Vanderzyden

Well, I'm not sure what I would do with organic designs, but I think we may have a suitable analogy in, say, basic automobile design. Consider a manufacturer that specifies a new navigation component (NAV system) on next year's model X. This component is to be an option. The interface for the NAV is to be placed in the center console of the cabin. With or without the option, the center console must look pleasant and conform to the general aesthetic shape and style of the console and the entire dashboard.

How will the engineers accomplish this task? As with many other modular designs, they will design connectors, a new cavity, and face plates for the center console. The NAV component will fit snugly into the cavity, and it will have connectors that fit into the connectors in the center console. If the customer orders the NAV option, the factory worker will insert the NAV component into the console cavity, hook up the connectors, and secure the component with mounting fasteners. For those customers not purchasing the NAV component, they will find a faceplate covering the cavity in the center console.

It would seem that this scenario is directly analogous to the cave fish. The Creator develops a basic body plan that has optional organs. For those variations where the eye will be unnecessary, the cavity (orbit) will be covered with a smooth, aesthetically pleasing and protective cover (skin flap, which is analogous to the face plate above). Since the Creator is dealing with organic material (the building blocks he made previously), the boundaries will not be precise as in the automotive example. However, the functional boundaries are well-defined.

Vanderzyden

Dr Rick

Blind, cave-dwelling fish species do not come with optional functional eyes, so it would be pointless to design them in a way that they could.

An automobile manufacturer will make practical designs that may be modified or adapted for more than one purpose, but these purposes are real options. Ford designs an Expedition so that it can be equiped with an optional navigational device because some of them will really be built with this piece of equipment, but there is no reason for Chevy to either design a Corvette that could accomodate an optional airplane landing gear or build one with a landing gear flap.

There is no intelligent reason to design blind cave fish so that they may accomodate or have vestiges of functional eyes.

Rick

[ October 15, 2002: Message edited by: rbochnermd ]</p>

Albion

Yes, I did try and mention that in an earlier post. But Vanderzyden is so good at going off on tangents that it's hard to keep up sometimes.

I mean, I thought that one of the big differences between the evolutionary process and the work of an intelligent designer is that evolution is constrained by all these parameters and so has to find the optimal pathway while taking them into account (hence these less than elegant design features in Oolon's list), while the creator is happily free of all these constraints and is able to create the best possible design regardless of all these little problems that beset natural processes. And then Vanderzyden comes up with that comment asking why we think the Creator is incapable of doing stuff. I mean, isn't that the exact opposite of what we've all been arguing?

DivineOb

Cars are built this way for reasons of economics--it is cheaper to build large numbers of things which differ very slightly coming off the assembly line than to build half, retool the assembly line, and build the other half. However, if the car company had infinite resources, it probably would build two types of cars, one with the naviagtion system and one without (you can certainly use that space for something more useful than merely a faceplate). There is also the limitation that the car manufacturer can't predict how much demand there would be for either model, so he constructs his cars for maximal flexibility so he can easily accomodate market demand.

An infinite creator, however

1) Has inifinite resources with which to design critters, so designing two completely separate designs is a nonissue
2) Knows a priori which fish will need eyes and which fish won't, so there is no need for the additional flexibility

Either this creator is finite in some way, or doesn't exist.

Vanderzyden

Your critique of the analogy excludes considerations of design flexibility, elegance, and unification. Are you saying that hand-crafters don't employ these priciples in designs where the cost of resources are negligible (such as the construction of a Rolls-Royce of a custom-built mansion)?

Tell me, what purpose would be served by the "empty space" of the vacuous orbit on a sightless fish? Storage, perhaps?

Also, who says the Creator is infinite? Or that he has infinite resources available? (God knows his own limits.)

While a potential infinite is mathematically convenient, the notion of an actual infinite is absurd.

Vanderzyden

Dr Rick

None, that's why the vestiges of functional eyes in blind fish are evidence against intelligent design. An intelligent design would not include useless rudiments.

Rick

Defiant Heretic

Well why doesn't the creator just give the fish eyes that are capable of monitoring the infrared spectrum, or sonar, like bats?

Even if the creator doesn't put anything there, he should still make it solid bone. That would offer more protection against predators.

pz

Heck, if I was the creator, I know what I'd put there.


Lasers.

Doubting Didymus

Vander, while your analogy is one of the more sensible and respectable I have seen from ID ists, it fails on several counts.

First: The analogy of the optional NAV system only makes sense if it were possible to install an eye later. In blind cave fish, the eye is not optional. There is no means for the fish to obtain a working eye in its lifespan.

Second: The NAV system (I assume) works via sattelite. In this analogy, the NAV system would not work even if it was installed at a later date, as there are no working sattelites to accomodate it (i.e. there is no light for the eye to work with).

Third: The analogy applies only to the connectors of the NAV. In this case, the designer has seen fit to install a broken nav, which would have to be removed and repaired if he wanted to have a working NAV at a later date.

Fourth: In the car, the connectors covered with a faceplate do the car no harm. The malformed eyes and purposeless orbits are a detriment to the fish.

The designer has compromised the design for the sake of adding a broken optional extra that there is no means of repairing and which would be useless even if it were obtained.

monkenstick

vanderzyden, I rewrote my urate oxidase thread and removed your name from the title. Now I'm wondering why I bothered because you still haven't answered it