A Bad "Design"

[[serious]]

I work with tubes that convey material.
They get plugged and need to be blown clear......with air.

Ah, so the design flaw is really a fix for a clogging issue? I assume it's a perfectly designed clogging issue.

Also, why not carry the air purging of the digestive system more than a couple inches down? And if you want to use the airway to purge the lines, why not toss a simple one way valve on a separate crossover tube to prevent aspiration? And bird lungs are much more efficient than ours. Why didn't we get some of that design?

 

[dysert]

I think one of your pictures isn't showing, and that I am not a fan of facial hair. Also, one day at the beach will show you the majority of humanity is not even at 8/10

1 Sam. 16:7 -> "...for man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart."

 

[dysert]

Do you live in the water like the octopus do? The sea water blocks out UV rays.

Man was made perfect, everything God made was perfect and it was very good.

But then came The Fall :-(

 

[dysert]

I've always found it interesting and hugely ironic that the source of energy for virtually all life on earth (the sun) will also kill you if you stand in its rays too much. Or blind you if you look at it.

Some design.

All things in moderation.

 

[dysert]

Psalm 119:73
"Your hands made me and formed me; give me understanding to learn your commands."

Where's my 900 year lifespan?

It's a *psalm* (poetry, metaphor...).

 

[dysert]

Psalm 139 would appear to be a load of nonsense.

Why do you say that?

 

[dysert]

Anyone who has a problem with our design is certainly free to make a person of their own design. Use a 3-D printer if you like.

 

[OldWiseGuy]

Anyone who has a problem with our design is certainly free to make a person of their own design. Use a 3-D printer if you like.

Surgeons can do wonders in rearranging the human body. I've had bypass surgery where veins are removed from one part and attached to another. Men and women are changed surgically to the other gender. There has even been a face transplant. Tissues from one part are used to repair other parts. Good stuff.

 

[Papias]

LM - Yep, good example. (Bat)

Keith wrote:

Papias wrote

Then it struck me - why is this most important organ stuck out on an appendage (the head),where it is hard to keep warm, is in danger of injury, and even worse, is attached to the sense organs and hence must be jerked around whenever one looks around? It's in so much danger that we've evolved a huge, thick, wasteful skull around it to protected it from the inevitable impacts. How much better to put it by the heart - for more efficient oxygenation, heating, protection, and so on? But no.

Except that this would mean a longer transmission time from the eyes, ears and nose, the main sensory organs. Result a more 'poorly designed' predator has turned you into a meal.

Of course that assumes a human designed to compete in the wide world where there are dangerous things.

Perhaps, but perhaps not. First, for the eyes - the visual center of the brain is at the back, so it's already wired to give a longer distance (the visual center could be near the front of the brain in a good design), so that extra few inches can't be that big a deal. For the nose, due to the fact that smells move slowly in the air means that a few extra microseconds there wouldn't matter. The best example for your point would be hearing. If the brain were near the top of the thorax, then it's not much longer - especially when we remember the wiring for the eyes shows that a few extra inches isn't a big deal.

However, all that becomes moot when we remember that any response will need to generate a signal to the arms or legs to run/fight/whatever. As soon as that needs to happen, the path is now shorter to move those appendages, because the chest-brain is closer to all the appendages. Shorter, in fact, by more than the increase you mention, since the brain moves from being above both of them to being in between them. (so the few extra inches added for the sensory stuff gives of more than a foot of shorter path for the response nerves).

I think the idea that a chest brain is a better design still stands, no?

Papias

***************************************

SW wrote:

Go ahead. Try to do better.

You've got to be kidding - throughout this thread many obviously stupid designs in our human body have been pointed out. Between the bass-ackwards eye, the sewer line through the middle of a recreation area, routing the birth canal through a bone opening, and many others (and it's even worse when looking elsewhere among the animals), attributing our design to a micro-managing God is calling God incompetent at best (or cruel). I hire engineers - and these designed would get even a newbie engineer fired. I think more highly of God than that.

 

[PsychoSarah]

The point at which they meet is a wonderful design. Food goes down, sound and speech come out, thanks to the glottis and epiglottis.

-_- they don't have to meet for us to be capable of speech, and the epiglottis is not the voice box.

 

[PsychoSarah]

Good start with the list. Some others:

Stuff NOT included. For instance, wouldn't it be a good design to include voltage detectors, like many other animals have? That would make modern homes much safer. The same goes for radiation / radon detectors, eyes that sense the earth's magnetic field (like migrating birds have), etc. Lungs that detect deficient O2, not just a build up of CO2, would prevent many asphyxiation deaths each year, as would the detection of CO, etc.

For all those things (and more) - it's as if humans were designed to live as chimps in Africa. Hold on.......

Papias

P. S. -

Another one - I was watching a scientist colleague giving a talk. She had to look at the screen, then turn her head to us, the screen, then us. Jerk one way, then the other, over and over. I realized that here was this incredible computer (her brain) which was one of the most powerful computers I know, being jerked back and forth dozens of times. Then it struck me - why is this most important organ stuck out on an appendage (the head),where it is hard to keep warm, is in danger of injury, and even worse, is attached to the sense organs and hence must be jerked around whenever one looks around? It's in so much danger that we've evolved a huge, thick, wasteful skull around it to protected it from the inevitable impacts. How much better to put it by the heart - for more efficient oxygenation, heating, protection, and so on? But no.

What did I already say about sensory overload? NOT HAVING SENSES WE DON'T NEED ISN'T A FLAW. I also don't include instances of when the senses we are supposed to have aren't functioning, such as in nearsightedness. Having every sense in the animal kingdom at once is not advantageous.

 

[PsychoSarah]

1 Sam. 16:7 -> "...for man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart."

Hey, it was a Christian who brought up looks as a weak argument about humans being designed perfect. I would never bring up something that shallow and meaningless.

 

[PsychoSarah]

I work with tubes that convey material.
They get plugged and need to be blown clear......with air.

2. Go ahead. Try to do better.
You will fail.

3. Go ahead. Try to do better.
You will fail.

1. Eye placement.
Go ahead. Try to do better. You will fail.

2. Feet not like hands
Go ahead. Try to do better. You will fail.

3. Ear placement and nose placement
Go ahead. Try to do better. You will fail.


I had a class in college where all 250 people in the lecture hall designed aliens with
unique features that "improved" on human abilities. This class had been offered
for over 10 years. Every person and every class agreed that the attributes lost were
greater than the ones gained.

Design classes.

School of Art & Design | Course Information | College of Liberal Arts | SIU

-_- you do know that you can still swallow and burp up air without having to share space with the respiratory system, right? And also that some animals that do share this space actually have problems with this sort of thing anyways?

 

[PsychoSarah]

Actually that would be considered a good death (no long term suffering).

P.S. You're not supposed to swallow your food whole in big chunks. That why God made teeth.

Choking is considered to be one of the most painful and terrifying ways to die, and depending on what you are choking on, can take HOURS, as would be the case if your throat is only partially obstructed and is slowly closing more over time.

Also, you can choke without being bad at chewing. The epiglottis is not perfect.

 

[PsychoSarah]

What? No links to reputable experts or peer reviewed articles?

Because no professional in their right mind would suggest
they could improve on the human design.

Not
one
ever
has.

I can't make a person, but if I were an omnipotent deity, I sure wouldn't have to design an immune system that could have deadly responses without having to reduce its efficiency.

My point isn't about what people can do, but what a hypothetical deity could do.

 

[Loudmouth]

I think the idea that a chest brain is a better design still stands, no?

Faster nerve impulses would solve all of the problems. Surely an omnipotent and omniscient creator could do better than what we have. It is even more embarrasing that he decided that squid didn't deserve myelinated axons.

 

[MerlinJ]

I can't make a person, but if I were an omnipotent deity, I sure wouldn't have to design an immune system that could have deadly responses without having to reduce its efficiency.

Yes, but would you design one that might decide to kill its own body?

 

[Papias]

PS wrote:

My point isn't about what people can do, but what a hypothetical deity could do.

Right. Whenever the incompetent design of animals comes up, this is probably the biggest flaw in everyone's points - to forget that we are talking about an omnipotent deity who is supposed to be able to make anything.

In fact, you and I have both made this mistake in the past few posts.

What did I already say about sensory overload? NOT HAVING SENSES WE DON'T NEED ISN'T A FLAW. ....Having every sense in the animal kingdom at once is not advantageous.

An omnipotent deity could certainly make each sense able to turned off at will, or make our brains able to handle more sensory information - hence, no sensory overload. With 4,400 people being injured (and hundreds dying) in the US alone every year due to electrocution (and obviously much higher the world over), these are certainly needed. Similarly for all the other hazards I listed and the much greater number I didn't list (or think of yet).

To boot, we should be designed to be unelectrocutable (the voltage sense would still be useful, and fun, so keep that).

LM wrote:

Faster nerve impulses would solve all of the problems. Surely an omnipotent and omniscient creator could do better than what we have.

Good point. And so it is my turn to have forgotten that we are talking about an omnipotent deity. Mea Culpa

: )

Papias

 

[Loudmouth]

Good point. And so it is my turn to have forgotten that we are talking about an omnipotent deity. Mea Culpa

: )

Papias

It is part of human nature to project our own abilities AND flaws onto others. This would include deities, it would appear.

One of the arguments that piques my interest is that it "makes sense" for God to reuse designs. As it turns out, it only makes sense if God is like we are, limited by time, resources, and knowledge. For a deity that knows everything, can do anything, and lives outside of time and space, surely it is just as easy to design each created kind or species from scratch than it is to have to reuse previous designs. Humans reuse designs because we don't want to start from scratch and invest all of that time and energy to find a different, and perhaps even better, solution to a problem.

This is why the "Common Design, Common Designer" argument is not only bad science, but bad theology.

 

[keith99]

LM - Yep, good example. (Bat)

Keith wrote:

Perhaps, but perhaps not. First, for the eyes - the visual center of the brain is at the back, so it's already wired to give a longer distance (the visual center could be near the front of the brain in a good design), so that extra few inches can't be that big a deal. For the nose, due to the fact that smells move slowly in the air means that a few extra microseconds there wouldn't matter. The best example for your point would be hearing. If the brain were near the top of the thorax, then it's not much longer - especially when we remember the wiring for the eyes shows that a few extra inches isn't a big deal.

However, all that becomes moot when we remember that any response will need to generate a signal to the arms or legs to run/fight/whatever. As soon as that needs to happen, the path is now shorter to move those appendages, because the chest-brain is closer to all the appendages. Shorter, in fact, by more than the increase you mention, since the brain moves from being above both of them to being in between them. (so the few extra inches added for the sensory stuff gives of more than a foot of shorter path for the response nerves).

I think the idea that a chest brain is a better design still stands, no?

Papias
....

I'd still say no. The issue with eyes is that it is not a single step. You think you see something out of the corner of your eyes. There is then turning the head in the general direction, then exact direction then focusing on the spot. That last involves some fine control.

Note also that if you lose your sight or hearing you are dead anyway. And regeneration of eyes or ears isn't a fix, you are dead long before that can happen. Sense organs gone equals you being dinner for something.

Or perhaps my points make the argument against design stronger, in a strange way. I'm thinking of a dangerous world where man is an animal like the rest, not so much as part of a society. Brain in the core and the ability to regenerate sensory organs is a pretty advantageous design where someone blinded can go home and recover. Not so good a design for a man fighting wolves for survival.

If man was meant to be part of a society it seems God was using the wrong specs.