Jesus Tap-Dancin' Christ

Yeah, and it works sooooo well at that. Mabe the lists are so long because, well, I don't know, the evidence points that way?
Hello, Mr Kettle. How are you today?
Hey, isn't that what you're doing here?
Exhibit a: Sub-optimal design
Logical chocie: either no designer, or poor designer.
Vander's answer: PERFECT DESIGNER!!!


So, somehow, wasting a fair amount of material and energy into growing eyes on every member of a blind species needs some explanation as to why this is unnecessary? Good thing we have an icon for this: <img src="graemlins/banghead.gif" border="0" alt="[Bang Head]" />

Well, let's see, what are the alternative explanations?

A) Incompetent designer.

What, the under-grad was given the till for creation? Why? Was this planet a guinea pig for other, more perfect worlds? Then why bother with this whole christianity stuff?

B) A really, really, really good designer who is either insane, or is just messing with our heads.
Okay, why the hell would he be messing with our heads? And if he was nuts, wouldn't conjoined twins be far more prevalant? Or what about arms growing out of heads and the like. That's messed up. But we don't see this stuff. We see stuff that makes sense if a piece of equipment was tinkered with to get a different result.


Why do we need to elaborate on poor design? What, you think people needed 500 words to say the Pintos sucked and were dangerous because of sub-optimal design? NO! I just said it in about 12! Same information is conveyed, and it gives you far less wiggle room to contrive flaws with methodology where there are none, challenge the results, even when they are as plain as day, etc. There is no point in giving it--you drag on and on about nothing, demanding to see the same materials over, and over again, then decide that professionals don't know what they're doing and only you do.

<a href="http://www.apa.org/journals/psp/psp7761121.html" target="_blank">I find this highly appropriate for Vander.</a>

Albion

Black.

lpetrich

First off, Vanderzyden, I'm not going to kiss your feet. You are not the Pope, and I would not kiss your feet even if you were. So if I seem somewhat abrasive, don't whine about how hypersensitive you are.

VZ:
(on lists of suboptimal features and Bible contradictions)
-- Usually, such lists are quite lengthy. The aim appears to be intimidation.

That whine closely parallels the whine over at ISCID about "literature bombing".

-- There is often no demonstration of the specific difficulties with the subject of the inquiry. ...

More likely, VZ does not bother to read the arguments very closely.

-- Upon close inspection, it seems that common sense observations are either overlooked or dismissed.

Please give examples. And go into detail.

The biggest dissappointment is that the first several links merely contain exhibits. There is no explanation. This is reminiscent of so much of the "evidence" for macroevolution.

First, Biblical-contradiction lists speak for themselves (metaphorically, of course). Second, the suboptimal-design lists do contain explanations of why some feature's design is suboptimal.

Allow me to propose a more efficient method to discuss "suboptimal designs": The original author of this list could take two or three of the best examples and perform a detailed exposition. ...

O Vanderzyden, why do you expect others to do your work for you? I suggest that you demonstrate that OC's examples are really the best of all possible worlds. VZ, if you are so smart, that will be no trouble at all for you.

lpetrich

VZ, why don't you rebut some of these arguments and demonstrate that at least some of these examples are examples of optimal design? If it is such "common sense", then that should be a very easy task for you.

And I will repeat for you, O VZ, that you are not the Pope and that I will not kiss your feet.

galiel

Hey, the list is missing my favorite example:
Komodo Dragons.

Their gums actually grow *over* their teeth. When they bite their prey, their teeth have to literally rip through their own flesh first!

Since their thick, gooey saliva is extremely lethal, being chock full of toxic bacteria, (which eventually kills their prey after they inflict the bite, so they have to wait three days or so and track the dying prey so they can grab it when it is dead before the carrion eaters or other lizards claim it), they have had to evolve strong and unique antibacterial defenses just to avoid giving themselves toxic shock every time they go out for dinner.

Rather an inefficient way to go about things.

(Turns out their extreme biological defenses, which have succesfully outwitted bacteria for millions of years, may be useful for development of new antibacterial defenses for humans, so it's not a total loss.)

[ October 11, 2002: Message edited by: galiel ]</p>

pz

Just a suggestion, everyone: please ignore Vanderzyden unless he actually writes something substantive, other than yet another demand that people reply in some arbitrarily different way.

The topic has such a magnificent beginning that it would be a real tragedy to have to close it because it spiralled into the sewer.

monkenstick

vanderzyden, long ago I gave you an excellent example of not only suboptimal design, but complete "non-design" - you ignored it.

atrahasis

Only two things are infinite human stupidity and the universe but i a'm not sure about the latter
---Albert Einstein

Oolon Colluphid

The aim is to indicate that there’s lots. Just saying so would not suffice, so examples are listed.

Mind you, it certainly works as intimidation too. But then again, if creationists can explain them, there’s no reason to feel intimidated. If they can rise to the challenge, let them. One item at a time will do. You up for that, Vanderzyden?

It’s a list, not a book . I have discussed many of these in much greater depth in other threads. If and when I get this online, I’ll link from to these deeper discussions. Meantime, if you’d like to pick on one or two, feel free. You can have as much of my command of the subject as you can handle.

Such as? The most obvious piece of common sense I can think of in this regard is that an omniscient designer would not use inefficient and wasteful designs....

The presupposition I used for all these was what creation claims -- a highly intelligent and capable designer-creator. What might we reasonably expect of such an entity? The argument is, not what we find him to have actually done so often in the natural world.

How about you begin by address the points, not faddle around criticising the presentation?

The links are to further information, plain and simple. The interpretation in context is in the list; the point of the links is to demonstrate that the claimed observations are true. ‘Birds have genes for making teeth: here’s the evidence.’

If you want the evolutionary explanation, then fine. But that’s not what the list is about. To spell out what it is about:

a) Creationists say god designed stuff. ‘Look at X!’ they say.

b) Here’s some of the things he then allegedly did -- and they are, from the point of view of design, stupid. Got it?

Thanks, but been there, done that. See eg some of the follow-up posts to the original <a href="http://iidb.org/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=58&t=000801&p=" target="_blank">‘Hey Oolon!’ thread</a>.

So, erm, you find it persuasive, but not compelling?

Sure. That’s been done too. In sum, the options suggested include:

1) Creation by the Xian ‘loving, omnipotent and omniscient’ god. Refuted as above. Such a god would not reasonably be expected to make such mistakes.

2) Poor designs are the result of the Fall. So far, I’ve seen this claimed, but never defended.This scenario credits either the fall itself or Satan with design abilities: putting post-auricular muscles in humans, teeth genes in birds and blind eyes on creatures that don’t need them; presumably altering the superior and more suitable through-flow (avian-style) respiratory system that the ‘good’ designer gave to bats to the mammalian, less efficient one... for some unspecified reason... And so on.

3) God is a drunk: great when sober, but prone to cock-ups when pissed. Irrefutable: explains every possible thing, and so explains nothing. And not creation by any designer-deity actually proposed.

4) God is a committee: better at some things than others, squabbling over which organism needs what. Irrefutable: explains every possible thing, and so explains nothing. And not creation by any designer-deity actually proposed.

5) God is an artist: just doing stuff for the fun of it, with no intention of making things as good as possible... but doing good stuff as the day job. Irrefutable: explains every possible thing, and so explains nothing. And not creation by any designer-deity actually proposed.

6) God is an idiot savant: he did it, but did not realise all of what he was doing. Irrefutable: explains every possible thing, and so explains nothing. And not creation by any designer-deity actually proposed.

7) Evolution, which expects suboptimal designs, because design is constrained by history (no clean slate for each organism); features get carried into descendants unless a disadvantage, when they would be reduced till no longer ‘visible’ to selection -- then no further (eg the human appendix, which seems to be maintained because any narrower and it would block even more frequently than it already does). And so on, go learn some biology. Evolution, which has overwhelming support from all other areas of biology and palaeontology; evolution, which explains these and so much else more conservatively, by requiring fewer initial assumptions (gods not required); evolution, which explains it testably.

If you can suggest some better explanation for suboptimal designs than evolution, I’m all ears.

TTFN, Oolon

Oolon Colluphid

Why not? Please define 'poor design', cos we don't seem to be using the same dictionary.

Nice shift of burden. But it is not us claiming that there is such a designer, it is you. Using excess materials and convoluted designs is generally thought to be not good design: see eg the reference to Terry Hill in the OP.

Therefore it is up to you to demonstrate that they are in fact somehow good designs.

I'll go with the one already mentioned: eyes that do not work on animals that do not need them. If you cannot see that that is, prima facie, stupid design, then you are as blind as these animals are.

TTFN, Oolon