The Intelligent Design "Debate"

[filkertom]

Thanks to redaxe for pointing out this.

So -- and let's go for Teh Fonni here -- what's your Best Evidence That, If Intelligent Design Is Real, God Is An Idiot?

Comments

[bald-ruminant.livejournal.com]

W.

[sunfell.livejournal.com]

Childbirth.

Nah!

[capplor.livejournal.com]

That just makes me disbelieve in the existance of a Goddess.

[docwebster.livejournal.com]

Cleveland.

[takaal.livejournal.com]

It's a tie: mosquitos or The Platypus. (Although the latter may just be "God was stoned".)

[hitchkitty.livejournal.com]

Men have nipples! (http://www.idrewthis.org/2005/intelligentdesign.html)

[fraggedone.livejournal.com]

Disease.

[fraggedone.livejournal.com]

Oops, The Funny... Uh... Men have it up front, women have it between.

[scifantasy.livejournal.com]

Humanity.

It's like Calvin said: "Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us." God has the power of the universe, and the best he can come up with is humanity? Please.

[marahsk.livejournal.com]

Someone already said "W," so I'll say, that children are incapable of being toilet trained for 2-3 years. Yup, that was good planning; no one will mind *that*.

[catlin.livejournal.com]

Kids can be trained as soon as they can walk, society has just moved away from doing so at that age.

[marahsk.livejournal.com]

Even so, that's still almost a year of yuckiness.

[sylverwolfe.livejournal.com]

rush hour

[janetmiles.livejournal.com]

Human lower back. And knees.

The platypus, on the other hand, is evidence for a brilliant creator god with a twisted sense of humor.

[aylinn.livejournal.com]

My best guess would be the bit exemplified by the old engineer's joke punchline.

"Who else would run a sewage line through a playground?"

Mind you - humans aren't the only species where this design "feature" is evident.

[liddle-oldman.livejournal.com]

Heh. I immediately thought of that line too.

[cheshyre]

I rather like xiphias suggestion that if there's an intelligent designer, we're not the end goal. Octopi have many fewer design flaws and all it might take was longer lifespans and an ability to pass on learned traits, and they'd rule. Maybe that's why Gd created humanity -- to accellerate global warming to give them a chance.

Then again, reading articles on prehistoric Australia megafauna makes me think there is a designer out there, he's whimsical, plays d20 with the universe and has a wandering monster table. I mean, carnivorous kangaroos? Giant crocodiles that drop from trees? A creature otherwise-sober scientists call "Demon Duck of Doom"??? I'm still collecting details for a Friday Animal Blogging post for riba_rambles, if you want to check back in a few days...


More seriously, check out this essay on unintelligent design by a former veterinarian and assistant professor of moral theology. Knees, lower backs, the crossing of windpipes and digestive tubes in a way that make us prone to choking are my favorite examples of unintelligent design

[the-s-guy.livejournal.com]

Certain of my co-workers spring to mind.

[valkyrwench.livejournal.com]

Fundies.

[skipjim.livejournal.com]

The popularity of country music?

[gridlore.livejournal.com]

Hodgkins Disease. Seriously, who designs a lymphatic system that can just decide, all on its own, to start pumping out cancer cells?

Game 6 of the 2002 World Series proved that if there is a God, he's a complete sadist.

[holzman.livejournal.com]

You mispelled "Inelegant Design." Hope This Helps. :)

[unclelumpy.livejournal.com]

The appendix.

[partiallyclips.livejournal.com]

The scrotum.

[darthparadox.livejournal.com]

The scrotum is actually an elegant solution to the problem of sperm requiring sub-body temperatures to thrive. Though from an omnipotent-design viewpoint, it's a bit of a hack - the better solution would have been to fix the sperm-temperature bug in the first place. The hack leaves certain vulnerabilities in the system.

Now, think about that the next time you hear the phrase "hacky-sack".

[partiallyclips.livejournal.com]

I stand by my scrotum.

Remark.

[unclelumpy.livejournal.com]

Does that mean Canadians are more fertile than Haitians?

[arcane-k.livejournal.com]

Carrot Top.
Young Rocket Samurai.
Jesus Christ, Vampire Hunter.

[arcane-k.livejournal.com]

Wood ducks. Pretty, but strange. A duck that nests in trees?

[arcane-k.livejournal.com]

I'm surprised that nobody mentioned the Pastafarians of the Church of the Flying Spagetti Monster.

[catlin.livejournal.com]

The strongest most likely to survive creatures are cockroaches and sharks. If there is a god plann in all this, it isnt a human one :-)

Not sure about idiot, but sadist...

[lizard-sf.livejournal.com]

There's this parasite which EATS A FISHES TONGUE and then TAKES ITS PLACE. So the fish has this carnivorous worm living in its mouth which it now requires to live.

That's just sick.

Any 'designer' who comes up with this sort of thing isn't worthy of worship. I mean, even Great Cthulhu never got that gross.

Re: Not sure about idiot, but sadist...

[darthparadox.livejournal.com]

Agreed. Most of that evidence points more to an actively malevolent God than an incompetent one, in my opinion. I mean, Alzheimer's? I understand we all have to die sometime - I can even accept that cancer is a reasonable mechanism for causing that - but I can't imagine a loving God causing someone to cause someone's mind to deteriorate like that.

Re: Not sure about idiot, but sadist...

[liddle-oldman.livejournal.com]

How abaout the bug (I'm afraid I don't know its name) that, at a certain stage of maturity, inserts its head into its mothers nethers and eats her insides?

[umbran.livejournal.com]

The best evidence that God is an idiot is that we are not built to naturally recognize the presence of God in the Universe.

[partiallyclips.livejournal.com]

At least ten inflammatory responses self-edited.

(This probably counts as an eleventh but I just wanted you to know.)

[unclelumpy.livejournal.com]

Gotta side with PC, here. I personally believe that God exists, but I didn't make my decision based on any empirical (sp?) evidence.

Bugger

[baronet.livejournal.com]

If life on earth was designed, then it was designed by a real bug lover. Insects outnumber humans by so much that they have a higher total mass. (assuming that isn't an internet rumor that I am mistakenly repeating. I didn't quickly find a reliable source to link to)

Re: Bugger

[partiallyclips.livejournal.com]

Wikipedia has an interesting entry on biomass, but I could ask for more stats there.

Another source I found estimated that the biomass of ants alone is roughly equal to that of humans.

[trdsf.livejournal.com]

Best evidence that God is a doofus? Humanity.

[james-rayner.livejournal.com]

Joe McCarthy, Pat Robertson and Jack Thompson.

'nuff said.

[arensb.livejournal.com]

You could probably use most of the examples that Behe and other creationists use to "prove" intelligent design.

The argument is that X is so complex that it must have been designed. But the kind of complexity they're talking about just accretes naturally. Who designed the US Government, with its myriad departments and agencies sometimes duplicating each other's efforts (e.g., various law enforcement agencies), sometimes working at cross-purposes (e.g., subsidizing tobacco farmers and fighting tobacco use), and often employing circuitous routes to a goal (why is the president protected by the Treasury Department)?

In contrast, I have a dining room table with leaves that slide out from the ends, and store underneath the table. A friend of mine who's into woodworking came over and spent several hours trying to figure out how those 20 pieces of wood worked together.

So if there's a God intelligent designer, why didn't he clean up the obvious instances of bad design (e.g., the vas deferens making a long detour through the pelvis and prostate, rather than cutting around the pelvis)? Why is everything so bloody complicated, instead of simple and elegant?

[liddle-oldman.livejournal.com]

The absolute lack of intelligent design. An engineer would be ashamed of this kludge.

Knees.

Teeth.

The fact that the damn thing wears out and dies.

Why do so few people's brains work?

[wildcard9.livejournal.com]

I still say DC Comics had the best solution to this arguement back in 1986: showing the words "Let There Be Light" triggering the Big Bang. If some higher being design life, there is nothing there that says that evolution can't then cause that life to change over time. And I won't go into the "so what came before the Big Bang" arguement or where did the matter from the Big Bang come from. Personally, I lean towards it was the matter/energy from the universe before ours, and the matter/energy of this universe will eventually collapse into a mega-atom (aka the Big Crunch) that will explode into the next universe.