That Wacky Intelligent Designer!

May 10, 2008

Guest Post by Morbo

I’ve never seen a real platypus, but I’d like to. I’ve been interested in these animals since I was kid and someone gave me a book about odd animals of the world.

And the platypus is definitely odd. It has a bill like a duck and lays eggs but is covered with fur. Females feed their young with milk. Males have venom in their hind legs.

We’re talking about a creature that has the characteristics of birds, mammals and reptiles — all in one package. The platypus is classified as a mammal, and now scientists have just completed mapping its genetic makeup.

[T]he platypus genome offers an unprecedented glimpse of how evolution made its first stabs at producing mammals. It tells the tale of how early mammals learned to nurse their young; how they matched poisonous snakes at their venomous game; and how they struggled to build a system of fertilization and gestation that would eventually, through relatives that took a different tack, give rise to the first humans.

Evolutionary processes can make sense of the platypus’ mixture of features. As The Post reported:

Other genes show how platypuses were transitional creatures on the road from egg laying to internal gestation. There is just one gene for one kind of yolk protein, for example, while chickens have three. That is consistent with the idea that the platypus represents a shift in strategy toward providing more nutrition after hatching, rather than during incubation….

This creates something of a problem for creationists.

Let’s consider the options here:

1. The Intelligent Designer was drunk the day he designed the platypus (or just had some spare parts left over from previous designs and figured, “What the hell….”)

2. The space aliens who seeded the planet are pulling our leg.

3. Darwinian evolution, operating through the process of natural selection, has allowed this really cool animal to do well with an unusual mix of characteristics.

Under the principles of ID, you can choose which one to believe. Public school lesson plans will soon follow.

P.S. For more fun with real science, visit the National Center for Science Education’s “Expelled Exposed” website and watch their new video debunking the common creationist canard that eyes are too complex to have evolved.

This creates something of a problem for creationists.

Not at all – the anti-evolution crowd, most of whom support this administration’s war crimes, crimes against humanity, and the wholesale slaughter of 100,000s of thousands of innocent people (mostly women and children) in Iraq are not going to let a little thing like a platypus disturb them.

They are too busy distorting the bible and the word of God for their own economic/political or out-of-ignorance purpose to even think about any of this.

  • Creationists are so prevalent (well at least in the US) because they can’t comprehend the vast extent of time. It disturbs them and they reject it. What’s so peculiar with the US that you have such huge numbers of these people ?

    In a hundred thousand years nothing that you see will exist and at best our lives will occupy one thousandth of that time. But it gets worse – we’re talking about hundreds of millions of years back in Earth’s past.

    Over that duration everything will change and anything can evolve

  • Don’t confuse the issue with facts, Morbo. My mind is made up.

    God said it, I believe it, and that settles it.

  • No, no, no! The Flying Spagetti Monster created the universe and all the creatures with His noodly appendages. His noodliness may very well have been partying the day He created the platypus–He has been known to throw one amazing party. A little wacky tobacy easily account for the platypus’s unusual design.

    I for one cannot wait for the day when FSMism is taught along side evolution in the science classroom.

  • This creates something of a problem for creationists.

    You’ve never seen one, I’ve never seen one … obviously they don’t exist and have just been made up by the evil Darwinists

  • Sometimes I wonder why the creationists have such a problem with the idea that maybe God “created” evolution.

    Then I realize I don’t give a damn, they just need to keep their stupidity to themselves.

  • We laypersons talk about evolution one way. Here’s how scientists talk about it:

    Evolution: what’s the real controversy?: “Other controversies within the evolutionary field popped up in the discussion. Bruce Lahn reiterated his controversial proposal that an allele of a key gene in human brain development came via Neanderthals. Andrew Roger suggested that secondary and tertiary endosymbiosis may have scrambled parts of the eukaryotic family tree. Peter Holland, who works on amphioxus, described some confusion about the precise location of the base of the chordate tree, while Ulrich Technau mentioned that the single axis that exists in Cnidarians may not be equivalent to either of the two axes of bilaterians.”

  • Any ‘adaptation’ that doesnt hurt a species prospects is not deselected; it doesn’t have to help to persist. The big question, imho, is what genes and/or environment allowed Platy the Puss to make these outside the box choices? Something about it had to be special, or maybe just incredibly lucky.

    Just came up with a pretty fair analogy I think. Evolution is like a slow(most of the time) moving avalanche. Repositioning rocks in the pile without a very good understanding of the forces interacting(species introduction, genetic engineering) is a potentially high risk proposition.

  • Not so Fast orange.

    I’ve been to the Zoo and I’ve seen a couple. And they exist, man. The Clever Darwinists may have made them up, but they are real. And the Male is Poisonous. It’ll mess you up if you mess with it.

  • I’m a biology grad student. Everyday i am in awe of the absolute beauty of life and nature. I actually do believe that intelligent design is a rational belief system. (keep readying before you call me a neo-con). The problem is that the theory does not lend itself to the scientific hypothesis format. I can’t test it, its just something i believe. IT’S NOT SCIENCE!

    I think it is important not to label anyone who believes in ID a knuckle-dragging, mouth-breathing, neanderthal. we just have to point out that ID belongs in the science classroom as much as pig latin belongs in the english classroom.

  • Although I find the platypus to be an especially wondrous creature, I’ve already discovered the ideal weapon against ID. Every time someone pushes the theory at me, I simply explain that I cannot teach their theory to my children–because after all, the Bible does say, “Thou Shalt Not Lie.”

    The sound of a fundie’s head exploding as I hang up the phone—or the sight of a fundie melting on my front step as I close the door—once this tactic is employed is a very satisfying event. The rabble never come back for a second shot at it, because it is there is one thing they dare not do, it is to openly refute the literal foundation of their literal argument. The moment they even suggest that it’s “open to interpretation,” they lose the entire basis of their proselytizing “missionary work….”

  • “Don’t confuse the issue with facts, Morbo. My mind is made up.
    God said it, I believe it, and that settles it.” – OkieFromMuskogee

    Not to be picky Okie, but didn’t some some human write what he thought god said some thousands of years after the actual event occurred, and those writings went into a library of thousand of ‘Godly’ writings that ‘evolved’ into the bible after human ‘selection’ ?

    idreamofpennylane.
    First, Intelligent Design is merely a cover for creationism, which leads me to believe you haven’t really thought in the topic. Second, I have obtained a syllabus for the Biology dedree offered at Regent:
    Day 1 – Read Genesis from bible
    Day 2 – Answer Question, “Who created all living things ?”
    Day 3 – Graduation
    Last, I can not state it any better then TAIO #5, “Sometimes I wonder why the creationists have such a problem with the idea that maybe God “created” evolution.”

    TAIO, Because it doesn’t fit into what they think. The bible teaches us nothing, it’s a tool to support one own views. So if you hate worms, read the bible and you will invariably find a passage that supports you pre-bible reading opinion. The really cool part, is the koran work the exact same way.

  • Scott@
    I’m not saying i don’t believe in evolution. From my understanding of ID, it simply says that there is a higher power that guided evolution. I believe in a Higher Power. When i look at the beauty of nature, i find it compelling to see god in it.

    I don’t believe that the world id 6000 years old. So where does that put me? I may or may not believe in ID (i’m still not sure), but i still agree with you that ID doesn’t belong in the science classroom.

  • It’s hard to understand why anyone would believe in UFOs when it seems pretty obvious that any species capable of interstellar travel would hardly be interested in a bunch of wackos such as human beings. Aghast at our primitive behavior an advanced civilization would probably simultaneously be rolling on the floor in laughter.

  • Steve #15, good one. And here’s another that I use. I ask what is the very best book they ever read in support of evolution. I’ve yet to engage a fundie who was prepared for the question or who had ever read a good book in support of evolution. If I ever do, I’m sure I could loan them a half dozen out of my library that would trump anything they have read. And, of course, it doesn’t make you look so good when you have such strongly held opinions but have never taken the initiative to understand alternatives. And yes, I was once a theology major and am more than well equipped to engage the rookie fundie. In fact, it was the questions I asked that drove me to atheism.

  • idreamofpennylane #13 and #17 – Although I’m a nonbeliever, I don’t find fault with what you say. Most people want to believe there is some purpose behind it all. You understand the difference between science and belief/hope/religion. All we know about so far is this natural world in which we live. But who knows whether there is something beyond it or not? Nobody.

    This strikes me as interesting, though: “Everyday i am in awe of the absolute beauty of life and nature.” You hear this all the time, and the usual conclusion is, therefore, there must be a god who made it that way. But don’t you think it would be peculiar if we evolved to think nature and life were hideous and ugly and horrible? I mean, how long would such beings survive with an attitude like that? Would we eat food if it tasted terrible to us? So there’s a little bit of maybe sentient creatures evolve so they perceive it that way, because it wouldn’t work otherwise. In other words, our perceptions evolve also.

  • idreamofpennylane.
    Please, you wrote, “it (Intelligent Design) simply says that there is a higher power that guided evolution”

    I have never heard anyone use the phrase “guided evolution”. I looked at Conservapedia and no mention of it.

    Guided ?? Is it done ?? So god makes mutations that are almost all worthless and the one in a million that starts the transformation of gill to lung is how god guides the process ? Or do you mean he created the process itself, Adam and Eve were single cell amoebas, and we are evolving at this exact moment ??

    Plus, as a biologist you should know that everything, from flowers to rotting carcases serve a purpose in the biological chain. All life is currently evolving, it can not be stopped. So when the flu virus mutates from year to year, sometimes, like this year we base our vaccinations on the wrong strain, leaving us with a moderate flu outbreak. The mutation with the best chance of survival (strongest) survived, not the prettiest, not the biggest. The flu virus is evolving and has the ability to mutate, even when humans artificially create a predictor, the vaccination.

  • steve. what is your point? are you saying that as a spiritual person i have no place in the democratic party? i mean seriously. I stated that i absolutely agree that it should not be in the classroom. My only point in my original post is that it is dangerous to label anyone who believes in ID as crazy.

    I haven’t in the slightest tried to push my beliefs on you. I have even stated that i don’t know what i believe. I just think that if we mock anyone that is spiritual or religious, then the democratic party is going to shrink to a quarter of its current size. It’s people like you that give liberals a bad name. My conservative friends always argue that liberals are just as closed minded as them. I guess i have to agree with them.

  • idreamofpennylane.
    Huh ? I didn’t say anything about the Democratic party and I never labeled believers in ID crazy. I don’t understand how a biologist can reconcile the blaring differences.

  • Coming from Australia I’m lucky enough to have seen a platypus in the wild, swimming in a creek on a friend’s property. For all their seemingly disparate parts they’re astonishingly sleek, graceful swimmers, not unlike otters, while their bill and clawed feet are perfect for exploring the rocky creekbed for food. Watching it I saw a perfectly evolved creature, well adapted to its eco-niche. I can imagine someone religous seeing the same wondrous little beast as being Intelligently Designed.

    To me though that thinking has always had a problematic central paradox. If everything complex and wondrous must have a Designer, who designed the equally complex and wondrous Designer? And who then designed the Designer’s Designer….etc, ad infinitum. Postulating a universal creator or intelligent designer, making creation or design essential to existence simply postpones or ignores more questions than it answers.

    I came to that conclusion when I was 14 and nothing I’ve heard since has convinced me otherwise.

  • Everything is a manifestation of Brahman (the creator), who plays games of hide and seek with himself, sometimes wearing the mask of the preserver (Vishnu), the destroyer (Shiva), and you and I.

  • The problem with ID and evolution is really quite simple. The fundies say that evolution does not explain the formation of life. This is absolutely correct. Evolution doesn’t explain the formation of living things. It was never intended to. Evolution explains everything that has happened since life first showed up.

    And let us not even delve into the whole, “I didn’t descend from no ape!” thing. Apparently the fundies don’t understand the simple concept of a common ancestor that was neither man nor ape. Yet these same fundies expect us to believe that their concept of a mysterious creator designer is so complex that it deserves scientific validation.

    And the claims that evolution has never been observed? Ludicrous on its face. Speciation, genetic drift, environmental adaptation, and forced mutations have all been observed at both the micro and macro levels throughout the fossil record, in the wild, and in the laboratory.

    In addition, a wide range of religions have reconciled a belief in a supernatural being with evolution. Molleen Matsumura of the National Center for Science Education found that “of Americans in the twelve largest Christian denominations, 89.6% belong to churches that support evolution education”. These churches include the United Methodist Church, National Baptist Convention USA, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Presbyterian Church (USA), National Baptist Convention of America, African Methodist Episcopal Church, the Roman Catholic Church, the Episcopal Church, and others.[1]

    Intelligent Design was designed by unintelligent people.

    See also:
    Unintelligent Design
    Objections to Evolution

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