A Dozen Questions For Creationists/I.D. Proponents
A Dozen Questions For Creationists/I.D. Proponents – ideas, inspiration and some verbiage from “Why Darwin Matters,” by Michael Shermer.
Foreword: This list of questions assumes that intelligent design and creationism, for all intents and purposes, are the same thing. True, there are variants and subsets within this larger whole. However, speaking generally, the available evidence indicates that intelligent design simply is creationism in a flimsy Halloween mask.
1. Why do males have nipples?
2. Why did the intelligent designer design the male uterus? (“the remnant of an undeveloped female reproductive organ that hangs off the prostate gland”)
3. Why do humans get goose bumps? (which are a physiological method by which to puff-up fur)
4. Why do some humans get wisdom teeth? (which don’t fit in our modern jaw structure and are meant for plant-eaters)
5. “Most modern humans have twelve sets of ribs, but 8 percent of us have a thirteenth set, just like chimpanzees and gorillas.” Why?
6. Why does the human genome contain junk DNA, repeated copies of useless DNA, orphan genes, gene fragments, tandem repeats and pseudogenes?
7. Why do the geological strata indicate an evolutionary history to life? For example, why does no geological stratum simultaneously contain a trilobite and a fossil horse?
8. A bat’s wing has exactly the same set of bones as a whale’s flipper and a human arm. Why? Additionally, why does a bat’s wing not have such similarity to an insect’s wing or a bird’s wing?
9. How is “intelligent design” accomplished? For example, how did the designer design vertebrates? This question is essential because a theory without a process is useless. For example, the theory of evolution would be of no value if scientists had no mechanism by which evolution could occur. Natural selection is a key mechanism of evolution. What are the processes and/or mechanisms associated with design?
10. How much microevolution is allowed? Can species only evolve to subspecies? Or, does the intelligent designer get involved at the level of genus, from which species then can evolve naturally?
11. If you reject Young Earth Creationism, this question is for you: At what stages, specifically, did the intelligent designer intervene? Additionally, did the intelligent designer modify the DNA of an entire population, or only of a single creature, from which an entirely new population was born?
12. Who designed the intelligent designer? (no theology allowed; remember, intelligent design is science!)
Foreword: This list of questions assumes that intelligent design and creationism, for all intents and purposes, are the same thing. True, there are variants and subsets within this larger whole. However, speaking generally, the available evidence indicates that intelligent design simply is creationism in a flimsy Halloween mask.
1. Why do males have nipples?
2. Why did the intelligent designer design the male uterus? (“the remnant of an undeveloped female reproductive organ that hangs off the prostate gland”)
3. Why do humans get goose bumps? (which are a physiological method by which to puff-up fur)
4. Why do some humans get wisdom teeth? (which don’t fit in our modern jaw structure and are meant for plant-eaters)
5. “Most modern humans have twelve sets of ribs, but 8 percent of us have a thirteenth set, just like chimpanzees and gorillas.” Why?
6. Why does the human genome contain junk DNA, repeated copies of useless DNA, orphan genes, gene fragments, tandem repeats and pseudogenes?
7. Why do the geological strata indicate an evolutionary history to life? For example, why does no geological stratum simultaneously contain a trilobite and a fossil horse?
8. A bat’s wing has exactly the same set of bones as a whale’s flipper and a human arm. Why? Additionally, why does a bat’s wing not have such similarity to an insect’s wing or a bird’s wing?
9. How is “intelligent design” accomplished? For example, how did the designer design vertebrates? This question is essential because a theory without a process is useless. For example, the theory of evolution would be of no value if scientists had no mechanism by which evolution could occur. Natural selection is a key mechanism of evolution. What are the processes and/or mechanisms associated with design?
10. How much microevolution is allowed? Can species only evolve to subspecies? Or, does the intelligent designer get involved at the level of genus, from which species then can evolve naturally?
11. If you reject Young Earth Creationism, this question is for you: At what stages, specifically, did the intelligent designer intervene? Additionally, did the intelligent designer modify the DNA of an entire population, or only of a single creature, from which an entirely new population was born?
12. Who designed the intelligent designer? (no theology allowed; remember, intelligent design is science!)
posted by The Jolly Nihilist at 7:48:00 PM
10 Comments:
I'm glad to see a couple of posts come out of you. It has been a long time between posts.
Well, here's my answer ... uhh, magic! I love magic. I could spend all day watching magic. Some people even pay to watch magic. Wouldn't it be great if God was a really, really, really good magician? I mean, more than just card tricks or spitting out an endless stream of ping pong balls from His mouth, or even the silver dollar behind the ear trick, but some really cool tricks, like hiding quarks inside hadrons!
All good questions. And I have one for you. Please don't read my question as an attack. It is not. I have not yet really formed anopinion on this topic and I would like your honest thoughtful naswer to this question:
If evolution were a natrual process ongoing since the dawn of time and causing entirely new speicies to arise from existing ones, why have no new speicies arisen in the last thousand years of recorded history? Why is there no current evidence of this ongoing "creation" of new speicies? Or is there such evidence? If so, what is the latest speciies to emerge and when?
Damn! Did I say I had A question for you? Soemtime I intend to learn to count!
An even more intelligent intelligent designer created the intelligent designer which created everything we see here. Duh :)
Hi anonymous,
a fair question, but apparently one that has been addressed. This is from the TalkOrigins website, a great resource for these types of questions.
Here is the link for the complete article with references. http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB910.html
Claim CB910:
No new species have been observed.
Source: Morris, Henry M., 1986. The vanishing case for evolution. Impact 156 (Jun.).
http://www.icr.org/index.php?module=articles&action=view&ID=260
Response:
1. New species have arisen in historical times. For example:
* A new species of mosquito, the molestus form isolated in London's Underground, has speciated from Culex pipiens (Byrne and Nichols 1999; Nuttall 1998).
* Helacyton gartleri is the HeLa cell culture, which evolved from a human cervical carcinoma in 1951. The culture grows indefinitely and has become widespread (Van Valen and Maiorana 1991).
A similar event appears to have happened with dogs relatively recently. Sticker's sarcoma, or canine transmissible venerial tumor, is caused by an organism genetically independent from its hosts but derived from a wolf or dog tumor (Zimmer 2006; Murgia et al. 2006).
* Several new species of plants have arisen via polyploidy (when the chromosome count multiplies by two or more) (de Wet 1971). One example is Primula kewensis (Newton and Pellew 1929).
2. Incipient speciation, where two subspecies interbreed rarely or with only little success, is common. Here are just a few examples:
* Rhagoletis pomonella, the apple maggot fly, is undergoing sympatric speciation. Its native host in North America is Hawthorn (Crataegus spp.), but in the mid-1800s, a new population formed on introduced domestic apples (Malus pumila). The two races are kept partially isolated by natural selection (Filchak et al. 2000).
* The mosquito Anopheles gambiae shows incipient speciation between its populations in northwestern and southeastern Africa (Fanello et al. 2003; Lehmann et al. 2003).
* Silverside fish show incipient speciation between marine and estuarine populations (Beheregaray and Sunnucks 2001).
3. Ring species show the process of speciation in action. In ring species, the species is distributed more or less in a line, such as around the base of a mountain range. Each population is able to breed with its neighboring population, but the populations at the two ends are not able to interbreed. (In a true ring species, those two end populations are adjacent to each other, completing the ring.) Examples of ring species are
* the salamander Ensatina, with seven different subspecies on the west coast of the United States. They form a ring around California's central valley. At the south end, adjacent subspecies klauberi and eschscholtzi do not interbreed (Brown n.d.; Wake 1997).
* greenish warblers (Phylloscopus trochiloides), around the Himalayas. Their behavioral and genetic characteristics change gradually, starting from central Siberia, extending around the Himalayas, and back again, so two forms of the songbird coexist but do not interbreed in that part of their range (Irwin et al. 2001; Whitehouse 2001; Irwin et al. 2005).
* the deer mouse (Peromyces maniculatus), with over fifty subspecies in North America.
* many species of birds, including Parus major and P. minor, Halcyon chloris, Zosterops, Lalage, Pernis, the Larus argentatus group, and Phylloscopus trochiloides (Mayr 1942, 182-183).
* the American bee Hoplitis (Alcidamea) producta (Mayr 1963, 510).
* the subterranean mole rat, Spalax ehrenbergi (Nevo 1999).
4. Evidence of speciation occurs in the form of organisms that exist only in environments that did not exist a few hundreds or thousands of years ago. For example:
* In several Canadian lakes, which originated in the last 10,000 years following the last ice age, stickleback fish have diversified into separate species for shallow and deep water (Schilthuizen 2001, 146-151).
* Cichlids in Lake Malawi and Lake Victoria have diversified into hundreds of species. Parts of Lake Malawi which originated in the nineteenth century have species indigenous to those parts (Schilthuizen 2001, 166-176).
* A Mimulus species adapted for soils high in copper exists only on the tailings of a copper mine that did not exist before 1859 (Macnair 1989).
There is further evidence that speciation can be caused by infection with a symbiont. A Wolbachia bacterium infects and causes postmating reproductive isolation between the wasps Nasonia vitripennis and N. giraulti (Bordenstein and Werren 1997).
5. Some young-earth creationists claim that speciation is essential to explain Noah's ark. The ark was not roomy enough to carry and care for all species, so speciation is invoked to explain how the much fewer "kinds" aboard the ark became the diversity we see today. Also, some species have special needs that could not have been met during the flood (e.g., fish requiring fresh water). Creationists assume that they evolved from other, more tolerant organisms since the Flood. (Woodmorappe 1996)
Creationism is a total fucking lie. Make no mistake: it is part of a political, fascist program designed to destroy secular democracy and impose theocracy. It aims to poison children with lies, sow contempt for science and scientists, bring guilt and shame on people just for aspiring to live like people, and make everyone small-minded and petty, just like the creationist preachers. It has NOTHING to do with science. And I don't just mean "little to do with science". I mean fucking nothing. I beg anyone reading this: don't get dragged like a gullible child, especially if you're an adult. We live in the 21st century. Don't let the creationists make fools of you. Follow your curiosity, ask questions, be skeptical, ask for evidence, ask what the evolutionists are saying instea of just taking the word of a creationist preacher who has an ulterior motive in fooling you and making you part of his flock. Don't be a chump.
Why can Creationists &/or Intelligent Design (ID) advocates solve Sudoku Number Puzzles so quickly?
THEY JUST PUT A “G” IN ALL THE EMPTY SQUARES.
It’s just a matter of faith! It’s the same method creationists and now ID specialists resort to in trying to prove their unsustainable “intelligent design theory”. Creationists can just stop searching for reality by just assuming all gaps in current understanding and/or knowledge of evolution must be filled with a (G=god) solution. As Prof Richard Dawkins explains in chapter four of The GOD Delusion; “If an apparent gap is found, it is assumed that God, by default must fill it.” Saves them having to think and question I suppose.
Much like the progress one makes by eliminating the possible numbers in each square as a Sudoku puzzle is solved, “gaps shrink as science advances and God is threatened with eventually having nothing to do and nowhere to hide.” This of course “worries thoughtful theologians” however the greater worry for scientists (and the rest of us) is that groups through politics or fear will walk away from the “essential part of the scientific enterprise [that is] to admit ignorance.”
Nothing is more dangerous than a, ‘I have all the answers’ arrogant preacher followed by a bunch of non-thinking ‘god-botherers’ driven by blind faith who absolve themselves from their societal responsibilities with the comfort of unquestioning feeble-minds!
Although some see Dawkins as a bit of a raver and less scientific in his arguments than he could (should) be, if you read Pascal Boyer's "Gods, Spirits and the Mental Instincts that Create Them", Dawkins’ 'emotional' approach to battling the “ID” lobby is also needed.
caliibre
anonymous said:
If you are an intelligent designer, than why would you have to be created ... You are intelligent.. If you think about it, it is really not that hard to figure out..God is intelligent...He did not have to create himself to create something else..duhh
The answers you were looking for?
I was not able to answer all of them.
Foreword: This list of questions assumes that intelligent design and creationism, for all intents and purposes, are the same thing. True, there are variants and subsets within this larger whole. However, speaking generally, the available evidence indicates that intelligent design simply is creationism in a flimsy Halloween mask.
1. Why do males have nipples?
Why did we (acording to you) evolve tonsils?
2. Why did the intelligent designer design the male uterus? (“the remnant of an undeveloped female reproductive organ that hangs off the prostate gland”)
I love my uturus :P
Same as the first question, this does not prove or disprove evolution or creation!
3. Why do humans get goose bumps? (which are a physiological method by which to puff-up fur)
4. Why do some humans get wisdom teeth? (which don’t fit in our modern jaw structure and are meant for plant-eaters)
because we aren't plant-eaters, were omniverous
5. “Most modern humans have twelve sets of ribs, but 8 percent of us have a thirteenth set, just like chimpanzees and gorillas.” Why?
6. Why does the human genome contain junk DNA, repeated copies of useless DNA, orphan genes, gene fragments, tandem repeats and pseudogenes?
7. Why do the geological strata indicate an evolutionary history to life? For example, why does no geological stratum simultaneously contain a trilobite and a fossil horse?
8. A bat’s wing has exactly the same set of bones as a whale’s flipper and a human arm. Why? Additionally, why does a bat’s wing not have such similarity to an insect’s wing or a bird’s wing?
Are you suggesting that bat's evolved from humans... or of the like? AND because a bat is not a bird or insect.
9. How is “intelligent design” accomplished? For example, how did the designer design vertebrates? This question is essential because a theory without a process is useless. For example, the theory of evolution would be of no value if scientists had no mechanism by which evolution could occur. Natural selection is a key mechanism of evolution. What are the processes and/or mechanisms associated with design?
READ GENESIS ONE
PS it's in the holy bible
10. How much microevolution is allowed? Can species only evolve to subspecies? Or, does the intelligent designer get involved at the level of genus, from which species then can evolve naturally?
If with microevolution you mean adaptation... then it mostly depends on how fast the creature takes to reproduce. Elephants would adapt much slower than a fruitfly.
Malnutrition cause people to shrink over several generation, likewise, good nutrition will cause people to grow taller over several generations (eg the Dutch).
This should not be labeled as evolution because it is misguiding the weak mind!
11. If you reject Young Earth Creationism, this question is for you: At what stages, specifically, did the intelligent designer intervene? Additionally, did the intelligent designer modify the DNA of an entire population, or only of a single creature, from which an entirely new population was born?
I believe in the young earth and i love it!
12. Who designed the intelligent designer? (no theology allowed; remember, intelligent design is science!)
A: Why would God need a designer? He is infinite.
Now my questions for you?
How did life (the first cell) originate in the presence of oxygen? Oxygen is extremely reactive and would destroy the cell before it could finish it's building.
If you reject the presence of oxygen in the atmosphere "6 billion" years ago, how did the first cell survive? and why didn't the suns radiation kill it?
How did the human evolve from one cell? from cell to what to what to monkey to us?
How does evolution explain the co-operative working bodily systems/organs? As in which systems did we have before other systems, and how did we survive without those systems?
Where did those systems come from?
I do not ask you to be saved, but only to acknowledge God.
Well I even believed that the long development process of evolution takes 10's of thousands of years. But I stand corrected. Apparently there's a group of fish in Africa evolving into a new species as we speak.
http://ecoworldly.com/2008/10/07/scientists-discover-fish-in-act-of-evolution-in-africas-greatest-lake/
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