Why atheism works

Originally posted by twhitehead
Sorry, I misunderstood the issue. I still don't think that there is an 'obvious' design flaw. I rather doubt that you could prove that the opposite design is much better without actually building one. It certainly is not as simple as saying 'well I would do it this way'.

“…I still don't think that there is an 'obvious' design flaw….”

I would ask a creationist: “would a god with infinite wisdom make a design flaw that wasn’t an ‘obvious’ design flaw?”

“…I rather doubt that you could prove that the opposite design is much better without actually building one….”

I disagree, I think you can ‘prove’ that the opposite design is better (I am using the word ‘prove’ a bit loosely here) without actually building it by applying logical arguments and by assuming that the basic laws of physics as they are currently understood are essentially correct.

Originally posted by PinkFloyd
You know the difference. Evil is demonstrable--stupid is subjective (unless you have a way to know every brain function of your adversary). And even if it were true, you are civilized and every civilized person can tell that the former is rude and the latter is not.

If I were to say that the Sun revolved around the Earth, what would you call me? If I said that evolution was a farce, what would you call me? Cause I would be extremely stupid to say either of these things, and that's a fact.

Originally posted by Zahlanzi
yes, what if the oxigen irrigation is better this way. less vision but higher durability.

Have you got a premise for believing that the oxygen irrigation is better that way?

I have studied biology and I certainly cannot see what possible reason there could be for believing that. The blood vessels would be the same distance from the retina cells so that would be a reason for believing it would make little difference to oxygen irrigation as one of the main things that effect oxygen irrigation is the distance it has to travel. Other things that effect oxygen irrigation would be temperature and the medium it defuses through -non of which are relevant here.

Originally posted by Andrew Hamilton
I disagree, I think you can ‘prove’ that the opposite design is better (I am using the word ‘prove’ a bit loosely here) without actually building it by applying logical arguments and by assuming that the basic laws of physics as they are currently understood are essentially correct.

Its not about the laws of physics. Its about a lot more than that. There are so many things involved in the eye, that getting light directly to the receptors is hardly the only consideration. Considering that we often like to wear sun glasses, one might think that allowing more light in might in fact be a bad thing. I don't know a whole lot about optics, but I suspect that if the retina was more sensitive then the iris would need to contract more which might result in a poorer focal range.

But even then it is not as simple as just eye layout. You must ask how the body builds itself, what proteins, hormones, DNA code etc are needed to make the eye grow in the right shape. Maybe it takes less DNA to do it this way. Less DNA means less chance of genetic diseases leading to blindness.
It just such a big equation that simply thinking that you know better is simply not enough.

Even the assumption that a better eye would be a good thing is just that - an assumption. Maybe God has a good reason for wanting us to have poor eyesight. More privacy at night for example. Maybe our eyesight gets worse as we age so that we don't notice our spouse getting uglier.
Or maybe he just wants us to suffer. If God exists, he could presumable stop malaria. So one must assume that he has good reasons for allowing suffering, and in fact if he designed malaria, he intended suffering - its part of the design.

Your claim that the eye doesn't do what you think it should do to in what you think is the best possible way does not in any way indicate that it is not designed to do something. At best it shows that it is not designed to do what you think it is should be designed to do.

Having said all that, I am an atheist and do think that evolution is the best explanation for the structure of the eye. I just don't think your line of reasoning is valid.

Originally posted by Zahlanzi
so the point of life for you isn't progress, self perfection, but sleepin, eating and sleeping. perhaps photosynthesis because we would be like plants.
do you still think god is an idiot?

I know this question wasn't technically given to me, but I find it very relevent to the essence of this post.

I believe that the purpose of life is to make a positive impact on the world so that you can be remembered in future generations as a good man/woman, thus even though your body is dead and your spirit and your personality are dead, your name isn't. Think of Mozart, Gandhi, and Mother Teresa.

I don't believe God is an "idiot," I just don't believe He exists.

Originally posted by Andrew Hamilton
Have you got a premise for believing that the oxygen irrigation is better that way?

I have studied biology and I certainly cannot see what possible reason there could be for believing that. The blood vessels would be the same distance from the retina cells so that would be a reason for believing it would make little difference to oxygen irrigation ...[text shortened]... rigation would be temperature and the medium it defuses through -non of which are relevant here.

i didn't say is, i said might. i made an hypothesis, not a demonstration.

evolution is not that easy. so feats that are required for survival of the species are favored over minor improvements. the appendix in humans is mostly useless. yet it doesn't go away. we have more important stuff to evolve, like defense against the new bugs(which evolve much faster than us) and resistance to the carcinogenic substances.

Originally posted by scherzo
I know this question wasn't technically given to me, but I find it very relevent to the essence of this post.

I believe that the purpose of life is to make a positive impact on the world so that you can be remembered in future generations as a good man/woman, thus even though your body is dead and your spirit and your personality are dead, your name isn't ...[text shortened]... , and Mother Teresa.

I don't believe God is an "idiot," I just don't believe He exists.

of course.

this is what atheists believe. i believe all this AND that if pull a ghandi or an einstein i might get a bonus: afterlife.


i just thought about an interesting issue: maybe religious people are more selfish than atheists. (assuming both categories adhere to the "make a good impact" idea). whereas religious people might make a good impact for the bonus afterlife, the atheists are making an impact simply for the sake of progress.

Originally posted by Zahlanzi
i just thought about an interesting issue: maybe religious people are more selfish than atheists. (assuming both categories adhere to the "make a good impact" idea). whereas religious people might make a good impact for the bonus afterlife, the atheists are making an impact simply for the sake of progress.

Maybe that's true. I'm not qualified to answer.

Originally posted by Zahlanzi
of course.

this is what atheists believe. i believe all this AND that if pull a ghandi or an einstein i might get a bonus: afterlife.


i just thought about an interesting issue: maybe religious people are more selfish than atheists. (assuming both categories adhere to the "make a good impact" idea). whereas religious people might make a good impact for the bonus afterlife, the atheists are making an impact simply for the sake of progress.

Isn't the idea of having ones name "remembered in future generations" basically the secular version of "afterlife". It's just as selfish.

Originally posted by twhitehead
Maybe God has a good reason for wanting us to have poor eyesight. More privacy at night for example. Maybe our eyesight gets worse as we age so that we don't notice our spouse getting uglier.

LOL. And for those of us stuck with the bad luck of maintaining our vision, there's always beer.

Originally posted by twhitehead

Its not about the laws of physics. Its about a lot more than that. There are so many things involved in the eye, that getting light directly to the receptors is hardly the only consideration....

OK I agree with you. I agree with your point that is far more complex than what I implied and I shouldn’t have said what I did and with such confidence. 😕

I think I should have said:

“I think you can give a very strong argument (not strictly a ‘proof‘ because nothing can be ‘proven‘ about reality without making at least one, strictly speaking, unproven assumption) that the opposite design is better without actually building it by applying logical arguments and by assuming that the basic laws of physics as they are currently understood are essentially correct and by assuming quite a long list of other qualified assumptions that are designed so that most people find those assumptions hard to deny and the additional assumption that there are no complicating factors that you haven’t thought of or overlooked that could have a baring on your conclusion because, to the best of your judgement, you have thought and scrutinized every aspect of the issue and nobody else has come up with a suggestion for a complicating factor that you haven’t taken into consideration which can be demonstrated to be of possible influence or relevance to your conclusion.”

I am not sure but I think I have covered everything here. Haven’t I? 🙂

I have just noticed that I have forgot to mention another very-closely related and similar flaw with the design of the human eye:

Within the human eye, the nerve fibres for carrying the information from the retina to the optic nerve are, just like the blood vessels, are in front of the part of the retina responsible for detecting light. Where all these nerve fibres meet at the optic nerve, there are so many of them that that part of the retina isn’t designed to detect light because any light would be too blocked by the nerve fibres in front of it there. This gives rise to what is commonly known as the ‘blind spot’ of the eye.

There would be no such blind spot if evolution put all those nerve fibres behind the part of the retina responsible for detecting light but that just confirms that evolution is a blind unintelligent process and that evolution really messed up here. As usual, evolution did the best of a bad job and did various things to minimise the impact of this design flaw e.g.
1, by ensuring the position of the blind spot in the visual field in one eye does not coincide exactly with the position of the blind spot blind spot in the visual field in the other eye so that the blind spot each eye is covered by the functional part of the visual field of the other.
2, And, also by designing the human brain to fill in the gap in the picture from the blind spot from each eye (even from just one eye when you have the other closed) with a reasonable guess of what should be there
3, And, by making those nerve fibres extra thin.
etc.

Originally posted by Zahlanzi
i don't know much about the subject but i think he says the blood vessels are before the retina when if being after they might not disrupt the image. not that the image forms itself upside down on the retina. since i made no research on the subject i can simply suggest that maybe the blood irrigation of the retina might work better this way.

but the way ...[text shortened]... uge amount of time because humans don't need their eyes much anyway. correct me if i am wrong.

i can simply suggest that maybe the blood irrigation of the retina might work better this way.

But in many other species the retina is the "right" way round. If I remember rightly, the cephalopod eye (squid, octopus) is one such example, which is nearly as good as ours.

The only real explanation for the strange human eye morphology would be if the cells were under the skin originally.

Eyesight is more than just retina design. It's also the ability to see colors and color definition. Most mammals see only red and blue light. Primates, including humans, see red, blue, and green light. But that's nothing compared with birds! Humans have about 200,000 cones per millimeter, while some hawks have as many as 2 million per millimeter. Birds can also see into the ultraviolet spectrum. Also consider that humans process still frames as motion after about 26 or 27 images per second, but with accipiter hawks that number is more like 175.

A great-horned owl has bizzare eyes that are shaped like incandescent light bulbs and locked in the socket. An owl doesn't have the ability to move the eyeballs within the socket at all. But an owl can be focusing on one object up close with one eye and another far away because they have voluntary control of pupil dialation and focus.

So human eyesight is better than that of many animals is term of definition and color but not necessarily range. They are quite poor compared to birds. But there is a trade off with how the eyes have come about, for if a hawk or falcon loses an eye then they probably can't survive (even though there are quite rare exceptions for everything). A human can survive without an eye. Sure, they'll make some adjustments but it's not the death sentence that the loss of an eye can be with creatures that have better eyesight.

Originally posted by ThinkOfOne
Isn't the idea of having ones name "remembered in future generations" basically the secular version of "afterlife". It's just as selfish.

yes, but you would reap no benefits.