Animals with bad design.

Hi, Dennis.Good to say you(r words) again.I'm an ecologist, and I so rarely get the opportunity to use my particular specialty of the biological sciences in the EvC debate. But, this post of yours is just screaming for ecological insight, so here I go: Leaving aside the obvious response that this predator-prey system is only a requirement because God made it a requirement, it's still a bad argument.Look at the trophic pyramid below: This pyramid relates the biomass of each trophic level (producer, herbivore, predator. etc.) to one another. In terrestrial systems, we always see that the biomass of a consumer is extremely small relative to biomass of the organism it consumes.Why is this? Well, it's because organisms are not particularly efficient machines. For most animals, the wastage is much higher than the resources that are actually used. While much of this wastage is just due to the nature of converting energy from one form into another (which is essentially unavoidable); much of it is also due to various weaknesses and shortcomings in the behavior and biomechanics of the organisms (which is avoidable).If every organism were equipped with parts better suited to its functions, then the entire system would be more efficient, and could still run on the same principles of carnivores eating herbivores eating plants, and everything being recycled by detritivores. Sea turtles waste a lot of energy laying their eggs because their flippers are not suited to any of the components of the task placed before them. A more efficient system could save the turtles energy, which they could then invest in producing more eggs, which could then hatch into more baby turtles, which could then feed more predators and scavengers that eat baby turtles.The point isn't that we expect Designed predators to be flawless killing machines, or that we expect Designed prey animals to be impervious to predators. The point is that there is a lot of energy wasted on inefficient parts and processes, much of which might very well have been conserved and put to better use within the system if the Designer had been more willing to look a little beyond the handful of common templates that all organisms were designed from.To me, yeah, "bad design" arguments are somewhat useless, because anything that falls short of perfection could be argued to be a "bad design." But, your counterargument---basically, 'the fact that the system works proves that it's not a bad design'---is pretty pathetic when it's clear to us that the same system could be maintained with less wastage than the current system experiences.So, because life could have realistically been more efficient than it is without compromising the overall conceptual integrity of the system or relaxing the constraints placed on it by the laws of physics, I don't see how you could make the case that this system is not poorly designed.Edited by Bluejay, : Altered "biomass of X is extremely small relative to biomass of Y" statement for better generality.

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-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)Darwin loves you.

Hi, Aaron. So do I. But, I feel like ToE does both.----- Yeah, this is kind of a tangent, but I disagree on two accounts:

1. The Theory of Evolution has nothing to do with cosmology. The Theory of Evolution is specifically a theory about life, so, until there is life, the Theory of Evolution is powerless to explain, expect or predict anything.
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2. Given that most scientists and atheists do not expect what you say they would expect, I think you've overstepped your bounds in stating what they would expect. As for me, I am not an atheist, but I don't really see much support for the assertion that the atheist view of cosmology and abiogenesis are wrong.

If you'd like to keep discussing abiogenesis (I have done so on many occasions, although I'm not an expert in that field), please start a thread and I'll join you there.----- Sure, I understand. But, if you can't establish a consistent pattern in the data, then you can't really make the argument stick.----- Sure, but I'm not arguing that whales haven't been successful: I'm only arguing that it's very strange to design a boat out of a car when you've already got a lot of tried and true boat designs available.----- Surely this is only because the designer designed them this way. Why couldn't they have been otherwise?----- I don't think this matches my argument very well at all. I wouldn't say that a less-diverse system is preferable: I would only argue that a whale seems to be a sea creature hastily (and somewhat sloppily) modified from land mammals, rather than a specifically-designed sea creature.----- I don't think that this is a particularly honest portrayal of the ID movement. "Bad design" is clearly anathema to the views put forward by every IDist I'm familiar with.Furthermore, I don't believe that the ID movement has demonstrated that people really are capable of recognizing design in any generalizable way. Sure, perhaps they are capable of recognizing the products of human manufacture, but it isn't clear what general principles there are that can be applied to things beyond human manufacture.This is another topic that should be shunted off into another thread if we want to keep discussing it.----- What a strange argument. You certainly wouldn't expect life to exist somewhere that wasn't suitable for its existence, would you?So, why is it particularly informative that life exists where life can exist?Again, we would need to start a new thread to continue this discussion.Edited by Bluejay, : "life" instead of "live"

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-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)Darwin loves you.

Hi, Kaichos Man. Mutations that make the horse bigger and help it run faster are "deleterious"?I'm not sure you're clear on what "deleterious" means. Start here. Then, you can go here for a discussion of what "deleterious" means in the classification of mutations.After you've done that, feel free to revise your statement and bring it more in line with the topic of the thread.

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-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)Darwin loves you.

Hi, Kaichos Man. The problems with this concept are pretty acute: cheetahs are genetically similar to cougars, lynxes, bobcats and house cats, but are not genetically similar to leopards. Leopards are genetically similar to tigers, lions and jaguars.On the basis of this, evolutionists conclude that cheetahs did not evolve from leopards, but from a cougar-like ancestor. Without this rather critical bit of information, your story comes off as pretty uninspired.Also: (Here is a link, in case the picture stops working again. Here is a link to another picture, for good measure.)That's a cheetah, by the way. In a tree.I've said this at least a dozen times before: nature is not nearly as clean or as neatly partitioned as creationists imagine. I know of very few "rules" about animal behavior (e.g. leopards climb, cheetahs run) that are actually legitimately born out in nature.Edited by Bluejay, : Attempt to re-paste the picture for CS. It was working just fine yesterday.

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-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)Darwin loves you.