lpetrich

What is that about Toxoplasma gondii protists in our brains?

I checked on the subject of toxoplasmosis, and that disease can sometimes be asymptomatic for several years, only re-emerging when one's immune system becomes weak. The Toxoplasma bugs enter a dormant state, and they wait for some opportunity to re-emerge.

So is that what Darwin's Terrier was referring to?

Refractor

Your argument is still falsely assuming that maximum energetic efficiency must have been the primary goal of the intelligent designer. Value judgments about whether or not a design is "good" or "bad" is subjective, as well as peripheral to the fact that intelligent design exists at all.

But by calling it a "flaw" - you are assuming that maximum energetic efficiency was the only goal of the intelligent designer. (that he/she/it subequently failed to meet) So your argument is based on an assumption that is not very sound because we have observed many motivations behind intelligent design, and maximum energetic efficiency is not the only one.

I think we would need to define "conquering" in order for this particular line of discussion to take on any meaning. I don't consider most of what you listed to have"conquerered" anything. They certainly affect humans, but it seems you think "affect" = "conquerer". We have treatments for all of those parasites. The very fact that we are aware of the parasites and know all about them, but they are unaware of us and know nothing, is a huge advantage for our side. Medical science is well on course for developing methods of treating/preventing parasites from being able to harm humans. So it is quite obvious who is "conquering" who in that regard. lol

No, it has not already been "done". A human eye designed after the squid eye has never been created and tested in a live human being. Sorry.

Wrong, all scientific claims require verification.

You are failing to consider the possibility that rearranging the nerve wiring may cause other problems or disadvantages to arise. The bottom line is, you don't know if it would work better or not until you actually test it out in a real, flesh and blood human.


Please quit your autogynecology and try some manners.


Now you are double-speaking. First you say energy efficiency need not be "maximum", but then say it must be "maximised as much as possible". But something that is "maximised as much as possible" means that it is operating at it's "maximum" *possible* energetic efficency. Regardless of how you want to wrangle words, your argument still breaks down to the false supposition that "maximum energetic efficiency" must be attained in all instances, and therefore, must be the primary goal of an intelligent designer, in all cases. That supposition is completely frivolous.

The arguments from "suboptimal design" falsely assume that maximum energetic efficiency must have been the primary goal of the intelligent designer in all those instances. That is a false assumption. Furthermore, value judgments about whether or not a design is "good" or "bad" is subjective and scientifically unproven, as well as peripheral to the fact that intelligent design exists at all.

lpetrich

But high-quality adaptation is often considered strong evidence of design. And a superpowerful designer would be able to avoid suboptimal designs. So if adaptation implies design by some superpowerful entity, then that entity ought not to have constructed suboptimal designs.

Mageth

The bottom line is, you don't know if it would work better or not until you actually test it out in a real, flesh and blood human.

Many mammals and birds have better vision than humans. Many have better hearing and better noses as well. Claiming that one of those "designs", or the squid eye "design", cannot be "known" to work better for humans for a particular sense without plugging it in and trying it is absurd. It's self-evident that those "designs" are better at what they do than the ones we find in us, and it is not necessary to scientifically prove that, if we had one of those designs, that particular sense would be "better".

Now, one might say that our eyes, for example, are sufficiently "designed" for our needs (at least our needs in nature, not our "civilized" needs. Better eyes might be advanateous for many modern purposes). Is that evidence of some kind of "design"? Only in the sense that there was no evolutionary selection pressure to make our eyes any better than they are.

Is the fact that the nerves in the eyes are "backwards" from an "optimal" design evidence of a designer? No; just the opposite. It's evidence of the way our eyes evolved, and that, once the "design" was set in some ancient common ancestor, it was not reversible by evolution. Thus, all descendents that inherited the original "design" are stuck with it, inefficient as it is.

What about squid eyes? Evidence of convergent evolution; eyes evolved more than once. The squid's ancestors got the nerves right from the beginning, thus all its descendence get the benefit of the more optimal design.

lpetrich

I think otherwise. We could just be part of a big experiment by some community of tinkerers who want to see what weird organisms we could create -- and we'd be "created" by some of these tinkerers meddling with the genes of some apes.

However, these messages are given to these objects' owners, and not these objects themselves. And some designers of humanity may want to hide and avoid contaminating their experiment with evidence of their presence.

Furthermore, our genes may be a good place to put a designer's signature, though there is the serious question of how one would tell that it was such a signature. Perhaps some SETI-style message?

Principia

Design exists in biology and in other natural phenomena, as shown in my two posts above. These design are a result of regularity and chance. The real burder on you is to demonstrate whether or not there are other designs that are intelligent. I am afraid you fall way short of this task when right off the bat you tell us: I'd say you've pretty much conceded the whole argument to us. If by your own admission noone can determine the ultimate purpose of a supposed design (i.e. a teleology), then what's the point of positing a designer? You can't even determine intent.

Oolon Colluphid

It seems you’ve got a few thousand of them, probably!
Ah, there you go you see: treating parasites as mere disease agents, rather than the fascinating organisms with complex ecologies and evolution in their own right!
More specifically, their ultimate hosts (I forget the exact term, it’s the host they are sexually reproductive in) are cats, not us, and they generally do not cause disease, though they can affect behaviour.
I’m referring to a bit in Carl Zimmer’s brilliant Parasite Rex:
(From pages 67-69.)

Ref affecting behaviour (p92-3):
Unfortunately, Zimmer’s notes don’t extend to sources for every paragraph, but there’s enough of them and they seem of high enough quality (primary literature and texts) for me to think he ain’t just making this stuff up.

Ref the kamikaze rats, see: Royal Society Proceedings B, vol 267 no. 1452, p 1591-1594: 'Fatal attraction in rats infected with Toxoplasma gondii': "Here we report that, although rats have evolved anti-predator avoidance of areas with signs of cat presence, T. gondii's manipulation appears to alter the rat's perception of cat predation risk, in some cases turning their innate aversion into an imprudent attraction."

This is a tiny iceberg-tip of parasitology -- most life, it seems, is parasitic. (I recommend A O Bush’s Parasitism too, for a readable but more formal treatment of them.) It’s why I’ve gotten so into parasites recently... after all, enough must have gotten into me...

To try to bring this thread back on track after my diversion... I wonder why the creator saw fit to design such a system?!

Cheers, DT

Oolon Colluphid

No it’s not. It is assuming that, other things being equal, optimal designs should be found as the result of intelligent design. To repeat a bit from the thread I linked:
Now, can you see any reason to argue with that? It looks like common sense to me. It means, for instance, that things shouldn’t be unnecessarily convoluted, nor should excess materials be used.
Of course. But the thing is, if you deny that we can tell if something is poor design, because we don’t know the designer’s intentions, then we cannot use this same system of judgement to identify good design either. If you throw out the common sense (or Hill’s logic) that says that the path of the laryngeal nerve is suboptimal, then you throw out too the common sense that says that an aerodynamic wing is a good design. We have no way to judge it.

Fine by me. It means you no longer have an argument from design.

Let me run that by you again, slowly:

Common sense says X is well-designed.

Common sense says Y is poorly designed.

If we cannot know that Y is in fact poorly designed, then we cannot know that X is well designed.

Therefore we cannot use X’s apparent good design to argue for a designer. Because, as you yourself say, such judgements are subjective, and you are rejecting our only moderately objective criteria for deciding.
Demonstrate that there is a designer, then we can talk about whether it is intelligent or not.
But the test is that squid eyes seem to function fine with their set-up. A set-up that does not impede incoming light. What’s to test? Do you deny that the nerves are in the way? Having something in the way of the light is bound to reduce the retina’s effectiveness.... isn’t it? :banghead:

Since that seems obvious, and since it concerns you so, please demonstrate that such an eye would not function better. Logic dictates that it should; to say it does not is counter-intuitive. So the burden of proof is in fact with you.
Yep. And the fact that solid objects -- which neurons are -- affect the path of light has been rather well verified. Turn on a light. Look at the floor. Those dark patches are called ‘shadows’. Therefore a retina that does not have stuff in the way of the light works better than one with. :banghead:
Nope, considered and rejected. Nothing is being re-arranged. Your designer is simply arranging, from scratch, from a blank slate. And it is poor from-scratch design to run a nerve ten or more feet out of its way, as with the giraffe’s recurrent laryngeal, because it uses more materials than necessary. (And the direct route does work fine, because (though I can’t track down the examples I’ve previously found) in rare cases the nerve does go by the logical route.)
And you do not know that it wouldn’t. But in principle it should. So you do the frigging experiment.
Must... resist... [choice phrases deleted]

You get the respect that you deserve. Tell you what: you try thinking, and I’ll be polite.
Nope. If you drive at your car’s maximum speed, you would have your foot hard down. But other factors, like traffic, bends and visibility, mean that your optimum (which is the term that eluded me last time) speed is not the maximum one. Obviously.

But where did this “energy efficiency” bollocks come from anyway? Put it this way. Counter-current flow is a well-known method of optimising the transfer of stuff, eg heat in Leibig condensers. Not surprisingly, it is widely used in nature, in fish gills, kidneys, penguin feet and so on. But cephalopod gills are not arranged in counterflow. They are therefore less efficient than they could be. That they get round it another way is irrelevant. ‘Getting round’ something is what you do if there is an impediment in the first place.

Birds have a lung ventilation system that is through-flow, where in-coming fresh air is not mixed with used air. The mammalian tidal system, which mixes the air, is therefore less efficient. Fact. And an even more curious fact: even bats, which mirror birds in many lifestyle ways, have the tidal system. And conversely, even near-wingless kiwis have through-flow respiration.

It is a fact that parallel currents are less efficient than countercurrents.

It is a fact that tidal lung ventilation is less efficient than through-flow.

It is a fact that if something if less-efficient, it is suboptimal. By definition.

Mammal lungs and cephalopod gills are less-efficient than other methods available to the designer, and are therefore suboptimal.

And before you say it, it is not a case of bird lungs not working in mammal bodies, or of cephalopod eyes not working in human heads. The designer started with a blank slate, allegedly. And made stuff work pretty well. But, in many cases, used designs that are less efficient than he could have. To do this is not good design, since good design means using the most efficient system available. Not ‘maximum’; like your road speed, your most efficient speed is not likely to be the maximum one. Good design means being efficient.

Unless there is a good reason to do something otherwise.

Therefore the burden of proof is with you. Offer a reason why bats have a tidal ventilation system, when birds have through-flow.

To say that we cannot know the designer’s intentions for using poor designs means we cannot know that the apparently good ones really are either: it rejects the criteria for judgement. So you must do better than that.
It would if I did say that, but I didn’t so it doesn’t. I simply say that if an apparently -- or even measurably -- poorer design is used, there has to be an explanation for this.

So offer some.
To suppose there is a from-scratch designer for things that have blatant historical constraints is completely frivolous.

TTFN, DT

yguy

The assumption appears to be that the Judaeo-Christian paradigm dictates that we are today of substantially similar physiology to Adam and Eve were upon creation. However, apocryphal writings suggest that they underwent a drastic physiological change after the fall, which was, predictably, passed on to their descendants.

lpetrich

It's possible to justify anything using appropriately-invented Just So Stories.

Adam and Eve are as mythical as the first people of any other creation stories.