Let scientists think

[pshun2404]

We know that all biological systems demonstrate plan and purpose both in their being and in how they function. A plan is typically a list of processes foreseen or built in, that if followed using timing and resources, achieves some objective. It can also be a predetermined strategy or any set of intended actions through which one achieves their goal. Purpose is an objective toward which one strives (in form or function), or for which something is devised or exists. A planned purpose precludes intent. Inanimate matter has no inherent ability to intend or plan such purpose. Do you agree that "Inanimate matter has no inherent ability to intend or plan such purpose?"

 

[Papias]

We know that all biological systems demonstrate plan and purpose both in their being and in how they function. A plan is typically a list of processes foreseen or built in, that if followed using timing and resources, achieves some objective.

Wrong from the get go. The various structures of all biological systems are easy to arrive at by mutation and natural selection.

That's very good news for us Christians, because time and again we see really stupid designs in the animal world.

To say that God directly micromanaged every detail all would mean that God would have to be pretty bad.

One example is poor giraffe’s neck – it has only 7 vertebrae, just like it’s horselike anscestors, so it can’t easily bend it’s neck to drink. Stupid design - not to mention running a nerve 15 feet longer than a direct route would require. Our eyes are put together upside down, which gives us a blind spot. An engineer would be fired for designing an eye like that. The panda’s thumb is rigged from a deformed wrist bone – and so it can’t even bend. The Dodo had useless, shriveled wings – why “design” entire wings that serve no purpose and don’t even work? Whales grow teeth in the womb, only to reabsorb them before birth – why? It’s because they evolved from land animals with teeth, but now it’s just a stupid waste to make the teeth.

That brings up a good way to find these examples - look first at creatures that evovled in one environment, but then moved to another, like whales, sea turtles, ostriches, penguins, etc. Who but an idiot or a sadist would make sea turtles and whales have to breathe....... air?!?!?! Or lay their eggs on land?


There are hundreds of examples like this, many in the human body. For God to purposefully design this, he would have to be incompetent or cruel.

Of all the kinds of life on earth, most of them are parasites. Ouch. If you were a good god, would you design most kinds of life to be parasites?


Why design cruel things, like the wasp that paralyzes the spider, and then lays eggs on it so the larvae slowly eat the spider alive? Can you imagine what it would be like to be slowly eaten alive by worms inside your own body?

Speaking of the human body, some of the best examples come from that - and not just diseases or malfunctions. For instance, look at the idiotic design of the eye, with the nerves coming off the retina into the eye, then needing to punch a hole to get back out again! An engineer would be fired for being so incompetent a designer. Or the birth canal - why not route it out the belly, like a natural C-section? simple. Or the stupid plumbing of the prostate gland - causing urination problems? Just plumb it around the gland instead of through it. Duh. But no, we are left with these incompetent designs and others, like the throat prone to choke, the backwards freshwater kidneys (see http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/postmonth/may05.html), "wisdom" teeth that no longer fit our evolved, shorter jaw, and so many more.


It still amazes me that the people who blame God for all of this incompetent, infernal, or incomplete design (http://www.geocities.com/lclane2/id2.html) are those who claim to worship this God. Creationism leads to a direct indictment of God, something that Jesus himself warns us Christians to avoid.

In Christ-

Papias

(I'll post this also in the other thread you started with the same OP).

 

[classicalhero]

But you are forgetting the fall where sin entered the world dramatically changed things. In fact mutations a creationist best friend because according to this paper Contamination of the genome by very slightly deleterious mutations: why have we not died 100 times over? that at current rate of mutation and assuming the evolutionary time scale, then human shouldn't even exist right now.

 

[Willtor]

But you are forgetting the fall where sin entered the world dramatically changed things. In fact mutations a creationist best friend because according to this paper Contamination of the genome by very slightly deleterious mutations: why have we not died 100 times over? that at current rate of mutation and assuming the evolutionary time scale, then human shouldn't even exist right now.

So... the Fall caused the giraffe to reduce its number of neck vertebrae to 7?

 

[Papias]

But you are forgetting the fall where sin entered the world dramatically changed things.

Um, I'm concerned. You are attributing massive creative power to the devil. God's holy creation is filled with all kinds of designs, body plans, and so on, that are pretty bad designs. To attribute all that creative ability to the devil, and not to God, is stating that God is so impotent that He can only watch while the devil creates much of our world. That's both unscriptural as well as giving glory to Satan.

In fact mutations a creationist best friend because according to this paper Contamination of the genome by very slightly deleterious mutations: why have we not died 100 times over? that at current rate of mutation and assuming the evolutionary time scale, then human shouldn't even exist right now.

There is this thing called "natural selection" which removes harmful mutations. That's why they don't accumulate. Perhaps you've heard of it....

In Christ-

Papias

 

[classicalhero]

Um, I'm concerned. You are attributing massive creative power to the devil. God's holy creation is filled with all kinds of designs, body plans, and so on, that are pretty bad designs. To attribute all that creative ability to the devil, and not to God, is stating that God is so impotent that He can only watch while the devil creates much of our world. That's both unscriptural as well as giving glory to Satan.

No. What is happening is that God removed his power so that we are no longer in a perfect state, currently under bondage waiting for the redemption that is to come and so is the whole universe. Romans 8:18-23 tells us that and it has nothing to do with the devil, but with the fact that we are living in a sinful world where death and destruction ae the norm, not the perfection we had in the Garden before the fall

There is this thing called "natural selection" which removes harmful mutations. That's why they don't accumulate. Perhaps you've heard of it....

In Christ-

Papias

You do realise that is at current rates and with natural selection at work?

 

[Willtor]

No. What is happening is that God removed his power so that we are no longer in a perfect state, currently under bondage waiting for the redemption that is to come and so is the whole universe. Romans 8:18-23 tells us that and it has nothing to do with the devil, but with the fact that we are living in a sinful world where death and destruction ae the norm, not the perfection we had in the Garden before the fall

You do realise that is at current rates and with natural selection at work?

So... the giraffe has 7 vertebrae in its neck because of sin? How many did it have before the Fall?

 

[Papias]

No. What is happening is that God removed his power so that we are no longer in a perfect state, ....

Romans didn't say anything about animal designs, which is what we are talking about. So you are attributing animal designs to "the power of sin"? So "the power of sin" is a new deity with creative power, responsible for creating all the animals mentioned in post #2? As Willtor asked, did that change the number of neck vertebrae in the giraffe?

You do realise that is at current rates and with natural selection at work?

If you'd like to discuss that, could you post your basis for thinking this is a problem? Clicking on your sentence gave a dead link.

In Jesus
Papias

 

[classicalhero]

So... the giraffe has 7 vertebrae in its neck because of sin? How many did it have before the Fall?

What evidence do you have of giraffes having more than 7 vertebrae? The fact that most mammals have 7 neck vertebrae is what makes them mammals in the first place.

 

[Willtor]

What evidence do you have of giraffes having more than 7 vertebrae? The fact that most mammals have 7 neck vertebrae is what makes them mammals in the first place.

I have no evidence they had more than 7 vertebrae. But you responded to Papias saying it was a consequence of the Fall. So, I have to ask: How many did it have before the Fall?