Seth Andrews vs God: Who is the Better Intelligent Designer?

We often think it is pointless to engage religious fundamentalists. Well, Seth Andrews was a fundamentalist Christian talk show host. After hearing a talk by Christopher Hitchens, Andrews saw the light and started his path toward atheism.

The Humanist Society was honored to host Andrews and attendees were delighted by his amusing and informative talk: “Seth Andrews vs God: Who is the Better Intelligent Designer?”

Andrews started off quoting Isaiah 64:8 “we are the clay, and thou our potter; and we all are the work of thy hand”. He showed the famous “Creation of Adam” Michelangelo painting on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

Full disclosure: It is forbidden to take photos of it. So I only took one! Back when it involved film and a big noisy camera. People don’t realize this famous scene is just a tiny piece of the ceiling fresco. Here is my photo:

In any case, Andrews focused in on the testicles. Why did they have to go there? They are very vulnerable and subject to painful attack. We know that better designs are possible.

Frog testes are safely inside their bodies. For mammals, the testes would get too hot inside the body and the sperm would die. But rats, mice and hares can retract their testicles most of the time, letting them out just when needed.

Yet “Intelligent Design” (ID) claims humans are the product of an Intelligent Designer who made us according to a perfect design.

The so-called “Discovery Institute” (DI) promotes ID. The name is interesting, since they do no actual discovery there. Kind of like the mis-named Liberty University and the mis-named Family Research Council, he noted.

In reality, it is named after the Royal Navy ship HMS Discovery in which George Vancouver explored Puget Sound in 1792

The Discovery Institute in fact is a right wing think tank, founded in 1991, based in Seattle. Michael Behe is a biochemist and senior fellow at DI. Despite God’s perfect design work, Andrews noted that Behe wears corrective eyeglasses.

Behe claims that the human eye is “irreducibly complex”, like a car engine. Meaning that all parts have to work perfectly, or else it won’t work at all. Which is actually not true about the eye.
Stephen C. Meyer is another irreducible complexity guy at the DI. He wrote a book “Signature in the Cell” that claims that the existence of DNA proves ID.

William Albert Dembski is an American mathematician, philosopher and theologian who is also a DI fellow. He also wears eyeglasses.

From Wikipedia:

Kenneth Alfred Ham is an Australian Christian fundamentalist, young Earth creationist, apologist and former science teacher, living in the United States. He is the founder, CEO, and former president of Answers in Genesis, a Christian apologetics organization that operates the Creation Museum and the Ark Encounter.

He also wears eyeglasses. Andrews has toured both of his exhibits. Ham dislikes DI because it is not specific enough. He believes that we were designed by Yahweh, the god of the Bible. Not just any old “designer”.

Abby Hafer wrote “The Not So Intelligent Designer” book. Andrews narrated it as an audio book for her. Her book shows that evolution explains the bad designs of the human body in a way that ID does not. He gave her credit for using much of her material in his talk.

He starts with the human eye. Like a camera, there is a lens and a photo sensitive imaging layer, the retina. But all of the blood vessels and nerve wiring for the retina are in front of the retina. Which blocks some of the light and lowers the sharpness of what we see. Where these nerves bundle together and exit the retina, there is a blind spot.

Is a better design possible? Yes. The octopus puts the nerves and blood vessels on the back of the retina. A far superior design. It sees better in dim light.

Geckos can have 350 times better color vision at night than we do. Then there is the eagle, which can see two miles away and into the ultraviolet.

But an intelligent designer could do even better, in principle. Why not macro and/or zoom lenses? And what’s with all of the allergies that make a mess of our eyes?

Maybe eyes on the backs of our heads would be a distraction most of the time. But maybe on demand it would be handy?

We have defects like glaucoma and cataracts. Why not make the eyeball modular, with the modules replaceable when they fail? “That would be REAL Intelligent Design!”

Brian Stanley is an engineer and machinist who lost an eye to cancer. He made the best of it by making a set of implant eyes with a variety of functions. Including a flashlight. And holiday versions.

85% of Americans need to have their wisdom teeth removed. And we get one set of adult teeth that have to serve us for life.

Again, another species got a much better deal than humans. Sharks have multiple rows of teeth that cycle through every 2-3 weeks. Not long enough to build up plaque. And sharks can breathe underwater. Why can’t we? African lungfish can breathe above and below water. Consider that 230,000 people drown every year.

And what is with putting our breathing tube and our eating tube in the same place? There are 5,000 choking deaths a year just in the US.

And why do humans have hair that is of little value? Either fill it in or get rid of it! We have two to five million follicles. About the same as other apes. But it is not functionally useful.

Lack of hair leaves us open to skin cancer. 700,000 new skin cancer cases a year in the US. If no hair, why not natural sunblock?

Humans are subject to many genetic defects. Hemophilia and Huntington’s to name a couple. There are 790,000 knee replacements each year in the US.

We are bipeds that evolved from quadrupeds. We were not intelligently designed bipeds. One quarter of adults have arthritis.

Then there is the appendix. It may have some value to support the immune system. But it is not a great design. It can get blocked and cause a painful death without speedy surgery.

Speaking of pain, yes it is an important signal. But after we get the signal, why can’t we turn it down or off? Instead, we have to take morphine or other powerful narcotics. Which have their own problems.

For some cases of pain relief an epidural is used. Notably, for childbirth. Not an optimal solution. But better than how we were designed.

Speaking of childbirth, what kind of crazy design makes a bony pelvic circle for the birth canal that is smaller than the baby’s head? 287,000 women still die each year worldwide during childbirth.

For those who don’t die, some develop a fistula that leads to urine constantly leaking for the rest of the mother’s life.

Some have argued that the human design is the best compromise possible between the survival of mother and infant. Not so.

Again, we know that a better design is possible, because some other animals have such a better design. Kangaroos and other marsupials give birth to a tiny embryo. Which is then reared in a pouch. There is even a handy nipple inside the pouch. For six months, the baby kangaroo can leave and return at will. No maternal pain, tearing, injury or death needed.

40-60% of human embryos may be lost between fertilization and birth. An important point for the anti-Choice crowd. The Intelligent Designer is by far the most prolific abortionist in history.

And what Intelligent Designer would place the sewer line next to the entertainment line in the uro-genital area?

Why 300 million sperm if just one is predestined to win?

And what is with the foreskin? The Bible calls for it to be cut off? Why doesn’t it come that way already?

In the modern world, overweight and obesity is a bigger problem than lack of food. Why not shed excess calories?

Some people are ambidextrous, able to use both hands equally. Why not everybody?

I forget what came next, but he also talked about how flawed our memory system is. Again, we know it is possible to make a better memory system that is more accurate and more accessible. Our computer files are one example. But some people are also better at this. As we get older, our best contribution to others is our shared wisdom. Why is it in old age, when we most need memory, we start to lose it?

We should be able to regenerate limbs. As certain other species can do. Including some salamanders, which share most of our body architecture and DNA. It is possible. Regenerating the spine could go along with that.

Most of Earth is covered in sea water that we cannot drink. And there are sea creatures like whales that can drown. There are winged animals that cannot fly. And animals with eyes that cannot see. Not the best designs.

And why do animals have to eat each other? Usually, alive. Why not protein-fortified fruits or vegetables instead. He imagined picking a rack of lamb from the garden.

He quickly ran through some ghoulish examples of living things causing huge amounts of suffering for their survival. Including the loa loa nematode (worm) that lives in human eyeballs. Related nematodes cause river blindness. Was that design really necessary?

There are zombie mushrooms that grow out of the brains of ants. A parasite that infects snails and causes them to produce “caterpillars” on their heads. Causing them to be eaten by birds. These are not humans, but why all that suffering?

Some designs make no sense if created by ID. The recurrent laryngeal nerve in the giraffe makes an absurdly long route and U-turn. Fifteen feet instead of a few inches.

Then there are all of the mass extinctions. While some ID people believe the Earth is just a few thousand years old, others believe it is much older. 99.9% of all species that ever lived are now extinct. Why all that waste?

ID apologists try to justify some of the bad designs due to Adam and Eve defying God and eating the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden.

Remember, this is a God who is supposed to be all knowing. Kind of like giving a hand grenade to a nursery school class and getting angry at the children for pulling the pin.

One angle is the Mother Teresa angle: Suffering brings us closer to God. None of this explains the suffering of so many other species. Nor does it explain why the suffering of humans has to go on forever.

Humans use their design ingenuity to get around the bad designs in nature. We build strong buildings to resist tornadoes and hurricanes. We develop meteorology to predict these storms. We make artificial limbs.

Religious people prayed for his father to restore his hearing. That had zero benefit. But a human-designed cochlear implant restored his hearing.

Occasionally a person with a disease or defect is prayed for and they recover. Hallelujah. But God clearly hates amputees. The web site https://whywontgodhealamputees.com/ used to be called “God Hates Amputees” and the message is clear: No amputee has ever had their prayers answered.

We are able to fly and communicate over long distances due to our ingenuity. Not due to our inherent design. Yet some religious figures say we should not do these things that God did not give us.

As absurd as human and animal designs are, they make perfect sense as a result of our understanding of evolution by random mutation and natural selection.

Be sure to check out Seth Andrews’ web site here!

https://www.thethinkingatheist.com/

– Robert Bernstein