pangloss

On ARN, our old pal Doug asks why evolutionists have "ignored" the evidence for creation seen in for example, finger and toe nails:

"And, what "survival advantage" do finger and toe nails yield? And don't say, "They're just remnants of our ancestors' claws or talons, and they're gradually disappearing". And please don't say, "They greatly aid in nose-picking and dirt-digging"."


Doug - did you know that ALL primates have nails (well, a few species still possess a grooming claw)? And that in fact all mammals have nails or some similar appurtenance?

Who said that they are gradually disappearing? And I love that last bit of projection..

Indeed, in my experienbce, it is the creationist that will dream up some 'function' for vestigial structures (I am not saying that nails are necessarily vestigial).

For example, George Howe one made a brief appearance on the old CARM board when the many factual errors in a book he had co-authored with Jerry Bergman wee being discussed. I asked what the function of the auricularis muscles are.

George replied that he just used his to help adjust his glasses, thus they have a function!

AMAZING..


Oh - and Doug - I am STILL waiting for some of that evidence you said you had that indicates macroevolution cannot be microevolution over time...

KC

Why do fingernails have to provide a specific, tangible survival advantage in order to be present?

Cheers,

KC

lpetrich

Nails are clearly modified claws, as are hooves, and claws are found among mammals, limbed reptiles and birds. I recall from somewhere that they are most likely modified scales.

Some supporters of evolution, however sometimes seem to approach this Panglossian viewpoint, that everything is somehow perfectly adaptive.

From Voltaire's Candide:

Pangloss taught metaphysico-theologico-cosmo-codology. He could prove wonderfully that there is no effect without cause and that, in this best of all possible worlds, His Lordship the Baron's castle was the most beautiful of castles and Madam the best of all possible baronesses.

'It is demonstrably true, 'he would say, 'that things cannot be other than as they are. For, everything having been made for a purpose, everything is necessarily for the best purpose. Observe how noses were made to bear spectacles, and so we have spectacles. Legs are evidently devised to be clad in breeches, and breeches we have. Stones were formed in such a way that they can be hewn and made into castles, and so His Lordship has a very beautiful castle. The greatest baron in the province must be the best lodged. And since pigs were made to be eaten, we eat pork all the year round. Consequently, those who have argued that all is well have been talking nonsense. They should have said that all is for the best.'

Bubba

Makes me question Bender's intellectual honesty...

Bubba <img src="confused.gif" border="0">

Oolon Colluphid

I don’t know how nails are evidence for creation.

The thing that makes fingernails useful is that they strengthen the tips of fingers for fine manipulation -- watch someone who bites theirs try to pick up a pin.

They’re obviously useful for scratching. But what might our ancestors -- or even we -- want to pick up that’s small and fiddly? How about Pulex irritans -- our own personal species of flea -- and Pediculus humanus -- our own personal species of louse -- for starters? Note how long monkeys and apes spend picking ‘nits’ off each other. How nice of the creator to give us the wherewithall to remove these little nuisances (and in the case of P humanus, the spreader of epidemic typhus) that he himself created for us!

Design-wise, nails or other digit-tipping keratin things (same stuff hair is made of -- what a coincidence... not!) are a standard-issue feature on mammals. What I want to know is why things like manatees have them on their flippers.

As to why on toes as well as fingers... well apart from rear claws etc being useful for quadrupedal ancestors, and apart from them adding to our balancing abilities on two legs (fine tip control again -- a friend who had his big toenails removed told me he practically had to re-learn how to walk, it threw him off-balance so badly)... apart from that, I expect it’s simple developmental genetics. The genes involved will tell skin cells something like ‘if you find yourself on the upper end surface of a digit, form nail’ -- whether finger or toe doesn’t matter. In the same way as all four limbs have the same plan: proximal (upper) single bone, two distal (further out) bones.: ‘when forming bone in lower limb, divide into two bones’.

On that matter (he rambled), funny how tib-n-fib and radius-n-ulna bones start as one, then the cells down the middle die to produce the separate bones, no? Another design oddity for my list! Why can’t the bones form separately (as eg the femur does) without cells dying -- bit of a waste of materials that!

TTFN, Oolon

GeoTheo

Hey Oolon,
One of your recurrent themes is that If their is a God/Creator, he is not benevolent since he created
parasites and other nasties. I would like to work on this question? I think it is a fair question. Other people have reached the conclusion that "If their is a God then He is the devil" by looking at the behavior of mankind. Your similar conclusion, by looking at lice, is unique but along the same lines. What do you think "Creation's Terrier" would say? Just so I can get all the arguements out of the way that are unsatisfying to you?
Thanks
Theo

Kosh

Oolon: <img src="graemlins/notworthy.gif" border="0" alt="[Not Worthy]" />

However, I think the nails are obvious. Without nails, you can't pick little slivers out of your skin. Ancestors, climbing through the trees, would have been prone to slivers. Those without nails would have gotten infected, and died. Therefore natural selection favored those with sliver pickin' nails... :toungueincheek:

Oolon Colluphid

Hiya Theo

Actually, I would reverse it. I’m inclined to say that, contra the scientists who argue there’s no overlap between the ‘magisteria’ of science and religion, the evidence of the natural world rules out the existence of a loving, personal, Christian-type god.

However, I don’t usually stray outside biology that far. Let those who believe in a god worry about that. I prefer this position, which I see as unassailable: the evidence of the natural world rules out the possibility of a Christian-type god who is also the creationist’s one.

Go ahead

I doubt it’s unique . It is simply the oft-heard argument from natural evil, which I gather Christians try to wriggle round, but which is perforce unavoidable if you have your god doing literal Genesis stuff.

The argument from natural evil runs something like:

P1: God is omniscient, omnipotent and perfectly good.

P2: If natural evils (death, misery and suffering from hurricanes, parasites and pathogens etc) were to exist, such a god would know of it, would be able to stop it, and would want to stop it.

P3: Natural evil does in fact exist.

C: Therefore god is not omniscient, omnipotent or perfectly good. Or does not exist. Since a god that is not these things would not be the Christian god, the Christian god does not exist.

The options are:

1. God knows of the suffering, is able to prevent it, but does not wish to.
2. He knows of the suffering, wants to prevent it, but is unable to.
3. He could and would, but doesn’t know of it.

Most Christians claim that option one is flawed: he might wish to, but the suffering has some higher purpose. I’ve yet to hear a convincing higher purpose that would justify the degree of suffering present in the natural world. The free-will defence surely does not apply to ichneumon wasps and phorid flies, whose larvae eat their hosts alive from the inside. Or any number of other things -- would you like a list?

However, as I say, I don’t usually push this line of reasoning, being utterly indifferent to theology. But now the killer: creationists, additionally to the above, insist that god created the complexities and intricacies of living things. Not ‘allowed to evolve’, but specifically made, designed, intended to exist. They hold up eyes, bombardier beetles, bacterial flagella etc as examples of things that he formed, each wonderfully designed for its purpose.

Creationists should learn a little about the lifecycles of parasites. Here’s just one. There is a bacterium that spends its time in two organisms. It is vectored between mammalian hosts by an insect. In the mammalian host, it causes a horrific disease: a high fever lasting about two weeks, with severe headaches, bronchial disturbance, vomiting and delirium; six days in, red eruptions appear on the body. Mortality is incredibly high under epidemic conditions, nearing 100%. (Don’t get me started on Lassa or Ebola Zaire. Or tuberculosis. Or malaria. Or leishmaniasis. Or HIV. Or a few hundred others.)

The bacterium is Rickettsia prowazekii, the insect is the body louse Pediculus humanus, and the mammal is of course Homo sapiens.

Now the point is, R prowazekii lives in no other organisms except those. And P humanus is our own personal species of louse, and lives on no other mammal. Both are very well ‘designed’ to fit their lifestyle.

These -- indeed, any other parasite I could mention (try hookworms) -- show just the sort of wonderful adaptations which creationists proclaim as evidence of a designer. Therefore, every nasty disease and parasite (and there is hardly an organism free of them: there is for example a whole class of viruses, the bacteriophages, that parasitise bacteria) is, according to creationists, deliberately created by god.

As to the scale of it: a single bird can have up to thirty types of parasite on it, from flukes and worms to lice, tics, bacteria and viruses. And according to the WHO, three million children under five die each year from diarrhoeal diseases alone. According to my calculator, that’s an average of six a minute, uncontrollably shitting themselves to dehydrational death, caused by organisms created -- designed for that purpose, it’s what they do to live -- by god.

God’s motives?

Is the purpose of suffering to make people hunger for heaven? Then what of the undoubted suffering of apes infected with SIV (Simian AIDS)? Do snakes infested with lung flukes go to heaven?

Or is it to spur others to do good works? Is the carrot of heaven so ineffectual that millions must suffer and die to get some people motivated? And again, what has this to do with the suffering of most other living things?

I’d be delighted if you can shed some light on this.

He seems strangely silent.

The motives above look pretty suspect. Others I’ve heard have involved the Fall (which apparently brought evil into the world... and is also apparently a creative design force in its own right); that the nasties didn’t affect people till after the Fall (so god was just as bloodthirsty before, and just said “sod ’em, they can go the same way” once an apple had been eaten); or that pre-Fall, everything was nice to everything. Which leaves me wondering about the ‘microevolution’ that led to cacti, acacia thorns and carnivore digestive systems.

Do you have something better to offer?

Cheers, Oolon

GeoTheo

Not right now, but I'll work on it. There is a branch of theology that does study the purpose of suffering. I forget the name off hand probably because I am a spoiled westerner and don't suffer much.

Bubba

Still, Geo, you've got t admit the evidence of suffering IS good evidence of evolution, right??

Even if one were to also believe in God??

Bubba