Unintelligent Design?

[Papias]

iambeeman wrote:

So your assertion is hearsay.

As I've cited before, the poor design of the female urinary tract causing infections at a higher rate than in men is not hearsay, it's demonstrable and undisputed. Here is yet another reference. let me know if you want several more.

Women are more prone to urinary tract infections because the urethra is much shorter than in men.
from:
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Urinary Tract Infections - Risks Factors and Causes

Sorry I wasn't clear in communicating my meaning. I was meaning that the female reproductive system has several different ways of keeping it from having bad bacterial growth. Most times I'm writing late at night and don't always do as good a job as I want to.

OK, so then we agree that there are some ways that bacterial growth is addressed, but that these aren't perfect?

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. All human technology is initially conjecture, and all of it is a deviation from what you see as God's perfect design.

No it isn't actually. I have never claimed "that because we can't know everything we can't know anything". We're dealing with a fallen corrupted world, not the perfect world God built for us. ...

But if you are saying that all of God's designs are perfect, then how can we propose any solution that isn't saying that God is a bad designer? Is cancer an example of God's perfect design (I asked that before but you didn't respond)? Or God's "perfectly designed" viruses? You know, when anesthesia was invented, strong arguments were made against giving it to women in childbirth, not for any health reason, but because, it was suggested, that this was going against God's design. Do you think we shouldn't provide anesthetics to temporarily deaden our perfectly designed nerves? That we shouldn't use cars, because God perfectly designed our feet?

Besides, it's not just conjecture. There are many cases where we did, in fact, change things in animals, and have them work better.

I'm only aware of 5 things mankind has changed on any sort of scale, corn, soy beans, canola, rice and cotton. And if one doesn't use the required chemicals in the tech. agreement you won't get a contract to grow them so it's hard to say if they are really improved in a natural setting. Other than that I'm not sure what your talking about

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Oh, "only"5. Since you already know of 5, why are you contesting the point? Besides, there are tons more than that - Didn't I link to the radiation induced mutation program to increase crop yeild? That alone has generated literally hundreds of improvements, including salt-resistance, better yeild (of course), weather tolerance, and so on. We've bred all kinds of breeds of dogs, faster racehorses, bigger cattle, woolier sheep, corn from the gangley grass teosinte, very meaty turkeys from wild turkeys, etc - we could go on all day. Are you saying a Christian shouldn't use any of the products from all those, because they are cases where man changed God's design?

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The whole field of medicine does that.
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No, not really. The vast majority of time doctors are merely (and when I say "merely" please don't think I am belittling their contribution) helping keep the body going until it can repair itself. Of course there are reconstructions that take place but the goal is to restore as much of the original function as possible.

First, if you agree that doctors improve on the design sometimes, and not always, then you've already conceded the point (that's what it sounds like). But, of course, they very often fix the poor design, as I showed by the prostate surgery where the enclosing of the urethra by the prostate is fixed. There are plenty of other examples - like the removal of the gill pouches in my niece, appendix removal, and so on.

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.

If this is true any God who uses evolution is just as responsible for the so called "brain-dead" design and is therefore equally "brain-dead" or possibly deistic and apathetic to the creatures he is ultimately responsible for creating.

As I explained in my first post on this thread, evolution removes God from being directly responsible for the design. If you are going to blame God for anything wrong in his creation today, then you have a very long list ahead of you, including all suffering, natural and human caused disasters, and so on. If you are saying that God is ultimately responsible for the state of his creation, then the stupid designs in nature are the least of your concerns. Besides, in the case of the stupid designs, their ubiquity and obviousness means that your only option against them is to deny reality.

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You don't need perfect knowlede to see that, because you don't need to know everything to know at least something.

Without that context misinterpretation is inevitable.

Since we never have the context fo perfect knowledge, you are back again to asserting that because we can never have perfect knowledge, we can never know anything well enough to act on it, and should go back to living in caves.

And we wonder why some people think Christians are anti-science?
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But not nearly as strong as muscle to bone connections. If God had done like you suggest it would have been a weak connection and you would have pointed to it and said "look what a brain dead designer God is."

So you are saying that our omnipotent God is incapable of making a sufficiently strong muscle to muscle connection?

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Besides, to make that claim, you are saying that God cannot make an orifice away from bone?

I at no time claimed he "couldn't", I do however claim one wouldn't be as strong so God very wisely chose to girdle such an orifice in bone.

Except that anyone who has attended a human birth or looked at birth mortality statistics can see that putting the birth canal through a bone pelvis, when a simple re-routing of it outside the pelvic arch can be done instead, is stupid. Haven't you see the "Honest Obstetrician" video? I can look for it if you like.

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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?

Are you seriously suggesting that a C-section is preferred to natural child birth?

I'm pointing out that our crude attempt at getting around this stupid design is often better than a vaginal birth, and that your assertion that God cannot make an well-designed abdominal opening is again, as you've been doing repeatedly, limiting the power of God.

I'm saying that God's designs are prefect, but we do not live in the world God intended for us for and that is where the problems arise.

So you are back to saying that a difficult childbirth is perfect, that the prostate design and UTIs are perfect, that aquatic creatures needed to breathe air is perfect, and that dead babies are perfect. Wow, I guess I'm glad I'm not even more perfect than I already am!
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Theistic evolution is saying far worse things .......admitting we don't know the entirety of any given organism from conception to maturity, their environment ....

It sounds like we are back to the "we don't have perfect knowledge, so we can't know anything" line. Here, hand me that rock to sit on in our cave.
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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.

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If I was forced to guess I'd say about 2% growth over the past 4000 years reasonably consistently.

Well, you can either be "forced to guess" or simply admit you were wrong. You can see from the graph as well as any of us that there are plenty of negative areas. The growth rate in many long stretches is less than 0.08% a year. None of that is consistent with a growth of 2% a year, a rate that was only true briefly a few decades ago, that we don't even reach now.

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Wrong, evolution doesn't insulate God from being responsible for your supposedly bad designs, he is still responsible and more over he's uncaring. I do agree that this world contains suffering but God isn't responsible, rather man is.

But why are you absolving God in one case, and not in the other? As I showed in my first post, evolution can indeed insulate God from these bad designs - unless you want to specifically make a point of blaming God for them.

I'm saying that most problems we see in humans could very well stem from improper diet, the remainder of problems could possibly be due to genetic degradation.

and I'm still wondering why you haven't yet marketed "Iambeeman diet of health", being that you are obviously more knowlegeable than the whole medical field.

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

No, I haven't. As I said "I'm not really convinced of all the claims these folks make". Though I'm not convinced, I do think that at the very least some of what they recommend is a reasonably good idea. Definitely I think the coffee enemas are a bad idea.

OK, so we agree that your Gerson "therapy" is quack medicine?
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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.

Do you have a link or is that just hearsay?

NIH OSE - Research in the News: Xenotransplants - Using Animal Organs To Save Human Lives (Grades 9-12)





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OK, you can't, and we are back to hearsay. As with the other stuff, all we have is your assertion.

Sorry but it's a little hard to find an inventors inspiration from hundred years ago. But the functions are as I explained virtually identical.

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OK, I've lost count, how many times have I backed up my statements, and you have provided nothing but hearsay?

First, not being an omnipotent God, even if I didn't know of many obvious ways, my point would still stand.

No, it wouldn't stand. That's just tossing a criticism out into a vacuum of your own making.

Sure it would. It sounds (again) like you are saying that God has only limited power, and really can't create much after all.

However, many are obvious. How about nanotechnological (or larger) hairs that move the dust out as is seen in plenty of other biological systems?

You mean cilia? Already have that, but it works in conjunction with mucus to keep our air ways clean - Ciliated Epithelium . So you still need mucus.

So you are saying that an omnipotent God is incapable of creating cilia that work well enough not to need mucus?
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Or filters, as are also seen in many other biological systems?

We got those too, look inside your nose, only problem is they only work on relatively course particles, if you have a fine enough filter then you run into plugging problems, so your going to need mucus to clean the fine stuff out.

So you are saying that an omnipotent God is incapable of creating filters that work well enough not to need mucus?



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Every single advance of human technology is a case where we rejected the idea that "God knows what he is doing".
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Do you have source for your assertion? Like the Write brothers studying bird to figure out how to fly?

It's obvious - even the Wright (not "Write") brothers would have gotten no where if they said "God knows what he is doing in not making people able to fly".

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.

This shows a profound misunderstanding of the creation paradigm.

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Maybe start a thread explaining it?

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,

For now let's stick to the OP. If I time for rabbit trails I may follow them later.

First of all, it sounds like your response may translate to "OK, I have no defense for that, so I'll just duck the question.". Secondly, the OP did, in fact, reference all creation. You can go back and see for yourself with the link near the top of the page.
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I have NO idea why you keep going on so.

Because you keep stating falsehoods, and denying the many bad designs we see, and claming that our omnipotent God is incapable of all kinds of stuff.


Papias
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[chris4243]

Who would design a fully aquatic creature like a whale and give it lungs instead of gills? Duh - an air breathing thing in the water.

Me! I might design an aquatic animal to be air-breathing, depending on other design specifications. Would you design a warm-blooded animal with gills?

 

[shernren]

Don't forget that air has a much higher O2 concentration than water, which is necessary for the warm-blooded life.

 

[Papias]

Chris wrote:

Would you design a warm-blooded animal with gills?

Why not? Shernren, do we have a reference for that?

Similarly, would you design a giraffe with an inflexible neck, a roundabout nerve, and a sea turtle that can't lay eggs as fish do, in the water? How about sea snakes that have to go on land to lay eggs?

Would you design in a broken vitamin C gene that appears "intelligently designed" to make it look exactly like it was a copy of working, previous vitamin C genes?


Papias

 

[Assyrian]

Don't forget that air has a much higher O2 concentration than water, which is necessary for the warm-blooded life.

Aren't Great White Sharks warm blooded?

 

[Smidlee]

accidental dp (ready for mutation. )

 

[Smidlee]

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.

This is because the last hole God created made man a butt-hole so He thought He would stop there.
You could argue how poorly man-made designed are since we create a lot of trash. All the products of life are put back into the environment to be reused.

 

[shernren]

Chris wrote:

Would you design a warm-blooded animal with gills?

Why not? Shernren, do we have a reference for that?

Aren't Great White Sharks warm blooded?

Here's an excellent reference: Warm-Blooded Fish by Paul McFarlane

The CliffsNotes:

Water on average contains 1/20 [obtained elsewhere] to 1/40 the oxygen content (mass per volume) of air, and can absorb 3000 times (per volume) the heat that air can absorb.

As such, if a fish tried to heat itself up by drawing more oxygen from water, it would find itself losing out as the very act of passing water through its gills would drain the heat it generated.

How do tuna and shark maintain the temperatures of their muscles far above ambient temperatures, then? The answer is that the circulatory system in their muscles are arranged as a heat exchanger: cold blood coming from the gills is forced to flow very closely to warm blood coming from the muscles (where usual muscular activity has expended heat as a byproduct), so that the warm blood gives its heat up to the incoming cold blood (hence giving it back to the muscles) rather than dumping that heat back into the surrounding water via the gills.

[Not in article] Note that this is not true "warm-bloodedness". There are at least two relevant definitions of warm-bloodedness. Firstly, homeothermy is the ability to maintain the body's temperature within a very narrow range. Secondly, endothermy is the ability to internally control the body's temperature; for example, humans can shiver when they are cold and sweat when they are hot. Most fish are homeotherms, but not endotherms: their body temperature is maintained within a very narrow range, but not by any internal metabolic processes - rather, it happens simply because water tends to be quite difficult to heat up or cool down. Most aquatic mammals on the other hand are both homeotherms and endotherms: they can keep their body temperature within a very narrow range, but do so via internal processes as well as relying on the large heat capacity of water.

Similarly, would you design a giraffe with an inflexible neck, a roundabout nerve, and a sea turtle that can't lay eggs as fish do, in the water? How about sea snakes that have to go on land to lay eggs?

Would you design in a broken vitamin C gene that appears "intelligently designed" to make it look exactly like it was a copy of working, previous vitamin C genes?

Papias

But the example of lungs for aquatic mammals should give you pause. Isn't it, after all, a valid argument for the creationist to say that God may have some as yet undisclosed design purpose for these things? Just as your argument about lungs for aquatic mammals is invalid once you learn more about the properties of air and water, maybe there is some particular interaction or feature that makes an inflexible neck, a roundabout nerve, landlocked sea reptile eggs, and GULOP desirable!

(Actually, the reason sea reptile eggs are laid on land is the same reason that aquatic mammals need lungs: the higher O2 concentration and lower heat loss allows for more development in the egg. A sea turtle or sea snake hatchling is relatively far more developed than newly hatched fish fry, is it not?)

You might reply that you cannot see any possible purpose for these things. But, the creationist continues, may that not simply be a failure of your imagination? After all, when the creationist demands an exact evolutionary sequence for the development of this or that feature, that's what you accuse him of. How is it not fair for him to turn the accusation around when you are ungraciously demanding exactly the same burden of evidence from him - the exact teleological reason for the intelligent design of this or that feature!

Why, if we knew all the reasons for God's creating all the features of all life forms everywhere, we wouldn't be very far from being God ourselves. Demanding such stupendously overwhelming knowledge of God's design specifications before accepting intelligent design is surely the same as when creationists demand stupendously overwhelming knowledge of evolutionary pathways before they are willing to accept evolution.

 

[chris4243]

To add to what shernren said, in addition to having less oxygen by volume than air, and a much higher heat capacity, water is also more viscous than air, much denser than air -- so that far more effort must be expended to breathe water than air. In addition, oxygen and CO2 diffuse far more slowly in water than in air, so that underwater areas can easily become anorexic. Also, most fish have an air bladder for buoyancy purposes anyways. In case you're still unsure whether water might be a superior medium for gas exchange than air is, consider that sometimes fish surface to gulp air.

And on top of that, if you breathe water you also have to deal with osmotic pressure. Unless you are isotonic to water, you must expend extra energy each breath to fight the osmotic gradient between yourself and the vast quantity of water you will need to breathe. This energy cost is significant enough that many fish have extra tissue to reduce the energy loss, similar in design to a heat exchanger (giant fish like tuna actually do use a heat exchanger to maintain select portions of its body somewhat warmer).

Also, unlike us air breathers, water breathers can't just pile on insulation to keep warm, since so much of their heat loss would be due to just breathing.

 

[shernren]

In case you're still unsure whether water might be a superior medium for gas exchange than air is, consider that sometimes fish surface to gulp air.

I'd forgotten about that! But any fish owner knows that this is exactly what their fish will do when the aquarium water is under-oxygenated.

I wonder if Papias will turn around and say gills are badly designed!

 

[Greg1234]

Similarly, would you design a giraffe with an inflexible neck,

Similarly, why design a machine that just turns itself off? Gadgetbox - The world's most useless machine version 2.0

Fortunately, intelligence is still required regardless of our preferences, and that's how intelligent design is determined.

 

[Papias]

Shernren wrote:

The CliffsNotes:

First, and foremost, there are many reasons why I appreciate Shernren's graciousness in helping to make this a rational and enjoyable conversation. Unlike nearly all the other times I asked for a reference, this time I actually expected a good reference to appear, and true to his word, Shernren supplied that, in addition to reasons that follow from the evidence. Thanks for all that.

Second (in both order and importance) - but I don't see that as exonerating the whale design, for a number of reasons. One, why not design a dual oxygen system, like Tiktaalik, with some small gills there to provide extra oxygen during deep whale dives? These could be segregated from the body by location and a heat exchanger so as to not lose heat, such as by putting them at the ends of flukes, etc. Or, make those robust enough to eliminate the need for air breathing all together?

If that wasn't sufficient, and an omnipotent, all -creative God couldn't come up with a better heat exchanger or some other way to allow the gills to work with the warm-bloodedness, then why make a warm-blooded aquatic creature in the first place? Have the whales be similar to their form today, but simply make them cold-blooded. As we saw with megalodon, large sizes would still be possible.

Originally Posted by Papias

Similarly, would you design a giraffe with an inflexible neck, a roundabout nerve, and a sea turtle that can't lay eggs as fish do, in the water? How about sea snakes that have to go on land to lay eggs?

Would you design in a broken vitamin C gene that appears "intelligently designed" to make it look exactly like it was a copy of working, previous vitamin C genes?

Papias

But the example of lungs for aquatic mammals should give you pause. Isn't it, after all, a valid argument for the creationist to say that God may have some as yet undisclosed design purpose for these things? Just as your argument about lungs for aquatic mammals is invalid once you learn more about the properties of air and water, maybe there is some particular interaction or feature that makes an inflexible neck, a roundabout nerve, landlocked sea reptile eggs, and GULOP desirable!


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I do see a difference - and a big one. That being that the creationist line of "I can't imagine transitional forms" shuts down further investigation and thought, while the realization that an animal (or plant) design may be sub-optimal can spur further investigation and thought by prompting us to desing things better (like the submarine example). Note also that the idea of a sub-optimal design in no way means that other uses might not exist - evolution (and humans) often rig up old thing to crudely do some further function, even if a complete redesign would be better.

(Actually, the reason sea reptile eggs are laid on land is the same reason that aquatic mammals need lungs: the higher O2 concentration and lower heat loss allows for more development in the egg. A sea turtle or sea snake hatchling is relatively far more developed than newly hatched fish fry, is it not?)

Again, is the "more development" worth getting them eaten by crabs or such in the dash from land to water? Is there a reference for the "more development" idea, since the egg processes are slow anyway, and may not need a faster rate of oxygen (they are underground if on land, remember)? Plus, some species of sea snakes show that argument to be incorrect, since they have evolved the ability to produce young in the water, avoiding the land step all together.

You might reply that you cannot see any possible purpose for these things. But, the creationist continues, may that not simply be a failure of your imagination? After all, when the creationist demands an exact evolutionary sequence for the development of this or that feature, that's what you accuse him of. How is it not fair for him to turn the accusation around when you are ungraciously demanding exactly the same burden of evidence from him - the exact teleological reason for the intelligent design of this or that feature!

covered above by looking the two points from the perspective of "continuing investigation". I discussed that with iambeeman in the post at the start of the previous page, too.

Why, if we knew all the reasons for God's creating all the features of all life forms everywhere, we wouldn't be very far from being God ourselves.

I don't think so. I see God as far exceeding what we'd be in that case.


As when we discussed this before, Shernren and I may need to agree to disagree. However, Shernren, do you think that the dozens of times more DNA in that paramecium we discussed is the optimal design?

Papias

 

[shernren]

Shernren wrote:

First, and foremost, there are many reasons why I appreciate Shernren's graciousness in helping to make this a rational and enjoyable conversation. Unlike nearly all the other times I asked for a reference, this time I actually expected a good reference to appear, and true to his word, Shernren supplied that, in addition to reasons that follow from the evidence. Thanks for all that.

Second (in both order and importance) - but I don't see that as exonerating the whale design, for a number of reasons. One, why not design a dual oxygen system, like Tiktaalik, with some small gills there to provide extra oxygen during deep whale dives? These could be segregated from the body by location and a heat exchanger so as to not lose heat, such as by putting them at the ends of flukes, etc. Or, make those robust enough to eliminate the need for air breathing all together?

If that wasn't sufficient, and an omnipotent, all -creative God couldn't come up with a better heat exchanger or some other way to allow the gills to work with the warm-bloodedness, then why make a warm-blooded aquatic creature in the first place? Have the whales be similar to their form today, but simply make them cold-blooded. As we saw with megalodon, large sizes would still be possible.

What if God simply wanted to make warm-blooded, air-breathing sea creatures? Can we really begrudge Him that?

Of course, I could take you up on your own terms and give you plenty of reasons why your suggestions wouldn't work. Having two different oxygen intake systems in different locations would make the circulatory system incredibly complex, and the more vessels you have the more places where an unfortunate blood clot can jam up the whole thing. As for making gills good enough to support an endothermic lifestyle, I believe the information presented here preclude that. But as to why God should make warm-blooded, air-breathing seas creatures?

What if He just wanted to?

It's almost comical thinking about this: two random guys (neither of which are even biologists! If I recall correctly) arguing over the Internet whether God is allowed to make aquatic mammals. On what basis, exactly, would He be forbidden from doing so? After all, it is certainly possible to create an ecological niche for them (or else they would never have evolved according to our theories, and they would have went extinct), and it is certainly possible to create them, and for all the world it looks like God did indeed create whales - even if to us He did it with evolution.

And here's an important clarification that I'm only just beginning to grasp myself: I do believe that God designed the whale. As someone who believes in an omniscient God actively involved in the providence of the universe, how can I not? Yes, I believe that the design was manufactured - brought into being - by evolutionary methods, but it is still God's design. The whale and the swallow and the will-o'-the-wisp and the wonders of all the world were in God's mind before the very first atom existed, and they are all still in God's mind even now as He sustains them. Indeed, evolution itself is God's design.

But I believe that the design argument is unfalsifiable, which is a world of difference from saying that it is false. For how could we ever show that the whale is suboptimally designed? Your entire argument seems to be based on the premise that an optimal design for the whale is one which draws in as much oxygen as possible from the water around it. But who told you that? Was the whale designed to be an oxygen-extractor? Was it designed to be a krill-consumer? Was it God's attempt at seeing how large He can make a mammal within the bounds of reasonable physics? Was it designed to be a Jonah-swallower? If you believed that God designed the whale to eat krill, you would understand its lack of gills in an instant - how would it survive if it always swam around the ocean with its food essentially up its nose? And even then you wouldn't be warranted to say that, because you just don't know what God designed the whale for - in the strict sense of knowing what parameters God was optimizing the whale's design for.

I do see a difference - and a big one. That being that the creationist line of "I can't imagine transitional forms" shuts down further investigation and thought, while the realization that an animal (or plant) design may be sub-optimal can spur further investigation and thought by prompting us to desing things better (like the submarine example). Note also that the idea of a sub-optimal design in no way means that other uses might not exist - evolution (and humans) often rig up old thing to crudely do some further function, even if a complete redesign would be better.

I'll grant you that but I must say: better at what? All that science can ever prove is that biological feature W is X% efficient at performing function Y according to criterion Z of efficiency. Science can go no further. Saying "it should have been better" is now a judgment of value.

Again, is the "more development" worth getting them eaten by crabs or such in the dash from land to water? Is there a reference for the "more development" idea, since the egg processes are slow anyway, and may not need a faster rate of oxygen (they are underground if on land, remember)? Plus, some species of sea snakes show that argument to be incorrect, since they have evolved the ability to produce young in the water, avoiding the land step all together.

That's like asking whether the portability of the calculator is worth its being unable to do even a fraction of the things my laptop computer can do. It's not that the calculator is suboptimal to the computer or vice versa, they're different designs with different purposes.

 

[Papias]

Shernren wrote:

What if God simply wanted to make warm-blooded, air-breathing sea creatures? Can we really begrudge Him that?

..... But as to why God should make warm-blooded, air-breathing seas creatures?

What if He just wanted to?

Except that it is hiding behind an unfalsifiable hypothesis. Could not even the most idiotic design imaginable be replied to with "What if God simply wanted to make wheeled, upside down sea creatures? Can we really begrudge Him that?"

It goes back to the one of the many problems I have with creationism - that it is the abrogation of the use of our God-given minds, a rejection of the whole idea of human progress and learning.

"There is no point in studying biology, just accept that God created it that way according to a literal reading of Gensis."

"Don't try to develope anesthesia, that goes against God's plan for us."

"Why look at archeological evidence in Jericho, God gave us all the history there that we need in the Old Testament."

and so on. That's why I pointed out earlier in my discussion with Iambeeman that the idea of "the design must be good somehow, we are just limited humans who can't see it" gets us nowhere.

Of course, I could take you up on your own terms and give you plenty of reasons why your suggestions wouldn't work. Having two different oxygen intake systems in different locations would make the circulatory system incredibly complex, and the more vessels you have the more places where an unfortunate blood clot can jam up the whole thing.

Having two sources of oxgen is common and easy. Lungfish, for example. Little additional circulatory tubing is needed, and it's seen to work many times over. And are you saying that an omnipotent God can't design a system that is robust against blood clots? Why not alter that irreducibly complex () blood clotting cascade, or use one of many other possible improvements?

As for making gills good enough to support an endothermic lifestyle, I believe the information presented here preclude that.

So the omnipotent God is incapable of making a gill work on a large creature? Why require endothermy? Even so, is it not possible for God to make a balance between fluke - end gills and a reduced endothermy?

It's almost comical thinking about this: two random guys (neither of which are even biologists! If I recall correctly) arguing over the Internet whether God is allowed to make aquatic mammals.

True!

On what basis, exactly, would He be forbidden from doing so?

Well, sure - but that applies to even the most completely idiotic designs imaginable - see above.

And here's an important clarification that I'm only just beginning to grasp myself: I do believe that God designed the whale. As someone who believes in an omniscient God actively involved in the providence of the universe, how can I not? Yes, I believe that the design was manufactured - brought into being - by evolutionary methods, but it is still God's design. The whale and the swallow and the will-o'-the-wisp and the wonders of all the world were in God's mind before the very first atom existed, and they are all still in God's mind even now as He sustains them. Indeed, evolution itself is God's design.

I can see that position. However, with the many problems in the animal kingdom, such as the ichneumon wasp's larvae eating paralyzed caterpillars, literally hundreds of types of venom, the commonality of babies being food, and the many clearly bad designs mentioned on this thread, to ME, at least, it seems more mentally consistent to allow God to leave the details to evolution, by allowing God to step back from the role of micromanager. I mostly say "to each his own" I guess on that, but I do object to statements that appear to be demonstrably false, like statements that the ichneumon wasp is a "loving" design, or that the huge genome of the paramecium we discussed is an "efficient" or "optimum" or "perfect" design, etc. At least, I say, call a spade a spade.

But I believe that the design argument is unfalsifiable, which is a world of difference from saying that it is false. For how could we ever show that the whale is suboptimally designed?

But we can tell a good design from a poor one, or else our entire technological works disappear. That goes back to the abrogation point I mentioned earlier.

Your entire argument seems to be based on the premise that an optimal design for the whale is one which draws in as much oxygen as possible from the water around it. But who told you that?

I'm stating that the whale is "designed" to live in the ocean. It's as simple as that. You are aware that baby whales often drown before they can be pushed to the surface to breathe, right? Even the addition of fluke tip gills would help there.

If you believed that God designed the whale to eat krill, you would understand its lack of gills in an instant - how would it survive if it always swam around the ocean with its food essentially up its nose? And even then you wouldn't be warranted to say that, because you just don't know what God designed the whale for - in the strict sense of knowing what parameters God was optimizing the whale's design for.

God can't make closeable gills? As stated, the "design" is for living in the ocean. Again, you point seems to be saying that an omnipotent God is incapable of designing it any other way, such as with closeable gills.

I'll grant you that but I must say: better at what? All that science can ever prove is that biological feature W is X% efficient at performing function Y according to criterion Z of efficiency. Science can go no further.

Better for living in the ocean. Science can say that whales live in the ocean.

Saying "it should have been better" is now a judgment of value.

Yes, "should" have been better is a judgement of value. But, "it could have been better" is just an observation of fact. Remember, we can look at designs for cars, bridges, and so on, and see flaws that can be fixed - that's why technology has improved for hundreds of years.

That's like asking whether the portability of the calculator is worth its being unable to do even a fraction of the things my laptop computer can do. It's not that the calculator is suboptimal to the computer or vice versa, they're different designs with different purposes.

__________________

Or like comparing my old calculator from the 70's, with a dim display, using huge batteries that ran out quickly, with a calculator today. They both have the same functions, fit the same niche, yet one wastes batteries, and the other, by comparison, does not. Neither are "optimum" (better calculator designs may well come in the future), but we can still see that one is more efficient than the other, with a better design to be a calculator.

That reminds me that in science, we can never know that an idea is completely right, but we can use evidence to show that one idea is more wrong than another. Similarly, I wonder if it is a useful analogy to see that we can never know if a design is optimum, but we can use evidence to see that some designs are clearly worse than others.

Papias

 

[shernren]

Except that it is hiding behind an unfalsifiable hypothesis. Could not even the most idiotic design imaginable be replied to with "What if God simply wanted to make wheeled, upside down sea creatures? Can we really begrudge Him that?"

Now take a look at what you've written (which I agree with, by the way - and if wheeled, upside-down sea creatures did in fact exist you know exactly what I'd be saying. ). Is the argument from good design false, or is it unfalsifiable? It can't be both.

My opinion is that the argument from good design by itself is unfalsifiable. If the creationist says "Look how well-designed the world is!" and we point out a particular feature, the creationist can say "Yes, but maybe that's what God wanted!"

However, the argument from good design plus auxiliary hypotheses is both falsifiable and false. For example, "Look how well-designed the eye is! It certainly can't have evolved" can be falsified (by proposing an evolutionary pathway for the eyes). More importantly, "Look how well-designed the giraffe is!" can be answered with "Yes, but look at that ridiculous nerve running all the way up and back down the neck." What you are doing is falsifying the good design argument with the auxiliary hypothesis that "shorter nerve length is optimum".

Yes, it is a reasonable assumption to make, but it's an auxiliary hypothesis, and the argument from good design can still be salvaged at the cost of the auxiliary - so the creationist says "Well, who are you to begrudge God making a really long nerve?", saving the argument from good design but losing the "shorter nerve length is optimum" auxiliary.

It goes back to the one of the many problems I have with creationism - that it is the abrogation of the use of our God-given minds, a rejection of the whole idea of human progress and learning.

"There is no point in studying biology, just accept that God created it that way according to a literal reading of Gensis."

"Don't try to develope anesthesia, that goes against God's plan for us."

"Why look at archeological evidence in Jericho, God gave us all the history there that we need in the Old Testament."

and so on. That's why I pointed out earlier in my discussion with Iambeeman that the idea of "the design must be good somehow, we are just limited humans who can't see it" gets us nowhere.

Yes, but it may well be true, might it not? God may genuinely have optimized the whale, or the giraffe, or whatever bad-design-instance you want to think of, for some ineffable good which we will never grasp until we reach heaven and ask Him. Assuming and using that perspective, of course, is incredibly stultifying, as you correctly point out. But it may, for all that, still be true, and the perspective is worth considering.

Having two sources of oxgen is common and easy. Lungfish, for example. Little additional circulatory tubing is needed, and it's seen to work many times over. And are you saying that an omnipotent God can't design a system that is robust against blood clots? Why not alter that irreducibly complex () blood clotting cascade, or use one of many other possible improvements?

So the omnipotent God is incapable of making a gill work on a large creature? Why require endothermy? Even so, is it not possible for God to make a balance between fluke - end gills and a reduced endothermy?

I'm stating that the whale is "designed" to live in the ocean. It's as simple as that. You are aware that baby whales often drown before they can be pushed to the surface to breathe, right? Even the addition of fluke tip gills would help there.

God can't make closeable gills? As stated, the "design" is for living in the ocean. Again, you point seems to be saying that an omnipotent God is incapable of designing it any other way, such as with closeable gills.

Better for living in the ocean. Science can say that whales live in the ocean.

Most lungfish actually have atrophied, functionally useless gills (there you go - bad design! ), with the exception of the Queensland lungfish. In any case, gills and lungs go next to each other (our "gill arches" form our jaws, IIRC), which is why I specified that the respiratory systems should be in the same location.

You need to remember that blood is a passive oxygen "sponge": it essentially unquestioningly accepts oxygen from the environment when it has less oxygen than the environment and gives up oxygen to its environment when the reverse is true. What would happen if a whale had lungs and fluke gills?

If the order of blood's circulation were lungs -> gills -> body and around again, then blood oxygenated in the lungs would not pick up any extra oxygen in the gills anyway - worse, they would release oxygen to the surrounding water. You could imagine a kind of "double pass" or "figure eight" circulation where blood flows lungs -> body -> gills -> body -> lungs and so on, but you'd then have to imagine some kind of "alternating" valve in the body's blood vessels which would alternate blood flow between lungs and gills. Otherwise, you could have some parts of the body supplied by lungs and other parts supplied by gills - in which case the parts of the body supplied by gills would have less oxygen to use all the time! And if the blood doesn't clot, you get hemophilia.

And did you know fish can drown too? That's why most home aquaria have air pumps. In fact, I'd argue that it's easier for a fish to drown than for a whale - at least when you do get air, it's always going to be 21% oxygen, whereas pockets of water can be deoxygenated depending on temperature, salinity, and other living things present. The only reason fish don't drown more often is because they simply are engineered to use as little oxygen as possible - and their fry perish with far greater frequency than baby whales.

And at the end of the day, you simply can't know that whales were designed solely for living in the ocean. After all, plankton seem quite well-designed for living in the ocean too, based on their abundance. So why is there anything besides plankton in the ocean? Perhaps God wanted to make macroscopic ocean life, as well - in which case it's entirely reasonable for God to want to make mammalian ocean life, too, and for all the "shortcomings" in the design (which neither of us have proved are shortcomings, since we're both shooting to the wind at this stage) the point is that it is still an aquatic mammal, and may well have been one of the best God could have designed given His specifications.

But we can tell a good design from a poor one, or else our entire technological works disappear. That goes back to the abrogation point I mentioned earlier.

Yes, "should" have been better is a judgement of value. But, "it could have been better" is just an observation of fact. Remember, we can look at designs for cars, bridges, and so on, and see flaws that can be fixed - that's why technology has improved for hundreds of years.

__________________

Or like comparing my old calculator from the 70's, with a dim display, using huge batteries that ran out quickly, with a calculator today. They both have the same functions, fit the same niche, yet one wastes batteries, and the other, by comparison, does not. Neither are "optimum" (better calculator designs may well come in the future), but we can still see that one is more efficient than the other, with a better design to be a calculator.

Better for what? I can construct a situation in which your shiny new calculator is suboptimal:

You are John Connor, and you have been sent back to the 1950's to sabotage nuclear tests which will be crucial in developing the weapons which will ultimately cause Judgment Day. You decide to do so by posing as a nuclear scientist, deliberately fudging experiments so that the governments of the day will give up on these WMDs. However, you know that Skynet also has a vested interest in making sure these tests succeed, and the era is lousy with Terminators crawling around.

You have the know-how to construct an advanced calculator with all the capabilities of the 21st century - but using one even for a moment in the laboratory is sure to tip off the Terminators, who are intricately aware of how to detect and neutralize a time traveling agent.

Wouldn't you agree with me then that your old calculator from the 70's, with a dim display, using huge batteries that ran out quickly, would be better to use? It might suck as a calculator, but as a chronologically-accurate artifact it would save your life.

Once again, the argument from good design can always be saved. It's unfalsifiable, not false.

I can see that position. However, with the many problems in the animal kingdom, such as the ichneumon wasp's larvae eating paralyzed caterpillars, literally hundreds of types of venom, the commonality of babies being food, and the many clearly bad designs mentioned on this thread, to ME, at least, it seems more mentally consistent to allow God to leave the details to evolution, by allowing God to step back from the role of micromanager. I mostly say "to each his own" I guess on that, but I do object to statements that appear to be demonstrably false, like statements that the ichneumon wasp is a "loving" design, or that the huge genome of the paramecium we discussed is an "efficient" or "optimum" or "perfect" design, etc. At least, I say, call a spade a spade.

What on earth does it mean for an omnipotent, omniscient God to leave anything to anything? Surely we are not going to retreat to an "open" theism where, upon creating the world, God chose to use evolution to create living beings, but genuinely did not know what kind of creatures evolution would create? "Oh my, bad evolution! Baaaaaad evolution! You wipe out those ichneumon right this minute or you won't get your supper!" The orthodox position on natural causation has always been that it is simultaneously the will of God and the result of physical processes that certain things happen, and I don't see why evolution and its resulting designs can be excepted.

I've been thinking about this over the past few days and I believe that it's possible to imagine that one of God's primary design specifications was that all living beings' designs should be compatible with evolutionary origination and maintenance. This is not to deny the reality of evolution: the fact that a car manufacturer must design his car to be producible by factories doesn't mean that factories are fictional or irrelevant. God designed creatures to be produced via evolution, and then He used evolution to produce those creatures.

How would evolutionary compatibility be a desirable trait for living beings? We begin with the tenet that God wanted to make a physical universe. In other words, God intended to create a universe which runs according to certain well-defined, predictable physical rules. Now firstly consider the fact that within a physical universe bodily harm is inevitable. I believe that God could not make a physical universe in which living things are somehow impervious to death. What happens if the immortal elephant steps on an immortal ant? Does the elephant leave its mark on the ant, or the ant on the elephant, or does God create some kind of magical force-field which instantly separates them? Furthermore, it is impossible for the numbers of any particular species to increase to infinity, which implies that death and even predation (certainly saprophytism) are inevitable.

Secondly, descent with random modification is necessary. Consider if God made all species reproduce perfectly. Then ecological development would be impossible - to say nothing of the fact that God seems to have chosen to make nature fundamentally indeterministic on the quantum level, making any kind of perfect reproduction impossible. As such, any process of copying is bound to contain errors, and once these errors have consequences for reproductive fitness, natural selection is inevitable. And once some creatures evolve, all creatures must be able to: otherwise an evolutionary arms race would rapidly wipe out those creatures which could not evolve. Could God make it possible for creatures to actively modify their own genome in response to other creatures' evolution - the "molecular mechanisms" of mark kennedy's monomania? No, because then creatures which could not would be even more swiftly wiped out, and the resulting equilibrium between species actively modifying their genomes would be very unstable and tip over into extinction at the slightest trigger. As such, the capability for evolutionary maintenance of genomes is actually God's mercy, rather than some autonomous process whose results must be placed at some reserve from God's sovereignty.

And once we allow that evolutionary maintenance of genomes is optimum, then all the designs which shocked you become somewhat inevitable. Toxins and poisons are inevitable - if life is to be run on the basis of chemical processes, and these chemical processes can be directed by the living being itself, then those chemical processes can surely be misdirected by some other living being. "Inefficient" designs like the giraffe's nerve and the paramecium's genome are optimum if evolutionary maintenance is optimum and the cost of rewriting the genome by evolutionary means outweighs the benefits gained. As for ichneumon wasp - well, it wasn't so long ago that fundamentalist Christians insisted that Terry Schiavo be kept "alive" at all costs, drugged, sedated, incapable of sustaining her own bodily functions, really less alive than a victim of the ichneumon wasp which can at least respire autonomously. Those people could certainly tell you whether it is better to be eaten alive or eaten dead.

I hope you can see that I'm disagreeing with you so much as trying to realign the data points. I'll be the first to say that a simplistic "hey hey look how amazing the flagellum is! There must be a God" argument does Christianity disgrace. And I would be standing in a long line of distinguished theologians in saying so, not least Karl Barth (after Darwinism) and John Henry Newman (before). But my theology has to allow room that, in the "endless forms most beautiful" that God produces through evolution, all glory must be given to God. And given that I believe in God, and accept that evolution seems to be the way He made life, I need to do my best to reconcile His glory to His methods - incomplete as that reconciling may be this side of Heaven.

 

[SkyWriting]

"endless forms most beautiful"

That's a cute saying. But without foundation. I'd sure like to see endless forms that worked.

But they don't all work. Imagine the wheels on cars with the axle in an infinite variety of positions. "Evolution" claims they all will work. I say bunk.

Imagine an endless variety of materials. Some wheels made of butter, some of leaves, some of pudding. Evolution says they all work.

Imagine and endless number of shapes. You get the idea.
Design is not endless. Beauty is when one works.....by design.

 

[shernren]

But they don't all work. Imagine the wheels on cars with the axle in an infinite variety of positions. "Evolution" claims they all will work. I say bunk.

Imagine an endless variety of materials. Some wheels made of butter, some of leaves, some of pudding. Evolution says they all work.

Do you even know where that quote comes from?

 

[Assyrian]

"endless forms most beautiful"

That's a cute saying. But without foundation. I'd sure like to see endless forms that worked.

But they don't all work. Imagine the wheels on cars with the axle in an infinite variety of positions. "Evolution" claims they all will work. I say bunk.

Imagine an endless variety of materials. Some wheels made of butter, some of leaves, some of pudding. Evolution says they all work.

Imagine and endless number of shapes. You get the idea.
Design is not endless. Beauty is when one works.....by design.

Bit of a flaw in your argument here, your ability to think up ugly forms doesn't take away from there being endless beautiful ones. If I said the even number were endless and beautiful, no amount of odd numbers you could think up would refute it. "Endless forms most beautiful" doesn't mean every axle layout is beautiful or that every layout will work, it means that after natural selection has got rid of the myriad of possible bad axle layouts and the wheels made of butter, the vast range of workable forms it comes up with is still endless and beautiful.

 

[Papias]

Shernren wrote:

Could not even the most idiotic design imaginable be replied to with "What if God simply wanted to make wheeled, upside down sea creatures? Can we really begrudge Him that?"

Now take a look at what you've written (which I agree with, by the way - and if wheeled, upside-down sea creatures did in fact exist you know exactly what I'd be saying. ). Is the argument from good design false, or is it unfalsifiable? It can't be both.

My opinion is that the argument from good design by itself is unfalsifiable. If the creationist says "Look how well-designed the world is!" and we point out a particular feature, the creationist can say "Yes, but maybe that's what God wanted!"

I think a well-constructed good or bad design hypothesis is falsifiable, such as "this design is the optimum design for a creature to live and reproduce in such -and such a habitat", or "hypothetically fixable problems with this design can be identified for a creature to live and reproduce in such -and such a habitat". I agree that any investigation that allows one to use the "maybe that's what God wanted" line is unfalsifiable, just like an investigation into physics that starts with or includes "things may move the way they do because that's what God intends them to do.". The same holds for any field of science - all investigations can be simply halted by playing "God is doing it for unknown reasons" card.

However, the argument from good design plus auxiliary hypotheses is both falsifiable and false. ......What you are doing is falsifying the good design argument with the auxiliary hypothesis that "shorter nerve length is optimum".

It seems to me that practically all hypotheses include many unstated factors that you are calling "auxillary hypotheses", but which I think are usually agreed upon sufficiently so as to be unstated. As with the Newtonian physics example above, I'm not sure why you are treating the field of biology so differently than other fields of science.

Yes, but it may well be true, might it not? ..... Assuming and using that perspective, of course, is incredibly stultifying, as you correctly point out. But it may, for all that, still be true, and the perspective is worth considering.

I don't think it is, if we are going to use our God-given brains and progress out of the trees. That kind of perspective isn't worth considering (to me) because it ends all experiments, all hypotheses, all science, and all understanding of the world God has given us. Again, I don't see why that perpective is rejected in all fields, and then arbitrarily dug up and propped up in this one sub-corner of biology. For me, I reject it here in this subcorner of biology just as I reject it in, say, Gringnard chemistry, differential calculus, and gravitational physics.

Most lungfish actually have atrophied, functionally useless gills (there you go - bad design! ), with the exception of the Queensland lungfish.

Yes, we can call that a "bad design", or go with the approach you described for the wheeled, upside down water creatures. It feels more honest for me to say "bad design", in addition to the stultifying point.

And at the end of the day, you simply can't know that whales were designed solely for living in the ocean.

I think your plankton example shows the problems with a teleological approach to a historical result.

Either way though, the mention of plankton shows that the hypothesis includes the unstated factors refered to above, such as in this case "eats plankton, survives temperatures lower than 80 C,......", and so on.

Better for what? I can construct a situation in which your shiny new calculator is suboptimal:

You are John Connor, .....

Yes, that example works for showing a situation where the 70's calculator is the one for the hypothetical environment, but a hypothetical environment isn't needed when the one the whale lives in is right here to examine. Overall, I do see your point (that different design goals can give different designs, and that God may have hidden design goals), but as described above, it doesn't work for me.

Once again, the argument from good design can always be saved. It's unfalsifiable, not false.

It seems to me that it is simply false, and only made unfalsifiably by avoiding the whole logical endeavor in such a way that can also be used in any question, making any hypotheses unfalsifiable. The argument from good design can only be saved by jumping out the window, and deciding that all evidence is irrelevant.

I hope you can see that I'm disagreeing with you so much as trying to realign the data points. I'll be the first to say that a simplistic "hey hey look how amazing the flagellum is! There must be a God" argument does Christianity disgrace. .......And given that I believe in God, and accept that evolution seems to be the way He made life, I need to do my best to reconcile His glory to His methods - incomplete as that reconciling may be this side of Heaven.

I can see that, and think that your construction at the end of your last post makes more sense (and clearly shows a lot more thought) than the standard "argument from design". I think that I do finally understand your view, and though I don't share it (for the reasons that have hopefully become clear), I do appreciate the discussion, and am glad that you took the time to help me see your view.

Happy New Year-

Papias

 

[shernren]

A summation: Papias and I are both theistic evolutionists (who in particular still believe in an actual ancestral human couple Adam and Eve, though we still take the rest of Genesis 1-3 non-literally) who have been trying to thrash out the exact logical status of the "argument from good design" - whatever that may be (defining it is part of the problem).

This actually reflects a similar discussion in the wider academic world: what, exactly, falsifies (if it does) the argument from design? Creationists of course don't even think it's false; but there remains a scholarly distinction between two distinct camps which do not accept the argument from design. One I may call the Humeans, who think that pre-Darwinian philosophy - of David Hume in particular - sufficed to falsify the argument from design or render it unhelpful; Elliott Sober, a philosopher of science, falls in this camp, and I've actually learned a lot about evolution from him (hence my leanings). The other camp I may call the Darwinians who think that the argument from design was actually a good argument until evolution came along to offer an alternative explanation. Richard Dawkins in particular is a proponent of this camp, which explains why he credits evolution with making it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.

Humeans tend to think that the argument from design is unfalsifiable, for the reasons I have stated: since design specifications for life cannot be independently found, one could always conjure up a set of specifications that (very conveniently) match what we actually see, and then claim that this just shows that life is designed.

However, Humeans would say (and I agree) that such a move is of little scientific value, since, in practice, just about any crazy statement can be rendered unfalsifiable (and thus potentially true) by the addition of suitable auxiliary hypotheses. For example, suppose I were to believe that there were a unicorn in my backyard. This patently false statement could be rendered unfalsifiable if I supposed that the unicorn were also invisible and untouchable to anyone other than me. And yet we still wouldn't accept the existence of the unicorn. In the same way, if the argument from design requires that kind of saving, it might as well be invalid.

What I argued was for that we could consider God to have designed life using the specification that all life-forms must be capable of being maintained by evolution. But note that this is not an argument from design: what I am really saying or assuming is that conventional design arguments are unlikely to be able to explain biodiversity. Rather, I was trying to fit my (pre-existing) beliefs in God with the fact that all life appears to have evolved, without simply making God not-responsible for the results of evolution. It goes without saying that if I have to assume God exists to argue about the origins of biodiversity, my argument is hardly going to be a proof of God's existence!

What Papias is arguing for (and which I agree with, really) is that, in general, "evolutionary origination" seems to be a much better way to explain the patterns we see in modern biodiversity rather than simply "design to the environment". Note that my own formulation (God designed life using evolutionary specifications) is really saying the same thing: that is, it doesn't look like God designed whales specifically and solely for living in the ocean, giraffes specifically and solely for eating tall tree branches, etc., and there is a lot that a design hypothesis can't explain without recourse to evolutionary explanations.

I must note that, given my background in theoretical physics, I am enamored with logical rigor, perhaps to a fault! Papias, on the other hand, is an ... I don't know what, actually. But it's certainly justified to go for as simple a formulation as possible when trying to quickly beat creationists on the head for using awful pseudoscientific mumbo-jumbo, and "the argument from design just doesn't work" is probably better in those circumstances.

Anyhow. I think that's a sufficient response to Papias' previous post, and I don't think I'll need to say anything more that hasn't already been said here or in the previous series. It's a joy to have a disagreement with someone who argues his side so well!

Just a specific comment, though:

It seems to me that practically all hypotheses include many unstated factors that you are calling "auxillary hypotheses", but which I think are usually agreed upon sufficiently so as to be unstated. As with the Newtonian physics example above, I'm not sure why you are treating the field of biology so differently than other fields of science.

This business of auxiliary hypotheses comes from the Duhem-Quine thesis, which basically says that one never tests a hypothesis alone, but a whole bundle of hypotheses together. It is also applicable in other fields of science, not just biology.

To use a classic example, when the seventh planet Uranus was discovered and its motions were tracked, it was found that its orbit did not match Newtonian predictions. In 1845 Urbain Le Verrier proposed that there was an eighth planet beyond Uranus which was perturbing its motion, and they found Neptune a year later, almost exactly where it was predicted.

In 1859 Urbain Le Verrier reported that the orbit of Mercury was also not matching Newtonian predictions. He proposed this time that there may be a planet or significant concentration of mass between Mercury and the Sun which was perturbing Mercury's orbit. But astronomers never found anything like that, and in 1915 Einstein's theory of relativity showed that it was genuinely Newtonian gravity which had failed this time.

Was Urbain being unscientific in 1845 when he invented an auxiliary hypothesis to save Newtonian gravity? Perhaps. Was Urbain being scientific in 1859 when he followed the lead of previously successful science? Perhaps. But the fact of the matter is that nature (and God's providence in it) is exceedingly subtle, and one often finds that the auxiliaries need to be enumerated and evaluated. A contemporary example is the reporting of neutrinos supposedly traveling faster than light - "supposedly", because the central hypothesis at stake (matter can't travel faster than light) has been so successful that it is highly likely that some other, less important, auxiliary hypothesis needs to be questioned.