Unintelligent design (recurrent laryngeal nerve)

This seems to be wishful thinking squared.You look at the cases that we actually cite, and to which you have no valid refutation, and you have faith that one day they'll turn out to be refutable --- on the basis that you have faith in some creationist when he tells you that in cases which he doesn't cite, and for which he provides no refutation, a refutation has been found.

Sure. In four words, natura non facit saltum. But you have got this exactly the wrong way round.Because the RLN is pointlessly twined around the heart, heart problems can cause problems to the larynx. The health of the recurrent laryngeal nerve is compromised precisely because of the detour.Now let's hear your explanation for the actual facts.

That is a very peculiar citation, because in fact the evolution side in the Scopes trial were not permitted to call a single expert witness to testify that evolution was true, this being deemed by the judge to be irrelevant to the purely legal issue of whether Scopes had broken the law by teaching evolution. No zoologist testified in the Scopes trial. Not one. But he's plainly wrong, because Darwin didn't define vestigial features as functionless. In fact, he didn't use the term "vestigial" at all, he said "rudimentary" instead. Here's the full text of The Origin Of Species. Find the word "vestigial" in it.No?And he made it clear from his examples and discussion of what he called rudimentary features that he thought that they could, and that many of them did, have functions. Ever since which time creationists have been desperately trying to move the goalposts.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

Well, the idea that we'd know how God would design things is essential for the purposes of using the "Argument From Design" as evidence for creationism. Otherwise you could point at any universe, no matter how dumb it seemed, and maintain that God must have arranged it that way.Which is in fact what you're doing.Now if you're prepared to admit that the Argument From Design is merely an article of faith, rather than something that can be decided by examination of the evidence, then I for my part will admit that in that case no facts can counter it, any more than any fact-based argument can counter any faith-based argument --- and shall simply rest on the purely scientific Argument From Everything Looking Exactly Like It Would If It Was A Product Of Evolution.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

They should be very rare.Producing and maintaining an organ has a cost. If that organ has no benefit, then natural selection should have eliminated it. What we should need to explain is the presence of organs that are totally useless.But the question of "use" is a subtle one. Consider, for example, cave crabs. These have lost their eyes, in accordance with the principle explained in the previous paragraph. They do, however, retain their eye-stalks. Now, on the one hand, I might ask: "what use is an eye-stalk without an eye?" To which one of those creationists who claims that anything which has any use whatsoever doesn't count as "vestigial" might reply that if they lost their eye-stalks, they'd just have a couple of holes in their heads, through which infection and parasites would enter.Which is actually the evolutionary answer --- if they'd just been created eyeless, they could have been created with no eyes, nor eye-stalks, nor holes. But it's hard for mutational processes to simultaneously remove the stalks and seal up the holes, which is the solution that would be favored by natural selection ... if this variation ever arose. Got a quote?No?Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

In which case, you are completely wrong. We can see why it does. We have explained why it does.But you and the rest of the creationists can't put up a creationist argument why it does.If I drop a brick and it falls, then I have an explanation --- it's because of gravity. If someone wants to deny that, but they have no alternative explanation, that doesn't mean that I am resting my case solely on the basis that they have no alternative explanation. But it does mean that they are resting their case solely on the faith that there might be an alternative explanation that they haven't thought of yet.

No other explanation has been provided, any more than you have provided any other explanation besides gravity why the brick falls when I drop it. So in each case, I have on the one hand an explanation that works perfectly and explains all the facts, and on the other hand not a shred of a scrap of a scintilla of an alternative.Your use of the word "faith" is peculiar. No-one has provided me with a good explanation of why it looks like I have two legs except that I have, in fact, got two legs. So, in a rather strange sense of the word "faith", I rest my belief that I have two legs "solely on the faith" that there is no better explanation. And yet that is not what we usually mean by "faith".Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

Actually, it's because your total failure to understand the theory of evolution is incorrect.Honestly, you guys make me laugh. You spend half your time pretending that evolution is all about "random chance" and couldn't have produced any adaptation whatsoever, and the other half of your time pretending that evolution should have produced absolutely perfect adaptation and that the theory of evolution must be wrong because not everything is perfect. Then your lack of a point of view could have been better communicated by silence than by hundreds of words of what appears to be total gibberish.Please find out what the theory of evolution is, learn a little basic anatomy, maybe find out what the scientific method is --- oh, and learn how to use the forum's quote function. Then maybe you will have a point of view, and be able to express it.

Of course we understand it. I'll wager I know more about cdesign proponentism that you do. That's why I know it's dishonest crap and you don't. I think you'll find that pretty much all of us would tell a harmless lie than suffer death. You see, we're not in the least like all those religious fanatics who'd rather be burned alive by other religious fanatics than agree that one incomprehensible dogma about the Trinity was better than the other.Science won't punish me in the afterlife if I'm wrong about it, and if a bunch of fundies threatened to kill me unless I recanted my evolutionism, I'd recant away. Eppur si muove. Fortunately, it hasn't come to that. Oh good grief.Do people's feelings and emotions change if they have a heart transplant?How about if they suffer damage to the areas of their brains that are responsible for their feelings and emotions?Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

Such as causing appendicitis.C'mon, by contrast with the homologous organs in herbivores, it's almost pointless.And it gets to be vestigial precisely because its purpose is a vestige of homologous organs in herbivores.

But that is exactly the opposite of what you claimed, i.e. that he said it had no purpose. You won't after I've posted an answer to it, because you are a gentleman.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

Hoorah! I thought you were presenting him as an evolutionist. Why else did you bring him up?In any case, my point still stands. No scientists gave evidence in the Scopes trial. The judge ruled that the question of who was right and who was wrong about evolution would have no place in his courtroom, and that the only question in law was whether Scopes had broken the law against teaching evolution by teaching evolution. Which he admitted that he had. "The population"? No, I think you'll find that it's just you and your creationist chums.And why did you learn a false meaning of the word? Because creationist liars repeatedly told you that that's what it meant.If you ask 100 people what "vestigial" means in biology, then I guess 90 will have no idea, 5 will be familiar with biology, and 5 will have been indoctrinated by creationists to say something utterly untrue.But the people who have been fed lies don't get to outvote the people who know what biologists are actually talking about, nor would this be the case if the split was 6%:4% or 7%:3%. The idiots don't get to decide what the biologists mean. The biologists mean what they mean.

I may have misunderstood the sense in when you were quoting him. It doesn't matter.The fact is that no-one, at all, whatsoever, who might have by a strange quirk of your own personal rules of nomenclature been called "Zoologist Newman", gave evidence in the Scopes trial. No scientist gave evidence in the Scopes trial. In which case you are utterly hopelessly wrong.Let me say again what I said before, in the hope that you'll understand it.If you ask most people for the meaning that "vestigial" has when talking about biology, then they'll either say "I don't know" or stare at you like you're crazy.If you ask someone who knows about the theory of evolution and what it means, they'll give you an accurate definition, such have as been used for "rudimentary" or "vestigial" features ever since Darwin wrote The Origin of Species.And if you ask a creationist, they'll recite a dumb lie that has nothing to do with the definition used by biologists.Well, they can if they want. The fact is that Darwin never claimed that these features in general must have no function; and nor does any evolutionist that you're arguing with.You don't get to hijack scientists' meaning and scientists' words and make them mean something different from what scientists mean just because you don't like what we're saying and because it would be easier for you to argue wirh us if we were saying something else.If people could do that, then why couldn't I hijack the word "creationism" to mean "evolution" and then thank you for finally admitting that I'm right?Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

Because your creationist liemasters lied to you --- and you assume that you are "the common layman".But I too am "the common layman". I read up on what biologists actually say, and I also, as a matter of historical curiosity, read what Darwin actually wrote. I too was a layman --- my PhD is in math, not biology. I also was a "common layman". But I did learn what biologists meant when they used certain phrases, such as "vestigial", because I learned what biologists meant from biologists, who wanted me to understand biology, rather than from pathetic creationist creeps who wanted me to misunderstand biology.And does it not set off a few alarm-bells ringing in your head?Your creationist liemasters only want you to read what some biologist might tell you about evolution --- after they have lied to you about the meaning of the words employed by that biologist, so that they can be certain that even if you read what the biologist has to say you will be incapable of understanding him.Once they have lied to you about what biologists mean when they say "vestigial", they can allow you to read biology books where you will read about vestigial features. If they have made it a point of dogma that "vestigial" means something different from "vestigial", then the liemasters can rest assured that you won't understand biology.How nice for them. But you are being swindled.

You may well be correct. Newman's evidence was not presented to the jury, but it was taken notice of by the court in case Scopes wanted to appeal.If I recall correctly, Scopes was found guilty by law and then innocent on a technicality, so the question never arose. I'll set off fireworks.I should be interested, by the way, to know how you got such a large collection of erroneous statements so quickly. I'm going to guess that it was not from an evolutionist website.