Was The Human Body Designed?

The Argument from Life – particularly human life – is one of the go-to arguments for a theist’s insistence that a ‘designer’ exists. (Naturally, their own designer; never anyone else’s.) Teaching A&P and human anatomy such as I do, it is quite apparent that if anyone did design the human body, they did a piss poor job of it. When you consider all the things that can go wrong with the human body, to say nothing of the malfunctions that afflict the supposedly wondrous brain alone, and it seems odd to me that anyone would consider the human body designed. Sure, how the kidneys balance bodily fluids and monitor blood pressure is amazing, but the process is so convoluted that kidneys actually seem to have arisen by chance. Being undersigned, the human body is the biological equivalent of a ’71 Ford Pinto, a vehicle that would burst into flames if you happened to tap it with a feather.

As always, one should have evidence for their assertions. Fortunately, a lot of this work has been done for me. Allow me to point you in the direction of some articles that lament the failure of God’s design:

http://whywontgodhealamputees.com/watchmaker.htm (Funniest)

http://io9.com/the-most-unfortunate-design-flaws-in-the-human-body-1518242787 (Simple)

http://nautil.us/issue/24/error/top-10-design-flaws-in-the-human-body (Simple)

https://www.quora.com/Science-of-Everyday-Life/What-are-the-greatest-flaws-of-the-human-body (Includes a section with comments from many biologists)

Granted, many of the articles speak of the same design flaws, and this is because the design flaws are so egregious that they can’t possibly go unnoticed. All of this points to the opposite of the Argument from Life, the Argument from Poor Design, indicating there is no designer.

There are two possible objections to these many foolish ‘designs.’ One is that the designer or designers did not see fit to design the human body for optimum efficiency. Human beings are well known for creating things that perform sub-optimally, but this is always due to either a lack of knowledge or resources, or is done out of plain ol’ greed. If we are anything like our designer(s), this says something about them. If it’s the case that we just don’t know the reason why we were created for sub-optimal performance, there is no reason to assume any such designer(s) had noble intentions. Even if it were the case that the designer(s) had designed some non-optimal features to improve the overall quality of the human body, this might indicate the incompetence of the designer(s), being or beings that are often regarded as omniscient. The worst flaw of all, death, has always afflicted human beings, even Adam and Eve upon their very creation! If human beings were designed, they might as well have been iPhones, with their obsolescence built in.

The second objection is that human disease is the result of sin.* This is quite obviously ridiculous since babies who are baptized have their sins taken away but still may become sick at a moment’s notice (or are baptized when sick, and are still sick immediately thereafter). People are also noticeable sick after confession, which supposedly asks for the forgiveness of sins. Of course, the designer(s) could never have allowed for sin, which even the dumbest engineer would have agreed seemed like a good idea.

[* Speaking from a fundamentalist Christian perspective]

“Finally, from what we now know about the cosmos, to think that all this was created for just one species among the tens of millions of species who live on one planet circling one of a couple of hundred billion stars that are located in one galaxy among hundreds of billions of galaxies, all of which are in one universe among perhaps an infinite number of universes all nestled within a grand cosmic multiverse, is provincially insular and anthropocentrically blinkered. Which is more likely? That the universe was designed just for us, or that we see the universe as having been designed just for us?” Michael Shermer in Why Darwin Matters

Ah, yes, cognitive bias, one of the worst ‘design’ flaws of all.

Michael Shermer, New Atheism and Hypocrisy

[I admit I am late to this topic. I am a busy person with little time to read People magazine. But I am addressing now only having recently found out about the indecent behavior of one of New Atheism’s ‘saints,’ Michael Shermer.]

If there is one thing you can count on people to be, it’s a hypocrite. It doesn’t matter if a person is Black, White, Asian, American, European, theist, agnostic or atheist. At some point, people turn their back on what they say they believe and demonstrate what they really think. Case in point: Noted author and founder of Skeptic magazine, Michael Shermer.

Although Michael Shermer is not one of the Four Horsemen of atheism, he is nonetheless highly respected among (most) New Atheists for his contributions to rational thought. But as any of us know who have ever had more alcohol to drink than we probably should have, rational thought and alcohol do not mix. Since mid-2008, Michael Shermer has been on the receiving end of numerous allegations of sexual misconduct (to put it politely) at several conventions across the U.S. While there is no hard evidence to hold Shermer legally accountable – no pun intended – there is enough testimony from several sources considered reliable to indicate that Michael Shermer has a problem with his libido. Along with the evidence, what is also missing is the outrage from the atheist community.

A timeline of Shermer’s misconduct can be found here on freethoughtblog.com. Note that in September 2008, another well-respect atheist DJ Grothe intervenes to stop Shermer from fondling a woman’s breasts. He had (apparently) recanted this sordid story many times before denying it in 2014. Why? Perhaps he is trying to protect a friend from allegations that didn’t go so far as to be out of hand, in Grothe’s estimation. But then note what the highly respected James Randi said about Shermer in late 2014: “Shermer has been a bad boy on occasion — I do know that[.] I have told him that if I get many more complaints from people I have reason to believe, that I am going to have to limit his attendance at the conference. His reply, […] is he had a bit too much to drink and he doesn’t remember. I don’t know — I’ve never been drunk in my life. It’s an unfortunate thing … I haven’t seen him doing that. But I get the word from people in the organization that he has to be under better control. If he had gotten violent, I’d have him out of there immediately. I’ve just heard that he misbehaved himself with the women, which I guess is what men do when they are drunk.”

There is something very strange about Randi’s statement and I don’t mean that it sounds untruthful; Randi recognizes that there is some kind of problem with Shermer at conferences but fails to ascent to the requisite outrage. Ah, but so does the New Atheist community who for so long has claimed the moral high ground over theistic institutions such as the Catholic Church that has for decades covered up sexual abuse by priests. I’m not drawing an analogy here, I’m making a direct comparison. Why is Shermer getting a pass, because he is ‘one of our own’ to atheists? That’s not rational and it is exactly the kind of behavior atheists have long rebuked the Catholic Church for. In other words, atheists that defend Shermer while believing in any kind of moral objectivity – as many New Atheists do – are hypocrites.

While Shermer has written about the evolutionary roots of our morality, I can’t be in Shermer’s head to know exactly his thoughts on morality. I do highly doubt he believes in moral objectivity himself. If he did, he must acknowledge that this morality becomes faulty in the presence of alcohol or is otherwise somehow able to conveniently justify his behavior. But what’s worse is that the rest of the New Atheist community ignores Shermer’s behavior as well and it’s not hard to tell why; if they do acknowledge Shermer’s conduct, then the argument from atheists about how terribly theists behave is weakened. If the New Atheist community really wants to be the paradigm of virtue and morality for the future, they need to have the strength of their alleged convictions. Shermer’s behavior is not okay. But it’s worse to ignore it altogether.

[Adam Lee wrote about The Wall of Silence Around Michael Shermer quite eloquently. Here is a link to that patheos.com article.]