Unintelligent Design?

[iambeeman]

Having issues posting, sorry.

 

[iambeeman]

your proposal that urine is set up to clean the reproductive area, when it only covers a small fraction of it, shows that it is not needed (because the area without it works fine).

But if it helps, the point is valid. It helps therefore the point is valid.

Redundancy is fine, but a redundant system would need to apply to more of the system to be relevant.

Why? Bad bacteria enters through the opening and a little extra cleaning goes a long way. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that if it doesn't happen women are all going to drop dead from infections, but a little extra cleaning helps.

Besides, if God were to micromange that, then many other solutions are easy to imagine, such as an antibiotic secretion that keeps the whole system bacteria free,

I'm told the female reproductive system has that already.

and for redundancy, 5 other compounds produced that way, and many other much better designs.

If you wanna look at it that way then of course you could find any number of ways it could have been done differently, but what of it? There are at least 3 things keeping the female reproductive system healthy, 1)an acidic environment discouraging bacterial growth, 2)vaginal secretions slowly flushing bacteria out, 3)beneficial bacteria (I'm told it's a similar bacteria or even the same bacteria in yogurt), and a 4th of being flushed by urine. And these are just the things that I remember from high school science, I'm sure someone in the field would know of more.

First, could you explain the relevance of the Rev verse? I don't see it yet

Sorry the whole verse didn't cut and paste for some reason. Rev 13:8 "And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him, whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world." God knew that he was going to sacrifice his son (Lamb slain) in the very beginning (the foundation of the world).

Next, the idea that God designed everything with the plan of the fall happening raises so many problems that it's hard to know where to start.

God wasn't planning ON it happening, he was planning AROUND it happening.

For one thing, the fact that there is so much disease, medical problems, and so on show that if God did intend to "equip us with what we would need", then he's abysmally failed in that too, again making the creationist approach end up calling God incompetent.

Last I heard there;s about 7,000,000,000 people running around, I'd say we're holding our own. And don't forget if God did use evolution then your calling him incompetent for the same reason.

So are you saying that it was God's plan for diet and other things to solve the UTI's that he planned, yet he didn't tell us what that diet was?

Gen 1:29 "And God said, “See, I have given you every herb that yields seed which is on the face of all the earth, and every tree whose fruit yields seed; to you it shall be for food." It seems the further we get from this the more trouble we're in.

It also seems odd that it's a medically accepted fact that women are more prone to UTI's - so if the diet thing really did solve that issue, then why would it still be common medical knowledge? I don't dispute that diet can play a role (it must with practically every aspect of health), but I don't see any evidence for your assertion that the gender difference is erased by proper diet. Do you have evidence for that?

I wish I had a study to quote, but I don't. It is however amazing what you learn sitting in a coffee shop with a group of farmers and a Vet. You see when you have a barn full of hogs (500+) that all came from the same breeder, all eating the same diet, and you have several of those barns spread out you have a great population for experimentation. Veterinary medicine also has a greater incentive to find the source of a given problem than human medicine, because more often than you think when an animal has a recurring problem it gets killed instead of treated. This is what the Vet told me (Vet was his first choice, his fall back career was human medicine). In his practice he found enough evidence that he would recommend contaminating wells with iron bacteria to solve the pigs urinary tract problems, and the farmers agreed with his assessment. One other thing he told us was that pigs internal organs where really close to humans, if memory serves he said closer than any other animal.

Yes, but several thoughts come to mind. For one, if the epiglottis were higher, say in the sinuses, then mucus could still be swallowed and choking would be eliminated.

How? You'd only be able to push the mucus onto your nose and not be able to get it into your esophagus.

Secondly, swallowing mucus is not needed anyway as it is, since mucus is also produced in the larynx and lungs, and it is absorbed from those with no problem.

Try getting a cold some time or worst still pneumonia and try telling me that.

Thirdly, if God were to micromanage this then even if the first two points above weren't true, then wouldn't it be trivially easy for an omnipotent God to give us a system that didnt' require mucus to drain (by providing a different thing for "mucus", or many other solutions).

Actually it's an absolutely brilliant design. It's so brilliant engineers in the auto industry copied it's principle and it's been in production for around about 100 years. It's called an oil bath air filter, it's more or less self cleaning, it never clogs, it lasts (most times) the life of the car and the air coming through it is 1/3 cleaner than a disposable paper filter.

I am not. I'm in silicon chip type electronics industry, not in the electrical industry.

It's a pity, it's a classic case of compromise in design. You see one has strong power production at high RPM sacrificing power production at low, the other has strong power production at low RPM sacrificing power production at high RPM. Both are reasonably cheap to produce and get the job done but you've got to look at the probable market for the car's their going into. Now you can get a duel wound alternating generator, but it comes at a cost of higher production price.

Now please don't think I'm saying that the chips and what not you produce aren't amazing at what their designed for but I think I have to strongly question that there are no compromises made anywhere. Now the compromise may not be made on your end of things necessarily, but I have to think that they are there. For instance, let's say your designing a basic calculator. The calculator you designed has no compromises made, the compromise comes from the need for the calculator in the first place, people don't want to do the math themselves. And don't forget either I could walk up to the calculator and say to myself "this calculator doesn't have the functions I would have put into it, the engineer was incompetent." and of course I would be wrong, because I didn't understand the criteria which you had in engineering it.

 

[Papias]

Iambeeman wrote:

But if it helps, the point is valid. It helps therefore the point is valid.

No, it isn't. Repeating it doesn't change anything. How about this - since it applies to only about 8% of the system, what if we agree it's 8% of a point? Like if I had a robot lawn mower that could only mow out by the mailbox, for 8% of the yard, I couldn't claim (or sell it as) a robot that "mowed the yard".

And it doesn't work very well even for that area, since that is the exact location where UTIs start.

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Why? Bad bacteria enters through the opening and a little extra cleaning goes a long way. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that if it doesn't happen women are all going to drop dead from infections, but a little extra cleaning helps.

It can't help much - woment still get UTIs at an elevated rate, and have common bad bacteria infections in the whole area, in addition to having good bacteria all the time. If that's "a little extra cleaning goes a long way", then I'd certainly not buy a cleaning product from you. It looks like we can agree that it is only a little cleaning, right? So it's not a good tradeoff for increased UTIs. Hence, it's a bad design - especially when better ones are easy to think of.

Papias wrote:

Besides, if God were to micromange that, then many other solutions are easy to imagine, such as an antibiotic secretion that keeps the whole system bacteria free,

I'm told the female reproductive system has that already.

OK, please cite your source? As we can see throughout this post and indeed thread, there are billions of bacteria present - and here you are claiming that there is an antibiotic that keeps the whole system bacteria free?

If you wanna look at it that way then of course you could find any number of ways it could have been done differently, but what of it?

That's the whole point - there are plenty of other ways to do it better (not just differently), and the fact that they aren't in existence shows that God didn't micromanage the formation of the female (or male) reproductive tract.

There are at least 3 things keeping the female reproductive system healthy, 1)an acidic environment discouraging bacterial growth, 2)vaginal secretions slowly flushing bacteria out, 3)beneficial bacteria (I'm told it's a similar bacteria or even the same bacteria in yogurt), and a 4th of being flushed by urine. And these are just the things that I remember from high school science, I'm sure someone in the field would know of more.

That's all fine, but we see that they have disadvantages as we've discussed, and are sub-optimal designs (not the mention the whole silly idea of putting babies though the pelvic arch instead of out through a natural "C-Section" opening). We also see that they don't always work. Both harmful bacterial infections as well as yeast infections and UTIs are common.

.......Sorry the whole verse didn't cut and paste for some reason. Rev 13:8 "And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him, whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world." God knew that he was going to sacrifice his son (Lamb slain) in the very beginning (the foundation of the world).


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......God wasn't planning ON it happening, he was planning AROUND it happening.

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Like I said, that raises more problems than it solves (like the idea that an omnipotent, loving, God couldn't come up with a better solution even knowing and planning in advance). So many that it's probably worth a separate thread if you still want to discuss that - it's part of the theodicy discussion.
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For one thing, the fact that there is so much disease, medical problems, and so on show that if God did intend to "equip us with what we would need", then he's abysmally failed in that too, again making the creationist approach end up calling God incompetent.

Last I heard there;s about 7,000,000,000 people running around, I'd say we're holding our own.

That population explosion is only due to modern chemistry, antibiotics, and such technology. For practically all of human history, population barely reproduced enough to survive, often declining or sub populations dying out.

And don't forget if God did use evolution then your calling him incompetent for the same reason.

No, I'm not. As pointed out earlier, evolution protects God from the realization of the bad design in animals (and plants) by removing God from being a micromanager.

So are you saying that it was God's plan for diet and other things to solve the UTI's that he planned, yet he didn't tell us what that diet was?

Gen 1:29 "And God said, “See, I have given you every herb that yields seed which is on the face of all the earth, and every tree whose fruit yields seed; to you it shall be for food." It seems the further we get from this the more trouble we're in.

So you are saying that Christians have to be vegetarians, and that if they were, there would be no diseases or UTIs?


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It also seems odd that it's a medically accepted fact that women are more prone to UTI's - so if the diet thing really did solve that issue, then why would it still be common medical knowledge? I don't dispute that diet can play a role (it must with practically every aspect of health), but I don't see any evidence for your assertion that the gender difference is erased by proper diet. Do you have evidence for that?

I wish I had a study to quote, but I don't. .... It is however amazing what you learn sitting in a coffee shop with a group of farmers and a Vet.

OK, you don't have evidence, just hearsay. In all fairness, I do respect the observations of vets and farmers, but I hope we both recognize that they are no substitute for documented evidence of controlled research. Like said, if all that were true, you (and the farmers and vets) could make millions immediately - UTIs cost billions of dollars in the US alone every year.

One other thing he told us was that pigs internal organs where really close to humans, if memory serves he said closer than any other animal.

Are you seriously claiming that pig organs are more similar to human organs than chimp organs are to human organs?

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How? You'd only be able to push the mucus onto your nose and not be able to get it into your esophagus.

No, you may have forgotten it is a 3-d area - the mucus could go around the side.

Secondly, swallowing mucus is not needed anyway as it is, since mucus is also produced in the larynx and lungs, and it is absorbed from those with no problem.

Try getting a cold some time or worst still pneumonia and try telling me that.

So you are saying that the throat's present design, which works the same in either case to remove mucus, is a bad design? You just agreed with my point.

Actually it's an absolutely brilliant design. It's so brilliant engineers in the auto industry copied it's principle and it's been in production for around about 100 years. It's called an oil bath air filter, it's more or less self cleaning, it never clogs, it lasts (most times) the life of the car and the air coming through it is 1/3 cleaner than a disposable paper filter.

OK, could you provide some images that explain that they copied the throat design, or some other reference? Also, and more importantly, you sidestepped the point that an omnipotent micromanager could easily avoid the use of mucus altogether, which we already agreed above causes problems.

It's a pity, it's a classic case of compromise in design. ....

No, you missed the point. Of course compromises sometimes have to be made, but as we've seen, all these bad designs are bad because a different design solves all the problems better, without "compromising". For instance, how is any of the above a forced "compromise"? Or how is the stupidity of making aquatic creatures breathe air, or lay eggs on land a "compromise"?

The calculator you designed has no compromises made, the compromise comes from the need for the calculator in the first place, people don't want to do the math themselves. And don't forget either I could walk up to the calculator and say to myself "this calculator doesn't have the functions I would have put into it, the engineer was incompetent." and of course I would be wrong, because I didn't understand the criteria which you had in engineering it.

But as pointed out, the same creatures, with the same final functions (like having a slippery reproductive tract, or a connection between the brain and throat, or to reproduce in the ocean, and so on) could be designed much better, using obvious changes that are easy to see.

That approach means that you are claiming that these animals have some unknown function that we can't be aware of, so that approach is nothing more than failing to address the problem in the first place. It's like responding to cancer by saying "oh, cancer is a good thing - we just don't know the good effect it is having.", instead of researching how to survive it or even taking medical treatments for it. It's just pretending to duck reality, and if humans always did that when faced with real problems, we'd still be living in caves at best, and more likely extinct.

Papias
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[iambeeman]

No, it isn't. Repeating it doesn't change anything. How about this - since it applies to only about 8% of the system, what if we agree it's 8% of a point?

Actually if it applies to 8% of the system it is helping maintain the reproductive system.

Like if I had a robot lawn mower that could only mow out by the mailbox, for 8% of the yard, I couldn't claim (or sell it as) a robot that "mowed the yard".

But it did mow the yard, not all of it, but it did mow some of it. I'm not saying a urine rinse cleans the whole reproductive system and I have at no time claimed that. But since your trying so desperately to make a point of it, tell your wife that unless she cleans her entire reproductive system she shouldn't clean her private areas..... I do truly hope your have a very comfortable dog house..... On second thought build a comfortable dog house first.

And it doesn't work very well even for that area, since that is the exact location where UTIs start.

But it does help keep the entrance to the reproductive clean.

It can't help much - woment still get UTIs at an elevated rate, and have common bad bacteria infections in the whole area, in addition to having good bacteria all the time. If that's "a little extra cleaning goes a long way", then I'd certainly not buy a cleaning product from you. It looks like we can agree that it is only a little cleaning, right? So it's not a good tradeoff for increased UTIs. Hence, it's a bad design - especially when better ones are easy to think of.

Out of curiosity do you have statistics on the yeast infection rates of women who can evacuate their bladders through a phallus? That would give some strength to your assertion that a rinse isn't helping prevent infections of the female reproductive system.

OK, please cite your source? As we can see throughout this post and indeed thread, there are billions of bacteria present - and here you are claiming that there is an antibiotic that keeps the whole system bacteria free?

Antimicrobial components of vaginal fluid. [Am J Obstet Gynecol. 2002] - PubMed - NCBI

This is the only link I could find that didn't treat sex in a disrespectful manner or show inappropriate pictures. But honestly in 9th grade this was covered in school, but I'm a bit younger than you.

That's the whole point - there are plenty of other ways to do it better (not just differently), and the fact that they aren't in existence shows that God didn't micromanage the formation of the female (or male) reproductive tract.

But that's just conjecture, that something man would come up with is better than what God made, your assuming you know the entirety of any given organism from conception to maturity, their environment and any environment they will encounter through their lives. That would require the intellect of God.

That's all fine, but we see that they have disadvantages as we've discussed, and are sub-optimal designs

See above point.

(not the mention the whole silly idea of putting babies though the pelvic arch instead of out through a natural "C-Section" opening).

Kind of off point for now but an orifice (especially one of the size of the vagina) needs to be girdled by bone for the other muscles to affix to other wise there is an inherit weakness in the overall muscle structure.

We also see that they don't always work. Both harmful bacterial infections as well as yeast infections and UTIs are common.

We don't live in the world God wanted for us, but he did make sure we could survive.

Like I said, that raises more problems than it solves (like the idea that an omnipotent, loving, God couldn't come up with a better solution even knowing and planning in advance). So many that it's probably worth a separate thread if you still want to discuss that - it's part of the theodicy discussion.

You still come to the table with the exact same problems and more besides, but your right, likely better fodder for another thread elsewhere.

That population explosion is only due to modern chemistry, antibiotics, and such technology. For practically all of human history, population barely reproduced enough to survive, often declining or sub populations dying out.

Your right of course about modern medicine having a huge effect, but any graph I've seen shows a pretty consistent population growth for the last 4000 years or so, anything past that is at best a guess.

No, I'm not. As pointed out earlier, evolution protects God from the realization of the bad design in animals (and plants) by removing God from being a micromanager.

Okay if your right then God may not be a micro-manager but he still is guilty of the same design "flaws" you point at, because he couldn't come up with a better system than evolution to build all the life we see around us, and he's apathetic towards his creation's suffering in trying to survive such an inefficient system as evolution.

So you are saying that Christians have to be vegetarians, and that if they were, there would be no diseases or UTIs?

No Christians don't have to be vegetarians, it isn't a command, you aren't sinning by not eating your veggies....... no matter what your mom tells you!

Gerson Therapy - Alternative Cancer Treatment I'm not really convinced of all the claims these folks make BUT in a lot of ways it does follow the general idea of the verse. And there is at least one woman who was cured of a cancer that has 100% mortality rate interviewed here The Beautiful Truth - YouTube (It's about an hour and a half long, just so your warned)

I hope we both recognize that they are no substitute for documented evidence of controlled research. Like said, if all that were true, you (and the farmers and vets) could make millions immediately - UTIs cost billions of dollars in the US alone every year.

When scientists are doing their studies they quite often start from people's observations (after all we're all scientists to a degree if we make good observations). And like I said "Veterinary medicine also has a greater incentive to find the source of a given problem than human medicine, because more often than you think when an animal has a recurring problem it gets killed instead of treated." Not too many people are lead out to the far corner of the pasture, shot and buried for having recurring UTIs so there is little incentive to treat the UTI, there is however incentive to cure it because there is more money in it. Whereas in humans there is more money in treating it rather than curing it. Unfortunately all too often it's the drug companies paying for the research and they are there to make money.

OK, you don't have evidence, just hearsay. In all fairness, I do respect the observations of vets and farmers

You wouldn't believe how many times my Dad would be reading his latest journal and exclaim "We knew that years ago! I can't believe they're wasting their time on this." To tell your the truth it is nice to have lab results backing up one's observations though.

Are you seriously claiming that pig organs are more similar to human organs than chimp organs are to human organs?

In size and the way in which they function, yes. They are trying to (or maybe by now succeeded) genetically modify pigs to prevent tissue reconnection Animal to human organ transplants come closer after GM pig breakthrough - Telegraph. Beyond that I really don't know.

the mucus could go around the side.

Around the side of what?

Secondly, swallowing mucus is not needed anyway as it is, since mucus is also produced in the larynx and lungs, and it is absorbed from those with no problem.
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Try getting a cold some time or worst still pneumonia and try telling me that.
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So you are saying that the throat's present design, which works the same in either case to remove mucus, is a bad design? You just agreed with my point.

I'm not sure your understanding this. Your saying "swallowing mucus is not needed anyway as it is, since mucus is also produced in the larynx and lungs, and it is absorbed from those with no problem."
To sum up-
-swallowing mucus is unneeded
-mucus is produced throughout the respiratory tract
-mucus is absorbed back into the tissues of the respiratory tract
I'm saying mucus being produced throughout the respiratory tract isn't a problem, mucus normally being absorbed by the tissues of the respiratory tract isn't a problem. The problem with your theory is when one gets a cold or pneumonia or working in a dusty environment, and you'll find out very quickly that your body won't reabsorb the quantity of mucus produced and expulsion or swallowing becomes required. This make a very practical reason for the throat being designed the way that it is.

could you provide some images that explain that they copied the throat design, or some other reference?

Actually I said "concept" not "design" and I wasn't referring to the overall throat design, I was referring to mucus.

You see the oil and mucus are both viscus fluids and they both act to capture dirt and contaminates and then be flush out where they won't do any harm. In the case of the oil bath air filter you have to scrape out the dirt the accumulates in the bottom every so often, in the case of mucus you either expel it or swallow it every once in a while.

Also, and more importantly, you sidestepped the point that an omnipotent micromanager could easily avoid the use of mucus altogether

How would you suggest mucus be eliminated?

which we already agreed above causes problems.

No not really.

you missed the point. Of course compromises sometimes have to be made, but as we've seen, all these bad designs are bad because a different design solves all the problems better, without "compromising".

But as pointed out, the same creatures, with the same final functions could be designed much better, using obvious changes that are easy to see.

That approach means that you are claiming that these animals have some unknown function that we can't be aware of, so that approach is nothing more than failing to address the problem in the first place.

But that's just conjecture, that something man would come up with is better than what God made, your assuming you know the entirety of any given organism from conception to maturity, their environment and any environment they will encounter through their lives. That would require the intellect of God.

It's like responding to cancer by saying "oh, cancer is a good thing - we just don't know the good effect it is having.", instead of researching how to survive it or even taking medical treatments for it. It's just pretending to duck reality, and if humans always did that when faced with real problems, we'd still be living in caves at best, and more likely extinct.

No it isn't, What I'm saying is God knows what he's doing, and we should try to figure out why he built things the way he did because we can learn a lot from his handy work, instead of telling God what he did wrong.

 

[Papias]

iambeeman wrote:

Actually if it applies to 8% of the system it is helping maintain the reproductive system.

Except that comes at serious costs that make 8% cleaning a bad trade off. Let's see, increased UTI's, putting a waste stream through a recreational area, urinary problems during pregnancy, and so on, all so you can get 8% cleaning in of a reproductive tract that you claim has sufficient cleaning through other mechanisms? And you call that a good design?

Why not simply put the urinary opening in a different location, thus avoiding the UTIs, sexual activity concerns, and urinary problems during pregnancy, (since you have claimed the cleaning of the other 92% of the reproductive area works fine, making urine "washes" unneeded)?

Out of curiosity do you have statistics on the yeast infection rates of women who can evacuate their bladders through a phallus? That would give some strength to your assertion that a rinse isn't helping prevent infections of the female reproductive system.

I don't, but the simple fact that UTIs are common in women shows that the current design is not good.

Papias wrote:

OK, please cite your source? As we can see throughout this post and indeed thread, there are billions of bacteria present - and here you are claiming that there is an antibiotic that keeps the whole system bacteria free?

Antimicrobial components of vaginal fluid. [Am J Obstet Gynecol. 2002] - PubMed - NCBI

Thanks for providing solid, reliable evidence from a well controlled study. However, I've never disagreed with the fact that such activity exists (in fact, you can see from both my post and the quote above that I've always been aware of the selective activity). You can see that your evidence doesn't support your claim. You claimed that there was an antibiotic that kept the whole system bacteria free. Your cited study only shows that it acts against some bacteria, and most importantly, that it is active against them, which is far different from always completely eliminating them (that's what "keeps" means). It's good that those secretions evolved, but they are far from perfect, as there are literally millions of women suffering from bacterial infections at any given moment.


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Papias wrote:

That's the whole point - there are plenty of other ways to do it better (not just differently), and the fact that they aren't in existence shows that God didn't micromanage the formation of the female (or male) reproductive tract.

But that's just conjecture, that something man would come up with is better than what God made, your assuming you know the entirety of any given organism from conception to maturity, their environment and any environment they will encounter through their lives. That would require the intellect of God.
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Your post is simple relativistic lazyiness. You are claiming that because we can't know everything, we can't know anything. That attitude would have us still living like neanderthals. We can't investigate antibiotics, since we can't know everything and they may be deadly over time. We can't look into fertilizing our crops, since we don't know everything about plants, and God must have had some perfect reason to design plants the way he did without fertilizer. We can't administer anesthetic during childbirth, since we don't have perfect knowlege, and that could hurt the child or mom, and we don't want to interfere with God's perfect plan for childbirth. And so on. All human technology is initially conjecture, and all of it is a deviation from what you see as God's perfect design.

Besides, it's not just conjecture. There are many cases where we did, in fact, change things in animals, and have them work better. The whole field of medicine does that. In case after case, biologists, engineers, and even just plain people like you and I can see that many "designs" in the animal kingdom are just plain brain-dead. You don't need perfect knowlede to see that, because you don't need to know everything to know at least something.

Kind of off point for now but an orifice (especially one of the size of the vagina) needs to be girdled by bone for the other muscles to affix to other wise there is an inherit weakness in the overall muscle structure.

I see no reason to think that - muscle to muscle connections can be quite strong. Besides, to make that claim, you are saying that God cannot make an orifice away from bone? And this is an all powerful God that can't do what humans do literally thousands of times every day, with every abdominal surgical procedure?


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We also see that they don't always work. Both harmful bacterial infections as well as yeast infections and UTIs are common.

We don't live in the world God wanted for us, but he did make sure we could survive.

You are saying all kinds of contradictory stuff. Are you saying that current designs are good, or not good? Are you saying that God intended to make designs good enough so that only millions of people die from them, when he could have made it so that those millions didn't die, and that we should be happy he decided to kill millions and not billions? It sounds like you are saying bad things about God, which as I've pointed out, can be avoided if you stop calling God a micromanager.

Your right of course about modern medicine having a huge effect, but any graph I've seen shows a pretty consistent population growth for the last 4000 years or so, anything past that is at best a guess.

What data do you have that shows "a pretty consistent population growth" for the past 4,000 years? The data is clear, the population growth was very slow, and sometimes zero, for long periods before science, and then rapidly accelerated as science gave us plant fertilizers, and modern medicine. Do we agree on that? Here is some data:

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No, I'm not. As pointed out earlier, evolution protects God from the realization of the bad design in animals (and plants) by removing God from being a micromanager.

Okay if your right then God may not be a micro-manager but he still is guilty of the same design "flaws" you point at, because he couldn't come up with a better system than evolution to build all the life we see around us, and he's apathetic towards his creation's suffering in trying to survive such an inefficient system as evolution.

Ok, I guess. I contend that is better than saying that God directly and purposefully built in all the problems and suffering we both agree that we see. At least my approach is less directly tied to God, right?

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Papias wrote:

So are you saying that it was God's plan for diet and other things to solve the UTI's that he planned, yet he didn't tell us what that diet was?

Gen 1:29 "And God said, “See, I have given you every herb that yields seed which is on the face of all the earth, and every tree whose fruit yields seed; to you it shall be for food." It seems the further we get from this the more trouble we're in.

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Papias wrote:

So you are saying that Christians have to be vegetarians, and that if they were, there would be no diseases or UTIs?

No Christians don't have to be vegetarians, it isn't a command, you aren't sinning by not eating your veggies....... no matter what your mom tells you!

OK, then what exactly are you saying? I copied the whole discussion on Gen. 1:29, where it seems that you are saying that Gen 1:29 gives instructions that if followed would prevent UTI's.

Gerson Therapy - Alternative Cancer Treatment I'm not really convinced of all the claims these folks make BUT in a lot of ways it does follow the general idea of the verse. And there is at least one woman who was cured of a cancer that has 100% mortality rate interviewed here

You've fallen for quack medicine - snake oil. Please read the American Cancer Society's view of Gerson "therapy":

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Gerson Therapy

Papias wrote:

I hope we both recognize that they are no substitute for documented evidence of controlled research. Like said, if all that were true, you (and the farmers and vets) could make millions immediately - UTIs cost billions of dollars in the US alone every year.

When scientists are doing their studies they quite often start from people's observations .........Whereas in humans there is more money in treating it rather than curing it. Unfortunately all too often it's the drug companies paying for the research and they are there to make money.

OK, so it looks like we both don't agree that we should rely on documented evidence and controlled studies. For me, I'm not one to go to conspiracy theories and quack medicine.


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Iambeeman wrote

Papias wrote:

Are you seriously claiming that pig organs are more similar to human organs than chimp organs are to human organs?

In size and the way in which they function, yes. They are trying to (or maybe by now succeeded) genetically modify pigs to prevent tissue reconnection Animal to human organ transplants come closer after GM pig breakthrough - Telegraph. Beyond that I really don't know.

OK, then please allow me to give my understanding. Just as evolution predicts, chimp organs are indeed closest to human organs. Too close, in fact, because the closeness of our bodies to chimp bodies allows pathogens that infect the chimp organs to infect our bodies. Pigs are chosen specifically because they are NOT as close as chimps. Chimps also aren't used because they are endangered, aren't as easy to breed in large numbers, and so on.

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Around the side of what?

The esophagus.

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could you provide some images that explain that they copied the throat design, or some other reference?

Actually I said "concept" not "design" and I wasn't referring to the overall throat design, I was referring to mucus

.

OK, you can't, and we are back to hearsay. As with the other stuff, all we have is your assertion. Thanks at least for providing a reference for vaginal secretions.

Also, and more importantly, you sidestepped the point that an omnipotent micromanager could easily avoid the use of mucus altogether

How would you suggest mucus be eliminated?

First, not being an omnipotent God, even if I didn't know of many obvious ways, my point would still stand. However, many are obvious. How about nanotechnological (or larger) hairs that move the dust out, as is seen in plenty of other biological systems? Or filters, as are also seen in many other biological systems? One of the many ways that evolution makes sense of the natural world is that it shows why obviously good and useful designs that are seen in one lineage are not seen outside of that lineage.

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But that's just conjecture, that something man would come up with is better than what God made, your assuming you know the entirety of any given organism from conception to maturity, their environment and any environment they will encounter through their lives. That would require the intellect of God.

As written above:
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Your post is simple relativistic lazyiness. You are claiming that because we can't know everything, we can't know anything. That attitude would have us still living like neanderthals. We can't investigate antibiotics, since we can't know everything and they may be deadly over time. We can't look into fertilizing our crops, since we don't know everything about plants, and God must have had some perfect reason to design plants the way he did without fertilizer. We can't administer anesthetic during childbirth, since we don't have perfect knowlege, and that could hurt the child or mom, and we don't want to interfere with God's perfect plan for childbirth. And so on. All human technology is initially conjecture, and all of it is a deviation from what you see as God's perfect design.

Besides, it's not just conjecture. There are many cases where we did, in fact, change things in animals, and have them work better. The whole field of medicine does that. In case after case, biologists, engineers, and even just plain people like you and I can see that many "designs" in the animal kingdom are just plain brain-dead. You don't need perfect knowlede to see that, because you don't need to know everything to know at least something.

It's like responding to cancer by saying "oh, cancer is a good thing - we just don't know the good effect it is having.", instead of researching how to survive it or even taking medical treatments for it. It's just pretending to duck reality, and if humans always did that when faced with real problems, we'd still be living in caves at best, and more likely extinct.

No it isn't, What I'm saying is God knows what he's doing, and we should try to figure out why he built things the way he did because we can learn a lot from his handy work, instead of telling God what he did wrong.
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Simply saying that "God knows what he is doing" gets you nowhere. Every single advance of human technology is a case where we rejected the idea that "God knows what he is doing". Even in the case of cancer, one could argue that we should not try to treat it, because obviously "God knows what he is doing", and we should instead try to figure out why he built cancer the way he did because we can learn a lot from his handy work, instead of telling God that he built cancer wrong.

Can you not see that some designs are obviously sub-optimal, like making aquatic creatures with lungs instead of gills? Are you seriously saying that whales would not be better off with gills, and that we should all go back to living in caves?

Papias

 

[Notedstrangeperson]

Despite being a theistic evolutionist, I don't find the idea of God as a bad designer a particularly compelling argument against creationism. It seems somewhat arrogant for us to think we could create better creatures than God and nature - just because the fuction of a trait is not immediately obvious, we assume it's useless.


Why, for example, is a whale breathing air any worse than having gills? Air-breathing dolphins can kill sharks, who constantly need water to pass through their gills in order to breathe.

Why do creatures which live in dark places such as caves or the bottom of the ocean still have eyes? Maybe because even 1% of an eye is better than nothing - an argument often used against the idea of "irreducible complexity".

Ostrich wings are still useful, even though they are not used for flying: males use them for displays. Furthermore, large wings on a flightless would be a problem, whereas small wings aren't.

Junk DNA may not be junk at all, and even it is it still provides us with a lot of information, like being able to trace the history of our species.

Some mutations may be damaging in large amounts (inheriting the same mutation twice, or having the same genetic sequence repeated) but in small amounts are harmless, or even beneficial.


The idea of God as a bad designer only works if we think the world never changes. Obviously it does. A trait which seems "useless" today may be useful in the future.

 

[SkyWriting]

Anyone ever wonder why much of creation seems to be made by a very poor designer? Take for instance the human body: why would God place a procreation/entertainment system (penis, vagina) with a sewage system (urinary tract)? Why would God not give us different orifices to breath and eat/drink? Just imagine, there would never have been anyone to die of choking.

YOU need to ask any surgeon why they don't do tracheotomies in the chest wall then.
Amazing that you are first to think of it. We'll give you 100% of the credit.

You are suggesting that man could possibly improve on any biological design.
Yet there is not even ONE example to show we can. So your argument fails.
There is one example of man making one improvement in one limited area.
Artificial legs can help one run better. I don't know of anyone yet
who has voluntarily traded though. All people prefer the organic
version for it's versatility.

Attend SIU-Carbondale and you'll discover your exercise of improving the human design has been attempted
by thousands of students every year for half a century. I did it in design class there.
Nothing so far.

One student a couple years before me lived in tents year around at SIU. Through experimentation
he created a revolutionary way of bracing his tent then found employment at an outfitter.
You may have seen his designs. They have the poles on the outside instead of the inside.
Like most any useful designs, his influence is from God's designs in nature with exoskeletons.

 

[SkyWriting]

.. This of course doesn't mean that either designer is wrong or unintelligent it simply means one designer made different compromises to achieve the end result.

Much more likely is that it works perfectly for it's intended use.
Even Natural Selection-ists follow that one.

 

[SkyWriting]

...The whole field of medicine does that. In case after case, biologists, engineers, and even just plain people like you and I can see that many "designs" in the animal kingdom are just plain brain-dead.

No. You have not one example. In particular, the "field of medicine" is 100% an attempt to REPAIR the natural function that others enjoy. There has never been one single improvement made over the natural or average or most common design in biology. Can you GUESS why hormones & other drugs are not allowed in sports? Because it trades temporary performance for lifespan.

theddt.com Pro Wrestling Message Board - Yet Another Wrestler Dead - Bison Smith

 

[Assyrian]

Much more likely is that it works perfectly for it's intended use.
Even Natural Selection-ists follow that one.

So if the purpose is that the years of our life are threescore and ten, or even by reason of strength fourscore Psalm 90:10 then a body that wears out and falls apart over this time scale is a perfect design for its intended use?

 

[SkyWriting]

So if the purpose is that the years of our life are threescore and ten, or even by reason of strength fourscore Psalm 90:10 then a body that wears out and falls apart over this time scale is a perfect design for its intended use?

Correct. It was not intended to ever "wear out."
But man has chosen to no longer walk with God so the body
has evolved and continues to degrade until God returns and
fixes the mess. Evolution is nothing more than degradation.

Romans 6:23 For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Matthew 24:8 All these are the beginning of birth pains.

James 1:15 Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death.

 

[Assyrian]

Correct. It was not intended to ever "wear out."
But man has chosen to no longer walk with God so the body
has evolved and continues to degrade until God returns and
fixes the mess. Evolution is nothing more than degradation.

Romans 6:23 For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Matthew 24:8 All these are the beginning of birth pains.

James 1:15 Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death.

So really, there is no evidence for this perfect design creationists claim to see? What is the point in the design argument?

 

[SkyWriting]

So really, there is no evidence for this perfect design creationists claim to see? What is the point in the design argument?

The evidence is perfectly stated. Evolution provides nothing but degradation
of an originally perfect design.

Name one beneficial disease. You know, one mutation that people
hope their children have that makes them better suited for life.
All families HOPE that this ONE mutation is present in their
child so that it is a better fit for it's environment.

Please name that mutation.

Feel free to check this list as well.

 

[SkyWriting]

I heard this on a Howard Stern show when I use to listen to his garbage.My answer is that our human brains can not understand the mind of God.Either he is real and in control or he is not.

The Bible indicates that God knows the location of each electron in it's orbit.
Jesus said that if a person had enough faith, that mountains would move on
command. It doesn't appear that we are currently capable of achieving that much faith.
I'm not surprised. But Jesus seems to have had it after his Resurrection.
Indicating that such abilities will come at that time for us as well.

 

[SkyWriting]

IAMBEEMAN - So you are saying that God compromised when he designed the human body? What a decidedly human characteristic to ascribe to the omnipotent, omnipresent, sovereign creator!

We were made in God's image. "Compromise" is not a Sin.
It's an element of Design where the engineer decides that
a certain aspect of design is best suited for a particular use.

For example, you're suggesting that there is a PERFECT tire
for use on every car and on every surface. And only God
knows what that perfect tire would be. Bad argument.

 

[SkyWriting]

But the design we have does allow excess mucus to be swallowed rather than being expelled and causing disease to be spread much more efficiently.

I think you meant to say efficiently destroyed by stomach acids.

 

[Assyrian]

The evidence is perfectly stated.

It was stated, then you contradicted it. Is the layout of the oesophagus and the urinary tract evidence of a perfect design we simply don't appreciate, or the result of the fall?

Evolution provides nothing but degradation
of an originally perfect design.

Odd then we have bigger brains and seem to be more intelligent than Austraopithicenes, Homo ergaster, and Homo erectus.

Name one beneficial disease.

You mean like Cystic Fibrosis, which protected people from to the Black Death if they had a single copy of the gene? Or sickle cell anaemia which does the same with malaria?

You know, one mutation that people
hope their children have that makes them better suited for life.
All families HOPE that this ONE mutation is present in their
child so that it is a better fit for it's environment.

Please name that mutation.

Feel free to check this list as well.

How about ApoA-1 Milano which protects against heart disease. Very handy in our saturated fat and cholesterol soaked modern environment. I am not so sure X-men is really a the best place for you to learn about genetics and mutations.

 

[Papias]

SW wrote:

No. You have not one example. .....
There has never been one single improvement made over the natural or average or most common design in biology.

Um, that seems a bit like moving the goalposts. The thread has been discussing if the designs we see in nature are what an omnipotent, omniscient God would have desigened if he had micromanaged every detail. I haven't claimed that humans have themselves made creatures with better designs (because we cannot manipulate flesh as would be needed to do so). Only that it is obvious from the flawed designs that a micromanaging God would have done a more competent job.

If you think otherwise, then look over the many previous examples like whales, giraffes, and sea turtles, and let me know how those are the optimal designs.

In particular, the "field of medicine" is 100% an attempt to REPAIR the natural function that others enjoy.

Many, many instances in medicine are cases where we clumsily try to find some artificial work around to make a problem caused by stupid original design workable. The fact that even with little power or creative ability, that we can still often fix these problems caused by stupid design shows how pathetic the original design often is.

For example - it's a common problem that our poorly designed prostate causes problems requiring surgery to fix. A less idiotic design would have routed the urethra around instead of through it, and no surgery would have been needed. Or a design without genes (left over from our fish ancestors) for making gill pouches, which often have to be surgically removed when that gene is partially expressed, as happened in my neice, and so on.

Papias

 

[Papias]

NSP wrote:

despite being a theistic evolutionist, I don't find the bad design argument against creationism compelling.....

Hi NSP. I've appreciated you help, enjoyed our conversations in the past, and look forward to this one too. In addition to the examples below, I think you are familiar with the GULOP vitamin C gene? How do you see that playing into this topic? Is that the best design?

Why, for example, is a whale breathing air any worse than having gills? Air-breathing dolphins can kill sharks, who constantly need water to pass through their gills in order to breathe.

Sharks are primitive enough that they still have many less then optimal designs too. It seems that the shark is another case of bad design. Bony fish don't need to keep moving to move water over their gills. Besides, breathing air is an obvious problem, as any submarine designer knows (and as any whale keeper knows - dead baby whales are common because the baby born under water has to get to the surface to breathe, sometimes failing.

Why do creatures which live in dark places such as caves or the bottom of the ocean still have eyes? Maybe because even 1% of an eye is better than nothing - an argument often used against the idea of "irreducible complexity".

Some of those eyes are completely non-functional, not even conveying 1% of the information. That's very different from the first stages of any eye (such as light sensitive cells), which actually do convey a selective advantage.

Ostrich wings are still useful, even though they are not used for flying: males use them for displays.

So you agree they are completely useless in females? What about dodo wings?

Furthermore, large wings on a flightless would be a problem, whereas small wings aren't.

So if the bad design can be compared to an even worse design, it is easier to overlook that it is a bad design?

Papias

 

[shernren]

But what if God's design spec was "Give humans a pseudogene that looks exactly like the GULO gene in other mammals with precisely one deletion"? It might be an immoral urge, but as a design job it fits the spec perfectly.

Or, maybe that pseudogene subtly tweaks the genes around it to create some kind of undetectably small but important effect, like makes humans just that bit friendly enough to form cohesive societies instead of stabbing each other in the back.

Or (and this has a real scientific basis) maybe it is designed solely as a "spacer" between critical portions of DNA. This was the originally conceived (evolutionary) function of junk DNA: if our genome was made up of only coding genes and regulators, then any mutation would by default hit something necessary and (have about a 1/3 chance to) break something. But junk DNA can "take the hits" without causing any harm to the individual or the gene pool, which balances out the cost associated with reproducing all that extra DNA. (And remember creationists, the first people to actually suggest a use for junk DNA instead of simply surmising there was one were evolutionists - and that even before creationists even knew what junk DNA was, because the very guy who defined the term, Susumu Ohno, was an evolutionist.)

So suppose God designed all the spacer DNA for the sole purpose of absorbing the impact of mutations on the genome. And in the process of designing all the spacer DNA, He decides to throw a bit into the primate genome that looks exactly like a misshapen copy of GULO (and make it follow the phylogenetic tree at that). Would that be bad design? It would be utterly tricksy, of course, but if the GULOPseudogene truly was designed as spacer DNA, its near-identical similarity to the GULO gene doesn't in the slightest affect its (non)functionality.