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Taking a leaf from the book of Intelligent Design proponents, and coming up with theories in the spirit of free inquiry...
In the spirit of free inquiry, I would like to propose some alternatives to Intelligent Design and Evolution:
1) Organisms spontaneously appeared in the time-space continuum
2) Aliens came to earth and spawned it with new species
3) Reality is an illusion. We are all fungi growing on the surface of an alien planet, and tricked into thinking we're humans.
I challenge everyone to rebut these theories. I will, of course, add as many ad-hoc statements as necessary to buttress said theories.
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Re: Vestigial Organs-Pelvic Girdle of Whale
Because pelvic girdles are present in land mammals but not fishes.
I'm guessing that erection and vaginal contraction in fishes are aided by some other structure which does the job more efficiently than the pelvic girdle in whales.
Put simply: why use an atom bomb to kill an ant? It does the job, but it's overkill. If someone used an atom bomb to kill an ant, we'd call him stupid, for an intelligent ant-killer would just step on the ant.
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Hi all,
In the last lecture, we learnt that vestigial organs did not necessarily imply that they do not have any use, but just that we cannot understand them in today's use, ie: there is a function, but does not perform the original function.
From an evolutionary point of view, the Pelvic Girdle of whales showed that whales evolved from land animals. However, Bergman and Howe point out that they are different in the male and female whales. They are not useless at all, but help penis erection in the males and vaginal contraction in the females (really??). So yes, we see that it does have a function in today's context. However, how are we to know if this wasn't their original function in the first place?
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Re: Vestigial Organs-Pelvic Girdle of Whale
Well that would depend on your priorities - whether you want to reuse a bad (if workable) design to save time and effort, or if you would rather start afresh and have a good design.
As the prof observed: "You know whenever you take an essay for a module that you have used for another module before, it comes out funny". So if you want to get a good grade for your essay, just as if you want a good design, you start afresh.
With all the caveats we add to Intelligent Design, is it really all that different from Evolution? Perhaps we should rename Intelligent Design: 'Somewhat-intelligent, lazy, artistic and imperfect design'. Which happens to describe Evolution, incidentally.
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i'm sorry to sound like a broken record, but personally, i still can't rule out the "template" explanation for Intelligent Design. it might not be the most parsimonious explanation, but template-using itself is definitely parsimonious, and evocative of the intelligence of the designer. it's like how we use copy & paste in word/excel/powerpoint.
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Re: Vestigial Organs-Pelvic Girdle of Whale
If we have 2 theories that explain the same phenomenon, we tend to take the one that explains more facts, and explains them better (and requires fewer assumptions).
If a brick falls off construction scaffolding and hits someone on the head, killing him, we have several possible explanations:
1) Spiderman came zooming by but mistimed his swing. His foot hit the break, which fell over and hit the person on the break. Since Spiderman is so stealthy, no one saw him.
2) A poltergeist picked up the brick and hurled it over the scaffolding. Since poltergeists are invisible, no one saw it.
3) A brick materialised in the air above the man, having been teleported from another dimension. It then fell straight down and hit the person on the head. We can't verify this, since no one was looking at the spot where it materialised, and we don't have a device to detect residual cosmic energies
4) An unnaturally strong pigeon happened to give the brick a peck, and it fell over the scaffolding. It then flew off, so we can't catch it
5) Someone in his kitchen leaned out of the window to cuss at noisy kids on the pavement, and accidentally hit the scaffolding, toppling the brick. He was unaware of his inadvertent manslaughter, and then left for Timbuktu to visit his relatives to take part in a Swahili Music an1d cultural Festival, so we can't track him down and question him.
Which explanation would you pick? They all explain the phenomenon well, don't they?
So to solve this problem according to each explanation, we would do the following:
1) Declare a bounty on the head of Spiderman
2) Call in the Ghostbusters
3) Prepare for an invasion from the other dimension
4) Cull all pigeons in the city
5) Do nothing
This is why we dismiss the conspiracy theories that seem to be so fashionable among a large slice of the American population.