lpetrich

URL: <a href="http://www.rael.org" target="_blank">http://www.rael.org</a>

The Raelians believe in Intelligent Design -- by extraterrestrial visitors who are fellow inhabitants of our Universe. They thus make a good counterexample to the creationist presumption that there are only two possible theories of origins: theirs and evolution. Yes, some of them maintain that the theories of non-Abrahamic religions are all evolution.

In fact, many of the deficiencies usually attributed to natural selection could be a result of the visitors' limited powers and fallibility.

But natural selection has been observed and extraterrestrial visitors have not; also, the multiple different "design solutions" often observed suggest a curious lack of communication between design teams. For example, bird, bat, and pterodactyl wings are all modified front limbs, and each sort of wing has remarkably similar anatomy: bird wings are very much alike, bat wings are very much alike, and pterodactyl wings are all alike. But they are all very different from each other.

But such a lack of communication is a natural result of natural selection; also, in this example, when a wing design has been invented, it is too difficult to make drastic changes without seriously affecting its performance.

Oolon Colluphid

So these aliens have the technology to cross the incredible vastness of space, yet thought that the human post-auricular muscle, trachea/oesophagus junction, appendix and coccyx were good ideas? Bedbug mating -- a random stab through the carapace -- and the skulls of bony flatfish are the best they could come up with? Tell me again about the level of fallibility that lets the recurrent laryngeal design slip through?

From the website:

Just how limited are the powers of these DNA engineers that they put in so many pseudogenes and the Alu sequences? Maybe the authors of the <a href="http://www.rael.org/int/english/evidence/evidence.html" target="_blank">Science page</a> could explain why 40% of the fruitfly genome is taken up with so much satellite DNA, a total of 18.2 million repeats of three tiny, useless sequences...

It’s a case of SSDW: same shit, different website. As with creationists, these IDiots rely on our ignorance to get away with their twaddle.

Education: the deadly weapon against snake-oil salesmen.

TTFN, Oolon

BLoggins02

To be fair to lpetrich, I'm sure his intention in posting this was not to lend credence to the Raelian's point of view, but rather to show creationists an obvious example of the failure of bifurcation.

lpetrich, this would probably be of much more benefit on a Creationist forum, just to show them that it isn't neccessarily either/or.

Well, I guess in some sense, it IS either/or, because where did the Alien's come from, but I digress

(edited because I cannot write a coherent sentence today]

[ January 28, 2002: Message edited by: BLoggins02 ]

[ January 28, 2002: Message edited by: BLoggins02 ]</p>

lpetrich

That's part of my purpose: to show that there are more alternatives that scriptural-percussionist creationism, and that establishing intelligent design would not automatically support their views.

And yes, I agree that there are lots of design blunders and oddities that would not be reasonably expected of those capable of traversing interstellar space.