This one.
But now there’s this from Faye Flam, “What Was the Designer Thinking When He Dreamed up the Human Body?” at the Philly Enquirer (November 1, 2011):
I’d also like to hear the creationist explanation for male nipples. Any good ideas out there?
We are not creationists nor experts at UD News but if, as we are told, nipples get started at a point in embryogenesis when male and female are imperfectly sorted, the obvious thing would be to just let them develop further in females, but not males.
May we add, ahem, that there is no evidence that male nipples have ever prevented a man from finding romantic happiness? Which often fixes the trait in future generations …
We have no idea what the opposite situation would do, were it even feasible.
Any kind of design means working within constraints. But you cannot explain that to someone who has no sympathy with engineering, that is, applied science, where reality matters.
The combox is hilarious, including one commenter’s response to her jibe: “If God created the human body, why did He put the sewer right through the playground? What was He thinking?:
Where would *you* put the sewer? Your finger? Your forehead? Elbow? Foot?
Hmmm. Yeah, we see the problem all right.
Could even God fly that past the mani-pedi/cosmetology industry? They probably lobbied for the sewer to be put some place where – if, like most people, you’re not totally gorgeous – most strangers other than medics don’t think about, or want to.
The “obvious thing to do“? It’s uncanny how people can, with a straight face, presume to second guess a being that lives outside time and space!
Please, please tell us more about this previously unknown designer and how his/her/its mind works! What else is the obvious thing to do for this Designer and how do you know?
Humans yes, Gods no.
Re: [W]hy did He put the sewer right through the playground?
I first heard this metaphor some years ago from Neil deGrasse Tyson. He was one of the presenters at a conference of evolutionary scientists. In a presentation he described as a fast tirade on stuipid design, he asked the following question. “What’s this going on between our legs?” He said we have an “entertainment complex in the middle of a sewer system.”
That quote comes at the very end of the following video.
Warning: There are also pictures of aborted fetuses.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v.....U&
notes:
For many years materialists predicted much of human anatomy was vestigial (useless and leftover evolutionary baggage) very much like they do now with supposed ‘junk’ DNA. Yet once again, they were proven completely wrong in this prediction.
Moreover, the vestigial organ argument, just like the ‘Junk DNA’ argument, is basically a ‘Bad Design’ argument which is used by materialistic evolutionists. But the ‘Bad Design’ argument is clearly a theological argument that quickly leaves the field of empirical science and enters squarely into the field of a Philosophical, and even a Theological, debate.
In fact, it has been pointed out, by many people besides Dr. Craig, that the whole neo-Darwinian argument is, at its core beneath all the rhetoric, a theological argument:
Here are peer-reviewed papers which point out the fact that many arguments for Darwinian evolution, even in Darwin’s original book, turn out to be primarily theological arguments at their core:
And the theological ‘bad design’ argument, which Darwinists unwittingly continually use to try to make their ‘scientific’ case, is actually its own independent discipline of study within Theology itself called Theodicy:
Verse and Music:
Three related points:
1. The scientific theory of Intelligent Design does not presume that the origin of life on Earth and/or its subsequent development must be the result of singular extra-universal being. While most (if not all) ID proponents make that metaphysical assumption, the theory itself is agnostic. Thus ID theory permits the hypostheses that the origin of male nipples could be the accidental byproduct of one or more mortal aliens, the deliberate choice of a supreme being, or even the result of darwinian evolution (provided it doesn’t cross the CSI threshold).
2. Evolution theory is really a very large group of suppoting theories that offers explanations for various developments in the history of life. In contrast, Intelligent Design theory is very small in scope. ID does not offer an explanation for this or any other feature as it (currently) only attempts to discern design (via the existence of a particular biological structure/operation highly improbable to have been found as a result of a random, exhaustive search).
3. I suppose it might be possible to determine if the suppression of nipples in male embryos has unintended consequences in later development, and if so, if there are any design alternatives. I’ve read that male horses and at the males of least one species of rat do not possess nipples, so designing/altering the human species to allow for healthy males to be sans-nipples may very well be possible. Where that leaves ID proponents, I haven’t a clue.
Just a couple of points.
First, there is no scientific theory of ID. This is the reason why after so much wailing and gnashing of teeth the ID revolutionaries have yet to advance, let alone perform a single experiment that might confirm or falsify the hypothesis. All they have are criticisms of evolutionary theory (e.g. irreducible complexity) that even if valid would not confirm the design hypothesis in any way.
Second, the ‘theory’ is studiously and self-defeatingly coy about proffering any useful information about the Designer. Nevertheless it is a logical consequence of their argument that the Designer must be, in Dembski’s own words, “not strictly physical”. For if CSI (or anyone of its equally ill-defined variants) is a reliable marker of intelligent design then it’s obvious we’re going to run out of designers as we regress back through history.
Oh, goody. Another version of the puerile “bad design” argument. It is astounding how often this line of reasoning gets recycled. A moment’s reflection for the person of even average intelligence would be sufficient to conclude that bad design does not mean no design.
Further, we virtually never hear an engineering quality explanation of how the allegedly poorly designed system could have been improved upon. Just assertions that it was poorly designed, like Neil deGrasse Tyson’s stupid statement referenced above.
And to top it off, in most cases when we actually start to understand the system in question (e.g., mammalian eye, non-coding DNA), it turns out to be an example of exquisite design.
Fossfur, read up a bit and then report back. Your understanding of ID is quite lacking.
It really isn’t.
What can be shown to be more scientifically productive is a pragmatic assumption that everything has a purpose as if an incredibly intelligent designer was responsible.
Unfortunately for science, the default assumption of evolutionary junk when anything is poorly understood has hindered progress, and probably originates from an irrational fear that God might be imagined to be the ultimate designer, perish the thought.
Thus, Darwinists are quick to rejoice when they find anything that they can assure themselves is “junk” or a design mistake, have a remarkable faith that “living fossils” must have reached relative evolutionary perfection within miraculously enduring, sheltered environments lasting millions of years, gloss over staggering complexity with mythologies based on chance and necessity, and unfurl wildly speculative evolutionary rationalizations for any discovery, even such astonishments as pliable tissue within fossils supposedly scores of millions of years old, which are somehow, emphatically, not recently deceased “living” fossils.
This is not science. This is a fool’s paradise.
In my opinion, biological sciences would advance much more quickly with the admission that, yes, God probably does exist; now get over it; and return to scientific rigor, following the data wherever it might lead.
H’mm:
Isn’t it obvious that there is a reason why these parts are in-common PRIVATE parts?
And, why are the reproductive [as in covenant of marriage . . . ] organs viewed as “entertainment” — does that not tell us something very serious about the breakdown of our culture, of family values and structures and stability, etc?
GEM of TKI
Fossfur:
Please.
Go: top-page, resources tab.
Pull down and read — don’t just skim and dismiss impatiently, actually read.
Pay particular attention to the definition of ID and the answers to the sort of weak argument talking point assertions you have been pushing with a fairly snide tone for some little while now.
Also, take time to read the NWE article on ID and at least the IOSE survey here, looking at at least the first two vids [I strongly suggest as well the onward bit on sci methods here], and use these to deprogram the NCSE-Wikipedia-NSTA-NAS etc talking points and attitudes you have been indoctrinated with and have accepted uncritically.
You doubt this, then kindly take a moment to explain the relevance of inference to best explanation to warrant of scientific knowledge claims, and especially those for origins science where we cannot actually observe the remote past.
Then, come back to seriously comment.
Otherwise, you are simply parroting talking points and smears.
(For just one instance, the Creationist movement knows full well the difference between ID and their Bible based movement, and warn their followers about it. ID traces to those Bible-thumpers, Plato [Gk, C5 BC] and Cicero [Roman, C1 BC], and in our modern era picks up again with that rabid anti-science nut, Newton [C17 – 18 AD] in his General Scholium to Principia and Query 31 to Opticks, those notorious anti-science screeds. Not to mention, the role of that Bible thumping Creationist fanatic, Hoyle [C20, Astrophsyisicist and Nobel Equivalent prize holder], and his remark about the monkeying with the physics of the cosmos that sets up life.Worse, there are those horrid thermodynamicists with their silly notion of the infinite monkeys theorem as a foundation for the second law of thermodynamics. Not to mention that exchange between Shapiro and Orgel on origin of life.)
Just for starters, let me clip the opening section of the NWE on ID:
Now, tell us why you differ with the NWE, not just regurgitate talking points and ad hominem laced sneers, explain and warrant your claims with good anchorage in empirical observations and an explicitly explained logical structure of argument. State the limitations of the method of reasoning you use. (Make a particular focus on the term “best explained.”)
GEM of TKI
Yes, it really is. When you start speaking of a designer with respect to ID then it is obvious that you don’t know anything about the subject.
That said ID can be tested and falsified as it is based on our knowledge of cause and effect relationships.
Fossfur: “Humans yes, Gods no”
This is as ridiculous a statement as saying “for humans 1 + 1 = 2, but for God 1 + 1 can equal anything at all. Please explain why a creature designed by God to exist in this universe would not be constrained in the same manner as one designed by humans?
Your response suggests to me that you misconstured my post. I was merely pointing out that the metaphor in the article was not new. Dr. Tyson’s self described tirade points to how ridiculous his arguments are. I wonder how it would rate if judged as a stand-up comedy routine?
All the “Why did God do it this way?” arguments are (anti) theological arguments that avoid the issue of the obvious design in nature.
There are certainly some interesting philosophical questions that can be raised regarding the motives of the designer, but I don’t see that any of the answers would ultimately refute that the design in nature is real.
Design has to be refuted strictly on evidential grounds. And as things now stand, I don’t see that happening either.