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External testicles another instance of bad design?

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From Nathan H. Lents, author of Human Errors: A Panorama of Our Glitches, from Pointless Bones to Broken Genes, at Undark:

Of course there’s an explanation (sperm like to develop at lower temperatures). But really: What intelligent designer could have come up with this?

It sounds as though Lents has never heard of the concept of “optimal”: best possible solution in given environment, as opposed to best theoretical solution as an abstraction.

The fact is that there is no good reason that sperm development has to work best at lower temperatures. It’s just a fluke, an example of poor design. If nature had an intelligent designer, he or she would have a lot to answer for. But since natural selection and other evolutionary forces are the true designers of our bodies, there is no one to question about this. We must interrogate ourselves: Why are we like this?

Oddly, in making such a dramatic claim (“there is no good reason that sperm development has to work best at lower temperatures”), Lents does not quote any expert on the subject of temperature and sperm development.

In addition to the obvious danger of designing such important organs without any protection or even padding, external testicles introduce additional problems for mammals. One in four men will develop a hernia in their groin, 10 times the rate of women, precisely because of a weakness in the abdominal wall left from the migration of the testicles out of the abdomen. Surgical repair is relatively straightforward, but surgery is a relatively new invention in the history of our species. While only a small percentage of these hernias become life-threatening, given how common they are, hernias have killed untold millions over the ages. More.

No wonder there is a mass panic about the worldwide shortage of births over the last century, resulting in mass depopulation, especially in the Third World…

Note: According to an online medical site re hernias, “In men, the incidence rises from 11 per 10,000 person-years, aged 16-24 years, to 200 per 10,000 person-years, aged 75 years or above.”  (Jenkins JT, O’Dwyer PJ; Inguinal hernias. BMJ. 2008 Feb 2336(7638):269-72.) In short, hernias tend to be a problem for older men, as do heart attacks, strokes, and prostate cancer.

Everything starts to break down as we age… If we are going to talk about design at all, we can’t compare mortality in this world to immortality somewhere that can sustain it.

See also: At Skeptic: Five Questions about Human Errors for Proponents of Intelligent Design

and

Jonathan Wells on Lents’s claim that the human eye is wired backwards

Comments
Marfin @45: Indeed. The whole bad design line of argumentation is an exercise in irrelevance as an argument against design. In addition to being naive about what is actually involved in building complex functional systems. In addition to being illogical in that it relies on a non-sequitur. In addition to having a terrible track record as we learn more about biology. It is an embarrassing argument and demonstrates a lack of understanding of the issues. Its real value is as a litmus test: when we see someone putting the bad design argument forward we can take it to the bank that they have an agenda, or don't know what they are talking about, or haven't thought through the logic of the argument, or all of the above. Eric Anderson
AK - without a given criteria every single body part of every single creature can be seen as sub optimal in some way or another, if you disagree with me on this name any body part of any creature and watch anyone here give you various reason that they can find it less than perfect. If you don`t know what the design criteria was you cannot claim it does not PERFECTLY meet that criteria. Marfin
AK @ 22:
Yes.
Well, you stepped over that tripwire.
I don’t know. ID is not prepared to propose any such constraints to the designer. Or rule them out. In short, ID is not prepared to propose anything that can be tested.
Were we not speaking of globally optimal design and global functional constraints? Reducing it to a subset, respecting less than divine designers, etc. can only excuse globally suboptimal designs on account of being optimal within the neighborhood of that lesser designer's repertoire. The suboptimality argument only gets weaker by taking non-divine designers into account. If it fails against the unlimited divine case, it fails everywhere. LocalMinimum
Allan:
Was that often a problem during your dating years?
You're the one who has to sit to pee. ET
To provide further evidence for information coming into the developing embryo ‘from the outside’, it is also important to note that quantum correlations somehow arise from outside spacetime, in the sense that no story in space and time can describe them,,,
Looking beyond space and time to cope with quantum theory – 29 October 2012 Excerpt: “Our result gives weight to the idea that quantum correlations somehow arise from outside spacetime, in the sense that no story in space and time can describe them,” http://www.quantumlah.org/highlight/121029_hidden_influences.php
And these quantum correlations which somehow arise from outside spacetime, are now found in molecular biology on a massive scale. In every DNA and Protein molecule,,,
Darwinian Materialism vs Quantum Biology - video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHdD2Am1g5Y "What happens is this classical information (of DNA) is embedded, sandwiched, into the quantum information (of DNA). And most likely this classical information is never accessed because it is inside all the quantum information. You can only access the quantum information or the electron clouds and the protons. So mathematically you can describe that as a quantum/classical state." Elisabeth Rieper – Classical and Quantum Information in DNA – video (Longitudinal Quantum Information resides along the entire length of DNA discussed at the 19:30 minute mark; at 24:00 minute mark Dr Rieper remarks that practically the whole DNA molecule can be viewed as quantum information with classical information embedded within it) https://youtu.be/2nqHOnVTxJE?t=1176 Quantum coherent-like state observed in a biological protein for the first time - October 13, 2015 Excerpt: If you take certain atoms and make them almost as cold as they possibly can be, the atoms will fuse into a collective low-energy quantum state called a Bose-Einstein condensate. In 1968 physicist Herbert Fröhlich predicted that a similar process at a much higher temperature could concentrate all of the vibrational energy in a biological protein into its lowest-frequency vibrational mode. Now scientists in Sweden and Germany have the first experimental evidence of such so-called Fröhlich condensation (in proteins).,,, The real-world support for Fröhlich's theory took so long to obtain because of the technical challenges of the experiment, Katona said. https://phys.org/news/2015-10-quantum-coherent-like-state-biological-protein.html
Of final note, besides quantum information providing direct empirical falsification of neo-Darwinian claims that say information is emergent from a material basis, the implication of finding 'non-local', beyond space and time, and ‘conserved’, quantum information in molecular biology on such a massive scale, is fairly, and pleasantly, obvious. That pleasant implication, or course, being the fact that we now have direct physical evidence strongly indicating that we do indeed have an eternal soul that is capable of living beyond the death of our material bodies. As Stuart Hameroff notes in this following video, “the quantum information,, isn’t destroyed. It can’t be destroyed.,,, it's possible that this quantum information can exist outside the body. Perhaps indefinitely as a soul.”
“Let’s say the heart stops beating. The blood stops flowing. The microtubules lose their quantum state. But the quantum information, which is in the microtubules, isn’t destroyed. It can’t be destroyed. It just distributes and dissipates to the universe at large. If a patient is resuscitated, revived, this quantum information can go back into the microtubules and the patient says, “I had a near death experience. I saw a white light. I saw a tunnel. I saw my dead relatives.,,” Now if they’re not revived and the patient dies, then it's possible that this quantum information can exist outside the body. Perhaps indefinitely as a soul.” - Stuart Hameroff - Quantum Entangled Consciousness - Life After Death - video (5:00 minute mark) https://youtu.be/jjpEc98o_Oo?t=300
Verses:
James 2:26 As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead. Matthew 16:26 For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul? Psalm 139:13-14 For You formed my inward parts; You covered me in my mother’s womb. I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Marvelous are Your works, And that my soul knows very well.
bornagain77
Moreover, this 'positional information' which is not reducible to DNA sequences and which specifies the three-dimensional arrangement of the molecular components of the cell, is found to be enormous. Much greater than the sequential information, as great as that sequential information is, that is encoded on DNA. For example, the following article notes that there are 10^12 positionally different cell types
How many different cells are there in complex organisms? Excerpt: The nematode worm Caenorhabditis elegans, the cellular ontogeny of which has been precisely mapped, has 1,179 and 1,090 distinct somatic cells (including those that undergo programmed cell death) in the male and female, respectively, each with a defined history and fate. Therefore, if we take the developmental trajectories and cell position into account, C. elegans has 10^3 different cell identities, even if many of these cells are functionally similar. By this reasoning, although the number of different cell types in mammals is often considered to lie in the order of hundreds, it is actually in the order of 10^12 if their positional identity and specific ontogeny are considered. Humans have an estimated 10^14 cells, mostly positioned in precise ways and with precise organization, shape and function, in skeletal architecture, musculature and organ type, many of which (such as the nose) show inherited idiosyncrasies. Even if the actual number of cells with distinct identities is discounted by a factor of 100 (on the basis that 99% of the cells are simply clonal expansions of a particular cell type in a particular location or under particular conditions (for example, fat, muscle or immune cells)), there are still 10^12 positionally different cell types. http://ai.stanford.edu/~serafim/CS374_2006/papers/Mattick_NRG2004.pdf
Moreover, the information content that is found to be in a one cell bacterium, when working from the thermodynamic perspective, is found to be 10 to the 12 bits,,,
Biophysics – Information theory. Relation between information and entropy: - Setlow-Pollard, Ed. Addison Wesley Excerpt: Linschitz gave the figure 9.3 x 10^12 cal/deg or 9.3 x 10^12 x 4.2 joules/deg for the entropy of a bacterial cell. Using the relation H = S/(k In 2), we find that the information content is 4 x 10^12 bits. Morowitz' deduction from the work of Bayne-Jones and Rhees gives the lower value of 5.6 x 10^11 bits, which is still in the neighborhood of 10^12 bits. Thus two quite different approaches give rather concordant figures. http://www.astroscu.unam.mx/~angel/tsb/molecular.htm
,,, Which is equivalent of 100 million pages of Encyclopedia Britannica. 'In comparison,,, the largest libraries in the world,, have about 10 million volumes or 10^12 bits.”
“a one-celled bacterium, e. coli, is estimated to contain the equivalent of 100 million pages of Encyclopedia Britannica. Expressed in information in science jargon, this would be the same as 10^12 bits of information. In comparison, the total writings from classical Greek Civilization is only 10^9 bits, and the largest libraries in the world – The British Museum, Oxford Bodleian Library, New York Public Library, Harvard Widenier Library, and the Moscow Lenin Library – have about 10 million volumes or 10^12 bits.” – R. C. Wysong 'The information content of a simple cell has been estimated as around 10^12 bits, comparable to about a hundred million pages of the Encyclopedia Britannica." Carl Sagan, "Life" in Encyclopedia Britannica: Macropaedia (1974 ed.), pp. 893-894
In the following video, it is noted that the information to build a human infant, atom by atom, would take up the equivalent of enough thumb drives to fill the Titanic, multiplied by 2,000.
In a TED Talk, (the Question You May Not Ask,,, Where did the information come from?) - November 29, 2017 Excerpt: Sabatini is charming.,,, he deploys some memorable images. He points out that the information to build a human infant, atom by atom, would take up the equivalent of enough thumb drives to fill the Titanic, multiplied by 2,000. Later he wheels out the entire genome, in printed form, of a human being,,,,: [F]or the first time in history, this is the genome of a specific human, printed page-by-page, letter-by-letter: 262,000 pages of information, 450 kilograms.,,, https://evolutionnews.org/2017/11/in-a-ted-talk-heres-the-question-you-may-not-ask/
The following video states that "There are 10^28 atoms in the human body.,, The amount of data contained in the whole human,, is 3.02 x 10^32 gigabytes of information. Using a high bandwidth transfer, that data would take about 4.5 x 10^18 years to teleport 1 time. That is 350,000 times the age of the universe."
Will Teleportation Ever Be Possible? - video - 2013 https://youtu.be/yfePpMTbFYY?t=76 Quote from video: "There are 10^28 atoms in the human body.,, The amount of data contained in the whole human,, is 3.02 x 10^32 gigabytes of information. Using a high bandwidth transfer that data would take about 4.5 x 10^18 years to teleport 1 time. That is 350,000 times the age of the universe." If we forget about recognizing atoms and measuring their velocities and just scale that to a resolution of one-atomic length in each direction that's about 10^32 bits (a one followed by thirty two zeros). This is so much information that even with the best optical fibers conceivable it would take over one hundred million centuries to transmit all that information!,,, (A fun talk on teleportation - Professor Samuel Braunstein - http://www-users.cs.york.ac.uk/~schmuel/tport.html
Moreover, we have fairly strong evidence indicating that this enormous amount of positional information, that is telling all the atoms of the developing embryo exactly where to be, is not contained within the material particles of the developing embryo itself, but that this enormous amount of positional information, that is telling all these atoms of the developing embryo exactly where to be, is somehow coming into the developing embryo from outside the material realm. For instance, at about the 41:00 minute mark of the following video, Dr. Wells, using a branch of mathematics called category theory, demonstrates that, during embryological development, information must somehow be added to the developing embryo, ‘from the outside’, by some ‘non-material’ method.
Design Beyond DNA: A Conversation with Dr. Jonathan Wells – video (41:00 minute mark) – January 2017 https://youtu.be/ASAaANVBoiE?t=2484
bornagain77
as to this quote from Sebestyen's article in post 35:
"A successful theory will have to explain the full diversity of mammalian testicle positions, not just the scrotum’s existence."
Darwin's theory can't even explain the existence of proteins much less the scrotum’s existence. Nor can Darwin's theory even explain the position of proteins much less the position of testicles. Although much ink has been spilled on the pages of UD elucidating the impossibility of Darwinian processes to account for the origin and subsequent transforming of proteins,,,
Douglas Axe - The Research (Part 2) 11-5-2016 by Paul Giem https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRj8vUMp03o&index=11&list=PLHDSWJBW3DNUx3ngrgTIQyl-B2TaQBoq8 1. Axe, D. D. 2004. Estimating the Prevalence of Protein Sequences Adopting Functional Enzyme Folds. J Mol Biol 341: 1295-1315. Available at http://www.toriah.org/articles/axe-2004.pdf Douglas Axe - The Research (Part 3) 11-12-2016 by Paul Giem https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1kmw9u3ljo&index=12&list=PLHDSWJBW3DNUx3ngrgTIQyl-B2TaQBoq8 1. Axe, D. D. 2010. The limits of complex adaptation: An analysis based on a simple model of structured bacterial populations. BIO-Complexity 2010(4): 1-10. Available at http://www.bio-complexity.org/ojs/index.php/main/article/viewFile/BIO-C.2010.4/BIO-C.2010.4 2. Gauger, A. K. and D. D. Axe. 2011. The evolutionary accessibility of new enzyme functions: a case study from the biotin pathway. BIO-Complexity 2011(1): 1-17. Available at http://bio-complexity.org/ojs/index.php/main/article/viewFile/BIO-C.2011.1/BIO-C.2011.1 3. Lynch, M. and A. Abegg. 2010. The rate of establishment of complex adaptations. Mol Biol Evol 27: 1404-1414. Available at http://mbe.oxfordjournals.org/content/27/6/1404.long
Although much ink has been spilled on the pages of UD elucidating the impossibility of Darwinian processes to account for the origin and subsequent transforming of proteins, much less ink has been spilled on the impossibility of Darwinian processes to account for the position of proteins in an organism.
Darwinism vs Biological Form - video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyNzNPgjM4w Excerpt: To further drive to point home that the basic form of any particular organism is not reducible to the material particulars of an organism, in the following article it is noted that, Richard Lewontin once described how you can excise the developing limb bud from an amphibian embryo, shake the cells loose from each other, allow them to reaggregate into a random lump, and then replace the lump in the embryo. A normal leg develops. Somehow the form of the limb as a whole is the ruling factor, redefining the parts according to the larger pattern.
What Do Organisms Mean? Stephen L. Talbott - Winter 2011 Excerpt: Harvard biologist Richard Lewontin once described how you can excise the developing limb bud from an amphibian embryo, shake the cells loose from each other, allow them to reaggregate into a random lump, and then replace the lump in the embryo. A normal leg develops. Somehow the form of the limb as a whole is the ruling factor, redefining the parts according to the larger pattern. Lewontin went on to remark: "Unlike a machine whose totality is created by the juxtaposition of bits and pieces with different functions and properties, the bits and pieces of a developing organism seem to come into existence as a consequence of their spatial position at critical moments in the embryo’s development. Such an object is less like a machine than it is like a language whose elements... take unique meaning from their context.[3]",,, http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/what-do-organisms-mean Intelligent Design and the Advancement of Science - Brian Miller - December 11, 2017 Excerpt: Similarly, mathematician René Thom argued that the 3D patterns of tissues in an organism’s development from egg to birth and their continuous transformation cannot be understood in terms of isolating the individual proteins generated by DNA and other molecules produced in cells. The problem is that the individual “parts” composing tissues and organs only take on the right form and function in the environment of those tissues and organs. More recent work by Denis Noble further has elucidated how every level of the biological hierarchy affects every other level, from DNA to tissues to the entire organism. Based partly on these insights, Thom concluded in his book Structural Stability and Morphogenesis that the process of development should be thought of as being controlled by an “algebraic structure outside space-time itself” (p. 119). Likewise, Robert Rosen argued that life can only be understood as a mathematical abstraction consisting of functional relationships, irreducible to mechanistic processes. He observed that life is fundamentally different from simple physics and chemistry. It embodies the Aristotelian category of final causation, which is closely related to the idea of purpose. The conclusions of these scholars challenge materialistic philosophy at its core. https://evolutionnews.org/2017/12/intelligent-design-and-the-advancement-of-science/
bornagain77
ET,
So what? A female can tell a male from female and a boy from a man just by looking at the testicles.
Was that often a problem during your dating years? Allan Keith
The basal condition for mammals is to have internal testes. The testes of the non-boreotherian mammals, such as the monotremes, armadillos, sloths, and elephants, remain within the abdomen. There are also some marsupials with external testes and Boreoeutherian mammals with internal testes, such as the rhinoceros. Cetaceans such as whales and dolphins also have internal testes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Testicle
Evolution. It explains everything and its opposite. Mung
Allan doesn't know why it happened, or how it happened, but he has faith that it did happen. Amen. Mung
BA77 Interesting. There is a temperature issue too. Both and is of course feasible. AK Low sperm count is only one of many, many issues. KF kairosfocus
per Sebestyen at 25
The Scrotum Is Nuts Why are testicles kept in a vulnerable dangling sac? It’s not why you think. By Liam Drew - JULY 8 2013 Excerpt: In the mid-1990s, Michael Chance, a professor of animal behavior at the U.K.'s University of Birmingham, came across a newspaper story about the Oxford-Cambridge University boat race that piqued his interest in testicles. He learned that after the race, the rowers’ urine contained fluid from their prostates. The oarsmen's exertions, the cyclic abdominal straining, had deposited prostatic fluid in their urethras because there are no sphincters in the reproductive tract. Without such valves, squeezing of any of the sacs and tubes that make up this system is liable to empty it, or at least rearrange its contents. In 1996, in what has become known as the galloping hypothesis, Chance argued that externalization of the testes was necessary when mammals started to move in ways that sharply increased abdominal pressure. A survey of how mammals move reveals a good deal of variety. And when Chance listed animals with internal testicles, he didn't find many gallopers. The elephants, aardvarks, and their cousins on the undescended branch of the mammalian tree don't bound or jump around.,,, It's rather humbling to realize that this basic aspect of our bodies remains a mystery. The fact that such a ridiculous appendage evolved twice surely means we should be able to get a handle on it. A successful theory will have to explain the full diversity of mammalian testicle positions, not just the scrotum’s existence. I like Chance and Frey's galloping hypothesis, but could a scrotum really be the only way to deal with undulating abdominal pressure? http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2013/07/are_testicles_external_for_cooling_galloping_display_or_something_else.html
bornagain77
Low sperm count can’t be identified by looking at the testicles.
So what? A female can tell a male from female and a boy from a man just by looking at the testicles. ET
KairosFocus,
Display is probably right, as defects will be readily apparent. KF
Low sperm count can’t be identified by looking at the testicles. Short of a serious damage to the scrotum, a visual inspection won’t identify a problem with sperm production. Although, it does raise an image of our human female ancestors picking their mates by fondling their junk. Allan Keith
Display is probably right, as defects will be readily apparent. KF kairosfocus
God does not have testicles, so she wasn't really aware of the consequences of that design. Mung
Internal ovaries must be good design then. Mung
Allan:
In short, ID is not prepared to propose anything that can be tested.
What an ignorant thing to say seeing that ID, unlike evolutionism, has the methodology to test whether or not intelligent design exists. Allan's position doesn't even have a methodology. ET
Allan:
I said that evolution predicts the existance of suboptimal solutions.
Nonsense. Evolution by means of blind and mindless processes doesn't make such a prediction. And seeing that Allan cannot reference any scientific theory of evolution that states that prediction it is clearly BS. ET
Eric,
Evolution predicts no particular outcome.
I didn’t say that evolution predicts that all outcomes will be suboptimal. I said that evolution predicts the existance of suboptimal solutions. This is examined in hundreds of peer reviewed papers. Allan Keith
The argument of suboptimal design is just one of the many predictions of evolution.
No it isn't. Evolution predicts no particular outcome. There might be suboptimal design, there might be exquisite design. There might be large organisms, there might be small organisms. There might be creatures with wings and hearts and eyes, there might be creatures without. There is absolutely no principle of evolutionary theory that predicts any particular outcome. All evolution claims is: Stuff Happens. It is no more substantive than that. Eric Anderson
Here's an interesting read on the subject: http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2013/07/are_testicles_external_for_cooling_galloping_display_or_something_else.html Sebestyen Sebestyen
Eric,
I’m so tired of these pathetic bad design arguments.
Bad design is not an argument. It is a prediction. Actually, it is sub-optimal “solutions” that are the prediction. Human eyes, abdominal wall, external testicles etc. are all suboptimal solutions, but they still function as well as they have to for survival and population growth. ID can certainly address this by hypothesizing about the constraints and limitations of the designer, but nobody is willing to do so. I can understand why people who believe that their Christian god is the designer would not do so. It would undermine the mythology that god is all powerful and all knowing. What is baffling, however, is why all of the ID proponents who believe that the designer is not god have not done so. Is it possible that such people simply don’t exist under the ID tent? Allan Keith
Eric Anderson @ 17, 18 What you said. doubter
LM,
You admit there would be additional constraints, but could you accept that those additional constraints could remove all available solutions to a given naturally selective functional demand?
Yes.
So is it obvious that a designer is so constrained, or not? I don’t know. ID is not prepared to propose any such constraints to the designer. Or rule them out. In short, ID is not prepared to propose anything that can be tested.
Allan Keith
Seems like everyone is missing the obvious reason for external testicles. Display. This is equally valid if you assume mutation or design. There's a clear and simple advantage in directly showing the amount of reproductive material available. Females, who are notorious window-shoppers, will see where to acquire the most abundant supply in one trip. polistra
AK @ 9:
The argument of suboptimal design is just one of the many predictions of evolution.
True; but it feels rather shallow and pointless when evolutionists are as comfortable with perfectly optimized systems as they are with bad ones. They aren't offering an actual signature and/or falsification criteria to a theoretical process, but an inference against some set of the alternatives. LocalMinimum
AK @ 9:
The mechanisms evolution use result in constraints placed on possible “solutions”. Constraints that are not placed on a designer, if he exist.
You admit there would be additional constraints, but could you accept that those additional constraints could remove all available solutions to a given naturally selective functional demand? By what principle can you constrain this set of unknown constraints?
This predicts that some “solutions” will appear as kludges rather than good design.
The appearance of a kludge is meaningless. In algorithm/method/pipeline design, you'll often have a clean and neat idea that simply works better...in your imagination. Assuming it's not actually worse or literally impossible, once in hand you'll have kludged it up yourself with all sorts of necessary details your past, inexperienced self didn't recognize. This is assuming you actually build and learn the things and aren't just staffing the peanut gallery.
In most mammals, the testicles are external because lower temperatures are required for sperm production. But marine mammals don’t have external testicles, so god obviously is not constrained. You could argue that the surrounding water offers them a cooling mechanism that land mammals do not have. Fair enough.
So is it obvious that a designer is so constrained, or not? Without knowledge of how to build even the crudest approximation of such a system, how many factors could we be ignorant of? LocalMinimum
AK: Are you seriously going down this path of latching onto Lents' bad design line of argumentation? You know you don't have to defend every bad argument the Darwinists put out just as a circle-the-wagon exercise, right? Let's see you actually put some intellectual thought behind the issues before throwing out silly claims that have no substance behind them. I can respect you if you say, "Lents doesn't have any idea what he is talking about, and I recognize that the bad design arguments against design depend on a non sequitur, so I won't go there. But I still believe evolution is true for the following reasons . . ." But don't fall prey to the knee-jerk need to support whatever nonsense some other Darwinist throws out there. You're better than that. Eric Anderson
I'm so tired of these pathetic bad design arguments. They have an incredibly bad track record from Darwin's day to the present, with items regularly getting knocked off the list as we actually learn what is involved in biological systems -- as opposed to the naive "gee it looks funny" level of analysis the Darwinists use. We've seen this movie over and over, and the bad design proponents are on the wrong side of the trajectory of the evidence, whether we're talking about Dawkins' clueless comments about the mammalian eye or otherwise. The reality is that Lents hasn't a clue -- and hasn't offered any detail -- about how a particular system could be improved from a biological engineering standpoint. And he has even less clue about what would be required from a genetic and programmatic standpoint to implement his (conveniently undefined) solution. All we get is snide "What designer would do that?" comments, coupled with a failure of logic non sequitur "Therefore, evolution must be true!" What a joke. This is such intellectual and academic incompetence. I sincerely feel sorry for his students. The bad design arguments do nothing to substantively inform us about biology. What they do is serve as convenient talking points for those who are already committed to a philosophical position. They also serve as a basic IQ test as we watch who falls for them. Eric Anderson
Where Darwinian evolution goes off the rails, theologically speaking, as far as science itself is concerned, is that it uses bad liberal theology to try to establish the legitimacy of its atheistic claims, all the while forgetting that it itself, in order to stay scientific, is absolutely dependent on basic Theistic presuppositions about the rational intelligibility of the universe and the ability of our minds to comprehend it. In establishing the fact that Darwinists use bad liberal theology to try to establish their science, it is interesting to point out that Charles Darwin’s degree was in liberal theology and was not in mathematics. nor any other field that would be considered essential for founding of a brand new branch of science.
Charles Darwin - The Rest of the Story Excerpt: Charles Darwin received a general degree in Theology from Cambridge, graduating in 1831.,,, he almost became an Anglican Minister and his degree was in Theology. http://creationanswers.net/biographies/CDarwin.htm
In fact, the liberal ‘unscientific’ Anglican clergy of Darwin’s day were very eager to jump on the Darwinian bandwagon from the beginning, whilst the conservative ‘scientific’ clergy reacted against Darwin's theory:
Reactions to Origin of Species “Religious views were mixed, with the Church of England scientific establishment reacting against the book, while liberal Anglicans strongly supported Darwin’s natural selection as an instrument of God’s design.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reactions_to_On_the_Origin_of_Species
Pastor Joe Boot and Dr. Cornelius Hunter have both done work exposing the faulty liberal theology that underlays Darwinian thought..
The Descent of Darwin (The Faulty Theological Foundation of Darwinism) - Pastor Joe Boot - video - 16:30 minute mark https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKzUSWU7c2s&feature=player_detailpage#t=996 Darwin's God: Evolution and the Problem of Evil - 2001 Excerpt: (Cornelius Hunter) shows how Darwin's theological concerns-particularly his inability to reconcile a loving, all-powerful God with the cruelty, waste, and quandaries of nature-led him to develop the theory of evolution. Hunter provides the crucial key to engaging the intelligent design debate in the context of modern theology. He addresses the influences of Milton, rationalism, the enlightenment, and Deism, quoting extensively from Darwin's journals, letters, and scientific writings. https://www.amazon.com/Darwins-God-Evolution-Problem-Evil/dp/1587430118
Moreover, Charles Darwin's book itself, Origin of Species, instead of being filled with experimentation and mathematics, is replete with bad liberal theology.
Charles Darwin, Theologian: Major New Article on Darwin's Use of Theology in the Origin of Species - May 2011 Excerpt: The Origin supplies abundant evidence of theology in action; as Dilley observes: I have argued that, in the first edition of the Origin, Darwin drew upon at least the following positiva theological claims in his case for descent with modification (and against special creation): 1. Human beings are not justified in believing that God creates in ways analogous to the intellectual powers of the human mind. 2. A God who is free to create as He wishes would create new biological limbs de novo rather than from a common pattern. 3. A respectable deity would create biological structures in accord with a human conception of the 'simplest mode' to accomplish the functions of these structures. 4. God would only create the minimum structure required for a given part's function. 5. God does not provide false empirical information about the origins of organisms. 6. God impressed the laws of nature on matter. 7. God directly created the first 'primordial' life. 8. God did not perform miracles within organic history subsequent to the creation of the first life. 9. A 'distant' God is not morally culpable for natural pain and suffering. 10. The God of special creation, who allegedly performed miracles in organic history, is not plausible given the presence of natural pain and suffering. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2011/05/charles_darwin_theologian_majo046391.html
To this day, Darwinists are still very much dependent of bad liberal theology, instead of any compelling scientific evidence, in order to try to make their case for Darwinian evolution.
Methodological Naturalism: A Rule That No One Needs or Obeys - Paul Nelson - September 22, 2014 Excerpt: It is a little-remarked but nonetheless deeply significant irony that evolutionary biology is the most theologically entangled science going. Open a book like Jerry Coyne's Why Evolution is True (2009) or John Avise's Inside the Human Genome (2010), and the theology leaps off the page. A wise creator, say Coyne, Avise, and many other evolutionary biologists, would not have made this or that structure; therefore, the structure evolved by undirected processes. Coyne and Avise, like many other evolutionary theorists going back to Darwin himself, make numerous "God-wouldn't-have-done-it-that-way" arguments, thus predicating their arguments for the creative power of natural selection and random mutation on implicit theological assumptions about the character of God and what such an agent (if He existed) would or would not be likely to do.,,, ,,,with respect to one of the most famous texts in 20th-century biology, Theodosius Dobzhansky's essay "Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution" (1973). Although its title is widely cited as an aphorism, the text of Dobzhansky's essay is rarely read. It is, in fact, a theological treatise. As Dilley (2013, p. 774) observes: "Strikingly, all seven of Dobzhansky's arguments hinge upon claims about God's nature, actions, purposes, or duties. In fact, without God-talk, the geneticist's arguments for evolution are logically invalid. In short, theology is essential to Dobzhansky's arguments.",, http://www.evolutionnews.org/2014/09/methodological_1089971.html
That Darwinists would still today be so dependent on such a faulty theological foundation based in bad liberal theology, in order to try to give force to their arguments, is, contrary to what Darwinists may believe, actually another compelling argument that drives my point home that basic Theistic presuppositions are necessary for us to even be able to coherently practice science in the first place. Darwinists, with their vital dependence on bad liberal theology in order to try to make their case for Darwinian evolution are, as Cornelius Van Til put it, like the child who must climb up onto his father’s lap into order to slap his face.
“In other words, the non-Christian needs the truth of the Christian religion in order to attack it. As a child needs to sit on the lap of its father in order to slap the father’s face, so the unbeliever, as a creature, needs God the Creator and providential controller of the universe in order to oppose this God. Without this God, the place on which he stands does not exist. He cannot stand in a vacuum.” - Cornelius Van Til, Essays on Christian Education (The Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company: Phillipsburg, NJ, 1979).
bornagain77
Since Darwinists have no experimental evidence supporting their grandiose claims, Darwinists are crucially dependent on unrestrained imagination and bad liberal theology in order to make it seem that their theory is remotely plausible.
Darwinian Evolution: A Pseudoscience based on Unrestrained Imagination and Bad Liberal Theology - video https://youtu.be/KeDi6gUMQJQ
Although Darwinists, ever since Darwin himself, are notorious for using imaginary 'just so stories' instead of providing any actual scientific evidence,,,
Sociobiology: The Art of Story Telling – Stephen Jay Gould – 1978 – New Scientist Excerpt: Rudyard Kipling asked how the leopard got its spots, the rhino its wrinkled skin. He called his answers “Just So stories”. When evolutionists study individual adaptations, when they try to explain form and behaviour by reconstructing history and assessing current utility, they also tell just so stories – and the agent is natural selection. Virtuosity in invention replaces testability as the criterion for acceptance. https://books.google.com/books?id=tRj7EyRFVqYC&pg=PA530 “Evolutionary biology, in contrast with physics and chemistry, is a historical science — the evolutionist attempts to explain events and processes that have already taken place. Laws and experiments are inappropriate techniques for the explication of such events and processes. Instead one constructs a historical narrative, consisting of a tentative reconstruction of the particular scenario that led to the events one is trying to explain.” Ernst Mayr – Darwin’s Influence on Modern Thought – Nov. 2009 – Originally published July 2000 “... another common misuse of evolutionary ideas: namely, the idea that some trait must have evolved merely because we can imagine a scenario under which possession of that trait would have been advantageous to fitness... Such forays into evolutionary explanation amount ultimately to storytelling... it is not enough to construct a story about how the trait might have evolved in response to a given selection pressure; rather, one must provide some sort of evidence that it really did so evolve. This is a very tall order.…” — Austin L. Hughes, The Folly of Scientism - The New Atlantis, Fall 2012 From Adam Sedgwick - 24 November 1859 Cambridge My dear Darwin, Excerpt: I have read your book with more pain than pleasure. Parts of it I admired greatly; parts I laughed at till my sides were almost sore; other parts I read with absolute sorrow; because I think them utterly false & grievously mischievous. You have deserted—after a start in that tram-road of all solid physical truth—the the true method of induction—& started up a machinery as wild I think as Bishop Wilkin’s locomotive that was to sail with us to the Moon. Many of your wide conclusions are based upon assumptions which can neither be proved nor disproved. Why then express them in the language & arrangements of philosophical induction?. As to your grand principle—natural selection—what is it but a secondary consequence of supposed, or known, primary facts. Development is a better word because more close to the cause of the fact.,,, You write of “natural selection” as if it were done consciously by the selecting agent.,,, We all admit development as a fact of history; but how came it about?,,, There is a moral or metaphysical part of nature as well as a physical A man who denies this is deep in the mire of folly Tis the crown & glory of organic science that it does thro’ final cause , link material to moral; & yet does not allow us to mingle them in our first conception of laws, & our classification of such laws whether we consider one side of nature or the other— You have ignored this link; &, if I do not mistake your meaning, you have done your best in one or two pregnant cases to break it. Were it possible (which thank God it is not) to break it, humanity in my mind, would suffer a damage that might brutalize it—& sink the human race into a lower grade of degradation than any into which it has fallen since its written records tell us of its history.,,, in speculating upon organic descent, you over state the evidence of geology; & that you under state it while you are talking of the broken links of your natural pedigree:,,, Lastly then, I greatly dislike the concluding chapter,,, from the tone of triumphant confidence in which you appeal to the rising generation,, (i.e. Darwinism of the gaps),, (yet),, (if we are to trust the accumulated experience of human sense & the inferences of its logic) ever likely to be found any where but in the fertile womb of man’s imagination. https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/DCP-LETT-2548.xml
Although Darwinists, ever since Darwin himself, are notorious for using imaginary 'just so stories' instead of providing any actual scientific evidence, imagination and fantasy are a far worse problem for Darwinists than just their imaginary just so stories standing in for actual scientific evidence.
Darwin’s Theory vs Falsification – 39:45 minute mark https://youtu.be/8rzw0JkuKuQ?t=2387 Excerpt: Basically, because of reductive materialism (and/or methodological naturalism), the atheistic materialist is forced to claim that he is merely a ‘neuronal illusion’ (Coyne, Dennett, etc..), who has the illusion of free will (Harris), who has unreliable beliefs about reality (Plantinga), who has illusory perceptions of reality (Hoffman), who, since he has no real time empirical evidence substantiating his grandiose claims, must make up illusory “just so stories” with the illusory, and impotent, ‘designer substitute’ of natural selection (Behe, Gould, Sternberg), so as to ‘explain away’ the appearance (i.e. illusion) of design (Crick, Dawkins), and who must make up illusory meanings and purposes for his life since the reality of the nihilism inherent in his atheistic worldview is too much for him to bear (Weikart), and who must also hold morality to be subjective and illusory since he has rejected God. Bottom line, nothing is real in the atheist’s worldview, least of all, morality, meaning and purposes for life.,,, Paper with references for each claim page; Page 34: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1pAYmZpUWFEi3hu45FbQZEvGKsZ9GULzh8KM0CpqdePk/edit
Thus, although the Darwinist firmly believes he is on the terra firma of science (in his appeal, even demand, for methodological naturalism), the fact of the matter is that, when examining the details of his materialistic/naturalistic worldview, it is found that Darwinists/Atheists are adrift in an ocean of fantasy and imagination with no discernible anchor for reality to grab on to. It would be hard to fathom a worldview more antagonistic to modern science than Atheistic materialism and/or methodological naturalism have turned out to be.
2 Corinthians 10:5 Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ;
As mentioned previously, the one thing, besides unrestrained imagination, that Darwinists try to use to give force to their arguments, is 'bad liberal theology'. First off, in making this "bad theology' point clear, it is important to note that Christian presuppositions about the rational intelligibility of the universe, and the ability of our mind to comprehend that intelligibility of the universe, underlay the founding of modern science, and those presupposition continue to be very much an integral part of modern science,,
Science and Theism: Concord, not Conflict* – Robert C. Koons IV. The Dependency of Science Upon Theism (Page 21) Excerpt: Far from undermining the credibility of theism, the remarkable success of science in modern times is a remarkable confirmation of the truth of theism. It was from the perspective of Judeo-Christian theism—and from the perspective alone—that it was predictable that science would have succeeded as it has. Without the faith in the rational intelligibility of the world and the divine vocation of human beings to master it, modern science would never have been possible, and, even today, the continued rationality of the enterprise of science depends on convictions that can be reasonably grounded only in theistic metaphysics. http://www.robkoons.net/media/69b0dd04a9d2fc6dffff80b3ffffd524.pdf
ALL of science, especially including Darwinian evolution itself, is dependent on basic Theistic presuppositions about the rational intelligibility of the universe and our ability to comprehend that rational intelligibility. Science is simply impossible without those basic Theistic presuppositions,,,
The Great Debate: Does God Exist? – Justin Holcomb – audio of the 1985 Greg Bahnsen debate available at the bottom of the site Excerpt: When we go to look at the different world views that atheists and theists have, I suggest we can prove the existence of God from the impossibility of the contrary. The transcendental proof for God’s existence is that without Him it is impossible to prove anything. The atheist worldview is irrational and cannot consistently provide the preconditions of intelligible experience, science, logic, or morality. The atheist worldview cannot allow for laws of logic, the uniformity of nature, the ability for the mind to understand the world, and moral absolutes. In that sense the atheist worldview cannot account for our debate tonight.,,, http://justinholcomb.com/2012/01/17/the-great-debate-does-god-exist/
bornagain77
AK- So in your opinion -- please tell me how many biological creatures you have designed or created to this point, so we can evaluate this great opinion of yours. Surely our bodies being made of a material which punctures so easily is another case of bad design or is it unless you know what the design criteria was how can you tell if its a bad design. Marfin
Allan:
But this still doesn’t answer the question of why god would put an internal organ on the outside our bodies
Question-begging ET
Marfin,
If evolution is true then us humans with our external testicles came from creatures with internal ones, please explain why this change came about.
I have no idea. Possibly a consequence of changing from a cold blooded animal to a warm blooded one. But this still doesn’t answer the question of why god would put an internal organ on the outside our bodies when he did not do so for other animals with much higher body temperatures. Allan Keith
AK- If evolution is true then us humans with our external testicles came from creatures with internal ones, please explain why this change came about. Marfin
Allan Keith:
The argument of suboptimal design is just one of the many predictions of evolution.
Too bad that you cannot demonstrate such a thing by linking to the scientific theory of evolution. Heck you don't even have a mechanism capable of producing eukaryotes so you lose before you can get started.
They have a higher body temperature than most mammals, yet do not have external testicles.
And your position cannot account for birds, nor sexual reproduction. ET
Harry,
Darwinists critiquing the design of life are like six-year-olds evaluating the design of computers. It is asinine to criticize the design of that which one has no idea whatsoever how to build.
The argument of suboptimal design is just one of the many predictions of evolution. The mechanisms evolution use result in constraints placed on possible “solutions”. Constraints that are not placed on a designer, if he exist. This predicts that some “solutions” will appear as kludges rather than good design. In most mammals, the testicles are external because lower temperatures are required for sperm production. But marine mammals don’t have external testicles, so god obviously is not constrained. You could argue that the surrounding water offers them a cooling mechanism that land mammals do not have. Fair enough. Then, what about birds. They have a higher body temperature than most mammals, yet do not have external testicles. Allan Keith
Darwinists critiquing the design of life are like six-year-olds evaluating the design of computers. It is asinine to criticize the design of that which one has no idea whatsoever how to build. The functional complexity of the nanotechnology of life is light years beyond anything modern science knows how to build from scratch. It is also asinine to insist something came about accidentally when one doesn't know even one way to bring it about intentionally. One needs to know that before one can even begin to explain how what was required to bring it about might have happened accidentally. Darwinism is irrational. harry
So if either AK and Seversky were God, they would not have created man the way God created man, therefore evolution must be true? May I express my profound relief that neither AK and Seversky are anywhere close to being God? :)
Isaiah 55:8-9 “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.
And you guys do also realize that your argument is a theological argument for evolution not a scientific argument for evolution? To show how vacuous Darwinian scientific explanations are for sexual reproduction, Darwinists have no clue where the first single cell came from. Much less do they have a clue how a single cell became a multicellular creature of tens of trillions cells capable of sexual reproduction.
“We have no idea how the molecules that compose living systems could have been devised such that they would work in concert to fulfill biology’s functions. We have no idea how the basic set of molecules, carbohydrates, nucleic acids, lipids, and proteins, were made and how they could have coupled into the proper sequences, and then transformed into the ordered assemblies until there was the construction of a complex biological system, and eventually to that first cell. Nobody has any idea how this was done when using our commonly understood mechanisms of chemical science. Those that say they understand are generally wholly uninformed regarding chemical synthesis. Those that say “Oh, this is well worked out,” they know nothing, nothing about chemical synthesis – Nothing! Further cluelessness – From a synthetic chemical perspective, neither I nor any of my colleagues can fathom a prebiotic molecular route to construction of a complex system. We cannot figure out the prebiotic routes to the basic building blocks of life: carbohydrates, nucleic acids, lipids, and proteins. Chemists are collectively bewildered. Hence I say that no chemist understands prebiotic synthesis of the requisite building blocks let alone their assembly into a complex system. That’s how clueless we are. I’ve asked all of my colleagues – National Academy members, Nobel Prize winners -I sit with them in offices; nobody understands this. So if your professors say it’s all worked out, your teachers say it’s all worked out, they don’t know what they’re talking about. It is not worked out. You cannot just refer this to somebody else; they don’t know what they’re talking about.” James Tour – one of the top ten leading chemists in the world The Origin of Life: An Inside Story - March 2016 Lecture with James Tour Out of One Cell, Many Tissues — But How? - May 15, 2018, Excerpt: From this solitary cell emerges the galaxy of others needed to build an organism, with each new cell developing in the right place at the right time to carry out a precise function in coordination with its neighbors. This feat is one of the most remarkable in the natural world, and despite decades of study, a complete understanding of the process has eluded biologists.,,, In several instances, they found that the DNA sequence of a gene — and the structure of the protein it encodes — could be nearly identical between species but have very different expression patterns. “This really shocked us, because it goes against all the intuition we had about development and biology,” Klein said. “It was a really uncomfortable observation. It directly challenges our idea of what it means to be a certain ‘cell type.’”,,, “We found that this expression plasticity is independent of variation in protein sequence itself, surprisingly decoupling a gene’s structure from its expression pattern in the embryo across evolution.”,,, ,,, the authors of the Xenopus paper were rather surprised that a gene’s expression pattern could be decoupled from its structure. What does that do to the old neo-Darwinist mutation/selection theory?,,, https://evolutionnews.org/2018/05/out-of-one-cell-many-tissues-but-how/ That Conference On The Evolution of Multicellularity Revealed The Usual Problems - Cornelius Hunter - December 25, 2013 Excerpt: "The emergence of multicellular animals or metazoans from their single-celled ancestors is one of the most important evolutionary transitions in the history of life. However, little is known about how this transition took place.",,, "That is nowhere more true than with the miracle of multicellularity which, if evolution is true, must have independently evolved more than, err, twenty-five times." http://darwins-god.blogspot.com/2013/12/that-conference-on-evolution-of.html "The earliest events leading from the first division of the egg cell to the blastula stage in amphibians, reptiles and mammals are illustrated in figure 5.4. Even to the untrained zoologist it is obvious that neither the blastula itself, nor the sequence of events that lead to its formation, is identical in any of the vertebrate classes shown. The differences become even more striking in the next major phase of in embryo formation - gastrulation. This involves a complex sequence of cell movements whereby the cells of the blastula rearrange themselves, eventually resulting in the transformation of the blastula into the intricate folded form of the early embryo, or gastrula, which consists of three basic germ cell layers: the ectoderm, which gives rise to the skin and the nervous system; the mesoderm, which gives rise to muscle and skeletal tissues; and the endoderm, which gives rise to the lining of the alimentary tract as well as to the liver and pancreas.,,, In some ways the egg cell, blastula, and gastrula stages in the different vertebrate classes are so dissimilar that, where it not for the close resemblance in the basic body plan of all adult vertebrates, it seems unlikely that they would have been classed as belonging to the same phylum. There is no question that, because of the great dissimilarity of the early stages of embryogenesis in the different vertebrate classes, organs and structures considered homologous in adult vertebrates cannot be traced back to homologous cells or regions in the earliest stages of embryogenesis. In other words, homologous structures are arrived at by different routes." Michael Denton - Evolution: A Theory in Crisis - pg 145-146
In fact, the entire Darwinian 'natural selection' scenario argues against such a transition from single cells to multicellular creatures. If evolution by natural selection were actually the truth about how all life came to be on Earth then the only life that should be around should be extremely small organisms with the highest replication rate, and with the most 'mutational firepower', since only they, since they greatly outclass multi-cellular organism in terms of ‘reproductive success’ and 'mutational firepower', would be fittest to survive in the dog eat dog world where blind pitiless evolution ruled and only the fittest are allowed to survive. The logic of this is nicely summed up here in this Richard Dawkins' video:
Richard Dawkins interview with a 'Darwinian' physician goes off track - video Excerpt: "I am amazed, Richard, that what we call metazoans, multi-celled organisms, have actually been able to evolve, and the reason [for amazement] is that bacteria and viruses replicate so quickly -- a few hours sometimes, they can reproduce themselves -- that they can evolve very, very quickly. And we're stuck with twenty years at least between generations. How is it that we resist infection when they can evolve so quickly to find ways around our defenses?" http://www.evolutionnews.org/2012/07/video_to_dawkin062031.html
In other words, since successful reproduction is all that really matters on a neo-Darwinian view of things, how can anything but successful, and highly efficient reproduction, be realistically 'selected' for?
The Logic of Natural Selection - graph http://recticulatedgiraffe.weebly.com/uploads/4/0/6/2/40627097/1189735.jpg?308
Any other function besides successful reproduction, such as much slower sexual reproduction, sight, hearing, thinking, etc.., would be highly superfluous to the primary criteria of successful reproduction, and should, on a Darwinian view, be discarded, and/or 'eaten', by bacteria, as so much excess baggage since it obviously slows down successful reproduction which is practically the central, primary, tenet of Darwinian theory. In fact, Darwin himself stated that "Natural selection cannot possibly produce any modification in any one species exclusively for the good of another species"...
Natural selection cannot possibly produce any modification in any one species exclusively for the good of another species; though throughout nature one species incessantly takes advantage of, and profits by, the structure of another. But natural selection can and does often produce structures for the direct injury of other species, as we see in the fang of the adder, and in the ovipositor of the ichneumon, by which its eggs are deposited in the living bodies of other insects. If it could be proved that any part of the structure of any one species had been formed for the exclusive good of another species, it would annihilate my theory, for such could not have been produced through natural selection. - Charles Darwin - Origin of Species http://darwin-online.org.uk/Variorum/1866/1866-241-c-1859.html
Yet, contrary to this central 'survival of the fittest' assumption of Darwinian evolution, instead of eating us, time after time we find micro-organisms helping each other, and us, in ways that have nothing to with their own ‘survival of the fittest'’ concerns. The following researchers said they were ‘banging our heads against the wall' by the contradictory findings to Darwinian 'survival of the fittest' thinking that they had found:
Doubting Darwin: Algae Findings Surprise Scientists - April 28, 2014 Excerpt: One of Charles Darwin's hypotheses posits that closely related species will compete for food and other resources more strongly with one another than with distant relatives, because they occupy similar ecological niches. Most biologists long have accepted this to be true. Thus, three researchers were more than a little shaken to find that their experiments on fresh water green algae failed to support Darwin's theory — at least in one case. "It was completely unexpected," says Bradley Cardinale, associate professor in the University of Michigan's school of natural resources & environment. "When we saw the results, we said 'this can't be."' We sat there banging our heads against the wall. Darwin's hypothesis has been with us for so long, how can it not be right?" The researchers ,,,— were so uncomfortable with their results that they spent the next several months trying to disprove their own work. But the research held up.,,, The scientists did not set out to disprove Darwin, but, in fact, to learn more about the genetic and ecological uniqueness of fresh water green algae so they could provide conservationists with useful data for decision-making. "We went into it assuming Darwin to be right, and expecting to come up with some real numbers for conservationists," Cardinale says. "When we started coming up with numbers that showed he wasn't right, we were completely baffled.",,, Darwin "was obsessed with competition," Cardinale says. "He assumed the whole world was composed of species competing with each other, but we found that one-third of the species of algae we studied actually like each other. They don't grow as well unless you put them with another species. It may be that nature has a heck of a lot more mutualisms than we ever expected. ",,, Maybe Darwin's presumption that the world may be dominated by competition is wrong." http://www.livescience.com/45205-data-dont-back-up-darwin-in-algae-study-nsf-bts.html We are living in a bacterial world, and it's impacting us more than previously thought - February 15, 2013 Excerpt: We often associate bacteria with disease-causing "germs" or pathogens, and bacteria are responsible for many diseases, such as tuberculosis, bubonic plague, and MRSA infections. But bacteria do many good things, too, and the recent research underlines the fact that animal life would not be the same without them.,,, I am,, convinced that the number of beneficial microbes, even very necessary microbes, is much, much greater than the number of pathogens." - per physorg
Moreover, if anything ever went against Darwin's claim that "Natural selection cannot possibly produce any modification in any one species exclusively for the good of another species", it is the notion that a single cell somehow became tens of trillions of cells that cooperate "exclusively for the good of other cells" in a single organism. To say that one cell transforming into the tens of trillions of cells that make up our body is anything less than a miracle is either sheer arrogance or profound ignorance (perhaps both).
Mathematician Alexander Tsiaras on Human Development: "It's a Mystery, It's Magic, It's Divinity" - March 2012 Excerpt: 'The magic of the mechanisms inside each genetic structure saying exactly where that nerve cell should go, the complexity of these, the mathematical models on how these things are indeed done, are beyond human comprehension. Even though I am a mathematician, I look at this with the marvel of how do these instruction sets not make these mistakes as they build what is us. It's a mystery, it's magic, it's divinity.' http://www.evolutionnews.org/2012/03/mathematician_a057741.html One Body - animation - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDMLq6eqEM4 Darwinism vs Biological Form - video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyNzNPgjM4w
Verse:
Psalms 139:14 I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well.
bornagain77
Allan Keith at 5, how do we know it could easily have been prevented? I haven't heard expert explanations yet. I am rather more used to listening to women bitch about female-specific problems, but frustratingly, obvious solutions that would actually work seem to be in short supply. News
BA77,
So Darwinists have no clue how sex could have possibly evolved in the first place, but they are sure God would not have done it the way He actually did do it? The sheer arrogance of Darwinists displayed in the face of their own ignorance is astonishing:
All I know is that god doesn’t have testicles. If he did, he would know what every male ever born already knows. Getting hit in the nuts is debilitating and could easily have been prevented. Allan Keith
bornagain77 @ 3
So Darwinists have no clue how sex could have possibly evolved in the first place, but they are sure God would not have done it the way He actually did do it?
You mean the way God created Adam first, although it isn't clear if he had a navel or was equipped with a penis and external testicles right from the start, then belatedly realized he hadn't given him a companion for companionship - and other things - so He sneakily created Eve out of a spare rib when Adam wasn't looking? Sounds like a somewhat haphazard way for an omniscient deity to go about things. Why not create Adam and Eve at the same time? Why was the woman just an afterthought? Of course, I understand that from your Paleyist perspective any explanation, however absurd, is better than a "Darwinist" one. Seversky
So Darwinists have no clue how sex could have possibly evolved in the first place, but they are sure God would not have done it the way He actually did do it? The sheer arrogance of Darwinists displayed in the face of their own ignorance is astonishing:
Importance of Centrobin in Sperm Development — Another Stumbling Block for Darwinism - Cornelius Hunter - May 14, 2018 Excerpt: The new study shows just how important centrobin is in the development of the sperm tail. Without centrobin, tail, or flagellum, development is “severely compromised.” And once the sperm is formed, centrobin is important for its structural integrity. As the paper concludes: Our results underpin the multifunctional nature of [centrobin] that plays different roles in different cell types in Drosophila, and they identify [centrobin] as an essential component for C-tubule assembly and flagellum development in Drosophila spermatogenesis. Clearly centrobin is an important protein. Without it such fundamental functions as cell division and organism reproduction are severely impaired. Yet how did centrobin evolve? Not only is centrobin a massive protein, but there are no obvious candidate intermediate structures. It is not as though we have that “long series of gradations in complexity” that Darwin called for: Although the belief that an organ so perfect as the eye could have been formed by natural selection, is enough to stagger any one; yet in the case of any organ, if we know of a long series of gradations in complexity, each good for its possessor, then, under changing conditions of life, there is no logical impossibility in the acquirement of any conceivable degree of perfection through natural selection. Unfortunately, in the case of centrobin, we do not know of such a series. In fact, centrobin would seem to be a perfectly good example of precisely how Darwin said his theory could be falsified: If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down. But I can find out no such case. Darwin could “find out no such case,” but he didn’t know about centrobin. Darwin required “a long series of gradations,” formed by “numerous, successive, slight modifications.” With centrobin we are nowhere close to fulfilling these requirements. In other words, today’s science falsifies evolution. This, according to Darwin’s own words. https://evolutionnews.org/2018/05/study-highlights-importance-of-centrobin-in-sperm-development-another-stumbling-block-for-darwinism/ New book challenges sexual selection theory in evolution - May 20, 2018 Excerpt: Darwin's Secret Sex Problem What Darwin Ignored,,, Darwin never seriously confronted the crucial, insurmountable gap in his grand theory between asexual replication and sexual reproduction. Nor could Darwins famed natural selection have provided simultaneous on-time delivery of the first male/female pair of millions of sexually unique species required for evolutions bedrock premise of common descent, a fundamental flaw fatal to the romanticized microbe-to-man Evolution Story. https://uncommondesc.wpengine.com/evolution/new-book-challenges-sexual-selection-theory-in-evolution/ How did the sexes originate? Why is it that the vast majority of living things require a "male and female" to reproduce? If evolution were true - doesn't it make much more sense that EVERY living organism was self-replicating and required no useless energy expenditure? When did the first male get here? When did the first female get here? How? Why? Wouldn't they have had to appear fully functional and at the same time in order for the next generation of organisms to arrive? Of course, they would. So, how is it that the first male and female for almost 2 million living organisms arrived together and fully functional so that reproduction could take place? "Sex is the QUEEN of evolutionary biology problems." Dr. Graham Bell - In his book, 'The Masterpiece of Nature' Knowledge gap on the origin of sex - May 26, 2017 Excerpt: There are significant gaps in our knowledge on the evolution of sex, according to a research review on sex chromosomes. Even after more than a century of study, researchers do not know enough about the evolution of sex chromosomes to understand how males and females emerge. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/05/170526084533.htm Another whack at the “sex paradox” - July 1, 2014 Excerpt: The article is most informative about tests done on the various theses but in the end (they state). And so the paradox of sex lives on. “We still really don’t know the answer to this very most basic question,” says Mark Welch. “We don’t know why sex exists.” https://uncommondesc.wpengine.com/evolution/another-whack-at-the-sex-paradox/ Ian Juby's sex video - (Can sexual reproduction plausibly evolve?) - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ab1VWQEnnwM Surprise: Men and Women Greatly Differ Genetically | Jerry Bergman - May 8, 2017 Excerpt: An article in New Scientist titled “Sex Differences in Human Gene Expression” concluded that “Researchers uncover thousands of genes whose activity varies between men and women.”[1] Specifically, their study found 6,500 genes were differentially expressed. They concluded that men and women are distinctly dimorphic, consequently one result of this fact is that they have very dissimilar disease susceptibilities.[2] The sexual dimorphic traits result mainly from differential expression of the genes that exist in both sexes. These results strongly go against the current politically correct view that the only differences between males and females are a few minor plumbing variations and a couple of small hormones. http://crev.info/2017/05/men-women-differ-genetically/
bornagain77
Speaking as a male who rode a bike, and played sports, external testicles? Bad idea. As an aging male, lack of a penis bone? Bad idea. Why is it “good design” to put internal organs on the outside of your body? Why is it good design to rely on pneumatic pressure when a solid structure would always work? Allan Keith
OK, but how (and why) did whales get the optional INTERNAL testicles? I'm guessing part of the justification for the alternate design at the Change Control Board (CCB) meeting was that, well, YES, boy whales really could freeze their,um, "delicate parts" off transiting arctic regions. Which raises the general question: how many species of marine mammals have internal "parts"? From film clips of seals and sea lions and walruses and such sun bathing on beaches, there doesn't appear to be much spoiling the streamlining at the south end of their bellies. vmahuna

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