To Cofty and S&R:
What we have here is what I call "evolutionary speak". It's a unique language developed by evolutionists.
In my time anatomists, doctors, physiologists, etc., had huge respect for the human body, whether they believed in evolution (they would say “Mother Nature knows what she's doing”). The rest of us would say, the Creator knew what he was doing. If you give due deference to the human body, you will also treat your patients with respect. But watch out for the new wave. They are so clever. They can design the human body from scratch and their version would so much better and improved version. So I dare you, design a working model that would be a marked improvement on what we’ve got. Put your money where your mouth is.
The palmaris longus, a muscle in the forearm/hand for holding onto branches, we are in the process of losing it with 14% of humans missing this tendon. Tense your wrist and look for a big tendon in the middle of your wrist. (mines missing = less of an ape lol)
The process of losing it. I like your terminology. It’s very specific. It’s called “evolutionary speak". In Chinese populations there is a low rate of absence (6.4%). In Caucasian populations it is absent (12-24%). This proves that the 12-24% (without muscle) are more human than the rest of us (with the muscle). I am sure some will take exception with such incredible findings.
The reccurant laryngeal nerve supplies your voice box, but instead of going from your brain straight to the voice box, it very precariously travels down around your heart vasculature, then back up to your voice box. There is no need for it to travel so far away, it needs to only be a few inches in length. A designer would never do this, however when you put evolution in reverse, it fits exactly to the descending heart in embryology of our fish ancestors. The heart over millions of years decends into the thorax and the RL nerve has to lengthen with it and around it.
As the recurrent laryngeal nerve curves round the sub-clavian artery, or the arch of the aorta, it gives several cardiac filaments to the deep part of the cardiac plexus. As it ascends in the neck it gives branches, more numerous on the left than on the right hand side, to the mucous memrane and muscular coat of the oesophagus; branches to the mucous membrane and muscular fibres of the trachea and some filaments to the inferior constrictor (Grey’s Anatomy, 35 th edition, p. 1023).
There’s a good reason why they go that way. When you operate, just watch out for the cardiac branches. If you cut them off, you might do some extensive damage to the cardiac plexus of your patient.
The gland of the penis has a rear facing rim at its base (like a barb), this is to scrape out opposing male sperm during intercourse before ejaculation.
Method: Gallup’s approach to studying the design of the human penis is a perfect example of of “ reverse-engineering ” as it’s used in the field of evolutionary psychology. This is a logico-deductive investigative technique for uncovering the adaptive purpose or function of existing (or “extant”) physical traits, psychological processes, or cognitive biases. That is to say, if you start with what you see today—in this case, the oddly shaped penis, with its bulbous glans (the “head” in common parlance) , its long, rigid shaft, and the coronal ridge that forms a sort of umbrella-lip between these two parts—and work your way backward regarding how it came to look like that, the reverse-engineer is able to posit a set of function-based hypotheses derived from evolutionary theory. In the present case, we’re talking about penises, but the logic of reverse-engineering can be applied to just about anything organic, from the shape of our incisors, to the opposability of our thumbs, to the arch of our eyebrows. For the evolutionary psychologist, the pressing questions are, essentially, “why is it like that?” and “what is that for?” The answer isn’t always that it’s a biological adaptation—that it solved some evolutionary problem and therefore gave our ancestors a competitive edge in terms of their reproductive success. Sometimes a trait is just a “by-product” of other adaptations. Blood isn’t red, for example, because red worked better than green or yellow or blue, but only because it contains the red hemoglobin protein, which happens to be an excellent transporter of oxygen and carbon dioxide. But in the case of the human penis, it appears there’s a genuine adaptive reason that it looks the way it does (Scientific American).
It’s “glans” of penis, not “gland”. It has been suggested that the unique and unusual shape of the glans in humans has evolved to serve the function of "scooping" any remnant semen deposited by other rival males out of the deeper part of the vagina of a female who may have recently copulated, and thereby decreasing the chance of the rival male from impregnating the female. Other theoristssuggest that its distinctive shape evolved to heighten the sexual pleasure experienced by the female during vaginal intercourse. In this theory, the glans increases friction and tension at the mouth of the vagina by its additional girth and the dilating properties of its probe-like shape (Wikipedia).
I love the way they bandy about the term “reverse-engineering”. You need an engineer or computer programmer to do that. Anyway, their guesses are as good as mine.
And my all-time favourite:
The eye is shit, there is a terrible blind spot in the middle of our vision, requiring us to constantly shift our vision left to right (subconscious and fast) where the optic disc sits in our retina and no light is received. This has been avoided in other animals where a better design has evolved. Our night vision is crap, we have to look out of focus to see things, I.e. divert the light. Other animals eyes have evolved simple solutions. Obviously god got smarter.
I love my eyes. I think they are brill. Without them, I’d rather die. A few interesting facts mon the eye:
Photoreception is phylogenetically very old, with various theories of phylogenesis. Rod and cone cells in the retina allow conscious light perception and vision including color differentiation and the perception of depth. The human eye can distinguish about 10 million colors. The human eye's non-image-forming photosensitive ganglion cells in the retina receive the light signals which affect adjustment of the size of the pupil, regulation and suppression of the hormone melatonin and entrainment of the body clock.
The eye is shit? So why don’t you get rid of your shit, and replace it with a man-made eye. Oh, there is no man-made eye that can compare with the eye. Oops!
Apoptosis is programmed cell death, babies form from death not life, hands form by killing the cells between the fingers not growths of outward cells. We have the instructions in our DNA to build things we no longer use, tails, horns, muscles, enzymes etc. But we kill those cells off in growth.
Instructions from DNA: Where do those instructions come from?
In some cases the apoptotic stimuli comprise extrinsic signals such as the binding of death inducing ligands to cell surface receptors called death receptors . These ligands can either be soluble factors or can be expressed on the surface of cells such as cytotoxic T lymphocytes. The latter occurs when T-cells recognise damaged or virus infected cells and initiate apoptosis in order to prevent damaged cells from becoming neoplastic (cancerous) or virus-infected cells from spreading the infection. Apoptosis can also be induced by cytotoxic T-lymphocytes using the enzyme granzyme.
In other cases apoptosis can be initiated following intrinsic signals that are produced following cellular stress. Cellular stress may occur from exposure to radiation or chemicals or to viral infection. It might also be a consequence of growth factor deprivation or oxidative stress caused by free radicals. In general intrinsic signals initiate apoptosis via the involvement of the mitochondria. The relative ratios of the various bcl-2 proteins can often determine how much cellular stress is necessary to induce apoptosis.
Most humans have back ache, it's obvious why, back muscles travel horizontally all down our back because we are supposed to be on all 4's. Now we wander the planet upright, the muscles need to be vertical to cope with the load.
Yes, it is obviouys. Perhaps if you exercise more and sleep on a proper mattress, back-ache would not be such a problem.
Most humans have incontinence with age and have to learn bladder control as we are not born with it. Why? The bladder has evolved for an animal on all 4's. In an upright human,the bladder freely releases urine requiring unassociated pelvic muscle control to restrain it, not a problem for our ape ancestors who's bladder is ideal for them.
I am thankful for my bladder. Otherwise we would spray each other, like the monkeys.
Ill leave it there, but let's be honest if there was a god, his design skills wouldn't get him a job with apple! Seriously! What a coincidence evolution explains all these flaws and can be seen in the reversing of evolutionary stages.
I call our situation "human imperfection".
Yes, S&R, I think you should leave it there, otherwise you might just throw away your name completely.