Fine detail in the gospels: made up or not?

[Spud]

How would your voice changing be a benefit if you have an aortic aneurism or a tumour?

It can aid diagnosis.

Aren't these things also evidence that, if there was a designer, he/she/it was very bad at it?

I guess that's for the individual to decide.

More bad design.

Poor neck and shoulder posture can be rectified. My strategy is to remove the headrest from my driving seat. Then I try to lean my head back onto the top of the seat (while stationary of course). If I can't do this I know my neck is restricted, so I practice doing it and after a while the mobility comes back and I can do it comfortably. It does relieve neck pain quite effectively (for me anyway). I do get some funny looks though.

What sort of action?

The above is the most effective way I've personally found to deal with chronic muscle shortening in the front of the neck. It's not rocket science.

Don't forget that for most of human history, we lacked the tools and knowledge to do anything about the diseases that afflicted us.

The Egyptians were pretty good engineers - they probably knew about posture.

You tend to know about it for some time before your appendix explodes, but until recently that was just early warning of your impending doom.

Hold that thought.

[jeremyp]

It can aid diagnosis.

What good is that if you lack the knowledge and tools to fix the problem as humans did for most of their history.

I guess that's for the individual to decide.

Why don't you have the balls to confront the obvious problems with your world view?

If we were designed, tumours and aortic aneurisms are evidence of bad design.

Poor neck and shoulder posture can be rectified.

Yes but, the fact that they can happen at all would be evidence of bad design if we were designed.

The Egyptians were pretty good engineers - they probably knew about posture.Hold that thought.

You cherry pick one issue with the human body and one ancient civilisation and claim that makes everything OK. If you were an ancient Egyptian with appendicitis, you were guaranteed a painful death. This is not evidence of good design.

If there is a god, he is probably up there looking at your posts and cursing the fact that he failed to design anti bullshit measures into the human brain.

[Spud]

I have heard that Owl but not known anyone in my lifetime who believes it & going back in time, my maternal gran and aunt who were both obstetricians + plus m.i.l., district (now community) midwife, did not believe in it; old Queen Vic (who had plenty of experience!) championed women having pain relief for childbirth & was effective! Not everyonetook all the early Bible stuff literally.

In my lifetime and for many years before women were given pain relief of various types. We know some people had a very hard time for many reasons (I do & feel if that had been my experience I would not have done it again), and even if it's easy and natural, it's still an effort, but the idea of women 'deserving' painful childbirth is positively archaic! Plus you are forgetting women who go through pregnancy and give birth quite easily and there are many of those.

You cite Christian doctrine, I've no idea what other faiths say on this subject but what about them? They were surely in the same boat.

Childbirth is a great leveller. Nature is nature when it comes to childbirth, some easy and some not, same with animals.

Btw the Adam and Eve legend does not say "Apple", it says, "Fruit", and Eve was deceived by the arch manipulator! Adam just gave in, in my opinion he was far weaker. He just gave in, "OK then". Weak man. However, only a story to illustrate fall of man, many similar stories in other traditions.

 

Hi Robbie,
If it was only a story, then where does the historical part of the Bible begin? With Noah? Abraham? King Hezekiah? Genesis is written as a historical account from start to finish. What's more, the serpent isn't the only animal to talk - what about Balaam's donkey? What about the other miracles? Yep, Adam was weak, probably weaker than Eve. Regarding childbirth, though - it's also true that the curse on the ground can cause pain that is possibly equal to childbirth: eg acute back pain from man's need to till the soil; sharp pain from being stabbed by a thorn. From that point of view, Genesis 3 is quite realistic. Not wanting to belittle childbirth, I have read that the more physically fit a woman is, the less likely she is to need a cesarean. Anyway, I must get back to the intelligent design of the recurrent laryngeal nerve. Enjoy the rest of the weekend.

[Spud]

What good is that if you lack the knowledge and tools to fix the problem as humans did for most of their history.
Why don't you have the balls to confront the obvious problems with your world view?

If we were designed, tumours and aortic aneurisms are evidence of bad design.
Yes but, the fact that they can happen at all would be evidence of bad design if we were designed.
You cherry pick one issue with the human body and one ancient civilisation and claim that makes everything OK. If you were an ancient Egyptian with appendicitis, you were guaranteed a painful death. This is not evidence of good design.

If there is a god, he is probably up there looking at your posts and cursing the fact that he failed to design anti bullshit measures into the human brain.

Nobody has yet proved that the tortuous route taken by the recurrent nerve is necessary. That doesn't mean they won't, at some stage. You only have to glance at it to see that the larynx's nerve supply is nice and neat, coming from above and below - the afferent nerves to the cough reflex supplied by the shorter, superior laryngeal nerve. Jerry Bergman writes that the structures below the larynx which are innervated by the RLN, may need to receive nerve impulses slightly before the larynx does, in order to prepare them for laryngeal activity. So I would guess he is thinking of the trachealis muscle which alters the diameter of the trachea. As well as phonation, think of the cough and the swallow. You need to narrow the trachea before opening the glottis when expelling that drop of ice cream that went down the wrong way, in order to increase the speed of the airflow. Both these functions (narrowing the trachea and opening the glottis) are controlled via the RLN. You also need to relax the trachealis when swallowing a massive lump of food so that the food can squeeze past the trachea. If that isn't enough to hint at a need for a precise design, well...

[NicholasMarks]

Nobody has yet proved that the tortuous route taken by the recurrent nerve is necessary. That doesn't mean they won't, at some stage. You only have to glance at it to see that the larynx's nerve supply is nice and neat, coming from above and below - the afferent nerves to the cough reflex supplied by the shorter, superior laryngeal nerve. Jerry Bergman writes that the structures below the larynx which are innervated by the RLN, may need to receive nerve impulses slightly before the larynx does, in order to prepare them for laryngeal activity. So I would guess he is thinking of the trachealis muscle which alters the diameter of the trachea. As well as phonation, think of the cough and the swallow. You need to narrow the trachea before opening the glottis when expelling that drop of ice cream that went down the wrong way, in order to increase the speed of the airflow. Both these functions (narrowing the trachea and opening the glottis) are controlled via the RLN. You also need to relax the trachealis when swallowing a massive lump of food so that the food can squeeze past the trachea. If that isn't enough to hint at a need for a precise design, well...

You talk about the nerves as if they invented all the activity that occurs at the end of them, Spud...but, in reality, they are conduits of an electric energy which is the energetic part of that activity...I know this because Jesus Christ told us all about our inner spiritual energy and gave us the finest laws concerning them. In a nutshell...we either live according to the accidental laws of this electric energy which often back-fires or we can follow the refined version of Almighty God, as expressed by Jesus Christ, and transform this energy into our righteous spiritual energy...where repair, resurrection, and everlasting life, becomes feasible.

Hence, we can say, without a shadow of a doubt, that the fine detail mentioned in the title of this post...is not made up.

[jeremyp]

You need to narrow the trachea before opening the glottis when expelling that drop of ice cream that went down the wrong way,

Ask yourself why it is even possible for ice cream to go down the wrong way.

The arrangement at the confluence of the oesophagus and the trachea is a design disaster. Who would deliberately design the throat such that it makes it easy to choke on a piece of food or suffocate after swallowing your own tongue.

Thanks for another example of appalling design by your god.

[bluehillside Retd.]

jeremy,

Ask yourself why it is even possible for ice cream to go down the wrong way.

The arrangement at the confluence of the oesophagus and the trachea is a design disaster. Who would deliberately design the throat such that it makes it easy to choke on a piece of food or suffocate after swallowing your own tongue.

Thanks for another example of appalling design by your god.

Was it Neil de Grasse Tyson who once asked of the location of the genitals, "Why you you put a leisure centre next to a sewage farm"?

[Spud]

Ask yourself why it is even possible for ice cream to go down the wrong way.

Because people damage their throat - smoking, drinking, shouting etc. Actually, the design itself is totally cool.

[jeremyp]

Because people damage their throat - smoking, drinking, shouting etc. Actually, the design itself is totally cool.

No it's not cool. No serious designer would arrange the pipes so that people could accidentally block their own windpipe just by swallowing food wrong.

[Maeght]

Because people damage their throat - smoking, drinking, shouting etc. Actually, the design itself is totally cool.

What is cool about it?

[Spud]

What is cool about it?

No it's not cool. No serious designer would arrange the pipes so that people could accidentally block their own windpipe just by swallowing food wrong.

In this world machines eventually fail, even if they are designed perfectly. They can also be broken if not used correctly. The swallowing reflex is perfect, but at some point it won't work due to wear and tear or misuse. 

You have a cough reflex for occasions when food does accidentally go down the wrong way. If you want to know how these reflexes are cool, you need to read up on them. If you're still not satisfied, explain why. If you're talking about disease processes that cause an otherwise perfect mechanism not to work, that is surely not the same issue?

Don't forget we have an inbuilt mechanism for replacing our old bodies: having kids. If that fails, at least we have the GOSPELS to show us how to get a new body!!

And lo, they got back on topic....

[Maeght]

In this world machines eventually fail, even if they are designed perfectly. They can also be broken if not used correctly. The swallowing reflex is perfect, but at some point it won't work due to wear and tear or misuse. 

You have a cough reflex for occasions when food does accidentally go down the wrong way. If you want to know how these reflexes are cool, you need to read up on them. If you're still not satisfied, explain why. If you're talking about disease processes that cause an otherwise perfect mechanism not to work, that is surely not the same issue?

Don't forget we have an inbuilt mechanism for replacing our old bodies: having kids. If that fails, at least we have the GOSPELS to show us how to get a new body!!

And lo, they got back on topic....

Why not design a system where this doesn't occur. Now that would be cool.

[jeremyp]

In this world machines eventually fail, even if they are designed perfectly. They can also be broken if not used correctly. The swallowing reflex is perfect, but at some point it won't work due to wear and tear or misuse. 

You have a cough reflex for occasions when food does accidentally go down the wrong way. If you want to know how these reflexes are cool, you need to read up on them. If you're still not satisfied, explain why. If you're talking about disease processes that cause an otherwise perfect mechanism not to work, that is surely not the same issue?

You are utterly missing the point.

The cough reflex is a bodge job to paper over another bodge job. When humans design machines, they keep the source of fuel and the source of oxygen separate. The cough reflex solves a problem that wouldn't exist if the human throat had been designed properly.

Don't forget we have an inbuilt mechanism for replacing our old bodies: having kids.

And if you choke to death before reaching puberty?

If that fails, at least we have the GOSPELS to show us how to get a new body!!

There gospels are made up stories.

[Spud]

You are utterly missing the point.

The cough reflex is a bodge job to paper over another bodge job. When humans design machines, they keep the source of fuel and the source of oxygen separate. The cough reflex solves a problem that wouldn't exist if the human throat had been designed properly.

And if you choke to death before reaching puberty?

There gospels are made up stories.

I get your point, especially having used the analogy of fuel and oxygen, except that fuel and oxygen by themselves are not a dangerous combination. They have to be kept away from a spark. I'd suggest that the air and food intake being the same is only a problem if the structures are not put together properly or if they are abused or the control system fails. Lots of people (most, actually) don't choke to death. This statistic shows that the design works safely.
Moreover, the lungs and airways are constantly producing mucus which is shunted up towards the entrance to the airway. This brings with it any inhaled particles and keeps the airways clean. It also humidifies the air. Once it reaches the throat it has to go somewhere. Should we spit every 30 seconds, or could that mucus be swallowed and recycled?

[jeremyp]

This statistic shows that the design works safely.

Tell that to my brother whose friend aged six put a rubber ball in his mouth and choked to death on it. Tell that to my brother's other friend who saw the whole thing.

Moreover, the lungs and airways are constantly producing mucus which is shunted up towards the entrance to the airway. This brings with it any inhaled particles and keeps the airways clean. It also humidifies the air. Once it reaches the throat it has to go somewhere. Should we spit every 30 seconds, or could that mucus be swallowed and recycled?

You could have a one way valve from the trachea to the oesophagus to deal with that.

[BeRational]

What about the human eye?

If it was designed, then the designer is less intelligent than your average 10 year old child.

[Spud]

Tell that to my brother whose friend aged six put a rubber ball in his mouth and choked to death on it. Tell that to my brother's other friend who saw the whole thing.
You could have a one way valve from the trachea to the oesophagus to deal with that.

A baby has to learn how to swallow solid food; it takes years of constant supervision to make sure it gets the right kind and amount of food, and to keep unsuitable objects out of reach. You could equally blame the throat's design if a baby choked on a piece of food that wasn't cut up. It's down to adults to keep children safe. Sorry to hear about your brother's friend.
The valve idea would not allow coughing or sneezing or any increase in air pressure in the airways.

[Maeght]

A baby has to learn how to swallow solid food; it takes years of constant supervision to make sure it gets the right kind and amount of food, and to keep unsuitable objects out of reach. You could equally blame the throat's design if a baby choked on a piece of food that wasn't cut up. It's down to adults to keep children safe. Sorry to hear about your brother's friend.
The valve idea would not allow coughing or sneezing or any increase in air pressure in the airways.

As I asked before, why design a system with these faults? It is perfectly possible to design a different system.

[jeremyp]

You could equally blame the throat's design if a baby choked on a piece of food that wasn't cut up.

Yes I could. In fact, I will

The valve idea would not allow coughing or sneezing or any increase in air pressure in the airways.

Well, first of all, the wind pipe would not be sealed except for the valve. There would still be an air intake. Also, the valve opens from the windpipe to the oesophagus and would thus act as a safety valve in cases of over pressure. See. I’m a better designer than your god.

[Spud]

Yes I could. In fact, I will

Er, I'm sure most parents would be happy to cut food up for their kids...

Well, first of all, the wind pipe would not be sealed except for the valve. There would still be an air intake. Also, the valve opens from the windpipe to the oesophagus and would thus act as a safety valve in cases of over pressure. See. I’m a better designer than your god.

But if you had separate tubes for eating and breathing, you'd have to have two separate tongues and faces, since these are necessary for communication as well as nutrition. I suppose we could communicate by text messaging though,?