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DESIGNED FOR DISASTER |
 "I'm sorry, Mr. Nachman, but whoever designed that left eye of yours certainly has no business creating life or, for that matter, running the universe." |
What's so 'intelligent' about human design?
By GERALD NACHMAN
of TheColumnists.com
Now that the teaching of Intelligent Design as an alternative theory of evolution in science classes has been squelched by a Dover, Pa., judge, this may be a good time to reflect on the general premise of its proponents. Just how intelligent is the design of human beings? Incredibly sloppy, I would say. Nothing to brag about, let alone teach.
Let us begin our ID study with the crude, inefficient birth process. If it took nine months to create a toaster, or even a Porsche, the company would be out of business in the first year--or shortly thereafter. Even after the same intelligently crafted toaster finally rolls off the assembly line after nine months, the toaster would begin leaking from every opening, causing the owner to keep it plugged up every few hours for the next year or two. During that time, the toaster then rejects every third slice of bread, ejects it onto the floor, gurgles and emits loud wails that stop only after the toaster is gently rocked in its owner’s arms for 10 minutes.
Imagine further that, during the toaster’s first few years, it breaks down periodically and that none of these critical problems in workmanship are covered by the warranty. The customer cannot return the defective toaster, toss it out, get a new one or hide it out of sight on a bottom shelf in the kitchen.
The toaster’s owner, moreover, is forced by law to continue using the busted appliance every day for the next 18 years, only to have all sorts of other things go haywire during that time, many of them virtually unfixable. The only recourse is to scream at the toaster in hopes that it will mend its ways and learn to work properly.
As everyone acknowledges, the human body, unlike a toaster, is an incredibly complex machine, and the fact that it works at all--in spite of its inept, indeed stupid design flaws--is amazing, and a far better subject for study. Whoever or whatever put us together was undoubtedly well meaning but knew little about designing something supposed to last a lifetime. But just whose lifetime? Not even the cheesiest used car requires refueling every few hours, followed by the need to change its water (and other guck) a few times a day. Incompetent design is too good a name for your basic body, no matter how pretty it may sometimes look on the female surface.
Now imagine that you are required to drive this same car for 70 years, despite increasingly serious equipment breakdowns, and that the automobile could only keep going with daily infusions of expensive liquids and granules, with periodic visits to mechanics whose bills often amounted to between $5,000 and $50,000, requiring you to take out annual garage insurance to cover the mounting upkeep.
So ill designed--and unimproved, year to year--is the human body that, unlike a toaster, it is equipped with several needless and indeed often dangerous spare parts: The appendix and wisdom teeth, to name just a few of the more annoying add-ons. And of what possible use are ear lobes, small toes, chin clefts, belly buttons, body hair, bunions, moles, warts, freckles, male nipples, etc.?
Exponents of intelligent design like to point to the human eye as their finest, Exhibit A evidence of ID. Try again, boys. Most human eyes are so fumblingly designed that they need corrective lenses by the time they’re 20, if not earlier, followed later by bi- or even tri-focals. Some smart designer! Even the sharpest 20/20 eyes need to be closed down every night for six to eight hours; a paper clip is more efficiently engineered. And of course many of these supposedly superbly designed eyes are easily bloodshot, itch, water or are permanently ruined by cataracts and glaucoma.
Worst of all, several really crucial body parts--knees, hips, kidney, heart--often require replacements, made of simple plastic and metal. How intelligently built can a body be if much of it can be replaced by basic materials found at any hardware store? The brain, assuming it worked reasonably well to begin with, is guaranteed to stall and idle; and unlike even the cheapest computer, to which the brain is often flatteringly compared, the more it takes in, the more it forgets. Lastly and most clumsily, imagine if your intelligently constructed toaster, just when it finally started to work fairly efficiently after 40 years, suddenly got heavier, began to sag and developed deep unsightly cracks and crevices in its fragile, easily nicked surface.
I’ve owned the same dishwasher, refrigerator and stove for 23 years and none has ever needed a single repair. Now I call that intelligent design. Maybe God and his design team could learn a few things from Maytag and GE.
©2006 by Gerald Nachman. The cartoon is from IMSI's Master Clips Collection, 1895 Francisco Blvd. E., San Rafael, CA, 94901-5506, USA. This column first posted Jan. 9, 2006.
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