Aug
23
A Bad Argument for Banana Design
Okay, here’s another “Real Science” moment from the staff at Reasons to Believe (RTB). This time, Dr. Jeff Zweerink explains why saying “The banana was perfectly designed for human hands.” is a bad argument. (Personally, I don’t think I have ever heard that argument for ID.) This one isn’t quite as weird as the one about bellybutton lint, but hopefully you find it interesting.
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“You may have heard the argument that bananas are designed to fit in the human hand — that, when you look at the number of ridges and the width of the ridges on the banana and where the joints are on the hand, that the banana is designed to fit well, that it folds and peels, that it curves toward the mouth,… that this is an argument that God has designed the banana to fit in the human hand.
This is a bad argument, because it fails to take into account that we have genetically modified the banana — through crop-growing techniques — to look like it is today. When you look at the original banana, it has none of those characteristics that would allow you to argue that it was well-designed [for the human hand].”
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When you consider how many excellent arguments there are for Intelligent Design (whether or not attributed to the God of the Bible), why would you want to use something as lame as this banana-designed-for-the-human-hand, anyway? Here are brief articles of some of those arguments:
“Overlapping Genes Evince Intelligent Design”
“The Nobel Prize, Ribosomes, and Evidence for Intelligent Design”
“He Who Cannot Control His Water (and Sodium) Will Not Survive: The Kidney”
(This one is rather lengthy, and I admit I only skimmed it.)
Besides, bananas were clearly designed for minions:
