Unintelligent design (recurrent laryngeal nerve)

If you wanted to plug your TV into an outlet 3 feet away would you go get a 100 foot extension cord and run it around the entire house and then plug it into the outlet 3 feet from the TV? Does this sound like an intelligent design?

The analogy holds. The RLN travels a route that it doesn't need to in the same way that the electrical cord travels a route it doesn't need to. It is a poor design. Are you saying that we actually don't know the route that the RLN travels? So even if something appears to be badly designed it is in fact brilliantly designed in a way that we are ignorant of? Talk about an argument from ignorance.

Because there is nothing about the route which adds to function in the same way that routing more electrical cord does not add function to the tv. This makes the teleological argument moot and unfalsifiable. Any poor designs are instead good designs that we are ignorant of. That's a very poor argument. Please show us how the route of the RLN is vital to the function of the RLN. If you can't, then please explain why it makes such a circuitous route.

Don't you find it unfair that the ID crowd is allowed to point to "brilliant designs" and yet critics are not allowed to criticize any designs? Should we start calling biological designs "double plus good"? What we are asking is why didn't the designer use the direct route, assuming that the route was available to the designer? For evolution, they are equal at the phenotype level so one is not selected over the other.

That doesn't stop it from being a bad design. There is no functional difference between running 100 feet of electrical cord around the living room to plug the TV in, but it is certainly a bad design. There is a reason that Rube Goldberg cartoons were found in the funnies and not in engineering textbooks.

A never connection is a nerve connection. With myelinated nerves there is very little difference in response time, especially for something which is not vital to fight or flight responses. Because we can look for the lever, and there is none. On the flip side, how do you know that there is one?

Since when have you been using logic? Your entire argument is an appeal to emotion and illogic. It is a reference to the book "1984" where people are not allowed to criticize the government (aka "Big Brother"). No matter what the government did it was assumed that it was in the best interest of the citizen so they were not allowed to criticize. In this thread you have taken the same stance. No matter how kludgey or backwards a design is it is assumed that it is so for an important funcational reason, even if no such evidence exists. Even more, no one is allowed to criticize these designs.

No, he would be flunked.Or perhaps you can tell us what grade you would give an engineering student if they turned in this design for an automatic backscratcher:

Making a few extra feet of nerve fiber for no other reason than to create a longer route is less effecient. Designer flunks. This assumes that evolving the direct route would not require a drop in fitness. If that assumption is wrong then so is your conclusion. Embryonic development is a very fickle beast. It would require numerous changes in embryonic development that would result in lowered fitness. A designer would not have these problems to deal with.

Please show that in the giraffe the reworking of the development of the entire ennervation of the neck would not require a drop in fitness. Evolution produces complexity that is good enough, not brilliant designs. The RLN is good enough, but rather poor design if ID is true.

In the evolution of the giraffe, the best trait is a long neck and the RLN be damned.

Given your recent statements, ID is closer to not seeing tracks in the sand but claiming that they really are there even if you can't see them at the moment. So we have observed an intelligence making the DNA found in all life? That is a new one. At best, the source of DNA is unknown. Until you present evidence otherwise you have no foundation to claim how it came about. You have assumed your conclusion.

It would have led to what? There is no evidence that looping under the aorta offers any benefit. What evidence are you alluding to? Evidence in your own fantasies?

The analogy would need to be extended in order to include examples (such as the RLN) where ID predicts the discovery of further evidence. ​

And it does. ID predicts that there should be foot prints. There aren't any. The ID response? The foot prints are really there, but you can't see them right now.

No we have observed coded information being created only by intelligent persons.

We have also seen it produced through natural means such as reproduction. We also observe coded information in non-organic materials, such as the coded orbitals in atoms.ABE: "Therefore, because the source of coded information is intelligence, and not some other characteristics human happen to share in common, the only thing we can conclude about the originator of the coded information in nature is that he/it is intelligent."You are trying to show that the originator of DNA is an intelligence. Instead of demonstrating it you have assumed it. You assume the conclusion.Edited by Taq, : No reason given.

Archaeopteryx was found during his lifetime, and Darwin also mentioned the transitional eyes found in the class Articulata. You are claiming that the route serves a function. It is up to you to either evidence this claim or retract it.