Is not just that evolution makes sense of the natural world that matters, it is that, without an understanding of evolution, we will be robbed of wonder, unable to fully perceive and experience the the beauty of the natural world.

myrmepropagandist

Are lichen surprising and remarkable if one can simply say the bacteria, algae and fungi were just designed all at once to work together in their symbiosis? Without evolutionary theory the interplay and negotiation of ecosystems becomes invisible and trivial.

David Chisnall (*Now with 50% more sarcasm!*)

@futurebird

I've often felt that Christians should take a stronger position that 'intelligent design' is blasphemy. If you look at how, for example, the human eye is designed, it's entirely riddled with design flaws. The retina is not attached at the back at all and so can come loose. The optic nerve is connected right in the middle (rather than at the edges, where it wouldn't cause a blind spot). There's no mechanism for calibrating the lens (and the manufacturing quality on the lens is low enough that this is really important). The optic nerve doesn't have enough bandwidth to carry the full capacity, so there's delta compression, but there's no error correction for this and so you get a load of artefacts as a result. And that's not even getting into some of the, uh, interesting routing of nerves.

Claiming that this is the result of a god doing the best that they could is the same as claiming that the god is, quite frankly, a bit useless. You're saying that he's an incompetent deity who bodges things instead of doing good design work.

On the other hand, creating a set of initial conditions that gave rise to natural laws that drive evolution to create them is pretty impressive.

[email protected]

@[email protected] @[email protected] One of my earliest memories was getting an internal organ removed, and trying to grapple with why an all-powerful all-loving god would create me with an organ that I didn't need and that was harmful to me.