened to miss being pulled in to any and so float around uselessly. On the other hand, some got lucky and clumped into a ball that we see and think is pretty spiffy.
The important thing to realize is that ‘success’ is a misnomer. Our definition of success is that ‘you survived to be observed by us’, which isn’t a particularly meaningful definition in a cosmic sense. What we observe is just the current status of the history of matter interacting with other matter to produce various, random, forms. The same reactions that created a baby also created a corpse. But that we’re able to observe both of these means that matter was able to successfully make its way from the big bang or from the center of a star to appear in that state at that moment in time. But that matter would have been just as happy to be dirt or space gas, and you could still say that that’s a success; that we can observe it means that it was able to persist and continue its existence up until this point in time.
An animal is more interesting to us than a planet, but planets went through some amount of rigamarole for all that matter to come together successfully and persist through to modern day, as a planet. You may as well call that rigamarole ‘natural selection’ as well. The matter which makes up our planet is that which succeeded.
Planets don’t reproduce, so while I agree about luck, that isn’t what natural selection is about. Natural selection works on large populations, and is statistical. Any particular creature, no matter how “fit” can die without reproducing through chance. However over many the fit will tend to win out. Natural selection says that which tends to survive to reproduce has a reproductive advantage, which is true by definition.
While it is true that we don’t see stars or universes which are unstable, I don’t think this is very similar. We do see species which were once well adapted but are no longer, and which are headed for extinction, after. all.
I just had to resurrect this not-so-old debate, as I came across this pretty cool info-graphic (Odds of Your Existence) that uncannily describes what I wrote above. Weird!