Missed this from last summer but looking at it again raises a question: A review of Human Errors: A Panorama of Our Glitches, from Pointless Bones to Broken Genes. by Nathan Lents that indulges in outdated claims with impunity:
If it’s all that bad, why are there so darn many of us? Why are we supposed to be destroying the planet instead of dying out?
In his new book Human Errors: A Panorama of Our Glitches, from Pointless Bones to Broken Genes, Nathan Lents, a professor of biology at John Jay College, CUNY, has demonstrated that the human body can’t possibly be considered the product of an intelligent designer. Rather, its flaws tell the story of evolution. No intelligent designer would have put our retinas in backwards, left us with the stump of a tail, deprived us of the ability to make the vitamins and nutrients we need, or sent our recurrent laryngeal nerve on such a circuitous path. No intelligent designer would have filled our genomes with genes that don’t work and viral carcasses of past infections. These and our many other defects are explained only by the quirks of evolution.Harriet Hall, “Human Flaws Demonstrate Evolution, Not Intelligent Design” at Science-Based Medicine
One of the interesting things about this type of rhetoric is that it doesn’t need to be in sync with anything in particular and it can be
Given that it is incorrect and doesn’t make sense, we might be wise to ask, what interests it serves.
See also: Nathan Lents is still wrong about sinuses but is still writing about them
Does Nathan Lents, author of a “bad design” book really teach biology? A doctor looks at his claims about the human sinuses
and
Bad design of the human mouth enables us to speak
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>”No intelligent designer would have filled our genomes with…viral carcasses of past infections.”
Do we know for certain that the human body has no mechanism like CRISPR, that would likewise stash away bits of DNA from past infections?
Isn’t intelligent design tightly associated with meaning and purpose?
Do we fully understand the meaning and purpose of our current biological condition?
Were we designed to live forever in this current world?
Does our free will have anything to do with our current condition?
Does the relation between the “ought” and the “is” come to mind at this point?
Do we know everything 100% to make an infallible jugement about design?
Have these folks built a better human body, from zygote up? Where is this documented?
These kind of publications are best interpreted as religious tracts intended to preserve and bolster the faith of believers in materialism.
It’s akin to saying automobiles couldn’t be designed because they can’t fly or automobiles couldn’t be designed because tires get punctured.
Andrew
I suspect it appeals to those who insist on tying ID in with religion.
I heard Chris Hitchens give a talk, his last tour while dying of cancer, where he said in essence: “I’m so mad at God that I refuse to believe in Him.” And rhetorically that is exactly what Nathan Lents book says.
Remember the artificial heart? Whatever happened to it?
https://www.theengineer.co.uk/permanent-artificial-heart/
According to Wikipedia, “The first artificial heart to be successfully implanted in a human was the Jarvik-7 in 1982,” and now, finally, 37 years later we might have a design that can truly be used as a permanent replacement. Isn’t it little more than hubris to claim the natural human heart was poorly designed in the first place when it’s taken us this long to design an artificial one that might work as well.
I bet this new design is not going to do away with heart transplants.
JaD
I agree that this new design will not replace the need for heart transplants. But I wouldn’t bet against a viable design being developed within the next fifty years. Call me an optimist. 🙂
30 to 40 years ago the optimists were predicting that nuclear fusion reactors were only 30 to 40 years away. They’re still predicting they’re 30 to 40 years away.
JaD
Well, cardiac surgery ain’t nuclear physics. 🙂
As a real life (now retired) designer I have given a lot of thought how I would reverse engineer some of the designs we find in nature. To be honest with you the complexity is staggering, if not mind numbing. But if you think you can do better than original designer tell me how. I’m all ears. However, if all you have is a “well he somehow could have done it better” explanation, save your breath. Scientific and technological explanations answer the how questions. If you can’t answer that you don’t know anything– nobody does.
For one example, consider that complexity of walking and manual dexterity; something that is essential to human survival and flourishing. In 2015 The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) sponsored a robot challenge. Here is a video describing the event.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8P9geWwi9e0
The advantages of even a semi-autonomous android robot is that much of the damage of the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster could have been mitigated if we had a robot capable of walking into a highly radioactive environment and carrying out simple manual tasks such as turning valve. The video makes it clear there is still a lot of room for improvement. (At best we’re making little baby steps.)
How can anyone argue that there is nothing but poor design in nature when intelligent designers (human beings) cannot even begin to approach the capabilities we find out there in the biosphere?