Bad Design Claims and Human Reproduction
Over at The Question Evolution Project on Fakebook, we have been posting one of the favorite giggling points of misotheists. Namely, the alleged bad design of the human eye. Such dysteleology is easily refuted with:
- This series of articles by Dr. Jason Lisle (I linked to the first, the rest are linked at the end of each subsequent article)
- A video by the late Tommy Mitchell, MD
- The article "Backwardly wired retina 'an optimal structure': New eye discovery further demolishes Dawkins"
- Others
However, atheists have a bumper sticker mentality: "Dawkins said it, I believe it, that settles it". (It is indeed unfortunate that people who claim to believe in science and reason reject those very things.) Then they use a faulty appeal to authority to people who have no idea what they're talking about, then use all of those things to confirm their biases. In the same way, faulty presuppositions and bad logic are used to deny God because women have miscarriages. Therefore, evolution.
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| 9-Week Human Embryo from Ectopic Pregnancy Image credit: Flickr / Ed Uthman (CC BY 2.0) |
The claim that sporadic miscarriage is a result of poor design (or as expressed in the paper by Cavazza T, et al 2021, “is due to a remarkably inefficient process” of fertilization) emanates partly from a lack of understanding of reality. The fact is, we are all surrounded by poisons, corrosive radiation, toxins, dangerous chemicals and lethal gamma radiation. As I will explain, our body was designed to protect us from these insults. One of the most important concepts I learned in my medical school toxicology class was “the dose is the poison.” Nothing in low enough amounts, even radiation, is toxic, and everything in high enough amounts is toxic, even water, which is necessary for life.
You can read the entire article (I'll allow it rambles a bit, but the author gets back to the main points) by heading over to "Does Imperfection Discredit Design?".