So-So Proofs of Intelligent Design


Table of Contents Frank B. Finite (a "true" atheist) Amazing Transitional Animals interview with a god This Day in Evolution History Chatter Box The Book of Chances Evolution in Action So-So Proofs of Intelligent Design Primordial Soup for the Soulless Opposable Thumbs The Blind Fools Evolution Dictionary Toon Dig EvoNews! Letters to the Editor The Blind Fools Guest Entry Log Who Are We? The Real Story Past Issues - Issues that ran before this Linkage - Other sites that are way more Contact the fools	So-So Proofs of Intelligent Design Ones you won't hear about from the other guys. Here we hilight some of the examples of intelligent design that the glory boys of creation science won't touch for one reason or another (or at least if they do, it's hidden in the corner of some dark room way at the back of their web site). Focusing more on DNA, the eye, the brain, flagella motors, etc., they probably think they are way too good for such subjects. But not us guys here at Blind Fools. In fact, we're not good enough to teach even these subjects (is that humble enough for ya'?). This Month's Design Feature: *FLATULENCE* Whether you know them as - air biscuits, anal acoustics, Arkansas barking spiders, backdoor trumpets, bilabial fricatives, bunsen burners, crack rattlers, crunchy frogs, deer grunts, double flutterblasts, duck calls, eggy whiffos, fanny bubbles, flaming cornholes, flurpies, gassers, General Colon Bowel barking commands, guano-talk, ham slams, Hershey splerts, lactose liberation, love puffs, mudslappers, musical fruits, puffy pop tarts, rattlers, ripships, rump rippers, soytoys, taco torpedos, thunder dumplings, tooters or simply as that infamous four-letter "F" word (rhymes with "vart") - gasious anal discharges, like death and taxes, are part of life as we know it and are as natural as you can get. They have been a part of life ever since the beginning of creation. And as such, have been the topic of reflection and investigation by the greatest minds that ever lived, as well as the not so great (yours truly included) throughout history in all civilizations. Researcher Jim Dawson has a book called Who Cut the Cheese: A Cultural History of the Fart (Ten Speed Press). Here's some of the trivia sniffed out by Dawson... * Flatulence was blamed for the deaths of thousands of people in Jerusalem in the first century after a Roman soldier let one fly to express his disgust at the Jews. The noxious odor triggered a riot that left 10,000 dead. * One of the biggest French stage stars of the 1890s was a man named Le Petomane who used his rear end to imitate bird chirps, smoke cigarettes and blow out candles. * Adolph Hitler once attempted to cure his chronic flatulence by drinking machine gun oil. * Emperor Claudius even passed a law legalizing flatulence at banquets out of concern for peoples' health. There was a widespread belief that a person could be poisoned or catch a disease by retaining them. And then there's that American singing sensation, Broccli Spears, who exploded on the pop music scene with her string of hits on this subject including, 'Oops - I Tooted Again', 'Help Me Beano - One More Time' and her most controversial work ofart, 'I'm Not That Flatulent'. But no matter how you culturally feel about this sometimes repulsive subject, once you learn about the whole amazing process you can't deny that its design points to an intelligent creator. Intestinal gas is the exhaust fume of digestion, the necessary result of the bowel's work (digestion) which is to break the presented raw material (food) into small, absorbable parts (essential nutrients), which then pass through the bowel wall (absorption) into the blood stream for transportation (distribution) to the various locations where they are used for either the work (metabolism) or construction/repair (anabolism) of the body. Flatulence occurs when a food does not break down completely in the stomach and small intestine. As a result, the food makes it into the large intestine in an undigested state. There, the lactose meets up with billions of hungry bacteria -- the natural "intestinal fauna" we all have in our large intestine. These bacteria are happy to digest lactose. Bacteria are simple organisms that consist of one cell. Cells are the smallest unit of life other than visuses which technically aren't alive. Most Cell's genetic information is organized into chromosomes. Each chromosome contains from hundreds to thousands of of smaller pieces of information called genes. Each gene is a chemical blueprint for a specific type of protein. Proteins are made of yet smaller units called amino acids. There are 20 types of amino acids. The DNA tells the cell how to manufacture these amino acids. The DNA molecule ultimately guides the production of all the above. One DNA molecule contains more information than a stack of phone books. The RNA operates like a tiny copy machine. RNA "translates" the instructions from the DNA molecule to create amino acids and proteins. (Miko slaps Editor in Chief and yells, "Snap out of it you hairless freak! Get a hold of yourself! Come out of it! Get me a coconut!") Anyway, back to the rolling thunder from the valley of the cheeks . . . Bacteria are among the smallest living things. Most bacteria measure from 0.3 to 2.0 microns in diameter and can be seen only through a microscope. (One micron equals 0.001 millimeter or 1/25,400 inch.) They produce a variety of gases. Gases such as methane, hydrogen and hydrogen sulfide are common gases that these bacteria produce. Hydrogen sulfide is the source of the odor we associate with flatulence. Nutrients not needed immediately are stored as fat or glycogen for future use. As digestive enzymes break the chemical bonds, gas results and queues in the lower bowel for release, about 14 times daily on average (that goes for women too!). It's hard to imagine this entire life process (one of a whole heck of a lot) could have arrived by blind chance or not be irreducibly complex. If we didn't have this process, we would not get all the nutrients possible and therefore would have to eat even more than we do. For some people, this doesn't sound so bad, but it wouldn't be very efficient. If there was no way for the gas to be released, we would eventually explode. That wouldn't be very efficient either. (BTW - you can only hold one in until your body relaxes, so you would have to stay awake indefinitely in order to stifle one permanently). So since God knew that we would foolishly try to halt our "messages from internal affairs," He conveniently added, in His wisdom and grace, an automatic pressure release valve for our own protection. Some skeptics might argue that a loving God would have made the smell a lot more pleasurable rather than repugnant to those "caught behind enemy lines". But just because that's the way they smell today doesn't mean that it's the way they have always smelled. It's possible that before the fall of Adam (where creation got corrupted because of that first whole fruit eating sin thing) that flatulence actually smelled rather nice. Maybe there was an aromatic release of a potpouri nature with each and every discharge. That would be nice, wouldn't it? And it seems a bit of divine justice that God would cause a curse that directly relates to the very same act which was the first sin - food ingestion. But the skeptic might bring up the fact that people have been known to die as a result of inhaling too much of their own internal gas. However, the story of the bed-bound obese man who died from inhaling his own flatulence (and whose gas almost killed the paramedics) is an urban legend that has been released from the bowels of the gossip world for quite some time now. On the other hand, if you really work hard at it, you can manage to kill yourself with just about anything. There's the account of a man who hooked up his nose to his anus with a system involving a gas mask, rubber tubing and a hollow wooden post. He died of suffocation. This story comes from the Darwin Awards (Darwin's TRUE lasting legacy). And you have to admit . . . the gift of flatulence has provided, along with pressure relief, hours and hours of comic relief for all people from every walk of life. "You should have seen it. It was THIS big!" Editors note: We here at Blind Fools don't want to appear insensitive to people with gastro-intestinal . . .er . . .um . . . "challenges". We're sure there's a whole community of you out there who might be offended at this aticle. As a public service - and we do mean a public service - we offer this link to those of you who may suffer from this dreaded problem. No thanks needed - virtue is its own reward.

Past Issues - Issues that ran before this

Linkage - Other sites that are way more

So-So Proofs of Intelligent Design

Ones you won't hear about from the other guys.

Here we hilight some of the examples of intelligent design that the glory boys of creation science won't touch for one reason or another (or at least if they do, it's hidden in the corner of some dark room way at the back of their web site).

Focusing more on DNA, the eye, the brain, flagella motors, etc., they probably think they are way too good for such subjects. But not us guys here at Blind Fools. In fact, we're not good enough to teach even these subjects (is that humble enough for ya'?).

This Month's Design Feature:

FLATULENCE

Whether you know them as - air biscuits, anal acoustics, Arkansas barking spiders, backdoor trumpets, bilabial fricatives, bunsen burners, crack rattlers, crunchy frogs, deer grunts, double flutterblasts, duck calls, eggy whiffos, fanny bubbles, flaming cornholes, flurpies, gassers, General Colon Bowel barking commands, guano-talk, ham slams, Hershey splerts, lactose liberation, love puffs, mudslappers, musical fruits, puffy pop tarts, rattlers, ripships, rump rippers, soytoys, taco torpedos, thunder dumplings, tooters or simply as that infamous four-letter "F" word (rhymes with "vart") - gasious anal discharges, like death and taxes, are part of life as we know it and are as natural as you can get.

They have been a part of life ever since the beginning of creation. And as such, have been the topic of reflection and investigation by the greatest minds that ever lived, as well as the not so great (yours truly included) throughout history in all civilizations.

Researcher Jim Dawson has a book called Who Cut the Cheese: A Cultural History of the Fart (Ten Speed Press). Here's some of the trivia sniffed out by Dawson...

* Flatulence was blamed for the deaths of thousands of people in Jerusalem in the first century after a Roman soldier let one fly to express his disgust at the Jews. The noxious odor triggered a riot that left 10,000 dead.

* One of the biggest French stage stars of the 1890s was a man named Le Petomane who used his rear end to imitate bird chirps, smoke cigarettes and blow out candles.

* Adolph Hitler once attempted to cure his chronic flatulence by drinking machine gun oil.

* Emperor Claudius even passed a law legalizing flatulence at banquets out of concern for peoples' health. There was a widespread belief that a person could be poisoned or catch a disease by retaining them.

And then there's that American singing sensation, Broccli Spears, who exploded on the pop music scene with her string of hits on this subject including, 'Oops - I Tooted Again', 'Help Me Beano - One More Time' and her most controversial work ofart, 'I'm Not That Flatulent'.

But no matter how you culturally feel about this sometimes repulsive subject, once you learn about the whole amazing process you can't deny that its design points to an intelligent creator.

Intestinal gas is the exhaust fume of digestion, the necessary result of the bowel's work (digestion) which is to break the presented raw material (food) into small, absorbable parts (essential nutrients), which then pass through the bowel wall (absorption) into the blood stream for transportation (distribution) to the various locations where they are used for either the work (metabolism) or construction/repair (anabolism) of the body.

Flatulence occurs when a food does not break down completely in the stomach and small intestine. As a result, the food makes it into the large intestine in an undigested state.

There, the lactose meets up with billions of hungry bacteria -- the natural "intestinal fauna" we all have in our large intestine. These bacteria are happy to digest lactose.

Bacteria are simple organisms that consist of one cell.

Cells are the smallest unit of life other than visuses which technically aren't alive.

Most Cell's genetic information is organized into chromosomes.

Each chromosome contains from hundreds to thousands of of smaller pieces of information called genes.

Each gene is a chemical blueprint for a specific type of protein.

Proteins are made of yet smaller units called amino acids.

There are 20 types of amino acids. The DNA tells the cell how to manufacture these amino acids.

The DNA molecule ultimately guides the production of all the above. One DNA molecule contains more information than a stack of phone books.

The RNA operates like a tiny copy machine. RNA "translates" the instructions from the DNA molecule to create amino acids and proteins.

(Miko slaps Editor in Chief and yells, "Snap out of it you hairless freak! Get a hold of yourself! Come out of it! Get me a coconut!")

Anyway, back to the rolling thunder from the valley of the cheeks . . .

Bacteria are among the smallest living things. Most bacteria measure from 0.3 to 2.0 microns in diameter and can be seen only through a microscope. (One micron equals 0.001 millimeter or 1/25,400 inch.)

They produce a variety of gases. Gases such as methane, hydrogen and hydrogen sulfide are common gases that these bacteria produce. Hydrogen sulfide is the source of the odor we associate with flatulence.

Nutrients not needed immediately are stored as fat or glycogen for future use. As digestive enzymes break the chemical bonds, gas results and queues in the lower bowel for release, about 14 times daily on average (that goes for women too!).

It's hard to imagine this entire life process (one of a whole heck of a lot) could have arrived by blind chance or not be irreducibly complex.

If we didn't have this process, we would not get all the nutrients possible and therefore would have to eat even more than we do. For some people, this doesn't sound so bad, but it wouldn't be very efficient.

If there was no way for the gas to be released, we would eventually explode. That wouldn't be very efficient either. (BTW - you can only hold one in until your body relaxes, so you would have to stay awake indefinitely in order to stifle one permanently).

So since God knew that we would foolishly try to halt our "messages from internal affairs," He conveniently added, in His wisdom and grace, an automatic pressure release valve for our own protection.

Some skeptics might argue that a loving God would have made the smell a lot more pleasurable rather than repugnant to those "caught behind enemy lines". But just because that's the way they smell today doesn't mean that it's the way they have always smelled.

It's possible that before the fall of Adam (where creation got corrupted because of that first whole fruit eating sin thing) that flatulence actually smelled rather nice. Maybe there was an aromatic release of a potpouri nature with each and every discharge.

That would be nice, wouldn't it?

And it seems a bit of divine justice that God would cause a curse that directly relates to the very same act which was the first sin - food ingestion.

But the skeptic might bring up the fact that people have been known to die as a result of inhaling too much of their own internal gas. However, the story of the bed-bound obese man who died from inhaling his own flatulence (and whose gas almost killed the paramedics) is an urban legend that has been released from the bowels of the gossip world for quite some time now.

On the other hand, if you really work hard at it, you can manage to kill yourself with just about anything. There's the account of a man who hooked up his nose to his anus with a system involving a gas mask, rubber tubing and a hollow wooden post. He died of suffocation. This story comes from the Darwin Awards (Darwin's TRUE lasting legacy).

And you have to admit . . . the gift of flatulence has provided, along with pressure relief, hours and hours of comic relief for all people from every walk of life.

"You should have seen it. It was THIS big!"

Editors note: We here at Blind Fools don't want to appear insensitive to people with gastro-intestinal . . .er . . .um . . . "challenges". We're sure there's a whole community of you out there who might be offended at this aticle. As a public service - and we do mean a public service - we offer this link to those of you who may suffer from this dreaded problem.

No thanks needed - virtue is its own reward.

Table of Contents

So-So Proofs of Intelligent Design

Ones you won't hear about from the other guys.