If Intelligent Design were true, how come humans are not designed very intelligently?

Question

Sorry Deejay a, but berickf has it right, and that is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to looking at our human anatomy. Either God is a sadist, or this is further proof towards the process of evolution.

Answer 1

How very true. As the Hominid upright posture formed and we became bipedal this had a lot of costs. Back problems are extremely prominent in humans while rare in other species that hang their weight uniformly from their spines as opposed to compressing it straight down our spines. Our abdominal muscles are still adjusting to this bipedal posture frequently resulting in hernias and our altered sweat system from endochrine to eccrine has resulted in prolific acne problems, especially during our puberty. Gods cruel joke as part of his intelligent design? I think not, just the scars of evolution.

Answer 2

Intelligent Design is part of the "filling gaps" idea. With this, Christians say that God is responsible for the various "holes" in theories.

What's wrong with this idea is that we are closing these holes every day, so they themselves are suggesting that God becomes less and less important. Lack of knowledge does not mean "God did it," and to believe otherwise is quite ignorant.

Intelligent Design is purely faith, and will never be anything more. It is obvious things are not perfectly designed... I don't know what the hell my appendix is doing there (actually I do, we just EVOLVED to not need it anymore). I highly doubt God guides the mutations that are selected for or against.

Should we "teach the controversy," even though one side has no basis in fact or rationality?

Answer 3

Our ears are not optimal for hearing.
Our noses have rather poor olfactory ability.
Our knees are not energy efficient.
Our spines are not well adapted to being vertical.
Our jaws are not large enough for the "wisdom teeth"
Our intestines still include a useless extension called the appendix
Our goosebumps are basically an attempt to make ourselves seem bigger by having our hair stand on end but we don't have enough hair for this reflex to be effective
Our calves still contain an unused muscle called the gastrocnemis, used in arboreal primates but not landwalking humans

These are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head. Some perfect creator. If we are made in the image of god, as so many claim, then god is obviously pretty lousy in makeup as well...

Answer 4

Yeah, I want to have a chat with this supposedly benevolent Creator about my bad knees, bad PMS, poor eyesight, wisdom teeth, and that burst appendix that nearly killed me when I was a baby. Evolution explains all that, and more, very neatly, but I can't conceive of a loving God purposefully putting all of that in.

Answer 5

It is obvious not a question of intelligent design so much as a question of why there has to be any question about it in the first place. We're kind of lucky there was a design at all.

Answer 6

Yeah, its also why many peoples have sight problems and many others have bad teeth needing metal wirings... I got a collection of about 500 fossils, and about 60% of them having their skulls, and I can tell you that I have never seen an animal with teeth problems other than broken ones... If intelligent design is true, then we have been designed in a Chinese factory with Chinese made materials!

Answer 7

It depends on your definition of "intelligence."
The word has several different meanings, and
most of them have nothing much to do with the
sort of intelligence that you're probably thinking
of.
A computer, for example--a machine designed
by humans--is "intelligently designed" by way of
intricate circuitry. It has a brain, and can perform
virtually all the functions of its creator, with the
one exception of feeling; it doesn't have emotions.
But a human being--which, arguably, was created
by God--although it's impossible for one not to have
emotions, can be as "mechanical" as a computer:
if a person's conditioning has caused them to be
mentally-ill, they can appear to be as void of
emotions as a computer.
(Does that, though, imply lack of intelligence? No.
What it implies is that the person has suffered a
severely traumatic experience, because of what
a Christian would call "an act of God.")

Answer 8

Give an objective definition for "designed intelligently," and we can begin. Bipedalism can be responsible for a host of conditions, but it's not like the quadrupeds live in perfect harmony with their bodies.

If you're claiming that God could only make us with perfect bodies that never suffered from pain or disease or that never wore out, that's fine. But that's your claim, not anyone else's. You're missing a step in the logic. In fact, you seem to be implying that humans are constructed haphazardly, with lots of serious flaws. If that's true, it's a wonder how we ever got selected this way in the first place, and how we ever managed to survive at all. Evolution isn't really known for shoddy results either.

As it is, bipeds of our kind tend to deal extremely well with heat, and we are extremely efficient, if not the fastest runners. Even out-of-shape Americans can run down rabbits and lizards and the like. People who run from a very young age, like Prehistoric hunters probably did, had the stamina to run down things like deer. There are definite advantages to our form. If you want to infer the non-existence of God from that, I guess that's your call.

Answer 9

Your answer to this of course, is not only found in the book which I will recommend below, but in the account of the fall of Adam, wherein, the serpent persuaded Eve to choose death, disease, decay and imperfection generally, over the perfection that God had created.
Very simple stuff, really, people.

Now, for further indeph challenge, please note the following:


A prime reason is because D Towers, over his recent 9 year research, in his work, ‘TWO BIRDS ... ONE STONE!!', discovered, unequivocally, that Man and the snake are precise opposites of one another! ... in ALL aspects - both anatomically and behaviorally!
That is eerie!!!

But once we have recovered from the shock of such a discovery, we immediately realize that only a Master mind could have engineered such, and that random mutation certainly wasn't 'random", if at all!!

The other gravital realization that strikes is that it overwhelmingly supports the Biblical Adam and Eve, wherein it was the snake [serpent] who tempted Eve to oppose God, and set up "opposition in all things' in the first place!

Those who religiously 'hail' 'Biological Evolution of the Species' as some genuine, realistic, form of life source explanation:
BACK TO THE DRAWING BOARD NOW, AND WORK ON THAT ONE!!

Answer 10

Look at it this way. An absolutely top of the line computer can come off the productionline and go into use. It's equipped with all the latest super-tech features and has the capability to do anything you ever heard of a computer being able to do and then some. But an external intelligence has to operate that computer.
Now, think of a computer that actually has to "operate itself" But because it has personal feelings, and desires, and self interests, and ambitions, and the ability to even harm other computers if it will help get it what it wants, it often puts all of these things into use, and in the process, not only harms the good order of the whole community of computers around it, but even harms its own self.
If we assume that some supreme "intelligence" actually designed those computers and then left them to manage themselves, it doesn't mean that that intelligence did a lousy job of the design. It incorporated into the design all the absolutely best capabilities for perfect operation. One of these computers was put inside the head of each "being" called a human, but these humans were all very different in the way they operated their computer. Some were excellent at it, and some were terrible.
What could the "supreme computer designer" have done differently? He could have left out one component in his "humans".... the ability to operate individually according to each one's own will. In other words not give humans the ability to think and make any decisions for themselves one way or another, but just shuffle around like a bunch of robots, responding to certain behaviour signals. Do you think that would have been very "intelligent"?

Just imagine what this world full of humans would be like if we lacked individual initiative. We would not have individual interests, and individual skills and abilities... to be designers, builders, electricians, inventors, artists, musicians, and all the amazing variety of things that individual humans have come to be good at and had the ability to accomplish.

When we shake our heads and groan because of all the terrible things that some humans have done, and are doing, we forget about all the incredible, remarkable, mind-bogglingly magnificent things that we, as a whole species of beings, have accomplished. Every day, from the moment we wake up in the morning till when we close our eyes to go to sleep at night..... and even throughout that night...... we are enjoying the benefits of aaaalllll those amazing accomplishments that our fellow humans have achieved, and learned how to put to use for all of us. Every day that passes, we, as a species, are making even greater discoveries and accomplishing even bigger and better things.
Actually, I don't subscribe to the concept of some "mysterious invisible superbeing" , whether you want to call it "God" or "Intelligent Designer" But if I did, I certainly wouldn't accuse that Superbeing of making a lousy job of inventing humans. I would say it was a superb job, and one that is proving itself with each successive generation of humans. What we are is a "work in progress", having come a long way, but with a long journey still ahead of us. I am very happy to have been one tiny little "individual being" who has been able to be a part of that journey.