69 lines
3.6 KiB
Plaintext
69 lines
3.6 KiB
Plaintext
David Lee, John Prewett, et al. have posted here that
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organisms are too complex to have appeared without a master plan
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of an intelligent designer. In my latest issue of Technology
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Review (Feb/Mar 94), Kenneth Miller, Professor of Biology at
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Brown University and co-author of "Biology," a high-school
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textbook, argues that such seemingly perfect examples as the
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human eye and the genetic code actually display numerous mistakes
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and serendipity that could only reflect the opportunistic forces
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of natural selection.
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Either that, or else the Grand Designer was rather sloppy.
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In the human eye, light must pass through neural mass to
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reach the light-sensitive rods and cones. While the optic
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neurons are almost transparent, they still scatter and diffuse
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the light and produce a blind spot where all the neurons head for
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the brain. A much more efficient design would put the rods and
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cones in front of the neurons, and indeed squid and octopus eyes
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are designed this way. It would seem that an intelligent
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designer would have used the most efficient design everywhere.
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Evolution, which works by repeatedly modifying existing
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structures, can explain the inside-out nature of our eyes quite
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simply. Vertebrate retina evolved as a modification of the outer
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layer of the brain by making part of it more and more light-
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sensitive over time. Conversely, mollusk eyes are wired right-
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side-out because they evolved from skin cells, which retain their
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original orientation: the neural "wiring" is beneath the surface.
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The panda's opposing "thumb" is another illustration: it
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evolved from a wrist bone, rather than from one of the five
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digits (the panda has five regular "toes" as well as its thumb).
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A proponent of intelligent design must maintain that the
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absence of teeth in birds is because the designer equipped them
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with beaks and gizzards that are superior for lightweight flying
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organisms. But then why would the designer have chickens
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carry a gene for making nice pearly white teeth? They do. OTOH,
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evolution provides the simple explanation that birds descended
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from organisms that once had teeth; therefore they retain tooth
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genes, even if other genetic changes turn off their expression.
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"Birds thus have a genetic mark of their own history that no
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designed organism should ever possess."
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Another DNA example is the five genes for making beta-globin
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in the human blood when only two are required: one for adults and
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one for fetuses; the actual count is two and three. The fetus
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uses its tight-binding forms to draw oxygen from the mother's
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blood; adult forms need only draw oxygen from the atmosphere.
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Evolution can explain this combination by accidental duplication
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of ancestral genes. In addition there is a sixth beta-globin
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"pseudogene"; it became non-functional somewhere in evolution,
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but it is still carried along for the ride.
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To me, this means that the ULP god wrote the Ultimate Laws
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of Physics some 20 billion years ago (or maybe before), ignited
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the Big Bang, went off to do something else, and really doesn't
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care if we abort fetuses or not [last comment made only to keep
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this on topic B-)].
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I really don't want to reignite the creationism/evolution
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argument (although I guess I have), and I reserve the right not
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to reply to any comments on this posting.
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My purpose in posting this is to say that if anyone net-
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mails, internets, or otherwise makes me aware of a snail-mail
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address, I'll be happy to send a copy of the article.
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Pat
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NETMAIL address: 1:161/42
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Internet: patrick.spangler@intellisoft.com
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P.S. My spell-checker wanted to substitute "cretinism" for
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"creationism."
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