Now, consider if organisms had no "unintelligent design." What if the flounder were designed more like a skate or stingray? What if humans had no residual lung volume with unused air? What if all structures in natures were able to efficiently correlate with their functions to create a intelligently designed organism?
Discuss an example of unintelligent design in an organism. Explain how this example is inefficient with respect to its function, and how it can be improved to serve this function. People who are responding to previous responses may want to try to focus on why this structure's function is important.
An example of unintelligent design would be a the Australian platypus' lack of a stomach. As we have learned from the Digestion Unit, the stomach is extremely essential for the degradation of proteins into amino acids by use of proteases. As said on page 76, all platypuses lack a stomach, though platypuses do have the genes for the production of proteases and a stomach. The genes have been deactivated for reasons unbeknowst to scientists. Some theorize that it is because the food that platypuses eat do not require much "processing"; however, it would be much easier to absorb amino acids if the platypus had a stomach and the proteases and HCl that help digest food.
ReplyDeleteNow, to answer your italicized question, I think that it would be much more difficult to argue evolution if indeed every single structure had an intelligent purpose that functioned purposely. However, because not all mutations in the genes are perfect, evolution persists the most important, though controversial, theories existing in the biological fields of science.
An example of unintelligent design is the tail bone remaining in humans. Along the lines of continuity and change, though humans have changed and no longer have a tail nor need a tail, the tail bone continues to exist as a vestigial organ because humans descended from animals that did have a tail and never lost the trait. The vestigial tail bone was not a vestigial trait humans first developed however, as the Old World apes from which humans evolved also have vestigial tail bones despite the lack of a tail (p. 727). The tail bone is inefficient because the tail bone can be broken, causing unnecessary pain to the organism and my prevent the organism on giving the appropriate degree of attention to processes more vital toward survivalship.
ReplyDeleteI would agree with Ji that if organisms lacked unintelligent design the argument for intelligent design or creationism by the religiously orthodox would be stronger. As it stands however, vestigial organs aid the argument for evolution and the advancement of scientific thought, whereas the religiously orthodox continue to lose ground due to scientific discoveries as they have since the heliocentric solar system debunked the geocentric solar system.
Another example of unintelligent design is the design of the recurrent laryngeal nerve of mammals, described on p82-84 by Coyne. The recurrent laryngeal nerves, which connect the brain to the larynx, or voicebox, have an important function in breathing and speaking. Despite this, "Rather than taking a direct route from the brain to the larynx...the nerve runs down into our chest, loops around the aorta and a ligament derived from an artery, and then travels back up to connect to the larynx." This circuitous path is three times as long as the direct path that the most direct path would take. This unintelligent path increases the risk of injury to the nerve. Even though damage to the nerves (left or right recurrent laryngeal nerve) is "uncommon" according to the University of Maryland Medical Center's online medical reference encyclopedia, damage can result in difficulty breathing, swallowing, and hoarseness (http://www.umm.edu/ency/article/001643sym.htm). These effects can greatly hampering the human's ability to survive and reproduce. However, the reason this unintelligent design is present is once again displaying that ever-present theme in biology: evolution. During evolution from fish to mammals, the laryngeal nerve could not simply break off and reform to take the most direct path possible the way that it would have had to in order to form the best design.
ReplyDeleteAndrew and Ray both stated that a lack of unintelligent design would strengthen the theory of creationism. However, let's not forget that unintelligent design is not the only evidence for evolution. There is the fossil record, with fossil after fossil proving evolution. There are the piles of evidence from biogeography. The diverse distribution of species across the world greatly supports evolution. Coyne explains island biogeography by saying that many of the oceanic islands of the Pacific, South Atlantic, and Indian Ocean share the "same missing groups" of native species. However, even though the organisms are not native to the islands, the species are well adapted to live in their current habitats (Coyne 100-101). These fields of evidence, in addition to new evidence being gathered by the day make sure that even if unintelligent design did not exist, evolution would still have a clear advantage over creationism in terms of evidence and logic.
Additionally, a lack of unintelligent design is not necessarily contrary to evolution. Though it seems to favor creationism, a lack of unintelligent design, when placed in context with all of the other evidence, simply would show that evolution is just extremely effective. There are already many examples of intelligent evolutionary design, such as what type of nitrogenous waste (urea, uric acid, or ammonia) an organism will produce, mechanisms of thermoregulation, method of reproduction, physiological and anatomical adaptations to fit the organism's niche, method of gas exchange, etc. There are so many examples of effective evolution as well as other evidence of evolution that a hypothetical lack of unintelligent design would not take much away from the strength of the theory of evolution.