With a blog name like kansas, I feel it is my right and obligation to launch the Movement to Mock Intelligent Design. I’ll kick it off, then you can add your own examples of Not-So-Brilliant-Design:
- Pandas have 6-ounce babies. A friend of mine just gave birth to almost 13 pounds of twins. Intelligent design, yeah, right.
- Humans walk upright on spines not properly designed for it. Real smart.
- Two words: Emperor Penguins. Have you SEEN that movie? Sadistic Design is more accurate.
- “In human males, the urethra passes right through the prostate gland, a gland very prone to infection and subsequent enlargement. . any moron with half a brain (or less) could design male “plumbing” better.” LINK:
- Dachshunds.
- Oh,and while you’re at it, how about asking a male black widow spider how intelligent he thinks the design of his species is? Supposedly it’s the exception rather than the rule for the female to kill and eat her mate, but that exception probably seems a rather important flaw in the design for him. Sorry, Charlie.
- And speaking of mating, how about a human reproductive cycle that lets women give birth for upwards of thirty years to as many babies as she can pop out? Earth: Round Hole. Human Reproduction: Square Peg.
Those few ought to get you started. What’s the Dumbest Design YOU can think of? And Windows security system doesn’t count.
How intelligent could the designer really be having produced the piece of work currently residing in the oval office? Do ID supporters really need any more than this to show the folly of their “movement”?
No kidding! I should update my diary to add a category all its own:
* The Bush Boys.
Also, while we’re at it, and just to make this totally non-partisan:
* Brothers of U.S. Presidents
Ha ha..and great idea for a diary. mrboma’s weekly posting of the Humanist News Network had a great article on this very subject and how to answer back to all the ‘intelligent’ people who believe the intelligent design theory.. http://humaniststudies.org/enews/index.html?id=211 I’m still trying to wake up so I can’t think of any cool ideas on my own yet. Give me a few hours and lots more coffee and I’ll be back.
Great link! Here’s a quote from it:
You might want to point out that if an omnipotent God created humans and other life forms that He did a poor job designing them. That varicose veins, back problems, hemorrhoids, and difficulty giving birth, are all consequences of human being’s transition to bipedalism. . . (by Tim Gordinier)
Salmon have make a tortuous trip from the ocean back to the stream in which they were originally spawned, often dying before they get there. If they do actually get there, they have sex for the only time in their lives and then die.
OTOH, it does make me feel a lot better about my sex life.
Ha, I wish I could say that.
Which reminds me. People make a big deal out of the first time we (universally speaking, of course) have sex, but what about the last time? If we only knew which one it was going to be, we could do it up right with black candles and draped black crepe.
your comments somewhere so you can reuse them in your books.
And I still think the “I laughed before I killed him” line would be a great book or short story title — especially if it was a satire of the hard-boiled sub-genre.
I’m saving YOUR lines.
I’ll be looking forward to seeing the Blue Dot and the tenuta-leibowitz mindmeld showing up in a fiendishly clever epilogue to your new book.
I suspect, though, you can get a much better scene out of that last screw imagery.
Damn! I KNEW I’d forgotten something.
It’s never too late to hold a wake.
I get your point, I do.
But Dachshunds are one of the very few things in the world that make me even toy with the idea that there might be a God. And a damn smart one!
When I was little I even thought my Dachshund was God. Still open to the idea. 🙂
Actually, I am the proud mother of a miniature dachshund who is, even as we speak, curled up under my armpit. (Smart, you say?) She’s my second one, so you can see I love them. Honest. But, personally, I think I’d have to categorize them under AD, Adorable Design, rather than ID.
She does think she’s God, though. Hmm . . .
If I were a dog with a self-heating bed, I’d think I was really something too…
You are so scary! You never forget ANYthing.
It’s a curse…I’m still debating whether or not to put together an FBC trivia quiz…
That is an awesome idea. Seriously.
Second that. But only if CabinGirl is hosting, and not competing. Pro vs. amatuers.
If I’m not mistaken, the miniature dachshund is a product of human engineering rather than evolution.
Wait. Going to Google it …
Actually they think the dachshund as we know it is the creation of breeders rather than the product of ID or natural evolution!
Boy, I learn something new everyday.
Here’s where I chime in with some useless information.
My best friend in the world is a dwarf. She has achondroplasia….which, i’m pretty sure is what they breed into Dachshunds.
I was enjoying the diary, then I got to “Dachshunds” and I was ROFL.
To address your point, we must back up and ask “how intelligent is it to design a species capable of creating dachshunds?”
A related question: anyone familiar with Les Barker’s song “Dachshunds with Erections Can’t Climb Stairs”?
I believe we have a winner.
And I’m still laughing over the song title.
Or, more importantly, how intelligent is it to design a species that wants to create Dachshunds. I think the actual ability is more or less irrelevant.
Absolutely right. :^)
I meant “capable” to signify both the desire and ability, but I see where that wouldn’t have been very clear…
Les Barker’s stuff is really clever, though many of the parodies depend on a knowledge of British folk music. And he has a fetish for dog-related puns.
You’re debating “Intelligent Design” and claiming to be the mother of a daschund?
lol! Well, I am from Kansas, you know. It is now my excuse for everything.
“Hey, you stepped on my foot!”
“Sorry, I’m from Kansas.”
The whole process of childbirth provides a treasure trove of arguments against intelligent design which I will not go into here for the sake of our male or childless members.
How come (or better put, why…hee hee)is the most sensitive sex organ in the human female located so far away from where the thrust of the action is? Sorry, couldn’t pass up that cheap shot.
Male nipples, and back hair, and ear hair. Wisdom teeth. Republicans.
Fingernails. Really. Why?
Oh, that’s an easy one. To pick off the price tag they stick on the glass part of the picture frame you buy. Not to mention the sticker on the peach skin that you have to remove with either your fingernail or an x-acto knife.
Slaps forehead. Duh. Of course.
Also, without them we would no longer have:
“I’ll take Sounds People Hate for $2000, Alex.”
“Screech.”
“What is Fingernails down blackboard?”
menstruation
and why do they call it “men”struation? Hmmmm?
Because that way it can truly be said that all women’s problems begin with “men.”
What kind of intelligent god purposely fills the world with women with PMS?
with menstruation and its attendant fun, the crafty joker gives us menopause.
As if multiple orgasms could possibly make up for all of that…
more of the joker — multiple orgasms and guys with no attention span.
And the fact that approximately half of all fertilized eggs either never implant or are naturally aborted… Seems to me an Intelligent Designer would have a better success rate, if life and the soul really happened at conception…
My first thought when the ‘miracle of the human body’ is mentioned is always about the ‘naturalness’ of childbirth that so many like to rapture over….and it reminds me of something Robin Williams said many many years ago…on the design and that’s if men would be able to have kids the equivalent would be something akin to passing a bowling ball through the head of their penis..now there’s a guy who really gets it! Natural my ass…and certainly not anywhere near intelligent which would have to make you think that God might either be a wee bit of a moron for that painful design or else he was a bit tired out from creating the heavens above and below and kinda lollygagged around on the day he created ‘Blueprint for Human Body Day’. With a little siesta here and there some godawful designs slipped through.
We’re supposed to be eternally punished for that damned apple, you know, which is probaby why pie crusts are so hard to master.
Actually, something like this happens to female hyenas:
ID = Inhumane Design (or perhaps Incompetent). It must have been the aliens that did it, because no loving God could be so cruel.
OMG, that’s awful! One thing we know for sure after hearing that. . .it’s not the females who are laughing.
what’s the purpose of the uvula? anyone?
Just to make people laugh when you say it. It sounds dirty…but it’s not.
it’s snot? now I’m more confused than before. 😛
My answer,exactly. So maybe the Not-So-Intelligent Designer created the vulva one day–(do these people ever really THINK about what they’re saying God does with his time??)– and got to giggling over that one and then couldn’t resist uvula.
More and more, I’m thinking the Intelligent Designer looks like a lot like Marty Feldman.
This has absolutely nothing to do with uvulas…but I’ll go on anyway.
My 17 year old just bought his first car…a 1995 Volvo. He almost didn’t buy it because it reminded him that his birth father had the hardest time saying volvo and it always sounded more like vulva.
Now that I think about it that’s probably another argument against intelligent design. After the first ten times people laugh hysterically at your mispronunciation of a word you’d think that an intelligently created person would learn to say it correctly.
It provides a “punching bag” for the mouse to hit in those cat-and-mouse cartoons.
it’s also necessary when constructing a genuine Muppet.
The things you know!
These folks work hard to figure it out:
I love it….NUB!
to the master!
Pretty much any non-amphibious sea mammal. A creature that cannot actually breathe in the environment it spends most of its time in is, when you think about it, a damn stupid idea.
Cats. If the supposed Intelligent Designer had really intended humans to be the top of the food chain, why was an entire family of animals (yes, even the wild ones) designed that seems perfectly suited to either eating them or mooching off them?
Sharks. These things are bloody bizarre and, because many species apparently reproduce without really exchanging genetic material, there are chains of genetically identical sharks stretching back millions of years. And many species have to keep swimming, or they consume the oxygen around them too fast and die.
Bananas. Again, they reproduce pretty much by cloning. Really dumb idea for a multi-cellular organism.
Bananas! You get a 4 just for bringing bananas into this.
if we bring up banana slugs?
I’m having a serious case of deja vu here. I could swear my husband did this on our wedding night.
And, I must add, that I believe this is the second time someone has dug up this particular factoid about slugs on this site. Or maybe it was at the orange place…still it says something about us, doesn’t it?
C’est moi! And that time you told me it reminded you of high school — which I found very disturbing but that was early on before I knew you were SIN.
So…we meet again! This only proves that I cannot pass up the chance to pretend I’ve known someone with a large penis.
Do you have these slug sex facts ready to go at a moment’s notice? You seem oddly enamored of them.
don’t you mean, at a marmot’s notice?
</daily marmot worship>
I mean a marmot’s notice only if he waves his majestic penis over his head.
thanks the wonders of google oversized penises waving overhead are virtually a second away. IRL, not so much.
gnaw each other’s penises off???!!!
Boy, do you know how to drop a punch line.
with the fundies whole attitude toward sex.
I don’t know why, but that makes me think of parthenophobia
(That’s fear of virgins, for you who don’t know Latin and didn’t take into psych)
My cat thinks it’s a pretty intelligent design. 🙂
I think cats might just be the designers. They’ve got a pretty twisted sense of humor.
Actually, that wouldn’t surprise me in the least. The modern word seems singularly well-suited to the continued existence of house-cats. If there is a non-diestic intelligent designer, I think it’s down to them or the Flying Spaghetti Monster, and I know who I’m putting my money behind.
Oh, more fun examples:
Ostriches. If you don’t need intermediate stages, why make a bird that can’t fly and doesn’t run particularly well?
Australia. The entire continent. Seriously.
Allergies.
One would also think that an intelligent designer would take better advantage of observably successful traits. Intelligence, for example. Binocular vision. Opposable thumbs. Echolocation. Magnetic navigational sense.
How about our appendix? It apparently has no function, but might of in an earlier ancestor of ours, IF we were not designed the way we are today some 4,000 to 5,000 years ago or so. Same could be said for our back molars, the “wisdom teeth”. Most 16-25 year olds have a hard time determining the wisdom of having these teeth at all, and are often extremely happy when the last one is removed.
George Carlin has been saying throughout his career that for a “perfect” God, he has a lot of “quality control” problems.
I would think that the Kansas school board is the best example against “intelligent design.”
On a more serious front, what do people in Kansas intend to do about this? The voters in PA finally had enough. I don’t know anything about Kansas law for public officials, but it would seem like a good time to be starting some sort of removal from office drive for malfeasance or the like.
From today’s Kansas City Star:
The vote brings to a close the latest chapter of the evolution saga in Kansas, but it isn’t likely to end it. A similar story played out in 1999, when the board removed most references to evolution, the origin of the universe or the age of the earth. Voters unseated conservatives in 2000, and a new board, dominated by moderates, changed the standards back.
Moderates hope the same thing will happen next year, when they vow to unseat conservatives in next November’s elections. Voters will fill five board seats next year, four of them belonging to conservative incumbents. A handful of candidates have already announced their intention to run.
How many people wear glasses? Creationists wax poetic about the beauty and perfection of the eye. OK, Mr. Smarty Pants, why did “The Designer” put the nerve tissue in front of the retina, lowering the efficiency of the receptors, then run the optic nerve right through the retina, giving us a blind spot? And this crap about how part of an eye does nothing? I have three words for you. Flatworms, you morons
If I were this mystical designer, I’d use two lenses per eye and get zoom capability.
I have no idea what it means, and no way I’m going to do anything but take your word for it, but I just love, Flatworms, you morons. Don’t you long to stand up at a meeting of the Kansas board of education and shout that?
I just feel so sorry for the 4 how voted against the change. It’s hard enough to live in Kansas while this is going on, but what if you were actually on the Kansas Board of Education?
Looks like the Dover School Board just evolved.
or maybe the election results are proof of intelligent design — among the voters.
Oh, poo, someone beat me to the classic Python “Nipples for MEN?” complaint.
So, how about manic-depressive illness? a body that needs a not-supplied-with-package covering to survive the place it is born throughout the year? Animals with 4 stomachs?
The utter lack of any aesthetic sense among some conservative religious types.
Oops, my computer battery is dying. . . now that’s surely an example of “intelligent design”.
The utter lack of any aesthetic sense among some conservative religious types.
Is this ever true. As I type this I can look to the left and see the poster with DeLay, Frist, and Libby. It rests your case.
I’ll do you one better. A body without a built-in umbrella.
So much hate for rain.
Rain makes verbs and pronouns dissolve.
We’ve got a fish brain nested in a reptilian brain inside a generic mammal brain inside a primate brain with a thin layer of homo sap brain.
It’s a backwards compatible kludge.
There is no good design reason for this! When was the last time you got in touch with your inner lizard?
really want me to answer that? It could be dangerous since I haven’t had my coffee yet O:)
I loved the comments in Bujold’s Vorkosigan books about Miles’ “lizard brain”.