IamHis #fundie

IamHis #fundie rr-bb.com

When people talk about 'evolution' I tell them only a finished design is functional. And they usually get very quiet.

122 comments

old comment by Passerby

They get quiet because they don't like you and hope you'll go away. Only a finished design can function eh? Let's take the clock, for a historical and recognizable example. A sundial can be used but it's not practical, it relies on positioning and clear weather. So they made gearworks powered by winding mechanisms and weights to counter the environment. Those proved more useful but the designs were only applicable on large scales due to the limitations of available tools. Then the tools improved and we could miniaturize the process creating clocks we could fit on our dresser or wear on our wrists. But winding them every day proved troublesome so batteries were devised to power the gears. Eventually we did away with the gears that made them originally run and gave them digital displays. So a thousand years of tweaks and improvements from the sundial to the digital watch... Not exactly a finished design but one we've been using for a very, very long time regardless.

Epic Fail.

old comment by dionysus

only a finished design is functional

You've obviously never worked in software development.

And they usually get very quiet

1) They realize that you're not worth the time to educate as you're unambiguously demonstrating that you haven't even taken the time to learn the basics of ToE.

2) The people you're asking aren't experts in the field.

Try your little exercise on a university biology professor and if s/he doesn't laugh you out of the room s/he'll explain in great detail just why you're wrong. Not that you'd listen anyway. Hmmm, and that might be yet another...

3) They realize you probably won't listen anyway so it'd be a waste of their time.

old comment by Atheissimo

I would like you to point out one thing on Earth to me that is a finished design. Just one.

Your computer? Assuming yours is the latest model available, in six months there will be one in the shops twice as small and twice as powerful. Is your computer functional?

Your desk? Before modern carpentry was invented your desk would have been held together with nails. Nowadays we can use new kinds of joints and wood glue. Is your desk functional?

Your house? 400 years ago most houses were made out of a combination of wood and straw, the walls were coated in a mixture of mud, pee and dung. Nowadays we use bricks. Is your house functional?

So... over a period of hundreds of years tiny changes have been made to each of these items. Some of the changes have made them more useful and revolutionised the way we use them and some have been cosmetic changes. Eventually they have changed to become unrecognisable from what they were originally (have a look at an early vacuum cleaner for example).

What's the name for that again? It begins with E and ends with volution. (Albeit artificial evolution)

old comment by Angua

Well, those people are probably trying to be polite. You know what they say, "if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all." And there is no way I could ever respond to that argument while still being nice.

That, or they are are struck dumb by your utter stupidity. Or think that you are obviously so delusional that you are edging towards insanity and are afraid that anything they say might send you into a fit of blind rage.

Because . . . damn! Just, damn! What the hell is your problem? This has got to be the most debunked creationist argument ever. I wouldn't be surprised it this was simply the most thoroughly debunked argument of all time.

Where do we even start? Even Darwin dealt with how "organs of extreme perfection", like the eye, could have evolved. And yet still we hear people making the same arguments about everything from eyes to wings to bacterial flagellum. And every time they have been shown to be completely and thoroughly wrong.

How the hell is it that in 2011 there are people with access to a keyboard, with enough education to know how to type, that are still making this argument?!?

What the hell is with this? It's not like information that shows how wrong this whole line of argument is isn't readily available and accessible to the general public. I have a brother in elementary school -- and even he would think that you're an idiot. Yeah, children in elementary school can tell you just how wrong this is.

WHY DOES THIS ARGUMENT STILL EXIST? WHY?!?

old comment by Shax

When people talk about 'evolution' I tell them only a finished design is functional.

I know, right? It's just like how engineers slaved away at primitive machines that couldn't work for centuries because they weren't the finished, sleek, modern versions we have now. I know my grandparents bitched endlessly about the trucks they owned that just sat taking up space in their driveways because they weren't able to run, being unfinished. Heck, I remember staring at the NES I owned when I was a kid, frustrated and dreaming of the day years hence when game consoles would finally be finished, so that they would actually run games.

And they usually get very quiet.

...because they suddenly realize that they're talking to someone with a skull made of solid lead who can't reason his way out of a paper bag, and they get very uncomfortable.

old comment by Mrs. Antichrist

Wrong. Let's take the eye, for instance An eye without a lens is still better than no eye at all -- the millions of people who have had cataract surgery will tell you that. A few photo-sensitive cells, such as the ones seen on multiple lifeforms that lack any "true" eyes, are better than none. There has never been a sufficient example of irreducible complexity, even when studying the most complex of living structures. Stop picturing crocoducks, and start looking at the REAL world -- you'll find plenty of examples of lifeforms that have organs that only contain a few of the elements that ours do, yet they get along just fine.

And the idea that organs are "finished" once they reach a certain point is absurd.

The fact that some people are ignorant of this stuff hardly proves that the theory is flawed -- it just shows that schools need to step up their game in educating the public about science.

old comment by TWoozl

Would you care to explain the pineal gland, then, which essentially is an atavistic eye? Or perhaps why our eyes aren't as effective as the mantis shrimp, which can discern different spectra and types of polarized light. Or why snakes have two optically functional eyes and a third, related distantly to the pineal gland in concept which exists solely to monitor infrared emissions, without actually having a lens, iris, or other moving components. Just a patch of monitoring cells and nervous tissue.

The rough equivalent of a fundamentalist arguing that evolution is false because we can't see all the steps (Or in the egregiously stupid cases, trying to state we can't see any intermediary steps, ignoring literally billions of empirical examples)?

It's arguing that you can't drive from Chicago to New York because the mileage signs don't appear the whole way, and you can't see the whole route all at once. Evolution's transitional steps are the mile-signs; Tested and evaluated points along the path that correlate to the same direction of travel. In this case, intellectual and scientific.

And you wonder why people fall silent, then internally condemn you as an idiot who was beaten about the head as a child with the wrong book.

old comment by Anon-e-moose

"When people talk about 'evolution' I tell them only a finished design is functional. And they usually get very quiet."

When fundies talk about 'creationism', I tell them just three words:

Kitzmiller versus Dover.

And they STFU.

@JSS

"Think of it how Apple's products work. Apple continuously comes out with new gadgets like the iPhone and iPad that are often improvements over their predecessors. That doesn't mean the predecessors and earlier ideas aren't functional, as they perform the functions they were meant to do just fine. It means that the new products are improved versions of older ones. A lot like how evolution works."

Now if only Steve Jobs & co. could evolve a brain between them and devise a method so that I (and others like me) could use their products (iPod) etc without the need for that fucking awful iTunes.. Say, via a supplied utility that rewrites the firmware so that Windows users like yours truly could transfer tracks over to said iPod using nothing more than Drag & Drop via Windows Explorer (or a similar program, such as ACDSee). And that said altered iPod could play conventional MP3s instead of it's own proprietary format.

Otherwise I'll stick with my generic MP3 players, thanks, Apple. One word: Archos.

IamHis #fundie rr-bb.com

122 comments

Confused?