scar tissue
Banned
Source?
Chimps have been known to fling rocks (and poop) at zoo visitors with excellent accuracy.
And why would we be deadlier with rocks if the chimp is stronger?
More arm strength = more powerful throwing abilities.
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Troll biology, or intelligent designer's first day in AutoCAD?
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Chimps have been known to fling rocks (and poop) at zoo visitors with excellent accuracy.
And why would we be deadlier with rocks if the chimp is stronger?
More arm strength = more powerful throwing abilities.
Trent Strong
Banned
Try to go ten minutes without getting banned this time Scar Tissue.
scar tissue
Banned
Last ban was voluntary, FYI.
The child has to be developed to a certain degree before it can survive after birth. Brains are as big as they are for a reason and a woman's anatomy is what it is. 1 + 1 = shit happens. There's simply just slight variation in both, and if it so happens to be that the female is a little bit smaller and the baby is a little bit bigger than average, then problems occur.
Nature isn't perfect and it doesn't need to be. Just because some people die in child birth doesn't mean that evolution will "sort it out" since it's not a big enough percentage, so it's not really that much of a disadvantage whereas long pregnancy & big brains/head are huge advantages for us.
LiquidMetal14
hide your water-based mammals
Riveting.
I remember a couple of articles titled "the not-so-intelligent design" or something like that where it explained our eyes and the combination of digestive/respiratory systems with an analogy to two pupils doing science class experiments, one doing a perfect and planed design and the other just slapping stuff together until it worked and demonstrating how our body doesn't make any sense but I have never been able to find them ever again. If somebody has a clue...
I especially remember the stuff about the eyes article telling why the heck do we have the optic nerve covering a spot in our vision that our brain has to constantly make up for being inside the eye ball when other animals had perfectly working eyes without this glaring flaw.
I especially remember the stuff about the eyes article telling why the heck do we have the optic nerve covering a spot in our vision that our brain has to constantly make up for being inside the eye ball when other animals had perfectly working eyes without this glaring flaw.
â Narayan
Member
You can't lick your elbow either. Not that there would be much point to that.
We need Sunhi's ape and raccoon gif...
EDIT this:
Wow... wow. This .gif is fucking incredible!
We're built for endurance, not brute strength. We can beat most animals in an endurance run, especially in hot weather.
All I was saying is that an intelligent designer would have made female pelvises/vaginas wider. I know how evolution works.
What if He did, but then small flat asses suddenly became in vogue, and the secondary evolutionary systems that ensure that these organisms can adapt and progress biologically took over, and suddenly all these small hipped women are running around in addition to the ones with great birthing hips?
God needs to release a patch. We'll I guess he kind of did, but that didn't turn out so well either...
crimsondynamics
Member
There is no such thing as intelligent design. Just look at human teeth.
Nobody possessing intelligence would go about designing them the way they are, unless they were deliberately trolling the crap out of kids (the pain of them tearing through your gums and all the slobbering it causes), teens (the braces they put up with), adults (wisdom teeth, cavities and gum disease) and seniors alike (dentures).
Nobody possessing intelligence would go about designing them the way they are, unless they were deliberately trolling the crap out of kids (the pain of them tearing through your gums and all the slobbering it causes), teens (the braces they put up with), adults (wisdom teeth, cavities and gum disease) and seniors alike (dentures).
Evolved1
make sure the pudding isn't too soggy but that just ruins everything
I find intelligent design entirely laughable... but in that sea of silliness, the existence of vestigial organs or bones has always seemed like it should be an especially potent gut check for ID believers.
I mean really...
The testicles are outside of the human body to keep them cool - sperm would die at the higher temperature inside the body.
Always wondered about this - its really freaking stupid. Imagine a world where they were two completely separate tubes. You wouldn't be able to choke.
EDIT: Oh god, teeth. The poster who mentioned teeth deserves a medal. Worst designed part of the human body? Perhaps. They are incapable to existing on their own (properly) without human intervention.
velociraptor
Junior Member
It is the terrorist's law.
If someone were to subscribe to a Gaia type theory, it might be said that humans were a necessary way to control the threat of asteroidal destruction.
But I don't subscribe to that, and all the evidence to date suggests that collateral damage (ie human induced extinctions) is as bad as an asteroid strike anyway.
Well if one were to subscribe to the Gaia theory, one may say that global warming isn't quite as dangerous as the vaporization of the earth's crust, and the death of 98% of all life on earth. But humans certainly could do better.
so far we are the only creatures we know of, able to contemplate a Gaia, or to give a damn about a planet.
so far we are the only creatures we know of, able to contemplate a Gaia, or to give a damn about a planet.
The Gaia Theory in the way you present makes no sense. The Earth is a rock, and an asteroid impact does little to nothing in the large scheme of things. There have been several major asteroid impacts throughout the history of life. Things bounce back after a fairly short amount of time on a geological scale. Hundreds of thousands of years. Pretty much the equivalent of a bad day if you shrunk the history of life to the span of a human life.
Also, humans are not capable of deflecting large asteroids at this point in time, so the entire theory would hinge on the driving life force being omniscient, knowing that the creatures it is evolving will have enough time to develop (tens of millions of years if you go back to the branching off of the great apes) before the next strike, or else it was all for nothing. So basically, the theory is invoking god, but replacing the anthropological version with a life-force Earth deity.
Chaplain
Member
A lecture that really cements the idea that we were intelligently designed (for me at least). This does not say God did it, but that intelligence was behind the design of our DNA & biology.
'Intelligent Design: The Most Credible Idea?' A Lecture by Dr Stephen C Meyer @ Cambridge University
QA followed by questions from scholars at Cambridge to Dr. Stephen.
'Intelligent Design: The Most Credible Idea?' A Lecture by Dr Stephen C Meyer @ Cambridge University
QA followed by questions from scholars at Cambridge to Dr. Stephen.
As I said, I dont ascribe to the theory, just throwing it out there. If you could devise an immune response to a serious threat, that might be one way of doing it.
But as has been said above, each mass extinction event has been followed by an increase in the number of species anyway.
Life seems to thrive after disasters.
But as has been said above, each mass extinction event has been followed by an increase in the number of species anyway.
Life seems to thrive after disasters.
Ya, they are good for adaptive radiation because a very large number of ecological niches are suddenly opened up, allowing for a range of previously unimportant traits to receive selective pressures as animals fill in the void.
dragonelite
Member
Thanks just lost 2 hours instead of making homework
Check out the laryngeal nerve of the giraffe. Warning: contains footage of a cut open giraffe.
This video makes manages to make it just over the 2 min mark before the host starts talking bollocks. Evolution is not random, and there is no debate amongst academics about intelligent design because it doesn't even meet the basic standard of forming a scientific hypothesis.
I'll watch this later when I'm not about to go to sleep. But given the start if this kind of video cements your ideas about life then I'm going to suggest you have very low standards.
The only people who are convinced by intelligent design arguments are those who are already predisposed to believing in a creator. Considering his Jesus avatar, I don't think it is hard to put 1 and 1 together in this case.
Intelligent Design is a "theory" that offers zero answers or testable hypotheses, while sticking to an ever shrinking pool of arguments about things we can't currently explain as "proof" of intelligent intervention.
For the record, I know the biological/evolutional reasons why they're like that. I'm just putting it in a Seinfield-esque "what is the deal?" lighthearted framing.
If the hip were designed by an engineer, he would have been fired.
Walking upright puts stress on the vertebral discs. That's why everyone you know over 30 has some sort of back problem. Same issue with the knees.
Your heart is supplied by 3 main vessels, which sounds like it is a decent fail safe, except the two arteries that supplies over 3/4 of your entire heart actually start off as a single common vessel that also happens to be the first to get occluded in vessel disease. We call this main vessel "the widow maker" in medicine.
Our skin sucks for protection from the environment, and very sensitive to subtle temperature changes.
Walking upright puts stress on the vertebral discs. That's why everyone you know over 30 has some sort of back problem. Same issue with the knees.
Your heart is supplied by 3 main vessels, which sounds like it is a decent fail safe, except the two arteries that supplies over 3/4 of your entire heart actually start off as a single common vessel that also happens to be the first to get occluded in vessel disease. We call this main vessel "the widow maker" in medicine.
Our skin sucks for protection from the environment, and very sensitive to subtle temperature changes.
I'm quite familiar with Game Analyst. He'll happily quote scripture as "evidence" for God, so his support for such a video is unsurprising.
As for the video, I skipped through and then watched the closing and some of the questions. The lecturers argument basically boils down to the weakest of all ID claims, namely "It looks designed therefore it must be designed". He even throws in handwavey claims that he is not required to offer an alternative mechanism to evolution because "proving" the influence of intelligence is sufficient and somehow science, alluding that its probably beyond the reach of our material world anyway (something he seemingly claims of the human mind too).
This video and related arguments are terrible. Yes, Game Analyst, you have low standards.
Bravo, sir. Bravo.
On the point of two breathing tubes: have you ever had nasal congestion? Now imagine you couldn't use your mouth as a failsafe breathing apparatus.
googleplex
Member
Why? The human eye is horribly inefficient. Human eyes are shit.
SolidusDave
Member
Should have posted this video that brings the point across in just a minute:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4yBvvGi_2A
I'll remember to add a warning next time when i link to Atomic Rocket for any reason.
Oh, shit, i've posted a few TV Tropes links without warnings... gotta remember to add those next time...
Eh, it's not so bad. There are far worse eyes out there. For a mammal, we've done good.
Humans are the best at controlling pressure or at having a soft touch. Someone who has a body that is like a chimps would not be able to perform surgery for example. A chimp would crush you in hand to hand combat though.
Could you have conceived of a better eye?
CornBurrito
Member
Wow what an awful video.
We could make human eye better protected, have less issues in general, and make night vision substantially better as well. In addition to features it currently has.
EDIT well, i hope it could be better. Unfortunately i reckon there has to be compromsises...
Have you seen the gigapixel pictures floating around the net?
jamesinclair
Banned
Why the fuck did cancer evolve?
All hindsight bias.
We don't have the best eyes, we don't have the greatest finger strength, we're not the fastest runners, we don't have the longest life-spans, and we don't have the largest brains.
But none of that even matters. We are the dominant species on this planet.
We didn't need to have all the best equipment to be the best there is.
Cancer has always been with us and many other organisms.
SolidusDave
Member
Add the reflective tapetum lucidum for some nice night vision (e.g. cats)
Need much higher cone&rod cell density and a second fovea for some awesome zoom (e.g. eagles)
Add more (1-13) color receptive cone cell types to see more colors (e.g. birds/mantis shrimp), btw. this also enables to see UV light etc.
Maybe in the future we can enhance ourselves though
googleplex
Member
Is this a troll?
Those aren't natural bananas! Those bananas where grown and cultivate over generations by humans purposely to get the traits we wanted. Natural bananas are ugly, seed filled things.
What the fuck!
Edit: It was a troll and I fell for it! Lol good one.
Cancer is something that usually happens after you have kids. Of course, there's probably a slight selective effect to ensure that you can actually raise your progeny to reproductive age, but there's really no reason for your genes to keep you around after you've spread your seed.
googleplex
Member
Do you have any ideal of how much of the electromagnetic spectrum we don't see?
We have shit night vision and we can't see things like ionizing radiation. Hell, there are mammals that have much better vision then we do.
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