Tuesday, June 19, 2012

God: the Intelligent Designer? Oops! [+] Intermission

One alleged proof of an Almighty is that life, the universe and everything is apparently designed in an intelligent, not in a random way. Part of that life is of course human beings, like you. Are you intelligently designed? If you answer “Yes”, I’ll say “Bull”!

Do you need a hearing aid? Do you need glasses? Did you require your tonsils or appendix or wisdom teeth to be removed? Do you suffer from haemorrhoids or back problems? Have your hips, knees, and ankles let you down? Do you suffer from baldness, tooth decay, arthritis, acne, colds, the flu, even cancer? Do you have issues with your sexuality or the functioning of your private parts? Do you suffer from mental illness? Who created the human species and therefore by definition created you? Mr. Supreme Being, that's who, created you! Who created your physiology and anatomy? Did I hear you say "the Almighty"? So who created all of your psychological, physiological and anatomical problems? Did I hear you say "the Almighty" again? Is this what you would consider Intelligent Design? I don't think so! Did the Almighty fail Anatomy 101? I think so.

As an example of so-called ‘intelligent design’ our nakedness relative to our furry primate ancestors and current primate ‘relatives’ is another clue that God failed Anatomy 101 – there are multi-dozens upon dozens of primates; only one ‘naked ape’ (humans). Why did we get created without fur? I mean when the temperature drops much below the comfort threshold, we require in no uncertain terms clothing. When it hits freezing point, we can’t survive without clothing, yet our furry animal cousins seem to manage A-OK. There’s many an image of a furry mammal surviving, even thriving in the snow. Quite apart from the fact that fur is a better regulator of temperature than just sweating, loss of fur resulted in two other highly negative evolutionary rock and hard place restrictions. We’ve been given a temperature regulation mechanism via sweating. Humans of all the mammals are the species that sweat the most. The retrograde step of temperature control via sweating instead of fur imposed two additional restrictions on us. 1) We were forced to stay close to reliable sources of fresh water. 2) It also makes us way more dependent on supplies of salt since salt is excreted from the body via sweat. Salt supplies in the natural environment are rare – so rare that once upon a time salt was extremely valuable and you got paid in salt. It’s were we get our word, salary from. If only the Almighty had given us our fur.

Another screw-up by our Supreme Being has to do with our bipedal gait relative to the rest of the mammals. Name me one other mammal that routinely walks on two legs?  That’s probably because there are many negatives to a bipedal gait, like loss of stability. Humans are more prone to losing balance and falling over than say a cow or a cat. If you’re alone and quadrupedal (or an insect or even better a spider) and lose the use of a leg, you’re hurting but not critically. If your alone and bipedal and lose the use of a leg, you’re up fertilizer creek. God should have given us six limbs – four legs and two arms! Now that would have been intelligent design.   


That’s probably enough Bible-bashing and kicking God’s privates for the moment. I’ll be back on both bashing and kicking on both an irregular as well as an irreligious basis. Meantime, see also, if so inclined, my “All Things Extraterrestrial and “All Things Natural Philosophy” blogs.

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