: In response to brother Tenacious's post re: the alleged design insufficiencies of the human eye, I encountered a study that indicates that if the photo-receptors in the eye were not inverted, they would be suceptable to thermal damge from UV radiation. ***** Okay. I guess I'll have to revise that part of my argument. However, the point is (acknowledging Phil's post as well) you can't deny that there are design insufficiencies. For instance, there are many negative implications that arise from being bipedal beings. If were we designed to be this way, the various health problems suffered by this condition (lower back pain, the difficulty of child birth, etc.) should be absent, or far less prevalent. Each organism however, isn't perfectly suited to their environments (as we might expect if God created us to be perfectly suited in the first place), only sufficiently suited.

Now, I have the forsight to see a "we're de-evolving so naturally we've gradually become more ill suited via the 2nd law of thermodynamics/logical entropy" counter argument, so I'll say this. Like I've said before, If there is a higher rate of harmful maladities (ex. cancer - it's existence can be explained by evolution as a way of increasing the number of mutations) it's more due to the fact that we're releasing more carcinogens and mutation increasing agents into the environment, there's no evidence that we're de-evolving (though I have the feeling you'll come up with arguments to the contrary). Second, the argument that we're getting weaker, really doesn't have any empirial basis. We're living longer, and enjoy higher quality of life. This may be due to improved medical science, but our health is improving nonetheless (in wealthy nations anyway). "De-evolution" doesn't exist in my view, and I see no evidence for it.

There's currently a very convincing mechanism proposing the evolution of modern apes and humans from a common ancestor. Very interesting, and explains alot (bipedal condition, subcutaneous layer of fat, chemistry love, hunting, language development - the result of greater need to comunicate/collaborate in hunting.) I'll outline it someday when I have more time. These forums are fun, but time consuming :o)