Are you suggesting that because something is vestigal, that it is a sound argument to say 'it is vestigal means it wasn't designed' is a good arugment?
Quotes critical of evolution
- Thread starter T'ai Chi
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Are you suggesting that because something is vestigal, that it is a sound argument to say 'it is vestigal means it wasn't designed' is a good arugment?
UnrepentantSinner
A post by Alan Smithee
Unless you can cite an actual textbook I have come not to trust the "millions of school children are still being taught" malarky. Provide a cite. And dictionaries aren't medical textbooks or science textbooks. My 1977 edition of Websters New Collegate says nothing about function.
"vermiform appendix n: a narrow blind tube usu. about three or four inches long that extends from the cecum in the lower right hand part of the abdomen"
The entry for appendix refers to this entry. Nothing is mentioned about function, only form.
And why mention mythical textbooks or dictionaries, when I a: said that vestigial organs have a function, even if a diminished one b: you could cite contemporary papers by looking them up in Pubmed. Here's one I found from 1980 that claims primate appendixes developed aggressively and are therefore not vestigial (though I'd note human diets are different from our fellow great apes).
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?tool=pubmed&pubmedid=7216918
And here's an interesting abstract from 2003 that states the appendix is highly specialize, but that it has no known function in humans.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/...tool=iconabstr&query_hl=1&itool=pubmed_docsum
Why not go with scientific papers rather than mythical textbooks and dictionary definitions?
Whoever hired Dr. Mabel Rodrigues needs to fire her or send her back to school. The spelling and grammar errors in that reponse were painful. And while she speaks through her hat about possible function, she does state the same thing that the abstract does:
"the appendix has no known physiological function..."
But aside from the appendix, what about all the other vestigial organs/functions we have?
- Like our fellow great apes, we have all the vertebra for a tail, but they form the coccyx and remain within the body.
- Most humans aren't very hairy, and yet we get goosebumps.
- I don't know about anyone else, but I can pick things up from clothing to pencils in my feet, a vestige of our prehensile toe days.
- I can also wiggle my ears and flare my nostrils, neither of which has any purpose physiologically that I'm aware of, but I can do them none the less.
Some of these organs/functions have reduced function, some, like wiggling my ears, are obviously pale shadows of former capacity when compared with how other mammals can use this ability for hearing. And some, like the appendix, might have some purpose, but we really don't know what it is, but it's clear we can live, as millions of people have over the years, without them.
UnrepentantSinner
A post by Alan Smithee
So, let me get this straight. Becuase something is reduced in function now at time t compared to time t-n, the designer is stupid.
Wow, makes you wonder about all those car designers.
Who said this? I don't know why you quoted me and replied with this non sequitor.
cyborg
deus ex machina
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You maroon.
The whole point is that no, it is not designed, something being vestigial means, "this organ played a major role in a species ancestral to this one that is now diminished." Like our tail bones.
The term would have no meaning in design. The appearance of such structures only makes sense when considered in the context of gradual change - not big up-front design.
Why are they taught the Earth is a sphere and not an oblique spheroid? Probably because they're being taught from crappy books.
The solution to which is of course to only use the perfect KJV and to get rid of all those other unnecessary books.
UnrepentantSinner
A post by Alan Smithee
Hey now, they could use a suppliment like Icons of Evolution...
Uh Oh, looks like it doesn't just have errors, but outright lies.
Indolent Wretch
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The ones with humility will surely know that it's far too early to state that it's too improbable to have happened by chance. Think how arrogant they would have to be to feel that they had exhausted all the options with their unstoppable, brilliant minds.
How about you Rodney? Are you humble?
Indolent Wretch
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They feel they have evidence of design (you keep mentioning designer but really it is about design); that complexity and information, meaningful design, comes from intelligence.
It is like you see a painting in a room, yet you ultimately conclude design is not present because the Painter doesn't make herself available to you.
No Tai, it's like you saw a painting in a room and assumed a painter. And then even after we found that it was just a scrap of wallpaper, and the fallen pots of paint on the floor above, and the fan in the room, and the dodgy sprinkler system, and the wasps nest, and all the other things that moved the paint on the paper over many many years. You still insist there MUST be a painter because to you it looks like a painting.
Complexity and information do not have to come from intelligence.
Is it random stains on an canvas...or is it Jackson Pollock?
That's yet another question creationists like T'ai Chi can't answer.
That's yet another question creationists like T'ai Chi can't answer.
Dancing David
Penultimate Amazing
Just for fun, I'LL Agree, after all tail fins on cars were designed and serve no useful purpose.
However regressive traits like rudimentary tails on humans may bring into question the intelligence of the designer.
But I will accept the comittee approach to creation as well.
And I'd be right because it sounds like a Pollack painting.
I know you are just being facetious here, but this is precisely the point. I.W. specified a process by which this scrap of paper came to look as it does, without any intentional designer ("artist", in this case), and you looked at it and inferred Jackson Pollock.
For those not so quick to jump to the identification of a specific designer from such meager evidence, even far better evidence of Pollock is not enough for some experts.
Where is the evidence that wallpaper, with fallen pots of paint, fans, sprinkler system, etc, would come out to look like a painting? Your detailed history, with actual evidence of systems like this, just aren't there.
Of course, wallpaper, paint cans, fans, sprinklers, etc.; they are all designed too.
Of course, wallpaper, paint cans, fans, sprinklers, etc.; they are all designed too.
wollery
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T'ai, when the top of the hole is at the level of your head, it's time to stop digging!
Indolent Wretch
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So, you are saying that Jackson Pollock paintings weren't painted by Pollock?
You can't deny that I tried my best.
I mean duh! A specific painting? Unlikely. Any painting? Possible. A Pollock? overwhelmingly likely!
And whose to say that a molten piece of metal or wax could look like a scultpure?
Or a crystal could look designed?
Or some random rock formations could look like a building.
Or etc, fricking etc, could look like a thimungybooble.
Of course they could Tai.
Except for life of course, at it's simplest form created by chance, and then unstoppably worked upon by the blind forces of evolution and natural selection. How about that for an example?
If I may ask a direct question Tai, where do you have a problem with this? Is it a lack of imagination? Abiogenesis, Evolution, Natural Selection et al, do need imagination, imagination of chance, of huge time periods, and miniscule probabilities but where the dice are rolled billions of times? Or is it something else, whats the hang up?
Exactly.
T'ai Chi's understanding of art seems similarly faulty like his view on evolution.
Dancing David
Penultimate Amazing