“I keep hearing of all these poor designs. E.g. the famous "panda's thumb", and the web site named after it. But I'm sceptical of these poor-design claims.”
It’s good to be sceptical. Maybe you could apply the same approach to your church’s claims of magical realism.
“I doubt we are really qualified to make a commentary on the eye design of humans and squid, given that human technology is not capable of making an equivalent.”
I fail to see why I can’t have an opinion on something unless I can achieve better. There goes my right to assess and comment upon just about everything I experience.
“From what I've heard, we call fewer things "vestigial" than we did 50 years ago. The phrase "junk DNA" is likely to be abandoned as an unfortunate misnomer as we learn more about DNA. Biologists are undoubtedly knowledgable and clever, but we've got an awful lot to learn about biology. So it's good not to get too self-confident in our ability to accurately assess the quality of the design of the biological world.”
At what point are humans allowed to have an opinion or be confident in our knowledge? We are the most intelligent beings on this planet! Must be know everything before we can discount the ridiculously fallacious? Your writing reeks of the submissive, subjugated and servile posturing that pervades Christianity (only when it suits it of course). “We are all wretched sinners! How feeble and pathetic we are compared to God!” It’s not a good look.
“I keep hearing of all these poor designs. E.g. the famous "panda's thumb", and the web site named after it. But I'm sceptical of these poor-design claims.”
It’s good to be sceptical. Maybe you could apply the same approach to your church’s claims of magical realism.
“I doubt we are really qualified to make a commentary on the eye design of humans and squid, given that human technology is not capable of making an equivalent.”
I fail to see why I can’t have an opinion on something unless I can achieve better. There goes my right to assess and comment upon just about everything I experience.
“From what I've heard, we call fewer things "vestigial" than we did 50 years ago. The phrase "junk DNA" is likely to be abandoned as an unfortunate misnomer as we learn more about DNA. Biologists are undoubtedly knowledgable and clever, but we've got an awful lot to learn about biology. So it's good not to get too self-confident in our ability to accurately assess the quality of the design of the biological world.”
At what point are humans allowed to have an opinion or be confident in our knowledge? We are the most intelligent beings on this planet! Must be know everything before we can discount the ridiculously fallacious? Your writing reeks of the submissive, subjugated and servile posturing that pervades Christianity (only when it suits it of course). “We are all wretched sinners! How feeble and pathetic we are compared to God!” It’s not a good look.