Thursday, October 6, 2011

Nerve




[Seen, like much of my good videos and other stuff, on Pharyngula.]

Some might find the video a little grisly: it's an anatomic dissection of a giraffe's neck. But it makes a compelling, if obvious, point. Proof of evolution is all around; it only requires removing the scales from one's eyes. And as for "intelligent design?" Really? Halitosis, arthritis, cancer, atherosclerosis, Alzheimer's, trickle-down economics, Michele Bachmann.

By the way: patients have been damaged by surgeons flummoxed by the route of the recurrent laryngeal nerve since the dawn of operative misadventure.

4 comments:

  1. We get it, some people look like Monkeys...
    and nuthin Racial, just look at Joan Rivers.
    And wasn't Rick Perry in those "So Simple even a Caveman can do it" commercials??
    and you left out Jehovah's biggest practical Joke,
    The Prostrate, and its evil Cousin, the Fore-Skin.
    I mean, what Surpreme Being worth his Salt designs something to be cut off in the first few days of life..
    Now I'm not sayin I miss my Foreskin, but would have been nice if they'd asked me first...
    I'd write more but I gotta take a leak...

    Frank

    ReplyDelete
  2. Dr Schwab:
    Just because a human thinks the innervation design of the voice box is impractical doesn't mean it is. How many of intricate workings of the human body (like the kidney, brain, nervous system) are still not completely understood by science? The complexity of any one organ system of the body is awe inspiring whether it is the result of evolution or something else we just cannot comprehend. Not to mention everything else in the universe we have no clue about. Big bang...who or what lit that fuse?
    Since human beings are not creators of any life forms other than simple human reproduction (which it takes zero brains), what experience invests us with the expertise to decide that an evolutionary engineering flaw (like foreskin) might be best "corrected" with a snip? Who do we think we are? We are the result of a force (evolution or whatever) that we do no orchestrate.
    DD

    ReplyDelete
  3. Just because a human thinks the innervation design of the voice box is impractical doesn't mean it is.

    From an engineering standpoint, it is impractical, which casts serious doubt on the intelligent design hypothesis. What you argue here seems to be a variation on "How dare you question the way god did things?"

    How many of intricate workings of the human body (like the kidney, brain, nervous system) are still not completely understood by science?

    Not near as many as fifty years ago, or even ten. If your point is "We don't know how this works, therefore god," that god of the gaps gets smaller and smaller every day. And when we do understand all those mechanisms completely, where will it be then?

    ReplyDelete
  4. Pieter: I do not, did not, suggest we stop questioning anything. Whether or not god literally exists, is unknown. But the idea of God exists in every civilization.

    .."And when we do understand all those mechanisms completely, where will it be then?"

    Really? Current events would indicate that we have a long way to go. When pointless wars cease, then, we have evolved.
    DD

    ReplyDelete

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