Talk:Laryngeal nerve

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How do you know there is no benefit to this nerve being very long? This is as presumptuous as saying you can tell which mutations will make it in a population without knowing what all the environmental pressures are and before some of them even exist. Maybe this long nerve will make sense at some point. Nobody knows. Making these "bad design" arguments is as silly as the YE creationists arguing that such and such shows obvious signs of design. They're both assertions based on the same sort of assumptions about something that atheists must claim are unknowable. They are arguments from ignorance. I have even seen people like Richard Dawkins make this argument but it doesn't help evolution. It is easy to say that something is designed where there are examples of that thing in the world or where it has characteristics of design. We recognize those things because we have experience with them. We know what tool marks and welds look like. We know that certain substances like metal alloys don't come in nature but we make them. We know that more complex things like Paley's watch were designed because we know what watches are and that people make them. That's why Paley's argument is stupid. Maybe God makes these things too but atheists have to say they could never know that because they do not accept that there is even any good evidence for God and nobody has seen God making these things anyway. If they were YECs they would say everything is designed and then work backward to dishonestly force the so-called evidence to fit their scriptural misinterpretation by saying that something is so complex that it could only be designed by God. But that is the whole problem right there. They are admitting that they don't know and just asserting without evidence that it is true. Their argument doesn't actually have anything at all to do with design. Every bit of it comes from the Bible. For atheists to claim that something looks like bad design is as silly and presumptuous as YECs claiming they can identify design just by looking. To atheists both claims are based on ignorance, not knowledge. You can only say that you are making fun of YECs when you talk about bad design. You can't even say that you are accepting the idea for the sake of argument because atheists must say nobody knows what supernatural design looks like in the first place. I think it is even hypocritical to criticize YECs for pretending they can see supernatural design. Nate Nate Keaton (talk) 18:17, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

But the "design" isn't the point. Any accusation of "design" misses the fact that this is entirely consistent with common ancestry stemming from embryological development of certain structures and expressions of genotypes. "Design" is entirely a non-explanation, especially in this case, as it simply agrees with every single thing that evolutionary biology says but then tacks on "Evolution? Nuh-uh!!!" on the end. This adds and explains nothing. If you're going to assert "design" then you need a consistent framework for what is consistent with design; specifically, that organisms are created from scratch by a designer, should show efficiency in design, and have no limitations based on common ancestry - otherwise, how is it different from what evolution predicts? (Hint: it isn't) Any piece of evidence that suggests common descent blows this hypothesis up quite neatly - vestigial structures, biological homology, and "curious wiring" that makes sense in a fish, but not in any other animal. It's not that it's necessarily a silly design (though it really is), it's that it's entirely consistent with predictions based around common ancestry - and IDiots then try to shoehorn "design" into it anyway.^postate 09:02, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

The theological argument against Nate's would be that God does not deceive, so to say that he would create something but make it look like it evolved borders on blasphemy. If a god created the laryngeal nerve the way it is, it wasn't the god of the Bible. Perhaps it was Loki. Sophie^Wilder 09:50, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

No, Armondikov, you're missing the point. Of course you have to say that evolution is a better explanation for a feature. One argument YEC make that I think is correct, although it completely undermines their own position, is that you've got no business talking about what is and what is not good design. How do you know what God would and would not do? How do you know that some feature you think is bad design won't eventually provide some evolutionary advantage? How do you know that God would make things that you think are efficiently designed? Why can't God design a system that lets some features be neutral? The truth is you can't distinguish between what someone says God might do and what evolution predicts so what's the point in making the same kinds of arguments from ignorance as YEC? YEC only say they know what God would do because they make it up. You've never seen God design anything so where are your assumptions about good and bad supernatural design coming from? You have nothing to compare your idea of efficiency or whatever else to. Nate Keaton (talk) 16:43, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

Sophie, that is the kind of circular argument atheists say YEC make when they say that the Bible says X and therefore it must be true. It doesn't say anything about whether it makes sense for the atheist to make truth claims based on the same kind of ignorance YEC do. Like I said, YEC aren't really talking about intelligent design at all. They are talking about faith in their Biblical literalism because it doesn't matter whether there are any real features of design which is why their arguments for pretending to see it are weak. ANY design is intelligent design because to them the Bible says so. I happen to agree that Behe and Dembski are coming up with stupid examples of intelligent design that scientists have completely debunked but that won't stop YEC because their theology is so rigid that they can't accept what is true over what they pridefully and incorrectly insist the Bible says. Nate Keaton (talk) 16:43, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

Because the reason given by Sarfati is that the "design" prioritises the heart over the larynx, with the larynx reduced to a mere afterthought. Something capable of from-scratch design with no common ancestry wouldn't need to be painted into such a corner - an evolutionary development would be. It's barely consistent with design, never mind good or bad design (which, yeah, is subjective), but one presumes that if an "intelligent" creator was behind it, then the design would be at least applicable to purpose. You can't escape-hatch this by pulling some "you can't understand a supernatural deity" crap, because while I'm sure no one can know the mind of this miraculous designer, we can very much know the world that these designs operate in - and that is independent of the nature or mindset of the designer entirely. ^theist 20:45, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

Well I've made the point that needs to be made. That is that it's presumptuous to pretend you know what is and is not good design. What you may call a bad design can buttress another trait or might end up being beneficial given whatever environmental pressures come along in the future. You can't distinguish positive, negative, or neutral traits in the present - you can barely do it in hindsight. You're making the same mistake YEC make. Nate Keaton (talk) 23:57, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

But it's not presumptive. This is why we, as intelligent beings, can actually design things. We design cars to do a certain task because we know how reality works, we can see cars in action, we can design accordingly. By more-or-less the same token we can look at organic creatures and see what is and what is not appropriate in their form. If we were incapable of doing that, and making an assessment of biological "design" we would be incapable of doing it with our own man-made designs. ^theist 12:56, 8 September 2012 (UTC)

It's theoretically possible that a supernatural designer had reasons which we as humans can't understand for designing the Laryngeal nerve the way it is. Still by Occam's razor the simplest explanation with fewest implausible assumptions is evolution of the laryngeal nerve by natural selection. Proxima Centauri (talk) 11:14, 3 March 2013 (UTC)