Intelligent Design Question

The concept of I.D. assumes that the human animal (and most others) are so complicated that it needed intelligence to arrive at the current form.

I have one simple question for I.D. proponents - what is the intelligence that led to the human body containing an appendix? It serves absolutely no positive purpose and occasionally leads to death.

Evolution can explain it, since it appears to be left over from some ancestral animal which ate grass (like cows today).

 

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it assumes all life, from nanobes to bacteria and archae to plants, animals, fungi, and protists are too complex... not just animals.

I'm no I.D. proponent (*shudders*) but they would say that the human appendix is part of the immune system. What about all the other vestigial parts? they'd say that we don't know it all but they DO serve a function... we just haven't found out what it is.

as for the appendix, it is a vestigial structure for sure. As whether it's useless or not, here: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/vestiges/appendix.html
"However, contrary to what one is apt to read in anti-evolutionary literature, there is currently no evidence demonstrating that the appendix, as a separate organ, has a specific immune function in humans (Judge and Lichtenstein 2001; Dasso et al. 2000; Williams and Myers 1994, pp. 5, 26-29). To date, all experimental studies of the function of an appendix (other than routine human appendectomies) have been exclusively in rabbits and, to a lesser extent, rodents. Currently it is unclear whether the lymphoid tissue in the human appendix performs any specialized function apart from the much larger amount of lymphatic tissue already distributed throughout the gut. Most importantly with regard to vestigiality, there is no evidence from any mammal suggesting that the hominoid vermiform appendix performs functions above and beyond those of the lymphoid-rich caeca of other primates and mammals that lack distinct appendixes. "
"Furthermore, from systematic analysis we know that the rabbit, rodent, and human appendixes are convergent as outgrowths and constrictions of the caecum (Shoshani and McKenna 1998). It is thus very questionable to conclude from these animal studies that the human appendix has the same function as the other non-primate appendixes. "
"Of course, over a century of medical evidence has firmly shown that the removal of the human appendix after infancy has no obvious ill effects (apart from surgical complications, Williams and Myers 1994). Earlier reports of an association between appendectomy and certain types of cancer were artifactual (Andersen and Isager 1978; Gledovic and Radovanovic 1991; Mellemkjaer et al. 1998). In fact, congenital absence of the appendix also appears to have no discernable effect. From investigative laparoscopies for suspected appendicitis, many people have been found who completely lack an appendix from birth, apparently without any physiological detriment" (took the annoying sources at the end out)
"In sum, an enormous amount of medical research has centered on the human appendix, but to date the specific function of the appendix, if any, is still unclear and controversial in human physiology"

 

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I don't think Intelligent Design is a starter, myself. You've got millions of species that can't talk, can't read, can't walk on their hind legs, and they go around killing and eating each other all the time. Then you've got one species that can talk, can read, can walk on its hind legs, and they still go around killing each other all the time! (and occasionally they get particularly peckish as well.) Now does that sound like Intelligent Design to you? If I was God, I'd go back to the drawing board and start over again.

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Actually we now know that the appendix still does excrete enzymes to breakdown cellulose, as it does in Bovidae species such as cows, goats and sheep. But because it is now so small, it is considered as a vestigial organ.

The evolution of humans did not "lead to the human body containing an appendix." As in most other animals, it is a remnant, still-lingering, vestigial organ of of our past evolution.

 

could you give us a source?

 

But science says we evolved from monkies. You'd think we wouldn't have an appendix any more, but we do. It kind of makes me wonder if we're supposed to be eating grass or something, but then why would we have canine our teeth?

 

There is no reason to believe that there can't be intelligent design. Science as a practice does not prescribe one opinion or another. It describes and its consumers decide what to do with it.

 

The complex human eye is an example of Intelligent Design, which is why the optic nerve is so well placed, creating a useful and advantageous blind spot.

 

You don't know the facts of evolution. And we have other threads going on right now that would answer your questions. Look up the word "vestigial."

 

Are you also saying that humans have the "best" eyesight? If not, then that's why other animals have evolved to have better eyesight than humans (eagles? and other avians?). Why would an intelligent designor not give us the best? I can't smeller nearly as much as my dog can? Damn that "prejudicial" intelligent designor for depriving me of all this!

 

valich:
Note the bolded bit...

Sarcasm. Me bad... I need to break the habit.

 

Ahh, but what if god just created the "heavens and the earth" and one single-celled animal .......then sat back to enjoy a scotch n' soda to enjoy the process of evolution at work? ...sorta' like throwing the "go" switch on a computer game and sitting back to enjoying what happens.

Baron Max

 

Of course the whole problem regarding the notion of ID rests actually with the notion of ID itself - if life such as ourself basically only comes about exclusively by something else designing us, what process exactly is it which can possibly account for the design the designers?

It can't be intelligent design because the very idea dictates that something of sufficient complexity had to be around first in order to design whatever life form it produces - therefore, if the ultimate designers at the top of the design chain can come into existence without the process of ID being applied, why exactly can't the so called "products" of this design process?

Basically its the old Creationist argument, ponced up with scientific sounds rather than biblical soundbites.

 

Huh? Mr Anonymous, what the hell are you talking about? In ID, god is something that transcends any and all scientific laws, regardless of what those laws are or say. And god also is that which has been around forever, and will remain around forever. He/it can make whatever designs he/it wishes, with whatever flaws he wishes.

Baron Max

 

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... Ah, indeed yes. How could I possibly forget? I've inundated with spam mail and text messages of late from the very man Himself informing me that He intends to have words with me about this very thing...

Apparently, He also wants his hedge clippers back as well. The bounder!

 

"But just because the appendix performs no digestive function, this does not mean that it lacks a function. The walls of the appendix are richly endowed with lymphoid tissue, like much of the rest of the intestine. Just like the lymphoid tissue elsewhere, lymphoid tissue of the appendix monitors the passing of food, detecting and responding to harmful foreign materials and potential pathogenic bacteria. In short, the human appendix is part of the immune system."
"Vertebrates: Comparative Anatomy, Function, Evolution," by Keneth V. Kardong, Mc-Graw Hill, 2005, p.523.

Additional info was supplied and relayed from our more up-to-date course lectures. Source: Dr. Kiisa Nishikawa, Department of Biology, Northern Arizona University. I'll ask for the source. More later.

 

What are you saying? That we have less peripherial vision and lest accurate precise vision so that we don't see as much, to avoid arguments and sarcasm???

 

God is dead! Any posts to the contrary belong on the "Religion" subject category: not in "Biology and Genetics." We here are all way beyond these worthless waste-of-time arguments and talk about biology, genetics, evolution, development of species, and where all this will lead. You belong on a different forum! Go there and argue your points!

 

valich:

I'm saying that the human eye isn't intelligently designed, since the optic nerve is joined to the retina is such a way so that a blind spot is formed. These blind spots are often instrumental in car crashes, and children being hit by cars. An 'intelligent designer' should have given us an eye like a squid, which does not have a blind spot.

A lot of 'unintelligent design' exists in today's world. The ID'ists try to shrug this off by claiming that we 'can't know the mind of the intelligent designer', which pretty much begs the question of how much predictive power the ID 'theory' has.

 

Their are "errors" in genetics, but from what I see around me, those errors are a lot smaller than I can say a so-called "intelligent" designer would have made. If there is or were an intelligent designer, then he/she must be pretty dumb.