'the evolutionary scapegoat'

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Originally posted by schrafinator:
[b] OK, how about my favorite design flaw in humans; the crossover air/food pipes? Many thousands every year choke to death because it is very easy for our air to be cut off.[/QUOTE]

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Millions of people die in car wrecks does that mean the cars are defective? No. Just a lot of bad drivers. If you chew your food you wont choke.

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God didn't do a very good job with this design at all.

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Yes he did, we just did a poor job of chewing. Does it mean he did a poor job of designing the skin because we can be sunburned? You could also say he did a poor job of creating eyes and ears because we cant hear and see as well as dogs or cats. Surely this extra hearing would be benificial to survival. Why didnt we adapt?

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Since Evolution predicts only good enough adaptation, this explanation makes better sense. Complex speech is possible with the crossover design, and the adaptive advantages (and there would be many) to being able to produce complex speech is greater than the disadvantage of an increased choking risk. Thus, the adaptation proliferates throughout the population, despite the potential risk.

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Sounds like day dreaming to me.

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If you must think of humans being specially created, and not having evolved, you are left with God being a poor designer.

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Does that mean that the body is a bad design? There are millions of ingenious mechanisms in the body. Reguardless of who made it, I beleive that it is a beautiful design.

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Do you think you could do any better?

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I'll also throw out the poor, weak construction of our backs and knees. They are far from ideal for upright locomotion, which is why so many millions suffer with back pain and herniated disks, and why even a light blow to the side of the knee can produce big injuries.

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How did the body adapt the protective ridges on the back of the vertebra? How does it know it needs that extra protection? If the knees and back are not ideal then what would be a better design?

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Also, why do we have a sharp ridge on the inside of our skulls, which damages the brain if we hit our heads just so?

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You have to hit it pretty hard. Not "just so". Very few people will be hit that hard in their life time.

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[QUOTE]If the skull is meant to protect our brains from injury, and God designed our skulls, then why did he put a sharp ridge in there? Makes no sense.
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That sharp ridge makes plenty of sense its for structrial reinforcement. A uniformly smooth curve with no reinforcement is very weak. Like an egg shell.If evolution and natural selection were responsable for creating us and relied on variations that were just "good enough" then why dont we still have all of the variations that are totally useless and non life threatning? Like an extra ear on our back that doesnt work. Its not life threatning so natural selection wouldnt eliminate it. But still our bodies only have the minimal necessities to allow us to function.

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[This message has been edited by Jonathan, 07-14-2002]

What determines what is necessary and what is not?

You interprit these "design flaws" as evidence of an imperfect design. I see them as misuse of their original intended purpose. God did not design us to sit at a computer all day and eat doughnuts. Therefore we have weak muscles which lead to unnecessary injuries.If God were to make an infallible human then he would never choke, never get angry, make a mistake, trip, fall or bump our head. Is it Gods fault that I stubbed my toe? Was it because of his poor design that I miss calculated my foot step? No. I run my own life and make my own decisions. Its not Gods responsibility to babysit me and make sure I dont have an accident. God didnt make us poor chewers we did. Pointing out that the human body is accident prone as evidence for the non-existence of God is a weak arguement. [quote]quote originally posted by shrafinator:
A body doesn't "know" it needs extra protection. Variation exists within a population already, unless they are all clones. If an individual (or several) posesses a trait which makes it possible, in the current environment, to be more sucessful at reproducing itself
than others in the population which do not have this trait, the trait will therefore be more likely to be present in the more numerous offspring of the individual that has the trait.In other words, natural selection resulted in greater reproductive success to those individuals in a population of early humans which had those protective ridges on their spinal columns. [quote] This is where I have a BIG problem with the TOE and natural selection. Traits like the spinal ridges, eye brows, mens nipples all have little to no effect in increasing the possibility of reproduction yet every single human has them. Theses traits have zero influence on increasing our chances of reproduction, so why are they all here. And on every single human. Why arent there cultures in which some of these traits are absent?Every arguement in the creation vs evolution debate can be distorted to support both sides equally. . You see it as a "good enough" adaptation. I see it as misused from Gods intended purpose. Its all in how you look at it

Your missing my point. These traits have virtually no effect in increasing the probability of reproduction. I know they serve an important purpose but they dont increase the probability of reproduction so how can they increase reproductive success?I think if you were to apply the body to a "garden of Eden" lifestyle it may me more than sufficient.

[QUOTE]Originally posted by gene90:You're overlooking something. If it serves "an important purpose" then it contributes to reprodution. Simply put, if it helps keep you alive or helps you in any way, it improves reproductive success. [/B][/QUOTE]In theory yes. but in actual real world circumstances I dont beleive it would have any effect. Keeping the hair out of my eyes is helpful, but its not going to win over the ladies.This is the flaw I see in NS. Evolving a new tear duct is very helpful but it is not going to have an impact on my reproduction rate.

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Originally posted by John:
So if we were to live naked in a forest with no worries, no need to hunt or farm, and with plenty of food just hanging off of the trees we'd be ok? Oh, and no predators, or bad weather, or disease?

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Right.

[QUOTE]Originally posted by gene90:I doubt someone who has shaved their eyebrows would agree. For one thing, it makes people look strange, thereby harming you in the mate selection department, and since people are social it could cause you even more trouble if you are ostracized all the time or even banished from the group. Another problem is that if you can't keep sweat out of your eyes, you can't see, so it can get difficult to flee from predators. When you get eaten, you cannot produce more offspring. Even a small disadvantage between you and your peers will harm the chances of a particular allele being propagated through a population. [/B][/QUOTE]If you were the first person ever with eyebrows you would look strange. Its easy for you to make conjectures now to justify the survival advantage of eyebrows but in reality I dont think its going to make much difference. If you put two naked men in the forrest and one with shaved eyebrows is it fair to say that the one without is at a disadvantage? Come on now, lets be realistic.

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[This message has been edited by Jonathan, 07-16-2002]

No, your right. I agree I was out of line in my responses. It just frustrates me when people refuse to see the possible errors in thier theories and pass them off as infallible just because it is thoretically possible. Yes all of these theories sound good and would hypothetically work. But so do the plans the A-Team or Matlock has. They look good on paper but in actual real world practice "I believe" they would fall far short of their expectations.Again I apologise for my attitude.

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Originally posted by gene90:
[QUOTE][b]If you put two naked men in the forrest and one with shaved eyebrows is it fair to say that the one without is at a disadvantage? Come on now, lets be realistic.[/QUOTE]

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Yes. We've already mentioned three different purposes for eyebrows, that is more than enough to demonstrate reproductive advantage.

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But how significant is this advantage? Would it be enough to have a significant impact on his or her reproductive status?

I see your point. All of these traits can theoreticaly offer a survival advantage. However I dont think that the "advantage" they offer would have much impact on their ability to reproduce.Sure I can see how opposable thumbs can be extreamly advantageous to survival/reproduction. But if all of your species have no spinal ridges (and you are the first to have these) then for this to be advantagous to you all of the others in your species would have to be regularly suffering from spinal injuries otherwise you would have very little advantage over the others. You compared this to a disfigured eye being repulsive to all other mates but if you were the first to have a tear duct then the rest of your species would have disfigured eyes, not you.If natural selection works as well as you theorize then why do we have genetic predispositions towards obesity, poor eyesight, poor hearing even baldness? These traits have a much greater impact on their survival/reproductive success then say spinal ridges, eye lashes, eyebrows or any other trait with low "survival influence."You can call it incredulity but I just dont think that your model for reproductive success will work like you plan. Just because an individual has an improved design (tear duct, eye brow)over the others does not AUTOMATICALLY mean that he will have a reproductive or survival advantage over the others.

You guys are right. Im such a fool for beleiving in somthing as silly as that.What was I thinking?

You know what I meant.