5d ago

Intelligent Design

Atheist Memes @lemmy.world

Intelligent Design

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Bro myopia is the least stupid part of our eye design problems. Our retinas are built entirely backwards for no other reason besides evolution making a mistake and then duct taping over it too much to fix it later.
If your retina was the right way around (like cephalopod eyes) you would have:
No blind spots
Higher fidelity vision even with the same number of receptors since the nerves and blood vessels wouldn’t interfere like they do now
much lower likelihood of retinal detachment since you could attach it for real in the first place
possibility for better brightness/darkness resolution since blood supply could be greater without affecting light passage
possibility for better resolution because ganglion nerves can be packed more densely without affecting light passage
The ability to regenerate cones and rods because you could, again, ACTUALLY HAVE SUPPORT CELLS WITHOUT BLOCKING LIGHT TO THE RETINA
Our eyes are built in the stupidest way possible.
Another fun fact: retinol is regenerated by your liver. Not your eyes, not some part of your brain, not some organ near your head like your thalamus which could probably get the job done if it tried, your fucking liver. Your eyes taking a while to adjust to the dark has basically nothing to do with your eyes; it’s because of the delay in adjustment by your fucking liver to produce more retinal, dump it into your vascular system and wait for it to hopefully reach your eyes. Why are we built like this?!
Edit: A few comments asked for sources on the relation between dark adaptation and liver vitamin A. So I went looking for sources. It was honestly somewhat difficult to find information, but I was able to find two different case studies showing that night blindness in patients with damaged livers. Specifically these individuals had liver damage that affected their serum Vitamin A levels. And after raising their vitamin A levels, their symptoms improved.
This study details a patient with normal day vision and no other ocular problems besides being unable to see at night.
The patient had a medical history of stage 4 non-alcoholic liver cirrhosis, which led to a malabsorption of vitamin A, as confirmed by the very low vitamin A level in the serum analysis… …Subjective improvement in symptoms, along with better performance on visual field, were noted after initiating oral vitamin A supplementation for 6 months.
This study details a patient with night blindness caused by low levels of vitamin A presumably due to Hepatitis C.
Case description: This case describes a 64-year-old female patient with symptomatic VAD, likely secondary to liver cirrhosis in the setting of Hepatitis C. The patient presented with night blindness and blurry vision. She was successfully managed with direct replacement of Vita-min A.
These studies do show that dark adaptation is dependent on vitamin A produced by the liver, but I’ll be the first to admit it’s not exactly conclusive evidence of my initial claim that the liver must respond to dark conditions increasing retinol concentration in the blood in order for rod cells to function properly in low light conditions. That is a possible explanation for these case studies but not necessarily the only one, so take my last fun fact with a grain of salt.
- Another fun fact: retinol is regenerated by your liver. Not your eyes, not some part of your brain, not some organ near your head like your thalamus which could probably get the job done if it tried, your fucking liver. Your eyes taking a while to adjust to the dark has basically nothing to do with your eyes; it’s because of the delay in adjustment by your fucking liver to produce more retinal, dump it into your vascular system and wait for it to hopefully reach your eyes.
  This is fascinating, I had no idea that there was another mechanism at play to improve low light vision other than pupil dilation
  
  Or that it got stuck in the figurative basement organ where a silly amount of bio-chemistry is stuck because evolution kinda shrugged a few million years ago.
- Maybe if we eat more cephalopods, our eyes will turn into their good eyes?
  That's how that works, right?
  
  That's how you get a certain pissed-off Elder God to wake up from his dark dreaming down in the sunken ruins of R'lyeh..
- I’m reading this with my poorly designed eyes right now!
  
  I wish we could use genetics or some interest8ng science to fix this.
  
  Does eye excercises fix myopia?
- Source that retinal concentration is related to dark adaptation?
  
  I'm not OP and I'm not an expert, but I know that the production of rhodopsin requires retinal. Rhodopsin is a light-sensitive protein our eyes use to see in low-light conditions, and is essential for our night vision. Retinal and retinol are not the same thing, but they both come from Vitamin A, and convert into each other during the visual cycle. Which means that a deficiency in Vitamin A = a deficiency in retinol, retinal, and rhodopsin, which in effect leads to night blindness.
  But I'd like to know more/get a source for OP's liver connection. I know most of our retinol is stored in the liver. However, I'm having difficulty verifying their claim that the delay in night vision onset is due to it traveling from the liver to the eyes. From what I can find, the retinol ligand that produces rhodopsin already exists in mammalian eyes (and persists there as part of the aforementioned visual cycle.) So the argument that night vision takes so long because retinol needs to transfer from the liver to the eyes is suspect.
  Unfortunately, search engines absolutely suck these days, and almost every article I can find is behind a fucking paywall. So I'm struggling to find information that can either confirm or deny OP's claim.
  OP, please provide a source! Inquiring minds want to know more!
  
  I was able to find two case studies showing direct links from vitamin A levels (and liver damage) to night blindness. I’ve edited my initial comment with the links to them.
- From the point of intelligent design:
  We see that there is different sensory focuses. For instance many animals can smell and hear much better than humans do. Some animals have exceptionally better eyes than humans, but overall humans are very focused on vision.
  Now when we look at modern inner city environments and the like. Would you think it to be actually better if our senses, particularly our eyes were that much better and delivering even more input to our brains? We already see many people that are overwhelmed in terms of their sensory input and frankly the ones that aren't still suffer slowly from living in cities. In terms of where we are now, i don't think it is too bad that we don't have hawk eyes.
  
  I live with, work with, and am myself part of, the autistic population. So I gotta agree - sometimes, higher sensitivity is a real detriment.
  It's not fun being light-sensitive. I've had days where I've worn sunglasses indoors, with the lights off and curtains closed. The vast majority of my days aren't that bad, thankfully, but it truly sucks when light causes physical eye pain and headaches. I've got a great eye for detail (and have been called "eagle eye" throughout my life), which benefits me in a number of ways, but unfortunately it also means I get distracted by things others don't notice. I can't just "ignore" a lot of things, and when those distractions impact me disproportionately, I'm left in the frustrating situation of guiding others to see (or hear, or feel) the things that are super obvious to me - it feels like leading a child by the hand.
  I'm also sensitive to touch (I can't stand light touch, but I can detect ticks on my skin before they bite) and have the ability to hear novel speech sounds that modern science claims I should've lost the ability to detect decades ago (which, okay, is a cool feature to have. But it contributes to being easily-distracted.) All in all, I've never known any other way of experiencing the world, but I do know that most people have difficulty understanding my atypical point of view. Which leads to me preferring the company of fellow spectrumites, and others who understand and accept sensory differences.
  
  So this intelligent designer decided to fuck our eyes up some weird convoluted way instead of just... making us see less?
  I honestly hope you don't subscribe to this unscientific garbage.
  
  and so... the "intelligent designer" is, for some reason, restricted from being able to make human brains capable of withstanding the stress from having improved senses
- Can we have an eye transplant from an octopus please? And while we are at it, can we have a couple of tentacles too?
  
  Nope
  
  Nope
- Did you just see that other post about Cephalopod eye anatomy and write this?
  I ask because you have a poor grasp over what evolution actually is when you say things like "evolution made a mistake". The truth is that our eyes are one of many, many layouts in the animal kingdom, it's not some binary thing like you're making it out to be.
  
  I actually came across this for the first time when I was doing research into the visual pathway for the purpose of trying to structure a spiking neural net more closely to human visual processing.
  The Wikipedia page mentions cephalopod eyes specifically when talking about the inverted retina of vertebrates.
  The vertebrate retina is inverted in the sense that the light-sensing cells are in the back of the retina, so that light has to pass through layers of neurons and capillaries before it reaches the photosensitive sections of the rods and cones.[5] The ganglion cells, whose axons form the optic nerve, are at the front of the retina; therefore, the optic nerve must cross through the retina en route to the brain. No photoreceptors are in this region, giving rise to the blind spot.[6] In contrast, in the cephalopod retina, the photoreceptors are in front, with processing neurons and capillaries behind them. Because of this, cephalopods do not have a blind spot.
  The Wikipedia page goes on to explain that our inverted retinas could be the result of evolution trying to protect color receptors by limiting their light intake, as it does appear that our glial cells do facilitate concentrating light.
  However, the “positive” effects of the glial cells coming before the receptors could almost certainly be implemented in a non-inverted retina. So that’s the evolutionary duct tape I was mentioning.
  It would be difficult to flip the retina back around (in fact since it originates as part of the brain we’d kind of have to grow completely different eyes), so that’s not an option for evolution.
  However, slight changes to the glial cells and vasculature of the eyes is definitely more possible. So those mutations happen and evolution optimizes them as best it can.
  Evolution did well to optimize a poorly structured organ but it’s still a poorly structured organ.
- TIL,Thank you for dumping obscure biological knowledge!
  I felt the same when I found out roughly 90-99 % of serotonin (predecessor) is produced by a certain type of gut bacteria. For some reason, finding the research was (is? Haven't checked for a few years) for some reason non-obvious and difficult.
  Now that I think about it, is there a wiki or something where we can share this knowledge? Your artefact would have helped a friend a few years ago...
- Dear internet stranger, you are awesome. Thanks for your comment and time :)

Evolution: bruh all that matters is that you are a horndog.
- dat pelvis 🫦
- It's so weird thinking about how we're just copying DNA. That's pretty much the purpose of life; replicate these strange molecules as much as possible. Consciousness is some unintended byproduct of the 'copy forever' algorithm.
  
  And the contents of the information being copied is basically a recepie for building a machine that can make copies of the information needed to build that machine...
  
  It's so weird thinking about how we're just copying DNA.
  What's more interesting to me is that we're not just copying it. We're taking two strands of DNA and randomly choosing some from each strand. Some animals are clones of their parent, but most are a randomized mix from each parent. The strands are 99% the same, so to a certain extent it's just copying that molecule, but it's also trying to perfect that remaining 1%.
  Instead of being a way to copy a molecule forever, it's a way to optimize that molecule. But, what is an optimal molecule? It's a molecule that contains instructions to generate a creature that has 2 legs, 2 hands, a brain, etc.

no but honestly, periods are great. The feeling when all that extra blood leaves your body is amazing. Guys will never know what it's like being somewhere and sudenly feeling warmth blood running down your legs out of nowhere. Amazing. 10/10 would ome back as a woman again
- I honestly don’t know any proponents of “intelligent design” who are female.
  Except the Sycophantic Patriarchal TERFs who do everything their husbands tell them to do.
- Triggered lmao. A flood of memories just came back like
- I cannot describe how much I hate this feeling. It’s probably honestly been protective because I have another reason to always use condoms, and even when I’m drunk, I’m still autistic.
- Ha, nice try. There are no women in Lemmy

I forget who but a comedian said it well. If we were intelligently designed it was the first design. Why would they ever put the amusement park right next to the sewage system?
- I feel like if there ever was an advertisement park it would be perfectly placed right next to the sewage system.
  
  Ha, fair. Fixed now
  
  looks at Disney world
- Same reason they mixed the vestibular system with the vision system. Do you want a different body part for every single body function? That’d be a lot of extra weight and things to take care of.
- Plenty of animals have their excretion outlet and their food inlet in the same place.
  For birds the cloaca is both for excretion and sex.
  
  ah, the orifice of kings
- George Carlin, I think.

Optimization was never the goal. It just has to function well enough for a sufficient portion of the species to reproduce.
- Literally the evolutionary equivalent of "eh, good enough"
- Evolution is an optimisation process, just a very slow, wasteful and stupid one. It finds local optima which it usually gets stuck in.
  
  evolution is the epitome of "good enough, ship it!"

This D&D alignment chart is weird...
- Yeah, I don't think I'd put wisdom teeth in lawful good personally.
  
  Yeah, best case scenario it would be chaotic neutral

What’s the smart nerve taking a detour one?
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recurrent_laryngeal_nerve
  
  And it does that for both humans... And giraffes. Going from the brain, several meters down to the heart, then all the way back up to the larynx.
- Recurrent laryngeal nerve
- Vagus nerve
  
  Funny they didn't use a giraffe for that one. It's like a few inches out of the way for humans - It's feet for giraffes

Also, Appendicitis is when your Appendix, a vestigial organ which produces small amounts of Vitamin C, randomly explodes and kills you.
- I heard it's actually fairly useful for your gut bacteria or smth like that

Human body is worse than all the JS npm drama shit

Thought that knee diagram was a pelvis at first glance and was wondering how that was related to sports.
- Mmh, pelvis sports.

You forgot the nose when sleeping! It produces snoring, giving your location and sleep status away to nearby predators!
- That's only the fatties with sleep apnea. Survival of the fittest, nerd! /s

Who the fuck would design ingrown nails??

I used to argue this stuff online. I had to quit for my sanity. If anyone wants a sample of the absolute insane beliefs and the staggering amount of handwaving these people are capable of, I suggest checking out evolutionfairytale.com. They will unironically claim to be objective, then a sentence later tell you that "proper science literature" is to be discredited because it has a pro-evolution bias. 🤣
- I just took a very brief tour of that website. Apparently symbiotic relationships in nature prove evolution isn't real.... sheesh. I couldn't get past the giraffe claim that proves there was an intelligent design based on how much blood gets pumped up a giraffe neck.

Wisdom teeth were amazing to have back when dental care didn't exist and our teeth fell out from decay or injuries.
- Why?
  
  Because in prehistoric humanity, without the knowledge of toothcare or ease of access to scrubbing agents, your teeth would rot out in old age(about 20), but then the wisdom teeth would grow in, and you might barely live long enough to be a withered old husk and maybe see your grandkids born(about 30). The before times were rough.

I'm sorry gotta go on a tangent rant I was recently talking to a friend about pregnancy and it is fucking mind boggling. Organs shift, skeleton changes, and then all the crazy chemical stuff going on too.
The fact that millions of women want this and many experience it more than once is just mind boggling to me.
Eta: sorry my tangent was inspired by "childbirth is fun" but only showing the pelvis.
- Wait till you hear about caterpillars.
  Evolution is one hell of a drug
  
  ....you're not wrong but you're also comparing an insect to a human woman who has the cognition to experience all the discomfort and the high mortality rates even in first world countries.

Someone recently pointed out the bottom left one is because we can see color better with our eye design.
Are the other ones still valid?
- "See color better" is because 30+ million years ago one of our ancestors was born with a chromosomal mutation that duplicated the DNA sequence for the red/green cone cells in the retina. That individual had the same color perception as everybody else, but over millions of years the duplicated sequences were able to diverge their peak wavelength receptivities into red and green respectively, allowing better discrimination of colors in that range.
  Interestingly, that individual 30+ million years ago would likely have shown characteristics similar to today's Down's Syndrome people, due to the chromosomal duplication. It's a prime example of why eugenics is so horrifically misguided.
  
  As as a homocidal charismatic global suicide?

It's intelligent design; the divine is also just sadistic and a dick.

Oh, but you forgot that all the problems are because the first woman ate the wrong fruit. The bible says that is why pregnancy hurts. The rest of those problems? Well creation scientists have determined that sin caused those too even though the bible didn't specify it. They know this because they need it to be the case to keep believing in their mythology.
- I thought pregnancy hurts because woman number zero decides to go on top, which in return caused woman number one to eat the fruit.
  Checkmate, abrahamlcturds.

and the whole thing is based around killing and eating one another.

And amazingly 7 billion of us still breathing and at least half of us think they can do better 😂

The nerve thing bothers me. I wish to learn nothing more of it

The nerve going down around the heart artery also applies to the giraffe. It does the exact same thing from brain to heart and around that artery the back up to the throat.
I have seen creationists holding bananas and declaring that they are the perfect size for human hands and proof of intelligent design. DUH ... that banana took centuries to design and the fruit company has a patent for designing it.
- I loved learning about the laryngeal nerve in giraffes from the video by Richard Dawkins. I think the PBS show Your Inner Fish covered it too.
  Edit: I may be wrong about Your Inner Fish referencing the laryngeal nerve, but I'm currently re-watching it anyway.

Don't forget "the bush that tells theocratic ephebophiles that it's no longer pedophilia"!

also the eye development, Cephalapods dont have this weakness, the blindpsot, because of different evolutionary mechanism.

What's up with the earthquake one?

Also hiccups

Hey, is myopia reversible without surgery? Anyone knows?
- Take your thumb and gently push the eye back into shape from its elongated form. Push a bit and then check if your vision improved. Repeat until the focus point is correct. Be careful not to overshoot the sweet spot.
  
  Hey AI, you rock!
  
  Wow it worked! But now the lights went off..

Perfect, mustve been made by an omnipotent being.

My patella tracking is off and I’m furious about it.

The periods one is actually addressed by most creationists. In the book of Genesis, Eve (and consequently, all other women) is punished with the pain of childbirth for falling for the lies of the Serpent, and so most creationists view periods as part of that curse. Pretty messed up but that's how they see it. The vagus nerve is completely nonsensical under intelligent design but makes complete sense under evolution. The biggest issue I see is why TF God made everything in the universe look exactly like it's way older than it is. The best argument I can come up with is that it was an epic prank to totally own the libs who find all of this stuff 6,000 years later. Like God is like "Hah you just got pranked you stupid nerd! That'll teach you to be curious about all the cool shit I made!" To believe in creationism is to believe that a huge swath of scientists across an incredibly broad set of fields are part of the largest conspiracy ever conceived of to try to discredit the Bible, or that God is an evil trickster who intentionally laid this giant trap to damn countless souls to Hell.

Where is Doctor Pangloss when you need him?

no loving god could create the shoulder joint

Rabbits' digestive systems are so inefficient they have to eat their own shit to get enough nutrients.

It might be intelligent design but not perfect design. I mean we build stuff with flaws too and consider ourselves intelligent.
If God or some space alien was really good with biotech and had these parts laying around the result is pretty good. Most humans function for several decades before stuff breaks. The earth is also a pretty stable ecosystem.
Both much better than we could build.
- The Christian religion regards God as infallible. So if his designs aren't perfect either we weren't designed by him or he isn't infallible, which breaks Christian doctrine.
  
  Christian doctrine breaks Christian doctrine
  Also, anyone believing in goat herder fairytales from the year 0 should not be allowed to raise children as you don't have the intellectual capacity to do so
  
  I also subscribe to this ideology. If there is a god, he was never on our side.
  
  He might be infallible, maybe just sadist. You know... Mysterious way and other stuff when one runs out of arguments
- No, it is not intelligent design.
  Please stop as I'm unsure if you're joking or not and my patience with idiots is gone.

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