Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Not Quite Intelligent Design


I'm not usually one to complain, especially about God's creations, but in some instances He leaves me to ponder, 'What the heck was He thinking!?' I've read many articles on the idea of Intelligent Design, or Creationism Lite, and thought to myself - what about all of the unintelligent design in nature? Who designed that, and for what purpose? Were there a few semi-purposefully designed creatures (of course, we'd always have to lump us humans in with this group), but the rest of what we see was left to its own devices to evolve however it pleased? Even with humans, there are enough oddities to believe that at the very minimum, someone with a good sense of humor had a hand in this design.

Take vestigial organs. Was the appendix just designed with the fore-sight to ensure adequate financial support for the surgical profession? And to spread the wealth, I have to assume that wisdom teeth were most likely designed to provide financial support to oral surgeons? Couldn't God at least have removed these for all future missionaries and saved them the time, money, and pain - just a little token of appreciation to two years of full-time service? How about that tailbone in humans? I suppose there might have been a change in plans mid-design about us homo sapiens having tails, but someone forgot to remove all the evidence? And male nipples - what in the world do I do with these?

Hair is another interesting design aspect of humans. Our early ancestors started out completely covered. We shed some hair by the Neanderthal times, and now we're left with only a few small patches of hair, with the only hair we're really interested in being the stuff on top of our head, which also happens to be the only spot susceptible to balding. Couldn't we have been designed to bald in the nether-regions, and grow thicker hair on our heads as we age as a small compensation for a slowing metabolism? And why do we still have erector pili that cause our hair to stand on end (goose bumps), but we have no hair to really notice, where most animals have this trait as a defense mechanism to appear larger/fiercer to predators?

Our poor digestive systems. For some reason, they seem only designed to handle grains and proteins efficiently. Couldn't we have been designed with some fore-sight to better handle the abundance of refined sugar and carbs that we now consume in-mass, instead of being designed with what appears to be more for an environment tens of thousands of years ago? Why weren't we provided with some mechanisms to break down hydrogenated trans fats and oils so that we could enjoy our Big Macs and Super-Sized fries guilt-free?

And lastly, the duck-billed platypus. I rest my not-always-so-intelligent design case.

3 comments:

  1. Bishop,

    What about the foreskin? Is this another extraneous design feature incorporated on to the male body just to provide doctors a source of income? Was it incorporated to give the Jewish Mohels something to do? It was originally thought that circumcision would curb the temptation to masturbate. Hence, its removal was to prevent sin. Now it is done to reduce the risk for infection. If it causes us to sin through self gratification and it creates a risk for infection, why then do we have it? I think God may have lightly brushed over a few areas when he was in the human design process. To bad he didn't have SolidWorks and Finite Element Analysis to help Him with his design.

    God Bless,

    Monomo

    ReplyDelete
  2. I consider the platypus proof God has a sense of humor.

    No theories on anything else mentioned. ;)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Monomo - Yes, I tried to ignore the foreskin issue. Perhaps a little too close to home...

    Felix - Major sense of humor, most definitely.

    ReplyDelete