Animals with bad design.

Quote from Aaron: As other posters have commented - a bad design for one critter is invariably a good design for a competitive critter (competitive for resources etc).So the only way you can describe a design as 'good' is by the maxim:"If the 'design' can stay around long enough in this murderously competitive world long enough to reproduce more copies of itself then it is (by the ruthless standards of nature all around it) a good design.Guess what? That is EXACTLY what Natural Selection (one of the two driving principles of evolution) is all about. So the principal definition of good design is one in which natural selection favours its continued existence against the backdrop of millions of other individuals and species competing fiercely against it.....issue solved! Precisely! Can't you see that's why Dr A is arguing AGAINST your god for this very reason? Being the perfect creator able to do ANYTHING He wants, why would the disaster area we call 'life on earth' be a work of God? He should hold his head in shame at the 99.99% species failure rate and the trillions upon trillions of deaths over the ages - imagine the uncountable suffering (or do you not believe that 'lesser' animals can suffer pain or anguish?) that has gone on over the aeons. Why produce a god-awful mess like our ecosystem when he could have ‘magiked’ the whole thing into perfection from the get go? This is, of course, pure supposition based entirely on your a-priori belief system!Edited by Drosophilla, : No reason given.Edited by Drosophilla, : No reason given.Edited by Drosophilla, : No reason given.

Not a loaded sentiment at all. If, as you maintain, God created everything around us - the super designer of all, then he should be the best engineer in the business. Imagine the future fortunes of a human car designer who proudly boasted that 99.99% of all his designs were doomed to eventual failure. How long do you think he'd hold a licence to design?When I "go outside, scuba dive or look at the mountains" my thoughts are something like "Isn't it amazing we live in this world where evolution produces the effects we see - not by conscious effort - just by natural laws unfolding as they do." Why should there have to be this 'God' tag attached to everything? There's not a shred of evidence for it at all.Why does water beautifully fill the exact shape of the pothole in which it collects? Is the pothole made exactly for the water? Or does the water conform to the existing pothole? Does life on earth 'fit' its planet because - like the water it conforms naturally? ( Unless you think God is moulding the water to fit the pothole - which I wouldn't be surprised if you do think that - the theologian Richard Swinbourne believes that God is controlling every proton, electron, neutron - hell even the more basic quarks for that matter- in the entire universe - all at the same time - that's some GOD !!) By "groups' do you mean "species"? If so, the number of species that have died off conservatively measure into the tens of millions - one hell of a design failure rate I'd say. If 'group' doesn't mean 'species' for you be aware that this is an old EvC topic and you might want to visit other threads where this is discussed. Ah - so you DO believe that animals can't suffer pain or distress.....how interesting!

From barbara: Every year we are still finding new species in rainforests, caves, deep in the sea etc...literally hundreds of species every year. In fact it has been hazarded that more species are becoming extinct each year (before we actually catalogue them as a new species) than those new ones we do find.So you can see the biodiversity is vast - and undoubtedly was as vast (possibly more so) in the past. Even a 99.99% failure rate leaves countless millions of species available at any one point in time for evolution to work on. One of the big mistakes creationists make over and over is they genuinely have no idea of the scale of time available for evolution to work (saying the earth was formed only 6000 years ago - as opposed to life being catalogued by dating to at least 3.5 billion years ago http://pilbara.mq.edu.au/wiki/Stromatolites is the same error as saying the distance from New York to Los Angeles is only about 700 yards!) In that vast expanse of time lies all those millions of millions of failed - but also those millions of currently living species. It is only with the hindsight of the expanse of time that the 99% failure rate stacks up. [qs]What is interesting is the 99.9% extinct is based on the fossil evidence. Fossils are rare so this percentage is false. Nobody has any idea of how much biodiversity there actually was in history. Nobody knows if the fossils represent true extinction or that they changed in appearance in descent with modification.No one can tell us if any of the species that are alive today are the actual direct descent with modification to those specific fossils or a result from a split from another species.'/qsWhat is truly interesting is you taking this stance of suggesting that past species actually change by descent with modification into new species....that is precisely what the vast majority of creationists refuse to sanction, and therefore every extinct critter in the fossil record has to (by their standards) be an extinct line - because evolution can't happen right?(I am correct in assuming you follow the creationist argument rather than the evolutionists aren't I? - Apologies if not).

From barbara: Every year we are still finding new species in rainforests, caves, deep in the sea etc...literally hundreds of species every year. In fact it has been hazarded that more species are becoming extinct each year (before we actually catalogue them as a new species) than those new ones we do find.So you can see the biodiversity is vast - and undoubtedly was as vast (possibly more so) in the past. Even a 99.99% failure rate leaves countless millions of species available at any one point in time for evolution to work on. One of the big mistakes creationists make over and over is they genuinely have no idea of the scale of time available for evolution to work (saying the earth was formed only 6000 years ago - as opposed to life being catalogued by dating to at least 3.5 billion years ago http://pilbara.mq.edu.au/wiki/Stromatolites is the same error as saying the distance from New York to Los Angeles is only about 700 yards!) In that vast expanse of time lies all those millions of millions of failed - but also those millions of currently living species. It is only with the hindsight of the expanse of time that the 99% failure rate stacks up. What is truly interesting is you taking this stance of suggesting that past species actually change by descent with modification into new species....that is precisely what the vast majority of creationists refuse to sanction, and therefore every extinct critter in the fossil record has to (by their standards) be an extinct line - because evolution can't happen right?(I am correct in assuming you follow the creationist argument rather than the evolutionists aren't I? - Apologies if not).Edited by Drosophilla, : No reason given.