Yesterday I mentioned an interview with Sir David Attenborough. In the interview, he commented that people always give hummingbirds as an example of God's wondrous creation, and he always responds by informing them of a worm that can only survive by burrowing through a child's eyeball. That's something I've noticed - not one creationist or IDiot ever lists hyenas, dung beetles, hagfish, tsetse flies, slime mould or staghorn ferns as an example of the Glory of Creation.
A hagfish. Eww.
And then consider our own, perfect beautiful bodies. Our respiratory system crosses our digestive system so that we can't breathe and eat at the same time. We can choke on food, or suffocate on our own vomit. In males, the reproductive system joins with the excretory system. In birds and reptiles, the reproductive, excretory and digestive systems all come together in one nice big orifice. Is that intelligent?
Slime mould. Vomitastic.
We have appendices that have a tendency to get infected and inflamed. Despite apparently telling the Jews that they all had to be circumcised, the Almighty hasn't had the talent to just remove foreskins from all penises (there you go, my lovely critics, have a cock joke on me!). Men can get breast cancer - why would God need to leave vestigial breast tissue kicking around in a man's body? If Adam was, in fact, created before Eve (so the old joke goes, everyone needs to practise once before they get it just right), why would there have been breast tissue anywhere near his body to start with? Our brains are too big for our pelvic girdles, and it is that rather than a mythical casting-out from Eden, that makes childbirth so painful. If the human body was a GCSE Design Technology project, it would get a C, tops. It is not efficient, well-"designed" or even competent for a lot of purposes. And it certainly isn't perfect.
A staghorn fern. It is no coincidence that I have one that I named Fugly.
Nature is quite often distasteful. My father-in-law has a big problem with "nature red in tooth and claw", is a vegetarian and would quite happily see every carnivore on the earth exterminated. When he watches David Attenborough films he's rooting for the gazelle and the rabbit. But the world is a dangerous and ugly place. Earthquakes, volcanoes, landslides, tsunamis devastate communities and kill thousands of people in one go. Animals kill other animals in ever more creative manners, from simple vagal shock to laying eggs within the victim's body. Species are locked in an evolutionary "arms race", where each side has to resort to more desperate measures in order to ensure the propagation of their offspring. And at this point I would just like to warn any creationist readers that if you so much as mention Tyrannosaurus rex eating coconuts, I will hunt you down and tie you to Sue.
The bacteria that bring about flesh-eating diseases are not malicious. They are not sitting there with their tiny nuclei processing thoughts about which cute blonde moppet they're going to strike down with meningococcal septicaemia. They just exist. The cheetah is not plotting to go for that particular wide-eyed baby wildebeest just to upset my father-in-law. God did not sit and think "I know, I'll create something that looks, feels and smells like cat vomit, and my children shall call it slime mould, and it shall be a bane upon their greenhouses".
Now, this post certainly overlaps with yesterday's offering, but I felt that combining the two into one post would have made for one massively incoherent rant, rather than two slightly shorter, less incoherent rants. But join me tomorrow for something a bit more light-hearted...
A hagfish. Eww.
And then consider our own, perfect beautiful bodies. Our respiratory system crosses our digestive system so that we can't breathe and eat at the same time. We can choke on food, or suffocate on our own vomit. In males, the reproductive system joins with the excretory system. In birds and reptiles, the reproductive, excretory and digestive systems all come together in one nice big orifice. Is that intelligent?
Slime mould. Vomitastic.
We have appendices that have a tendency to get infected and inflamed. Despite apparently telling the Jews that they all had to be circumcised, the Almighty hasn't had the talent to just remove foreskins from all penises (there you go, my lovely critics, have a cock joke on me!). Men can get breast cancer - why would God need to leave vestigial breast tissue kicking around in a man's body? If Adam was, in fact, created before Eve (so the old joke goes, everyone needs to practise once before they get it just right), why would there have been breast tissue anywhere near his body to start with? Our brains are too big for our pelvic girdles, and it is that rather than a mythical casting-out from Eden, that makes childbirth so painful. If the human body was a GCSE Design Technology project, it would get a C, tops. It is not efficient, well-"designed" or even competent for a lot of purposes. And it certainly isn't perfect.
A staghorn fern. It is no coincidence that I have one that I named Fugly.
Nature is quite often distasteful. My father-in-law has a big problem with "nature red in tooth and claw", is a vegetarian and would quite happily see every carnivore on the earth exterminated. When he watches David Attenborough films he's rooting for the gazelle and the rabbit. But the world is a dangerous and ugly place. Earthquakes, volcanoes, landslides, tsunamis devastate communities and kill thousands of people in one go. Animals kill other animals in ever more creative manners, from simple vagal shock to laying eggs within the victim's body. Species are locked in an evolutionary "arms race", where each side has to resort to more desperate measures in order to ensure the propagation of their offspring. And at this point I would just like to warn any creationist readers that if you so much as mention Tyrannosaurus rex eating coconuts, I will hunt you down and tie you to Sue.
The bacteria that bring about flesh-eating diseases are not malicious. They are not sitting there with their tiny nuclei processing thoughts about which cute blonde moppet they're going to strike down with meningococcal septicaemia. They just exist. The cheetah is not plotting to go for that particular wide-eyed baby wildebeest just to upset my father-in-law. God did not sit and think "I know, I'll create something that looks, feels and smells like cat vomit, and my children shall call it slime mould, and it shall be a bane upon their greenhouses".
Now, this post certainly overlaps with yesterday's offering, but I felt that combining the two into one post would have made for one massively incoherent rant, rather than two slightly shorter, less incoherent rants. But join me tomorrow for something a bit more light-hearted...
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