The Recurrent Laryngeal Nerve and Creationism

So, it can be said that creationism makes a couple predictions. Creationism purports an intelligent creator, and that A species cannot over time become another species. Given this, we can say that creationism predicts that if a simple and efficient method of doing something in biology exists, and if no benefit arises from doing something in a complex way, then that portion of biology should follow the simple and efficient method. If this is true, then the left recurrent laryngeal nerve in in mammals (if not all chordates above amphibians) should not exist the way it does.

Let me explain this puzzle a bit more, the recurrent laryngeal nerve is responsible for moving the vocal chords in the larynx, damage to it is known to cause a hoarse voice. The left nerve starts in the brain stem, loops down around the aorta, then travels back up the neck to the larynx. This circuitous route is what earned the nerve the name 'recurrent' and it serves no clear purpose. Indeed I'd say that such an excess of nerve is more of a hindrance since neural impulses take much longer (relatively speaking) to travel over half a meter than they do the 10 centimeters we would expect from design, not to mention the fact that additional 'cabling' just offers more of a chance for damage/malfunction (This is even worse in other mammals, the giraffe's left laryngeal nerve is 7 meters long). This circuitous route is a lot like sending the control signal for your car's steering wheel back into your trunk before turning around and going to your front wheels. Given this, it's safe to say that the left recurrent laryngeal nerve goes against the predictions of creationism.

What about evolution though? Does this nerve fit with the blind watchmaker philosophy of evolution? Yes, it does. Since the disadvantage of a longer laryngeal nerve is slight and special-circumstance, selective pressure against such a thing would be equally as slight. If we look back at earlier chordates, we see a pattern that fits with the evolutionary model. If we look at amphibians, which are similar to early land dwellers so long ago, the most direct path from the brainstem to the larynx passes behind the aorta. If we move forward in complexity to reptiles, the heart has moved back a bit in the chest, giving the nerve a little curve. In mammals, the heart is deeper in the chest while the larynx is further up the neck, and so we have a progression- the path was the easiest in early ancestors, but without significant selective pressure (or chance mutation) to cause a reroute of this nerve, it just simply lengthened as the physiology changed.

source: "The brain", by Ammar Al-Chalabi, Martin R. Turner, and R. Shane Delamont

This is a good example, but one that will be unconvincing to any die-hard creationist. Any flaw in any animal or design can be explained with the simple phrase, "God wanted to do it that way."

The same logic means that god wants abortions. After all, everything is gods will, thousands of abortions occur each year, therefore abortions must be gods will!

Unfortunately religion has little to do with logic.

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On "illegal" immigration:
"Give us your poor, your tired, your huddled masses longing to be free..." -The Statue of Liberty

On the alleged connection between Hitler and Atheism:
"For it was by the Will of God that men were made of a certain bodily shape, were given their natures and their faculties." -Hitler, Mein Kampf, Volume II, Chapter X

Danth's Law: "If you have to insist that you've won an internet argument, you've probably lost badly."

I guess they can say it was the result of "The Fall" and "The Curse."

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“The biblical story of the perfect and finished creation from which human beings fell into sin is pre-Darwinian mythology and post-Darwinian nonsense." -Bishop John Shelby Spong

"It is not the obligation of the State to reconcile various faiths with reality. Do it yourself." -Atomweaver

"We have designed our civilization based on science and technology and at the same time arranged things so that almost no one understands anything at all about science and technology. This is a clear prescription for disaster."
- Carl Sagan (Demon Haunted World)

Or the "Everything was different back then!" PRATT.

Originally Posted by ragarth

So, it can be said that creationism makes a couple predictions.

Um ... creationism has nothing to do with predictions.

I'm sure that, before the Fall, the Laryngeal Nerve was just fine --- (not to mention 'perfect').

It got "damaged" when sin entered the universe and started messing with the gene pool.

Now we're all [supposedly] mutants.

Prone to sin, prone to disease, prone to death, prone to changes in the weather, prone to emotional outbursts, prone to insults, prone to being prone.

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All courtesy of your "All loving, all forgiving" God.

Sin, apparently is some universal magical force that can create disease-causing organisms and viruses and can twist nerves around in a highly repeatable fashion depending on how animals are classified.

I used to think that "sin" simply meant "violation of God's law". It probably used to mean that, but has over time evolved into a catch-all word to be used whenever a creationist encounters something he wouldn't expect from a perfect creator.

Peter

Do not forget that it can cause a change in all the laws of physics while leaving no trace of the laws changing.

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1. Nowhere does the Bible say it must be taken literally.
2. Nowhere does the Bible say it was given word for word and must be historically true.
3. God created the earth JUST AS MUCH as God inspired the Bible.
4. Therefore the earth is the Work of God just as much as the Bible is the Word of God.
5. Therefore God's Work and God's Word will line up.
6. Therefore if an interpretation of God's Word contradicts God's Work, that interpretation must be wrong.

If you make a claim, that claim can make a prediction. If your claim's prediction is testable, then it can be used to prove or disprove the claim. Now let's look at this whole 'sin' and 'fall' argument. What's the mechanism by which the sin or the fall would create a pattern of morphological change that reflects predictions made by evolution?

If we have humans, giraffes, iguanas, crocodiles, birds, and frogs which all show varying degrees of this recursive laryngeal nerve anomaly, and a plotting of this morphological change shows a pattern that also matches the pattern of other forms of proof such as ERVs, genetic drift, and fossil record, all of which are completely unrelated except within the domain of evolutionary theory, then this is positive proof of evolutionary theory.

When you have multiple unrelated strands of evidence that is predicted via a theory, this is proof of that theory.

So, how does sin and the fall predict all these multiple unrelated strands of evidence?" What is the mechanism by which some nebulous idea such as 'sin' can cause morphologic change such as this? (We understand the mechanism of evolution pretty decently, and that understanding continues to improve as science advances. For sin to be a competing proposition for change, you'll have to provide a falsifiable mechanism.)

Do you need me to reiterate my proof showing that a postulate divided from reality is naught more than fantasy?