Never to be confused with the risible 'Centre for Intelligent Design' (C4ID) -- perish the thought, in fact!
Now with over 130 EXAMPLES of unintelligent design!!
'Essays & emails' page now updated (13/05/12) to include
Casey Luskin's 'Multiple Deceptions' email (23/03/12)
(distortions, misrepresentations, faux outrage,
misinterpretations and quote-mining)
February 2012 additions/contributions:
“Giving birth through the pelvic girdle instead of through the abdominal wall
is the direct cause of endless horrors. Deaths in childbirth, and, if possible
even worse, brain damage during delivery either mechanically or through
perinatal anoxia. And anyone who quotes Genesis 3:16 in excuse is a moral monster.”
“Scurvy.”
“Beetle overkill (350,000 species? – Pourquoi?).”
“Cataracts (in the eye).”
“Cataracts (of the Nile – reducing navigability).”
“Ineffective goosebumps on humans.”
“Newborn marsupials having to journey from womb to pouch.”
“Precariously-balanced penguin eggs. Why no pouch, Dr N?”
“Hole-in-the-heart babies.”
“Wings on flightless beetles.”
“Miscarriages.”
“Easily-detached retinas.”
“Eyes on creatures that live in total darkness.”
“Most of human history spent without life-saving drugs, treatments and vaccines.
Most discovered relatively recently – and thanks to trial and error! And chance!”
“Millennia without anaesthesia.”
“Hernias.”
“About 95% of marine life and 70% of terrestrial life became extinct during what is
known as the end-Permian, a time when continents were all one land mass called Pangaea.
The environment ranged from desert to lush forest.”
“Menstruation, aka ‘the curse.’”
“Prostatitis.”
“Acne.”
“Limb regrowth restricted to salamanders and starfish.”
“Two thirds of the earth’s surface being under water.”
“Internal tails.”
“Hind limbs on snakes.”
“Teeth, tails and hind limbs that start growing only to be reabsorbed.”
“Deserts.”
“Viruses.”
“The fact that the liver is the only internal organ that can
spontaneously regenerate when damaged.”
“Haemoglobin’s preference for carbon monoxide.”
“Human conception – having to throw 250 million darts at the bullseye!”
“Anything with wiry hair, goosebumps, varicose veins, loose skin, one eye
and a purple helmet.”
“Putting the recreational area right next to the sewage outflow.”
“Creatures that spend their whole lives in water having to lay their eggs on land.”
“Creatures that spend their whole lives on land having to lay their eggs in water.”
“Malarial swamps.”
“Male sexual urges peaking at the same time as acne (and long before you can afford
a house down payment).”
“Few clues as to which plants are poisonous and which ones aren’t.”
“Kidney stones.”
Unintelligent Design -- The Original (2011) List:
Back pain
Fragile necks
Poorly-insulated brains
The ease with which we can choke
A pain 'alarm' that can't be switched off
Upside down/back-to-front eyes
Teeth prone to decay
Easily worn-out knees
Blind spot
Bad plumbing
Pain in 'phantom' limbs
Poor protection for fragile organs
The defencelessness of babies
Brains prone to oxygen deprivation
Having to spend a third of our lives asleep
Nerves that go a long way for a shortcut
Birth defects
Pain in childbirth
Fragile hearts
Ears prone to damage and infection
Poorly padded feet
Wisdom teeth
Funny bone
Quoll nipple shortage
"Nature red in tooth and claw"
Flightless birds
Manatee toenails
RuBisCo
Earthquakes
Avalanches
Landslides
Tornadoes
Droughts
Blizzards
Floods
Volcanic eruptions
Cyclones
Plagues
Famines
Typhoons
Hurricanes
Extinctions
Ravenous black holes
Cannibalising galaxies
The vast waste of space
The 10 billion year wait for life
160 million years of dinosaurs
The unravelling of Irreducible Complexity
Leprosy
Cancer
AIDS
Epilepsy
Angina
Rabies
Typhoid
Osteoporosis
Muscular dystrophy
Autism
Tetanus
Cystic fibrosis
Parkinson's disease
Hepatitis
Tuberculosis
Meningitis
Leukaemia
Diphtheria
Asthma
MS
Anthrax
Smallpox
Autoimmune diseases
Down's syndrome
Schizophrenia
Alzheimer's
Polio
Malaria
MND
Cholera
Pneumonia
Influenza
Arthritis
Syphilis
Unintelligent Design -- The 2011 additions/contributions:
"Waiting half the sun's lifetime before the Edicaran radiation (aka Cambrian explosion)."
"To say nothing, come to think of it, of waiting 8 billion years to turn the Sun on."
"Won't-drain sinuses (JBS Haldane's favourite)."
"You may want to add our geneomes to the list
(Amoeba dubia also has a geneome 200 times the size of ours)."
"Then you have evolutionary solutions to malaria - eg sickle cell genes,
and muscles like the palmaris longus..."
"External testicles."
"Vestigial limbs in snakes, and some water inhabiting mammals."
"Conjoined twins."
"People born with tails."
"Polydactyly."
"Fistula. Lovely and so intelligent."
"Post-Polio Syndrome."
"Food Allergies."
"You got pain in childbirth but missed out maternal death in childbirth - quite a
big killer of women in countries without access to more intelligent doctors due to
the ridiculously stupid route out of the womb via the pelvis."
"Not sure why the intelligent designer gave tyrannasaurus rex such pointlessly
tiny arms either. Perhaps Dr Noble could explain."
"The parasitic wasp."
"The 20ft-long loop in the giraffe's loopy nerve!"
"Have you already got liver flukes with their three separate hosts and
seven separate phases?"
"Halitosis."
From: Steve Fuller
Sent: Sep 18, 2011
To: Keith Gilmour
Dear Keith,
Thanks for this. You might perhaps make more headway with ID people if you
understood the position better. The problem of apparent 'unintelligent design' in
nature is one that people with ID sympathies have long tackled. Simply look up the
literature on 'theodicy'.
Steve Fuller
From: Keith Gilmour
Sent: Mon 19/09/2011
To: Steve Fuller
Subject: Thank You
Dear Prof Fuller,
I am immensely grateful to you for your 'stunning' reply to my recent email. In
just one line, you inadvertently 'destroy' the notion that ID is science:
"The problem of apparent 'unintelligent design' in nature is one that people with
ID sympathies have long tackled. Simply look up the literature on 'theodicy'."
By admitting that 'unintelligent design' is a branch of theology, you necessarily
admit that 'Intelligent' Design is also a branch of theology.
Not quite what I was expecting, but absolutely priceless!
Many thanks again,
Keith Gilmour
David Klinghoffer
The Problem with Arguments from "Unintelligent Design"
Please visit:
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2012/02/the_problem_wit056821.html
Referring to our latest additions/contributions as "the new list" - and ignoring
"Deaths in childbirth" to claim it "leads off" with "scurvy" - David Klinghoffer
lists the next nine C4UD examples (as at 21/02/2012) then asks, "Why stop at
130?"
Well, what on earth makes him think we've stopped at all? We were already at
139 when he visited this page and posted his critique.
("Over" and "up to" do not mean the same thing, Mr Klinghoffer).
To be absolutely clear, I do not hold that "to be intelligently designed, life
and its natural surroundings need to pose no challenges and entail no pain" -
simply that the above examples are 'unintelligent' in at least one sense of that
word. (Please see my reply to Casey Luskin on our 'Essays & emails' page). No
"false dilemma" is being offered here.
Extraordinarily, however, Klinghoffer complains that a world "without evil"
would be "the perfect hamster cage or turtle terrarium, where all our needs
are provided, there are no predators, no contagious disease, no confusion, no
loneliness, no sin, no particular purpose, no growth, just spinning aimlessly
on our exercise wheel or swimming idly in our calm, algaed paddling pool."
His fundamentalist Christian friends may well be 'stunned' to hear that God's
Heaven will be pointless and dreary! -- and this from a fundamentalist Jew!
Mr Klinghoffer also claims he could add "many more" of his own examples to
this site. I very much look forward to receiving these.
'Devastating' critique of this website:
http://www.pearceyreport.com/blog/2011/09/centre_for_unintelligent_design.php
