[quote=PV][quote=Legend]I see that a second-year student "industrial design" could have designed a smarter body than we humans - or just about any other animal - currently have - hardly the work of a deity.
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How can you say that? The human body is an amazing machine. A second year industrial design student can barely understand the body, much less design and build a superior one. [/quote]

Amen

It's very easy to state the body's weaknesses, but it's a much different story to be able to perfect those flaws in biological terms. Genetic biologists are nowhere near the ability to do anything of the sort.

Er, have you read up on ID? ID specifically counters Evolution (which again would prevent ID from becoming a scientific theory in and of itself). They are mutually exclusive.

The belief in a diety, such as FSM, and Evolution are not mutually exclusive. Perhaps that is what you meant.



IOW has no basis in reality.

Arr the noodly appendages have touched this thread...all hail FSM!

As it happens, I just read that Dutch scientists have grown a heart muscle tissue using stem cells from an adult. So far this was only possible using embryonal stem cells. It's a step in the right direction for people who had a heart attack.

But here we're talking about a creature that apparently could design and build something as complex as a brain, or, ID's favorite, an eye... and yet manages to rush through the rest of the body. I'm not saying that the second-year student could build this body, but I'm certain he or she could come up with a better functional design (is that the correct term for it?).

Hehe... (properly sourced) Wikipedia articles are fun



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irreducable_complexity

It doesn't bode well for your cause when the head of the movement buries his head in the sand in the face of scientific evidence.

Legend, I am flabbergasted that you look at the wonder of nature (and the human body) and can only find faults with it.

Considering the nasty little thing called Entropy, the whole system is quite amazing.

The odd thing is that of all the human organs, the brain is the least efficient in many respects. We do an awful lot of approximation and guessing in our heads, with easy to demonstrate errors (optical illusions are the easiest demonstrations).

How efficiently the brain manages cognative thought isn't a weakness, however, or proof of poor design - the fact that we have cognative thought at all (let alone the amount) far outstrips the inefficiency.

We're built, like all species, to have a finite size and, with it, life span. Approximately 120 years seems to be the maximum under ideal conditions. But none of us live under ideal conditions or treat our bodies in an ideal manner.

Joints ache because our bodies can't take time out to replace cartiledge in the joints - it would render the joint unuseable during replacement. And the blood vessels that would be required to remove old cartiledge while building new just won't work due to compression on joints. It's not "bad design;" it's a design decision that makes sense - even if it means the part will wear out eventually.

My genetic tree has a nice perk of quick bone healing. Not X-Men fast or anything, but faster than most people. It is what probably saved me from hip replacement surgery, as the neck of the femur healed in four weeks rather than six or eight, reducing the chances of necrosis. The downside is that arthritis and rhumatism is also a genetic trait. My index fingers began rotating inwards when I was in my 20's....by the time I'm in my eighties grabbing a walking cane will be painful, and making a full fist most likely impossible. Assuming that I don't opt for surgical correction, that is.

Poor design? I don't think so. Downside to a benefit.

Rilex, you're correct - I used "Intelligent Design" as a description of my beliefs rather than that of strict Creationists. I put Creationists in the same category as every other Fundamentalist group. At least they're not violent.

But even Phillip E Johnson conceeds that ID is just a form of Creationism. This was extremely evident when draft copies of Of Pandas and People were discovered where the word "creation/ism" was replaced with "Intelligent Design" wholesale (and indeed, ID is sometimes called "Intelligent Design Creation".

To boot, the fact that the creators of Intelligent Design put in text that there was a "higher being" that started life/etc., but admit that that "higher being" is indeed the Christian God and no other kind of takes away from the argument that this isn't Creationism re-wrapped in a new name.

ID does essentially reject all parts of evolutionary theory, mainly because -as Rilex said- it's literally just a front for creationists. What you're talking about is closer to theistic evolution.