Ray a Day: 26

“You can Lead an Atheist to Evidence, But You Can’t Make Him Think: Answers to Questions From Angry Skeptics”.
 
More of the same.  Just a quick one today.

Today’s angry skeptic calls Comfort a liar, and points out a couple strong indications of terrible “design” in certain biological organisms.  This skeptic mentions fish that live in caves yet have non-functional eyes, he mentions the fact that there is only one coronary artery, that has no back-up route, which can be easily clogged.

Comfort, as is par for the course, doesn’t attempt to answer the actual thrust of the question.  He says that it seems obvious to him that if the fish live in dark caves, then they don’t need functional eyes.  He doesn’t even try to reply to the obvious question of why they produce eyes at all, as this is a wasteful use of biological resources; a highly inefficient bodily design for an organism that doesn’t need eyes at all, especially when they eyes that are grown don’t work.

He actually gives what could be a half-way decent point about the coronary artery, that one can vastly decrease the chances of the artery clogging with a healthy lifestyle; eating healthily and exercising regularly.  Of course, this still doesn’t address the fact that a back-up artery or two would be a much, much more “intelligent” design.  However, entertainingly, he then shoots himself in the foot, reminding us that we also have only a single esophagus (and doesn’t try to defend the “intelligent design” of a single, easily blocked esophagus).  His own example is even more damaging, because the esophagus can be blocked regardless of how healthy you are, obviously causing severe injury or death.

Comfort asks the evolutionist a few more questions:

“Which came first – the blood or the heart that pumps the blood?”

“How did the body survive when the heart hadn’t yet evolved?  Or was the body alive without a heart?  How did that work?”

“Did skin exist before the blood formed?  How did the skin stay alive without blood?”

Etc.  Of course, there are organisms alive today that have structures like muscles (which the heart obviously is) yet have no blood.  An organism can have structures like a heart without blood or skin and survive perfectly well, as there are countless such organisms alive today.  To ask whether the heart, blood, or skin came first, as if an organism cannot survive without all of these biological features, betrays a staggering ignorance of the natural world, considering the countless plants and microorganisms that thrive without any of these features.