Whoever designed this body...

Post Reply New Topic

As opposed to them rotting in your skull because the gaps inbetween are a nightmare to keep clean? Bring on the replacements.

Just because the appendix appears to have an use, it does not make it non-vestigial ( http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/vestiges/appendix.html ).

It is also very hard to argue whether its benefits (for which we had to dig for centuries before we were able to have even theories about) beat the problems it causes (which have been rather obvious for a long time). So it would still qualify as not-so intelligent design.

Then it makes no sense that the smell would be so bad.


You do notice that it smells bad even after a shower? Everyone smells. Putting some chemicals on it to prevent the odor from being noticeable does not make you less or more filthy.

The definition of "vestigial" only changed as of 2007, since the original definition was no longer defensible provided that functions were being discovered for the organs and features which were previously relegated as vestiges due to the previous lack of comprehension of their purpose and lack of desire to seek it out since they worked perfectly well for the evolutionary paradigm as just being classified as useless remains of transmutation.

Why would a smell produced by a bacteria have to be pleasant? Wouldn't that decrease the demand for cleaning in favor of increasing the supply of the agent causing the smell?

Actually, I don't notice that I smell bad after a shower. Perhaps I clean more thoroughly than you do. Or maybe you have learned to hate your own smell probably due to your upbringing which, given this era in human history, tends to encourage the hatred of human life in general and as such the hatred for your own smell would be an acquired hatred and not a hatred which is innate to everyone such as the hatred of hydrogen sulfide or ammonium hydroxide.

Take a pair of pliers and remove your teeth if you hate them so much, then you wont have to clean in between them anymore.

Hey Vex, i've often thought about this too. =.= I mean, as human, if you lack anything, you're already somewhat handicap'd...

This is somewhat why i prefer to study simpler organisms. =.= Like Bugs.... :>

If people do try to debate design or why this could go on forever, mainly because the understanding of what and why are missing (yeah we have books that are supposed to bring an airtight understanding to it - I'm not of that opinion however).

A lot of things are aggravating but sort of irritating about the human body. We have a lot of nasty/gross output in the nose and ears, excritory isn't pleasant - than again if it all smelled like strawberries we'd have MUCH bigger problems with insects and other animals trying to rush or lay eggs in our cavities. Certain things like that, while a bit grating, do make sense on that level.

As for the frailty of the human body I agree - it seems like our endurance is crap, even trying to get fit you typically have all kinds of injuries that your prone for. Joints that wear out easily, people noted vitamin deficiencies and our ease of exposure to that, headaches - I think that may be like junk DNA - typically while I never like fatigue headaches or migraines I don't know that they've ever come without purpose.

On the design note though - if we don't know intent we don't know what we can call good design or not. I know that runs the risk of sounding unfalsifiable and I have no intent of making a design-of-the-gaps argument, just that with that taken it could go in circles for hours - for every ailment of the human body you could have a desired effect on the human condition. Certain weaknesses and frailties, limits to human energy, for example, put a cap on both the amount of good and the amount of evil that can be done, just like it keeps people somewhat reliant on each other and thus forces us to relinquish narcissism at least somewhat comparatively. I wouldn't call that a case but rather an example of where one could go with this.

What's your area of interest within biology, LKL?

There's a whole (very expensive) industry sprung up around that concept. An industry that exists entirely to cope with a terrible design.

Boxing?

Surely you must have had a tooth broken being hit in the face by now, and therefore comprehend how much MORE damage it causes dentally...

Who is John GALT? topic

I do not believe in creative design by a Designer. All species have something useful(cultural and/or biological) or they would have died out eons ago.

Every person/organism who is alive right here and now had ancestors who reproduced.

Last edited by sartresue on 22 Jul 2010, 9:38 am, edited 1 time in total.

Maybe there is a God and our bodies were well designed for optimal use, but the optimal use they were designed for is that of microorganisms, not us. There is this human-centric idea that if there is a God, then everything on Earth must be set up just for us. What if it's not all about us? What if God is real and designed us with sneezes and diarrhea etc. precisely because the only purpose of our bodies is to facilitate their tiny lives? When you look at the world as a whole, it seems like the only life forms that always come out ahead are single-celled ones (and possibly viruses, if they're actually to be considered alive). Maybe this is by design.


(I don't actually believe in God. I'm just having some fun.)

Unholy unwilling hosts topic

God has revenge ! !

(Perhaps bacteria/disease BELIEVE IN god. )

My training was in general biology, with a focus on evolutionary biology; I currently work in health care.

As a physician or something else?

My education (thus far) has had a very heavy molecular bias and I might be able to partially remedy that this fall with a 500-level evolutionary biology class.

this is incorrect.
quote:
"An organ serving for two purposes, may become rudimentary or utterly aborted for one, even the more important purpose, and remain perfectly efficient for the other.... [A]n organ may become rudimentary for its proper purpose, and be used for a distinct object."[6]
(source = wikipedia)
quote:
Rudimentary organs sometimes retain their potentiality, and are merely not developed. . . .
( Darwin 1859, ch 13)
quote:
Rudimentary organs, on the other hand, are either quite useless, such as teeth which never cut through the gums, or almost useless, such as the wings of an ostrich, which serve merely as sails.

( Darwin 1872, p 398)
quote:
Comparative morphology points not only to the essentially similar plan of organization of the bodies of all Vertebrates, . . . but also to the occurrence in them of certain organs, or parts of organs, now known as "vestigial." . . . By such organs are meant those which were formerly of greater physiological significance than at present.
(Wiedersheim 1893, p 2, emphasis added)
quote:
Retrogressively modified, the Organs having become wholly or in part functionless, some appearing in the Embryo alone, others present during Life constantly or inconstantly. For the greater part Organs which may be rightly termed Vestigial."
(Wiedersheim 1893, p 200, emphasis added)
(source = talk.origins)