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From: bill@utastro.UUCP (William H. Jefferys)
Newsgroups: net.origins
Subject: Re: Re: Integrated Circuits. Part II.
Message-ID: <996@utastro.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 12-Jan-85 12:08:20 EST
Article-I.D.: utastro.996
Posted: Sat Jan 12 12:08:20 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 14-Jan-85 04:11:51 EST
References: <658@uwmacc.UUCP>
Distribution: net
Organization: UTexas Astronomy Dept., Austin, Texas
Lines: 102

Well, golly.  Almost 250 lines and Paul hasn't come up with any new
arguments.  All he has done is to repeat, AS LOUDLY AS HE CAN,
his contention that an evident design flaw, the "blind spot", isn't
a design flaw at all because under normal circumstances our
brains are fooled into not noticing it.  That's like saying that you should
be willing to pay just as much for mahogany veneer as for solid mahogany, 
because under normal circumstances you don't notice the difference.

Well, let me tell you how anyone who hasn't found it yet can notice
it easily.  Close one eye, say the right.  Look fixedly at any convenient
point a few feet away.  Hold your finger out at arms length and
move your finger about a point between 6 inches and a foot to the
left of the point you are gazing at.  When you find the "blind spot",
POOF!  Your finger will (apparently) disappear.  Wasn't that fun?
(If you close your left eye, interchange "right" and "left" in the
above instructions).

If Paul really believes that this is just as good, functionally, as having
no blind spot, I would like him to explain this to a very good friend of
mine who lost the sight of one eye in an accident a number of years ago.
I think he will feel rather silly arguing the proposition to him, at least.

How about some other examples?  Among the following there must be
at least one that Paul would admit shows the Creator's lack
of foresight:  What about the spinal column?  Our habit of using it in a
vertical position causes no end of pain (as in "Oh, my aching back!") and
worse, since evolution has given us a basic design that works much better 
in a horizontal position, the way it originated.  Ask any orthopedist if  you 
don't believe me.  Or maybe God just wanted to be sure that orthopedists 
wouldn't starve.

Or how about hernias?  A common affliction which can also be blamed in
part on our vertical posture.  Or (sorry) hemorrhoids?  This afflicts
many women for the first time during childbearing, and many people in
sedentary occupations.  To bad God didn't have the foresight to make the
veins in that area just a bit stronger.  Or perhaps He also has an
inordinate fondness for proctologists (to misquote Haldane :-).

Paul may think I am being facetious.  I am not, but let's consider some
more serious design flaws.  I am thinking of hereditary diseases that 
condemn innocent children, *from the  moment of conception*, with 
great pain and suffering and the  prospect of an early death.

Were these genes part of our original gene pool?  If so, this was indeed a
cruel trick for God to have played on these innocents.

Maybe these are examples of "thermodynamic devolution"!  No, wait, there
are problems with that.  Almighty God could have designed the genetic 
apparatus so that it was much more resistant to mutations than it is.  For 
Him not to have designed the genetic apparatus with more robustness lays 
Him open to charges of incompetence and/or cruelty.  After all, 
Creationists claim that production of new genetic variations is not part 
of God's plan.  If this were really the case, then it doesn't make sense to 
design the genetic machinery with a  redundancy that (coincidentally??) 
just happens to be consistent with the rate at which evolution is actually 
observed to occur.

There is another problem.  The gene for sickle cell anemia confers a
survival advantage on its heterozygous carriers.  If it wasn't in the
original gene pool, then this would be an example of the evolutionary 
synthesis of a new, useful gene, which Creationists are always claiming to be
highly improbable.  On the other hand, if the gene had always been there, 
an example of God's beneficence to Mankind, then  one may ask why He 
made this particular design choice.  Remember, the individuals who are 
homozygous for sickle cell live a short life full of not inconsiderable pain 
and suffering.  The more malaria there is, the more such unlucky 
individuals there are.  A much better design choice would have been not to 
have created the malaria parasite in the first  place.

Which, of course, brings up the question of why there is evil in the
world.  If God designed the good things in the world, He also designed the 
bad ones,  such as the numerous deadly diseases that have caused untold
suffering through the ages.  This is a question that Creationists seldom
face up to.  What is the *scientific* explanation for the existence of
disease organisms, according to "Scientific Creationism"?  No fair
using religious arguments.  To do so defeats your purpose of showing that
Creationism is scientific.  No appealing to "the wisdom of the Creator,
which we are unable to fathom".  Remember, the evolutionary explanation
of the existence of disease organisms is simple and straightforward.
Let's see if the Creationists can do as well.

My original point in bringing up this subject was to give just one reason
why the Argument from Design has very little following today among
knowledgeable people.  I was simply trying to show that the excellence of 
design that we would expect in God's most subtle creation (us) is lacking,
and that the kludgy facts are explained just as well, in fact better, 
by evolution.  I think that I have succeeded rather well in this, as the
stridency of Paul's responses proves.  Come on, Paul, all you are doing is 
banging your fist on the table!  Not very persuasive.

As for the alleged inconsistency of my position, Paul, if you can't 
see why perfection of *design* has nothing to do with universality of
*function*, then I can't help you.  I've done the best I can.

-- 
"Men never do evil so cheerfully and so completely as when they do so from
	religious conviction."  -- Blaise Pascal

	Bill Jefferys  8-%
	Astronomy Dept, University of Texas, Austin TX 78712   (USnail)
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