Can anyone remember the name of the nerve that left the brain, went right down the neck and back to the brain and so was a good example on unintelligent design?

saw it but can't remember the name. It went to the larynx so was called something to do with that….laryngeal nerve comes up with a google search but not sure if it's the same for giraffes!

That would be the recurrent laryngeal nerve.

You want a good example of unintelligent design? Daddy long legs. Sorted.

Whales have leg bones.

brilliant tv!

not proof, simply a feature put in by god to test the believers faith.

simply a feature put in by god to test the believers faith.

so you mean apart from not being detectable by any means, a further test is bogus misinformation rooted in our genomes ? I'm not sure I'd want to give such an entity the time of day even if I were inclined to believe :o)

Love the lolasaur

missed the elephant one, but loving the others.
giraffes are funny 🙂
mooo!

sfb, do you have a problem with an omnipresent being that no one has ever been able to prove exists planting clues that hint to their non existence?

What other possible reason could there be? suggesting that there isn't an omnipresent being that may be blue, multi armed, caucasion, negroid, etc, etc.

"Oh dear," says God, "I hadn't though of that" and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.

sfb, do you have a problem with an omnipresent being that no one has ever been able to prove exists planting clues that hint to their non existence?

not a problem as such, and I suppose even gods are entitled to have fun, but I might not want to hang out with it/them…

Wish I could find it again, but a great cartoon goes like this;

Bartender – "Another beer, Mr Descartes?"
Descartes – "Erm, I think not. Oh……bugg……."

Imagine if, say, the world had been bodged together by an omnipotent version of World Class Accident, in his garage, pissed. It might very well contain giraffes, but I'm not sure you'd want to criticise their wiring too much, as long as they didn't actually catch fire… 🙂

god would not have created single speeders………there is your proof.

It might very well contain giraffes

the same quirk is wired into us and presumably all other mammals…

The whale one the other week was amazing. Only very slightly marred by the intense woman who couldn't wait to clamber onto and into the whale..

"YOU, and YOU! Come here! You hold this. You hold that. Where's my HOOK?" *Dives into bloody thorax*

Saw that last night and the "Dawkins message" pissed me off a bit – spoilt a good prog with a load of soapboxing

proselytising/evangelism is irritating whether it's religious or otherwise

proselytising/evangelism is irritating whether it's religious or otherwise

so how would one discuss this bizarre configuration without mentioning evolution, or would one just not mention the matter at all to avoid dissent ?

I love Jesus, he is awesome.

One could have mentioned it once or twice, rather than seizing on every (well, 4 in around 15 minutes) opportunity to drag it all back to how creation is wrong

After all, they spent very little time explaining that giraffes aren't tall to help them wade across rivers or to get served at the bar – presumably similarly incorrect

Hmmm, having thought about it, I'm not sure the whole of anatomy doesn't undermine creationism, I mean, if I were a god I'd not bother with all that complication, stuff would just work – I mean, animals are just a way of keeping meat fresh, right ? And since people aren't supposed to be eaten we could just have cotton wool inside, as the form need not be related to the function, or when you get cut open you just turn to dust like in Blade…

The point is broader than the design of giraffes, but attempting to extrapolate what god would have done from what you would do is pretty hopeless. 🙂

I lived with a girl at one stage who might charitably have been called a ghastly skank. She was a believer, and was confident that god wanted her to have fun as she saw fit. This included drinking to the point of public incontinence. She did not (as far as I am aware) have a revelation of the divine will particularly, she just assumed that god would approve of her personally. This seems to me to be even more implausible than the existence of god.

Likewise with giraffe design, it seems less likely that their is a god who designs giraffes according to a pattern that we can readily understand than that there is a god at all. Although I persist in thinking that religion is a different sort of belief and a different form of truth and therefore that Dawkins and his ilk are barking up fundamentally the wrong tree. 🙂

BigDummy – Are you suggesting I didn't invent Giraffes whilst drunk in my garage?

Heretic, burn him, burn him!

http://i303.photobucket.com/albums/nn130/wca_stw/deer2.jpg?t=1248211133

This was the prototype but I got carried away with the neck bit on the final model

Can someone sort the linky bit out.

[/img ] at the end…

Can you see the beginnings of the laryngeal nerve?

but attempting to extrapolate what god would have done from what you would do is pretty hopeless

but isn't that the very basis of all religions ? God says nowt so they have to guess…

I don't think any serious religion is based on guess-work in that way, no. Mistaken claims to have had revelations of the nature of the divine, if you like. But I'm pretty sceptical that's the same thing.

That's not to say that the contruction of giraffes is necessarily evidence either way. But "if I were god, I'd do it differently therefore it can't have been done by god" is a seriously flimsy position, suggesting at best a chronic lack of imagination. 🙂

WCA – chapeau, 'tis a fine giraffe. 🙂

That's not to say that the contruction of giraffes is necessarily evidence either way

as I pointed out above the same applies to (as far as I know) all mammals, certainly people too

But "if I were god, I'd do it differently therefore it can't have been done by god"

I didn't say that, just that if this is a metaphorical stage for testing our worthiness then the production values are overly elaborate…

suggesting at best a chronic lack of imagination

an apt confession 🙂