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<H4>From <EM>La Times</EM>, 06-27-05</H4>
<H4> </H4>
<H4>COMMENTARY</H4>
<H1>Does God Have Back Problems Too?</H1>
<H2>The illogic behind 'intelligent design.'</H2>By David P. Barash<BR>David P.
Barash, a professor of psychology at the University of Washington, is coauthor
of "Madame Bovary's Ovaries" (Delacorte Press, 2005).<BR><BR>June 27,
2005<BR><BR>In 1829, Francis Henry Egerton, the eighth Earl of Bridgewater,
bequeathed 8,000 pounds sterling to the Royal Society of London to pay for
publication of works on "the Power, Wisdom, and Goodness of God, as Manifested
in the Creation." <BR><BR>The resulting "Bridgewater Treatises," published
between 1833 and 1840, were classic statements of "natural theology," seeking to
demonstrate God's existence by examining the natural world's "perfection."
<BR><BR>Current believers in creationism, masquerading in its barely disguised
incarnation, "intelligent design," argue similarly, claiming that only a
designer could generate such complex, perfect wonders. <BR><BR><FONT
color=#0000ff>But, in fact, the living world is shot through with imperfection.
Unless one wants to attribute either incompetence or sheer malevolence to such a
designer, this imperfection — the manifold design flaws of life — points
incontrovertibly to a natural, rather than a divine, process, one in which
living things were not created <I>de novo, </I>but evolved. Consider the human
body. Ask yourself, if you were designing the optimum exit for a fetus, would
you engineer a route that passes through the narrow confines of the pelvic
bones? Add to this the tragic reality that childbirth is not only painful in our
species but downright dangerous and sometimes lethal, owing to a baby's head
being too large for the mother's birth canal. <BR></FONT><BR>This design flaw is
all the more dramatic because anyone glancing at a skeleton can see immediately
that there is plenty of room for even the most stubbornly large-brained,
misoriented fetus to be easily delivered anywhere in that vast, non-bony region
below the ribs. (In fact, this is precisely the route obstetricians follow when
performing a caesarean section.) <BR><BR>Why would evolution neglect the simple,
straightforward solution? Because human beings are four-legged mammals by
history. Our ancestors carried their spines parallel to the ground; it was only
with our evolved upright posture that the pelvic girdle had to be rotated (and
thereby narrowed), making a tight fit out of what for other mammals is nearly
always an easy passage.<BR><BR>An engineer who designed such a system from
scratch would be summarily fired, but evolution didn't have the luxury of
intelligent design.<BR><BR>Admittedly, it could be argued that the dangers and
discomforts of childbirth were intelligently, albeit vengefully, planned, given
Genesis' account of God's judgment upon Eve: As punishment for Eve's
disobedience in Eden, "in pain you shall bring forth children." (Might this
imply that if she'd only behaved, women's vaginas would have been where their
bellybuttons currently reside?)<BR><BR>On to men. It is simply deplorable that
the prostate gland is so close to the urinary system that (the common)
enlargement of the former impinges awkwardly on the latter.<BR><BR>In addition,
as human testicles descended — both in evolution and in embryology — the vas
deferens (which carries sperm) became looped around the ureter (which carries
urine from kidneys to bladder), resulting in an altogether illogical arrangement
that would never have occurred if, like a minimally competent designer, natural
selection could have anticipated the situation. <BR><BR>There's much more that
the supposed designer botched: ill-constructed knee joints that wear out, a
lower back that's prone to pain, an inverted exit of the optic nerve via the
retina, resulting in a blind spot. <BR><BR>And what about the theological
implications of all this? If God is the designer, and we are created in his
image, does that mean he has back problems too? <BR><BR>The point is that these
and other incongruities testify to the contingent, unplanned, entirely natural
nature of natural selection. We are profoundly imperfect, cobbled together
rather then designed. And in these imperfections reside some of the best
arguments for our equally profound natural-ness. </FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>