Not to beat a dead horse, so I will try not to. Here are perhaps some thoughts, scientific and not, to ponder on. Sorry about the length. Has anyone given the thought that ID and evolution... I should say the natural selection part of the evolution theory could co-exist. 1. I propose that you imagine you are the intelligent designer. For your own purpose you wish to create maybe a science experiment, maybe a faith based "test", maybe you just got this crazy thought that you'd like to see what these life forms you can create will be after a million, or 100 million years of living in the space you give them to inhabit. A. You are ruled by the laws of Physics - because lets face it - they exists, and I doubt anyone would want to work without them... They are actually a guide and aid to our hypothesized ID. B. You want to create a space for your intelligent life, you have to give them certain things to be able to grow and populate. And you have to design them is such a way so that without your interference they can continue to grow and populate, after all, how much interference are you going to give an experiment, or faith based test, especially when your crowning achievement, that "intelligent" life form you are producing goes and messes things up all the time because he thinks for himself? You may give life some assistance from time to time when asked, but for the most part you're a hands of kind of ID. C. You have to prepare for every contingency, because you'd really like to see what a million, or 100 million year outcome will be, and for your experiment to continue, you know its got to be designed pretty well without your constant help. In answer to Kurt's question about biological design I can only say: A. why do men have nipples? Maybe it's a contingency plan. I have heard of women producing milk even though they have not given birth. I have heard a wives tale that there have been men who could produce milk, but of course, I do not have a source to quote, and cannot prove any assertion, so I will make none, but just to say that perhaps the yet to be found "Homo Whatever" they finally are able to prove was our ancient ancestor from 4 million years ago had functioning mammary glands and chose to not do the job, something about a fire he had to keep going, or an animal that needed to be skinned at that exact moment, or some such excuse for not doing it, and so now man doesn't need these things on his chest. B. Women giving birth, and wouldn't an ID make it easier? How big do you propose a women should get? Are her hips to be so wide as to not let her stand or walk? What design would you propose instead?
From personal experience, I am built exactly right for having babies. Having had four children, I can tell you I would not choose to be built any other way. I do not see the design of my body as a flaw. I would choose to be no bigger than I am, thank you very much. Women have had babies from time on end without medical help. Its only the last 100 years that women have been hospitalized for births and given "Professional help". Before doctors there were mothers, and sisters, and sometimes a man would even help :). Women are stronger than I think you have given them credit for. Yes, its dangerous and women died, but the fact that our species has continued to exist and grow over millions of years pretty much proves to me that the design is flawless. I do not know what you would suggest would be better...? I just realized that sounded like an attack - but it wasn't meant to be. I was very amused by the question is all. Lets look at the egg aspect. People having been born with larger than normal brains, I believe have the largest head compared to body size of any mammal at the time of birth. Human babies are helpless at birth in the physical arena, and need to be taken care of. Lets look at every animal on earth who bears eggs. They do not care and nurture their young the way a human baby needs to be nurtured and cared for. Would mothers feel like carrying a off spring around constantly for the first two years of that child's life if the birth was from an egg instead of feeling that offspring every day for the last six months of gestation? I think not. Human babies also need constant renewal of food sources during gestation. How big do you think a woman would have to be to lay an egg the size a human off spring would need to both feed it for nine months of gestation, and allow the baby to reach full size? I wouldn't want to lay that egg!! Babies also need warmth, oxygen transfer, waste transfer and a host of other things that eggs are not optimized to do. The system still looks perfect to me. C. Your body is built to function the way it should. Humans do have to die. Everything on the planet does. Finite space on this world. If the Hypothesized ID built indestructible humans, we would have to turn cannibal in order to feed our selves and have space to live, to say nothing of the waste that would grow. The ID would be forced to make us weak and fragile by design in order for everything to work properly. D. Flightless birds? As previously stated, if our ID were running an experiment and/or a faith based test he would have to have made natural selection part of the equation in order to keep all species alive and allow us to adjust in an ever changing environment. Birds may have found a haven without predators, enough food for survival, and thought to themselves, "why should we ever leave this place" The birds who used their wings and left, still have them and live elsewhere, the birds who did not fly lost their ability to do so. The land mass moved so that birds who could only fly short distances could no longer could reach the island, end of story.
Now back to our hypothesis - because of course we will never be able to prove the existence of an ID unless he or she wants to be known. After all, you would have to be incredibly intelligent to create all this, and you could choose to stay pretty incognito. I believe you would actually choose to stay anonymous because if she/he presents himself to us and says "here I am", he/she has ruined all the faith based things he/she set up. And If she/he reveals him/herself to scientists, what would they have left to hypothesize and quibble over? Maybe its fun to see us living in such ignorance. If your running an experiment you'd just sit back and let it run. Why waste time letting your experiment know they're just a glob in a Petri dish? If however there is no ID and the seeds of life came from a comet or meteor, if perhaps there is alien life that sent the seeds of their own kind to earth, then lets go look for them, oh wait, we are already doing that. Lets hope we can find them soon so we can teach the truth of that in our schools. (Sarcasm here.) If perhaps life did come from a primordial soup, why isn't life still coming from there? Why did it stop? What event happened to make it come from there? What event happened to make it stop coming from there? If evolution is true, why cant it be proved? Why isn't there evidence surrounding us? Why is it so difficult to find? Why doesn't life cross classifications any longer? How would scientists expect to find Homo Sapiens if we evolved from a totally different life form? Maybe if evolution is true, there is no 4 million year old bones waiting for us that are Homo Sapien, because we evolved from a different species after that time frame. If we cant cross classification lines now, why did we then? Why aren't we becoming a different species than we once were? If these aren't legitimate questions, how do scientists think we came about from primordial soup? All I can see are more questions. I believe theories belong in schools because they keep us asking questions. They may not be true, they aren't proven, but they give us food for thought. Evolution does not take away from my religion. It is not proven, children learn this, I would not want my idea of an intelligent designer to be mutated by a school system into just a "theory" which is all they could say about it. Leave teaching of an ID for church and home. What we don't learn in schools, parents need to make up for by finding religion, or teaching their own theories, if they so choose. But religion is a very personal thing, were science isn't so much. No one went on a crusade and burned people for the sake of proving weather a fruit fly has this or that trait from the parent fly. Religion is too deep in the core of a person, and every one of us should have the right to choose to believe what they will about their own religion. It should not be taught in schools because religion is too diverse an opinion to teach in schools, and everyone of us has the right to believe and have their kids taught exactly what they choose. I don't want a teacher teaching my child religion as a "curriculum". It wouldn't do it justice. We cant agree, so why don't we choose to disagree, and teach scientific fact in our schools, with a dose or two of "What if?" thrown in. We can keep religion under our own much tighter control in our separate places of worship. After all, we all have our own minds, free agency, intelligence to make informed decisions. Our children will figure out their own minds as they grow and learn. What they learn in school will influence them, but that's not the only place to learn. My two cents. Lisa Zeigler