Animals with bad design.

I was going to look for one of those, but you beat me to it.Also, there are three other species of cat that can only partially retract their claws, all in genus Prionailurus. So he's pretty much wrong about everything.

Obviously, the cheetah must have walked up that tree because they can't climb them

Your question, while it is a good one, supposes that evolution and creationism are incompatible. Very well. I will illustrate this point taking into account your supposition that imperfection is evidence of perfection.The example I will use is HIV. Obviously, your account of the order of things assumes that HIV is but an instrument for maintaining the balance of nature, set forth by a higher being. That is not what I believe about the nature of HIV, but for the time being, I will say "fair enough".But here we must note that HIV has the ability to mutate faster than almost everything else we've discovered. Within a month's time - to be exact - one can observe HIV mutate to the point where it is resistant to drugs it was recently vulnerable to.Those who study HIV under the power of a microscope note that HIV reproduces itself with an amazingly wide range of variances. Therefore, they conclude that it is just such variances that allow HIV to essentially survive. One may - for instance - have but a few within a single group of HIV microbes that have a resistance to whatever drug they're treated with. The others - one can witness - being eradicated by the drug. Then, one observes the surviving microbes building in numbers until - a month later - one can now observe a more numerous group of HIV within the body of the same patient, only this time resistant to the drug the patient had been treated with a month before.How do you account for this very real situation without involving evolution in your explanation of the found mutation of the HIV virus?
I suppose that if you don't believe in evolution at all, in your case you would say that the mutation found was an instantaneous miracle. Which I don't believe is a good argument.Here is why it's not a good argument: the way in which mutated HIV is treated.Evolutionary biologists suspected that to successfully manage HIV within a person's body, we would need to create an environment within that person's body where even something that reproduces itself with such variance as HIV would yet be unlikely to survive by evolution. The method they advised for effective management of HIV, included attacking the the virus with many drugs simultaneously instead of with one drug at a time. That method is completely successful for the management of HIV.But in the scenario you provide, what happened instead? Was the creator not able to outperform the evolutionary biologists?Evolutionary biology, like HIV treatment, doesn't stop there.When it is found that a person has a strain of HIV which has become resistant to multiple drugs, an understanding of evolution is once again called upon for help.Evolutionary biologists have noted that with advantageous mutations there are trade offs. For instance, one study found that within a certain species of snake some snakes had developed the mutation of being resistant to a very poisonous salamander. They then made comparisons of the the resistant and nonresistant snakes and found that the resistant snakes were slower movers than the nonresistant snakes. These types of trade offs have been observed many times in many different creatures.Therefore, evolutionary biologists suspected that if a patient's drug regiment was stopped and a nonresistant strain of HIV was reintroduced in the patient's body, that the nonresistant form would out compete the resistant form of HIV..and within a month's time, again we should be able to observe the resistant form of HIV eradicated within the patient's body - in it's place, the nonresistant form. That has proved to be correct. At this point doctors can then manage the nonresistant HIV with the method advised by evolutionary biologists I'd mentioned before, by using multiple drugs to create an environment within the patient's body inhospitable even for HIV evolution. A few microbes always survive however, and as a result of using several drugs in treatment, these few microbes have resistances to many HIV treatment drugs. So the doctor then changes the drugs used in treatment. This process is repeated until the patient has a strain of HIV which is resistant to all the HIV treatment drugs available. At this point, the cycle starts anew, with a nonresistant strain of HIV being reintroduced in the patient's body, for the purpose of out competing the resistant strain of HIV. This cyclical methodology of treatment has been completely successful in the management of HIV, all thanks to evolutionary biologists.How do you account for this without allowing for evolution?

Oh Peter, you weirdo-you. Crystal clear posts there! I suppose your main point was this: Not necessarily. The process described in the Theory of Evolution "designs" animals to fit within their environment.Sometimes it happens better than others. Like, the Panda I would call a bad design. They're not doing so good and thier future ain't either.Crocodiles, on the other hand....... damn-well designed.

It all depends on what specifically is meant by 'design' (which is largely my point).If we say that ANY end product is the result of design then for the IDers we are looking for evidence of Intelligence in the design -- in which case good/bad design may be a minor indicator.I tend to think of 'design' in terms of whether the end product was intended from the out-set or not -- so maybe my concept of design is different.For example: There are two approaches to sculpture:1) I decide what I want to make (e.g. a statue of David). I then select an approriate material (I think I'll do this in marble), then find a suitably sized piece of material (hmmm ... at least six-feet). I maybe do some sketches, then get the chisels out ... a while later there I am ... statue of David.2) I'm walking along the shore and I find a piece of drift-wood. 'Ooh' I say to myself (possibly out-loud) 'this looks a bit like a horse.' I then set about the wood with my knife making it even more like a horse.1) Is what I would call 'design'2) Isn't 'design' so much as whittling away the bits that don't fit.So ... maybe I need to review what I actually mean by 'design' before making too much of good/bad.

Hi Granny and everyone else,I disappeared for a while to do some research on whale anatomy.I got really caught up in it and delved as deep as I could go.I've posted some of my findings in a new post. It is extremely long - but not as long as the full report I am still working on.Enjoy.EvC Forum: Creationist response to cetacean femur, leg atavism, and limb bud.

Hi, nice to have you back. I look forward to the promotion of your thread on whales.In the meantime, let me talk to you about torsion. Torsion is something that happens early in the development of gastropods. The following description is from Wikipedia: "Torsion is the rotation of the visceral mass, mantle and shell 180˚ with respect to the head and foot of the gastropod. This brings the mantle cavity and anus to an anterior position above the head."Now, this already raises the question of why, if gastropods are meant to be like that, this result is achieved by doing origami on the basal form of mollusks. But there's more. Some gastropods, for example the Opisthobranchia, do not exhibit torsion in their mature form. Now, given that nature always seems to conspire to delight evolutionists, can you guess what happens to them?That's right. They undergo torsion followed by detorsion, leaving them back in the basal form.You might care to ponder why torsion followed by detorsion should be the best way of producing gastropods without torsion, rather than just letting them alone; and why God did not opt to make this his method for producing tigers or jellyfish or lobsters without torsion. And why, again, the phenomena fit perfectly with evolutionary thinking, just like all God's other brilliant ideas.