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For Texas Textbooks, a Victory For Evolution
An anonymous reader writes "The Texas Board of Education has unanimously come down on the side of evolution. In an 8-0 vote, the board today approved scientifically accurate high school biology textbook supplements from established mainstream publishers — and did not approve the creationist-backed supplements from International Databases, LLC."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkBmhM0R2A0
Maybe there is a God.
Apparently they had an outbreak of common sense in Texas
can someone explain
Read radical news here
I had to shut it off after the fifth one though.... incredibly depressing to watch.
I like microcars
The scary part is that this subject was even up for debate.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
My guess is they may fear becoming irrelevant.
My guess is they lose half the nation (by population) if they approve creationism (with a quarter supporting the change, and a quarter not caring). There is a risk to losing their power by being crazy.
I'd love to see the textbook power shift to CA, as they are supporting open textbooks, which could save the education system billions/year. In both royalties, and the ability to use paperless solutions.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
A bit on the wrong side, aren't you? Evolutionary theories aren't dogma - like most scientific theories they are constantly being revised as new discoveries are made, and they form a central part of the the basis of modern biology. "Free thinkers" who profess the "religious creationism in a fancy dress" like Intelligent Design are pushing forward conclusions that predate genetics and other discoveries. Are there other conclusions (made thousands of years ago by nomadic tribesmen sitting around a campfire) you also will consider more valid than modern science? Should we perhaps abandon these fancy cars for trusty old camels?
Evolution deniers are skeptics in much the same way Holocaust deniers are skeptics. Should history classes teach historical revisionism? Or what about introducing contra-factual history ("what if" scenarios) at an early age to sow confusion? Should physics classes also teach the element-based world view? How about re-introducing the liquid balance principles in medicine?
The problem is that these people grow up to be politicians and policy makers. They wreck the economy and go to war based on their beliefs then expect the people who learned enough in school to get a proper job to pay the bills for the cleanup.
So... yes. It matters. Religion is NOT a harmless hobby like collecting stamps or arguing Ford vs. Chevy over a beer. Atheists do need to be active/militant against it.
No sig today...
This is the second time in two weeks I've had mod points. Apparently NOT visiting slashdot is how you get picked. (shrug)
Back on topic:
Why do people keep posting things like "even texans have to evolve"? Maybe I've spent too much time listening to College PC curricula, but that strikes me as being highly offensive. Imagine replacing "texans" with "women" or "blacks" or "retards" instead.
-1 for Anon. Coward
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
Thank Darwin.
Imagine replacing texans with women
I've imagined it and I've got to say, I like the idea. Not sure it's terribly practical though.
One question I'd like to ask Darwin, if he were still alive, is this: If man evolved from apes, then why do we still have apes? Why didn't all species evolve like man supposedly did?
Seriously, pick-up a decent book on evolutionary biology. Even AIG advise against this argument.
http://www.answersingenesis.org/get-answers/topic/arguments-we-dont-use
-- Using the preview button since 2005
They did evolve. They just didn't evolve into humans, but into chimpanzees and bonobos.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Most of it was depressing, I agree. A few (and I really do mean, a *few*) responses were encouraging--Miss California's for example.
It's amusing how so many responses follow the same, superficial notion of "teach both sides! Knowledge is good! Let people make up their own minds!" That misses the whole point entirely. The question itself is poorly phrased. Evolution isn't something that requires belief, at least not in the sense of personal faith. It isn't something that you "should" or "should not" be taught. Evolution by natural selection MUST be taught, if you are to teach biology. To not do so would be like attempting to teach mathematics without discussing multiplication, or chemistry without talking about the periodic table, or American history without mentioning the American Revolution and the Declaration of Independence. Thus, to ask the question "should evolution be taught in schools" is no different than asking "should biology be taught in schools," or more broadly, "should SCIENCE be taught in schools." You can't separate the two.
You can't really blame these contestants for being so hopelessly ignorant. They didn't get on that stage with their brainpower.
I had to shut it off after the fifth one though.... incredibly depressing to watch.
Others made a great antidote for that.
Donate free food here
"Redefining basic words"... you mean, like you just tried to do and failed? Insertion of gene sequences by artificial methods does not invalidate common descent. The bulk of the genetic material remains the same and implies a common ancestor. You may have to go a little further back to include the 'added' sequences, but that doesn't invalidate common descent. It just occured to me, I shouldn't be arguing with an irrational person... you won't try to understand, you won't even care.
Try living here.
What? In a Miss USA pagent?
I'd try it at least for a little while. Until my wife found out, anyway....
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Well, to be fair, the head of the Texas Board of Education did say "If there's evolution, how do you account for the spics and negroes?"
I googled for that quote, leaving off the last four words and got one hit - your post. Got a cite?
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Oh, and let's also explain exactly what a virgin is and what that's all about. Since they may ask what that is, and we mustn't lie.
Excuse me: I have a pretty good explanation of what all that's about. It seems to be nothing more (or less) that a recurring mythos in human culture.
Of course, when these myths were popularized, there wasn't the Gutenberg press, or the internet, or any sort of mass communication to raise people's awareness that "Hey! Isn't that the same as THIS story over here? What're you trying to sell us?!?" But now, people have to simply be Willfully Blind to not see the parallels in these myths.
And before the Thumpers start rationalizing "Those aren't myths. Those are simply different accounts of the same events.", keep in mind that the spread of these myths completely parallels the trade-routes of the day.
Nope. The FSM mythos is, and always has been, spread by those who have seen it as a way to bring power and wealth to themselves.
In short. A "con".
Well, just framing the question that way is biased. It assumes that obviously Creationism should be taught, and asks if evolution should be taught as well.
Based on some of the answers these contestants gave, I guess every student should get 100% for every test, as it's up to each student to decide what they believe in. Like 2+2=5 for some students.
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
You deserve to be flamed, if only for your blatant ignorance of biology. There is no difference between micro and macro evolution.
The concept that there is a difference is a "talking point" (read: "logical fallacy") promoted by cretins... sorry, creationists. Since their first stance - "Nobody has ever seen evolution happen" - has been conclusively disproved by the existence of antibiotic resistant bacteria, they've moved the goalpost, created an imaginary distinction between micro and macro evolution and pretended that macro evolution hasn't been observed.
So it's at least two fallacies for the price of one. And it's biologically incorrect. You will never, ever see a credible biologist talk of macro and micro evolution, and seeing a person claim a distinction should be a red flag as to their dishonesty or ignorance, depending on how kindly you wish to view them.
In genuine biology, what creationists call macro evolution is instead called speciation. And it's universally understood that speciation occurs as a result of the accumulation of small changes, i.e. what a creationist calls micro evolution. Now, not only has speciation been observed, making the "Nobody has seen macro evolution" argument outdated, but pretending that there must exist a single speciation event, rather than an accumulation of change, makes the creationist's argument more convincing. They're playing on the general public's ignorance of biology.
" without adding in a bunch about Macroevolution which we *can't* prove(Did *you* see personally see fish evolve into something else? )"
Certainly we can forget about teaching stars are hot gas spheres because, you know, you never touched one of them to know they are hot, do you? Or certainly, tell the Earth is about 4.5 billion years old, because nobody was there to tell.
Evolution by mutation is a coherent theory and it is the one that best fits with observations up to the point to detect genomic translocations responsible for diferenciation of some species. The only way not to see evolution as the prevalent explanation for life diversity is, oh well, some stupid variant of the freaking Spaghetti monster.
Yes, because bigotry is valid if you can find one person who matches your stereotype. That's science!
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
"Texas has yet to decide on the existeance gravity."
Well, every family has to have the option to decide how to teach their children and what their believes are, so they should have to have the option to teach alternate views about gravity.
After all is not as if you can prove gravity since you never saw it. Yes, you see apples falling, but you didn't see gravity. I am of the believe that apples do fall because that's the God will, and I feel that if those statments from that Newton guy (who's Newton, after all?) can be thought in school my Holy Bible point of view (you can't compare God to that Newton, can you?) should be tougth too!
That's the usual mistake creationists make when feebly trying to punch holes into evolution. "But have you seen macroevolution?" No. Why? Because it takes fuckin' eons and even I ain't that old. "How could a fish evolve into something else? How can a monkey become a human?" Not at all. They just happen to, most likely as far as we can tell today, have a common ancestor. Why did they "split up"? How about separations of populations?
But here is a question for creationists: Why do we only have one heart? It's a SPoF in the design of us, and I don't deem that very intelligent, to be blunt. While having one brain makes sense to some degree, having only one heart is a dangerous flaw in the whole design. It makes sense from an evolutionary point of view since having a second heart is more expenditure of resources which gives specimens with only one heart an advantage over those that have two, since they need fewer resources to create offspring and to keep their system running. An intelligent designer would have made sure there's a fallback system, don't you think? And that's only one example of "why this way and not another". There are plenty more where some of the bits and pieces in our body are suboptimal... unless we are the descendants of a species where they made a whole lot of sense.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
So you're saying they have delusions of being Australians? :-)
Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
But its your business what other people think and say about them?
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-speciation.html
So, will you admit you were wrong or just find some way to move the goalpost so you don't look like the complete fucking retard you are?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Jeesh! He's a god, ok? He has that power.
Dude, anyone who can turn water into booze is my God!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
But here is a question for creationists: Why do we only have one heart? It's a SPoF in the design of us
Why asks creationists and not scientists? The scientists could give you a perfectly plausible answer why one heart is the appropriate number for our body. One heart seems to work perfectly fine for species that weigh 1/1000th of what we do up to ones that weight 10,000 times what we do.
Did you know that muscles in your feet help to pump blood back to your heart?
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
I guess every student should get 100% for every test, as it's up to each student to decide what they believe in. Like 2+2=5 for some students.
That is not a fair comparison. We decided how to count and add and such, so we can say that yes, 2+2=4. However, science is not something that we decided to dictate as true. It is something that we have to test and study and try to find explanations for why stuff is the way it is. There is no "truth" in science. Just a series of ever-more precise approximations.
We can't even say for sure that evolution is true. There is a lot of evidence of adapting to changes in environment, and we have witnessed natural selection and survival of the fittest, but there are still a lot of questions that need answering.
Of course, biology classes should teach evolution as the currently accepted scientific theory as to how life on Earth came to be what it is today. But I fully expect any scientific theory of study to be open to reviewing alternative theories and not just accept the current belief as gospel.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
but pretending that there must exist a single speciation event, rather than an accumulation of change
Kind of on that note: One day a few years back I was walking along a trail in the jungles of Hawaii with my extremely-religious aunt. As she was admiring all the beautiful flora and fauna she said "This is proof that God must exist. How else could all this beauty just instantly appear out of nowhere?" I wanted to say something but didn't feel like debating with a religious psychopath who also happens to be a family member that I love and don't really want mad at me. But that right there showed me that they really don't understand what evolution means. Perhaps it's because they don't care to investigate and learn about it, or maybe the information is simply overwritten and blocked by their belief in an almighty creator. Who knows? The fact is it's hopeless to try and teach them actual science.
The theory of evolution doesn't attempt to answer all the riddles of the universe. It's just an explanation for how life developed on earth.
This is a victory. Anti-intellectuals in Texas attempted to make their schools even worse than they currently are by teaching children 'alternative theories to evolution.' The problem is, there is no viable alternative theory to evolution that is both logical and backed up by evidence. As one learns in logic 101: "knowledge is justified true believe." The scientific community has a justified and true belief in an evolutionary theory of some sort (Dawkin's version may be slightly different than Gould's, but both their theories are derived from Darwin's original premise) .
The same cannot be said for creationism. What's the best they've brought to the table? Michael Behe? His argument is essential the same as yours: talk about how mysterious and unknowable things are. That doesn't prove anything, and it certainly doesn't disprove the theory of evolution.
I'm religious but evolution doesn't threaten my spirituality. The jerk-off proponents of creationism don't understand religion or science because they're all about one thing: clinging to the childish belief in (literal) life after death. They're trying to convince themselves and convincing others affirms their beliefs. And it all starts with the humility angle: "we can't possibly know . . . the universe is so incomprehensible . . . humans are ignorant . . ."
The truth does need to be defended. There are far too many ignoramuses adamantly defending falsehoods.
"From the depths of my skeptical and rationalist soul, I ask the Lord to protect me from California touchie-feeliedom."
Science adjusts its views based on what's observed.
Faith rejects observation so that belief can be preserved.
We do not need better terminology. We need people to understand terminology. It is not terminology's fault if people like you do not understand common descent. I do suggest that you read about it. There is more to understand than just the two words in the name. But we can start with those, I suppose.
Common descent is the hypothesis that life arose once, and all life on Earth at this time is therefore a result of this. We call this "descended" meaning that we arose later in time as a result of the first. Those cats are descended from other cats. Period. Common descent is unbroken. They didn't appear out of the aether, they are the offspring of cats. They just had some viruses ram some extra genes in there. But viruses have been doing that forever. It's not new. What's new is humans picking which genes get shuffled about. I'm not sure what your problem is, and I certainly don't see how it relates in any way at all to intelligent design.
Design is the concept that life has been designed by something. But where is YOUR definition of your unqualified terminology? Obviously ever since sexual reproduction, life forms have been "designing" their species by selecting their mates. So is all life designed? Or does that count as part of the process? If it does, does genetic engineering count? Humans are alive, don't forget. But at any rate, design and common descent are not mutually exclusive. You can have common descent, but where space aliens came down and poked at some DNA to guide evolution. And you can have a completely evolution driven system, with no external design, but have multiple origins of life, and thus no common descent.
And so, to your absolute proof that common descent is impossible, and design is true, I raise you the real definition of common descent. There can be no absolute proof of common descent, but since every single life form on earth now has at least a handful of common genes, many of which don't do anything anymore, the case for common descent is a powerful one. You can try to falsify it with "A WIZZARD DID IT" (With an egg and watercress sandwich) but that's just silly. Now it's possible that life arose multiple times, but only one survived, but that's still common descent. And it's possible that it arose twice, and because form follows function, we just got the same genes twice...seems a big stretch, but possible. And it's also possible that it arose twice, and we got common genes because of those aforementioned viruses doing their best to muck up the works. Yeah, we can't know for sure. But all things being equal, common descent is the simplest explanation.
For whether or not we were designed, that's something that cannot be answered, and as such is pointless to discuss in terms of the science of it. Well, it could perhaps be answered. We could find preserved DNA and maybe observe inserted genes with such prevalence that it presents a very powerful case for some outside designer inserting those genes. But we haven't. And I doubt we will. You can go right on believing that Jesus or Aliens designed our DNA. But there's no evidence of that. An open minded scientist (which sadly is not all of them) would not care that you believe that, as long as you do not let it poison your mind against actual observations. And as I said, those observations very strongly indicate common descent. But certainly it can end up being wrong. All we have to do is find life that doesn't have any common genes with everything else we've seen on Earth, and there you have it. But at any rate, it's mostly philosophy. It would be absolutely fascinating if life arose twice on Earth. But it certainly wouldn't say a THING about evolution one way or the other.
ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI
Back in the 1930s, according to Thor Hyerdahl, the Lutheran school he went to taught him two things about creation that should have made everyone happy:
God did it.
Darwin worked out some things about how it happened.
Most of the fundamentalists opposition to evolution is that it is really just a soft target in an anti-intellectual attack. The poorly educated lay clerics running those groups see the educated as a threat to them expanding their flocks just as they saw the educated clergy of the established churches as a threat years ago (and people with dark skin, and gays etc). Their politics thrives on meaningless conflict and really all of this bullshit is just politics and a way to accumulate power. None of it is actually about religeon, they just want a bigger tribe or in some extremely blatant cases a bigger cashflow.
Yes, let's all worship bacteria an d fungi!
Listening to most of them, almost all of them say the same thing regardless of their personal point of view.
The question appears to be: "Should evolution be taught in schools?" I'd say that that's a biased question right there.
Their answers were mostly: "Both evolution and faith should be taught so that people can make up their own minds."
Obviously, if you want to be voted the winner, you don't want to alienate a huge chunk of voters. (I don't know who votes, judges or viewers. Not that it matters.) So from a strategic point of view, they are pretty much bound to say that both should be taught.
Notable exceptions to the rule that I found:
- Miss Minnesota, 7:19
- Miss Nevada, 8:36
- Miss New Mexico, 9:46
- Miss Pennsylvania, 11:28
- Miss South Dakota, 12:03
- Miss Vermont, 13:00
I only found one who appeared to be against evolution in schools. Can't remember who. But she was against teaching both.
Reading between the lines, I'd say that very roughly about half (possibly a little less) seem to be evolutionists, but were treading too carefully to be up front about it.
If man evolved from apes, then why do we still have apes?
You had grandparents, and for the moment lets assume you have a cousin. Let's label your grandparents all "doctors" and we'll also label your cousin a "doctor", and we'll label you a "cardiologist".
Now, the question you asked is.... if you evolved from doctors, why does your cousin exist?
And just to make the picture even more clear, just because you generally refer to yourself as a "cardiologist" does not change the fact that you are still in fact a "doctor". Just because you generally refer to yourself as "human" does not change the fact that you are still an "ape" and that you are still a "mammal".
Humans and dogs and lions and horses and whales are all mammals. We all evolved from the same mammal ancestor.
Why didn't all species evolve like man supposedly did?
That's like asking why all species didn't evolve like horses. All species did evolve. They live in different places or eating different things or surviving in different ways, and they all evolve to get better at their specialty.
Humans, horses, hippos, lions, whales, and chimpanzees are all mammals. At one time there was just a single mammal species. Those mammals had lots of children, and over generations they spread out to live in many different places in many different ways and eating many different things. Over time some mammals lived on grasslands eating grass, and evolved the ability to run really fast and really far to escape predators. Those mammals evolved into the horses we see today. Some of those mammals specialized in living in and near water, and they evolved into the hippos we see today. Some mammals survived by hunting, and they specialized into the lions and other carnivores we see today. Some mammals started out living in and near water like hippos, but further adapted to an entirely aquatic lifestyle.... those are the mammal whales we see today.
And some mammals adapted to a certain style of forest life, evolving into chimpanzees (and other "apes") we see today.
And along the way, some of those forest-dwelling primates moved out onto the grasslands and standing upright. And this freed up our hands to be able to make and use tools. To specialize in making and using tools.
When whales moved into the water, when they evolved to specialize in living in water, the land mammals kept evolving too. Land mammals continued to evolve to be better at living in the place (and way) they lived. Carnivores evolved into better carnivores while whales adapted to aquatic life.
Some primates were living in the forest and some primates moved out onto the grasslands... the ones that kept living in the forest evolved to be even better at living in the forest while the ones on the grasslands evolved to stand upright and specialize in using our hands to make and use tools... to specialize in bigger brains.
Everything is always evolving. It's just that a single species spreads out to live in different places or different ways, and then splits into separate groups that evolve in different directions getting better at different specialties.
Asking why gorillas didn't evolve the same size brain as us is like asking why hippos can't run as fast as horses. Hippos are protected against lions by swimming into (and under) the water, and horses are protected against lions by their speed and endurance at running.
Chimpanzees got better at climbing through the trees. We got better at standing up and swinging a treebranch as a club or throwing a rock.... and eventually at sharpening that branch into a spear and chipping that rock to a point. Other primates kept on evolving while we evolved.
And don't underestimate how difficult and expensive it was for us to evolve our modern brains. Your brain accounts for only about 2% of your body mass, but you burn over over 30% of your food just to fuel it. Humans require a continuous and ridiculously high energy diet to fu
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Evolution is backed by vast amounts of evidence. Creationism is just one myth among thousands that happened to win the meme-lottery and dominate in some cultures. Evolution is falsifiable, and has never been falsified. Creationism is a load of made up bollocks that can be falsified in numerous ways (rock/radiocarbon dating, distances of stars, mitochondrial DNA, etc).
Your charge that offending a particular professor will have you blackballed is a non-sequitur. It has nothing to do with whether Evolution is real or not. Evolution is as 'completely proven' as it's possible for any theory to be. If you want to disprove it do as an earlier poster said and find a rabbit fossil in the pre-cambrian. If you did, you'd instantly disprove evolution. You might find one. As Dickie Dawkins said, "Want to bet?"
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
Evolution by natural selection MUST be taught, if you are to teach biology. To not do so would be like attempting to teach mathematics without discussing multiplication, or chemistry without talking about the periodic table, or American history without mentioning the American Revolution and the Declaration of Independence.
Yeah, I'm not sure you have much of an understanding of Biology OR math AND chemistry AND History. When I took biology in high school ~2003 evolution nor ID was taught and they managed to fill up a curriculum just fine. We learned about you know, genetics, micro biology, organic chemistry, cellular structure, and a few other fun useful much better substantiated representations of reality. I think that's way it should be. Biology is not so much like Physics where you build on fundamental concepts, it is more of a collection of useful interesting observations. I think the evolution and ID people both have an agenda their are pushing and they are both damaging to the education of our children.
There were 51 contestants. 48 said that evolution should be taught. 2 said that evolution should not be taught. The remaining contestant didn't voice an opinion. Of the 48 contestants who said that evolution should be taught, 19 said that both it and creationism should be taught. The question was ambiguous, so it's hard to tell (without sketchy inferences) how many of the remaining 29 contestants who said that evolution should be taught also believe that creationism should be taught. I don't find this terrible, considering these girls were pandering to the crowd for votes, and the sample is non-representative. I do find their generally low level of intelligence troubling. See below for more details of my analysis.
I rated each response on what they said should be taught and what they believe. The question was "Should evolution be taught in schools?" Many literally said that evolution should be taught and left out any mention of teaching creationism; these ratings include only what the contestant literally said, instead of what they implied. Some of these were still hard to call, depending on how you interpreted the answer given. Many were also vague about creationism being the "other side" they wanted taught, but I hope that's a safe assumption. Here are my rating breakdowns:
Setting aside statistics, most of those girls were idiots. One used the word "creationtism." Many clearly weren't certain in their beliefs (stammering; trying to make profound statements everyone can agree on; laughing; flashing an almost flirtatious smile). These were generally trying to project confidence, which made for even stupider answers. Many of them implied that all beliefs are equal, and what you believe doesn't matter so long as we all get along in the end. There was exactly one contestant who professed a belief in evolution, and she gave a focused and succinct answer. My impression is that she was (by a ways) the smartest of the bunch, because of her answer's clarity and the speed at which she formulated it.
You're projecting a straw man who holds the fallacious belief that "it's natural therefore it's good".
Btw, the "atheists have no morals" objection has also been answered a multitude of times. Morals, cooperation and empathy are innate in us, "bred" into us by evolution.
HAND.
"As she was admiring all the beautiful flora and fauna she said "This is proof that God must exist. How else could all this beauty just instantly appear out of nowhere?""
For what it's worth, when faced with this in the past my response has been to tell them to think of a beautiful plant, such as an orchid like a Phaleonopsis, or a large cactus such as a mature Echinopsis in full bloom, and to imagine growing it from seed. You start out with nothing but a pot with brown mud in it and a little seed, but then after time a green sprout appears, and it grows, and grows, over a few years, and with a little patience we get our first flowers, and a little later we get a beautiful bloom of many flowers. I point out that if nature can produce something so beautiful with a bit of patience over 3 or 4 years, then why shouldn't it produce something as beautiful as the natural world in which we live in over millions of years? Why does it have to be created? The plant grown from seed isn't, it finds it's own way with the right natural conditions, why shouldn't that happen on a larger scale?
When you start posing it to them like this then some of them can be reached, but it depends if they're the type of person who is a die hard zealot, or someone whose capable of being open minded but never really taken the effort to think about it and simply swallowed what they were taught.
Why do you imply that I do not know better than God? From an engineering point of view, God is a pretty crappy engineer. From what I see when I look out there into the animal kingdom, he seems to be one that subscribes to the "try and error" approach. Oh, let's see, we have something with four legs. Let's try 6. How about 8? How about a few dozen? Does that improve it... erh... doesn't seem to. Dump it, retry something else. And so the poor millipede is still trying to sort out walking.
And don't get me started on the Platypus. Must've been God work for college when he was high on something.
Or reproduction. A billion different ways to propagate. Was God bored or something? Then, what's the idea behind parasites? Is God an asshole that he sends us these kinds of bugs? I can see bacteria and flesh eating maggots, being required to break stuff back down after it's dying, but parasites? Bugs that invade living, otherwise working organisms and destroying them for their own benefit? C'mon, that's not intelligent! Ok, it's intelligent from the point of view of the parasite, but not when assuming a great planner that designed everything around. What's the deal with those bugs?
But I guess I already know the answer I'll get. Oh, we're just mere humans and cannot understand God's plan. How convenient! Every time something doesn't make sense in the Bible, we cannot comprehend God's big plan. Ok, then explain me why I should worship a God whose plan seems to include getting on my nerves? If anything, I'd love to see him replaced by a better god with a more comprehensive plan.
I mean, do you vote for a politician whose plan you cannot understand and who demands from you to trust him to have your best interests in his mind, despite his actions contradicting that?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.