How can you deny the existence of an intelligent designer when you hear the life cycle of Onchocerca volvulus?

Question

The simulium fly thrive near fast-flowing rivers alongside humans who use the rivers for their water supply. Onchocerca volvulus lives in the fly's saliva glands and pass into humans when bitten. These larvae mature into breeding adults and produce thousands more larvae. They can live off the tissue inside the human host for years. They can be seen crawling under the skin or swimming inside the eye. When not feeding off the host they wait near the skin so that they may enter another simulium fly as it bites, to invade another human host later on.

If they die inside the host without being carried away, the larva corpse causes an infection. This will eventually happen in the eye, leading to certain blindness. But this doesn't matter to the larva because it does not kill the host organism.

The beautiful symmetry of this process, and they remarkable way O. volvulus has of continuing its life cycle can only point to the beneficence of an intelligent creator, don't you agree?

Unpope: there are thousands of examples of which the malarial parasite is just one. But there's something about having our eyes eaten by worms that grabs the attention, don't you think?

Or perhaps it doesn't...

Answer 1

satire is once again indistinguishable from the real thing. in behe's newest book "the edge of evolution", he sings the praises of the malaria parasite.

Answer 2

There is one major flaw with this argument of irreducible complexity. You are assuming that the Onchocerca Volvulus didn't mutate and has always existed in its current form.

The life cycle it exists in today is very complex, but that doesn't mean that it's life cycle was different millions of years ago. It may have been hosted in dragonflies, millions of years ago, and then one day, a dragon fly bit a dinosaur and the bug was transferred, into a new environment where it flourished. But that new environment caused different mutations to be more successful, so the decedents of that bacteria became quite different from the original, and had completely different life cycles as a result.

Here is a link that will shed some light on the current scientific findings relating to irreducible complexity.

Hope this helps.

EDIT:

Yep, you miss one word "beneficence" and the meaning of the whole thing changes. OOOOOpps

Answer 3

Being a scientific person, I must reject both views. I simply don't know. But what about the myriads of angels that even Shirley Maclaine seems to buy. I find it impossible to believe that there are no incorporeal beings with the universe as big as it is . And I am not contradiction my hesitation above. We know there is at least one spiritual-material mix and we know there are fully material. Why not fully spiritual ? IF you do a search on the Great Chain of Being you will see that virtually everybody used to accept this.

Answer 4

I think sansfear didn't quite get it; I think you aren't making a case for an intelligent designer but rather against it.

While fascinating and interesting and a good example, wouldn't the lowly mosquito have sufficed as an example?

Answer 5

Re: intelligent creator...Don't agree.Description of Onchocera volvulus fly fasinating though.

Answer 6

Doesn't seem very intelligent from the perspective of the "host."

If we were intelligently designed, wouldn't we be able to eradicate our bodies of this creature?

Answer 7

Thank goodness I'm a Jawa.

Answer 8

I'll think of this next time I hear "All creatures great and small".

Answer 9

You mean someone actually watches animal planet?

Answer 10

Thanks for the terminal case of heebie-jeebies...