Posted on 05/20/2006 6:02:56 PM PDT by Al Simmons
Quite so. If I restricted myself to arguing science, I would merely point out the fact that the recurrent laryngeal nerve starts out relatively straight and gets stretched as the heart plunges deeper into the chest, and the fact that there is a homologous nerve and blood vessel in all the chordates, and conclude that the indirect path it takes is yet more evidence for the evolution of mammals from "primitive" chordates.
Similarly for the other examples. Evolution is highly constrained by what it has to work with; there is no reason to suppose that a "designer" is so constrained.
However, I was more arguing against ID. The basic claim is that living things reflect a conscious designer. OK. Assume that.
This is not a scientific claim, as nobody has ever come up with a useful algorithm for detecting design. (Maybe someday Dembski will, but I remain skeptical, to say the least). So it's basically an intuitive, aesthetic assertion.
We know of no other intelligent designers than ourselves. To assert that the design reflects intelligence, we have only our own standards to go by.
The examples I gave, and the ones I linked to, show that the hypothetical designer is either 1) often incompetent, 2) has such wildly different standards than we do as to make talk of its "intelligence" meaningless, or 3) doesn't exist.
Since these anomalies all fit neatly into standard biology, Occam tells us to go with 3)
At first blush, I doubt it. But give me a link and I'll do some more digging for you...
Cheers!
This is soething that is of interest to you?
We know of no other intelligent designers than ourselves.
Actually chipanzees select and prune sticks for specific tasks such as using them to insert in to ant hills to obtain a tasty treat.
You continue on to re-state your non-scientific opinions about incoptetence etc...OK, but they are worth exactly as much as soeone's opinion who believes opposite you.
As far as Occa's razor and the vagus nerve's tributaries, occam's razor would in fact be consistent with the current morphology you think is so bizarre and incompetent.
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