Monday, November 27, 2006

A New Explanatory Theory: Take This, Evolustionists and IDers!

[Note: this post should not be read by the humor impaired, even though I am often among their number]

Since I broke my wrist, being physically unable to work, I have had a great deal of time on my hands. Way too much time. Time to ponder. Way, way, way too much time to ponder.

My pondering began when I realized that a reflex, an unconscious decision made in less than a quarter of a second's time, has reduced me to this broken shell of my former self, hand and arm wrapped and bandaged, a screw surgically (and permanently!) inserted into my wrist. I'd taken martial arts classes. I'd been trained in how to fall, my natural reflex subverted to avoid just the sort of injury I sustained. I spent months flopping on the floor of the studio, fearing the floor at least as much as the tongue lashing I'd get for hitting it wrong.

Under the supervision of my martial arts master I learned the art of falling. Knowing in advance that gravity would soon win our perpetual wrestling match, I could curl my body just right to hit the ground rolling, "slap out," and pop right up to resume the attack.

But, given my first chance to fall in a "natural environment," my first uncontrolled fall, the first time that gravity won even though I didn't let it, I reverted back to form. To reflex. An unconscious decision, unwilling to remain repressed, made in less than a quarter of a second, left me temporarily disabled.

And, like I said, this has left me with time to think. Time to ponder. Far too much time. Time to revisit everything I ever thought that I believed. And, in this time, I realized that my injury - or, more accurately, the asinine reflex which gave rise to it - stands as the ultimate challenge to two competing explanatory theories. My injury - or, again, the reflex which gave rise to it - knocks off the two theoretical giants at the center of both our culture war, and the broader war between science and religion.

The question of evolution by means of natural selection or intelligent design has, I propose, finally been answered in the most decisive fashion: Neither!

You see, if our biology could be explained by Darwinian evolution, then it stands to reason that at some point such a useless trait would have been weeded out of the gene pool. How can billions of years not eliminate the most counter-intuitive and destructive impulses?!? If it truly were "survival of the fittest," whichever of my ancestors possessed this ridiculous instinct would surely have been wiped out, leaving no trace of this trait.

No, the only way such a trait could have survived is if it were willed to be, and to be everlasting, by a sovereign creator, a supreme designer. But, from this trait, what can we learn of this designer, whose work is so manifestly evident in our fatal flaws? This is certainly not the perfect and benevolent artist/engineer proclaimed by ID. No, that the work of God is found in the most inexplicable aspects of our genetic make-up - not that which is, as IDers claim, too complex to be explained by random mutations over time; but that which is too stupid, too counter-productive, to have possibly survived the process of natural selection - points not to an intelligent designer, but to an unintellegent one!

That's right, the reflex to stick your hands down to break your fall as gravity hurls you to the ground proves once and for all that not only is there a God, but that that God is an idiot!

So I challenge you, dear reader, to look at nature with these new eyes given to you by the grand theory of Unintellegent Design (UD, for short), and find more evidence that we have been Unintellegently Designed.

This is the new Sandalstraps' Sanctuary reader contest: To find and report here evidence of our Unintellegent Design. We need both stories of stupid behaviors and reflexes which should not have been allowed to survive the billions of years of so-called "natural selection" which have supposedly led to us, and also theoretical work to bolster UD against those who would like, for ideological reasons, to shoot it down before it can knock down the twin idols of evolution and ID.

3 comments:

MadPriest said...

Teeth.
If dentures work, why were we born with teeth with nerves in?

I think this is a fine area of research that you have opened up here. Unintelligent Design - yes, it's definitely the way backwards and I'm with you all the way.

Pat Greene said...

I dropped over here from Mad Priest's place. One major sign of UD? Toenails. Toenails serve no earthly purpose, other than to get ripped off and ingrown. Fingernails are useful for tearing open packaging, but toenails should have long ago completely disappeared from the human race.

crystal said...

This makes me think of the Darwin Awards

Love is an example of UD, I think. It can sometimes cause people to do things counter to their own survival. Jesus = one of the best examples of this self-destructive trait :-)