By Marv Balousek
If intelligent design created the universe, then Lou Sasmor says there are some human design flaws.
Our spines are not well-protected, our nasal-sinus structure allows unwanted drainage into the throat and lungs and the proximity of reproductive and excretion organs is ill-conceived.
“Why put a playground next to a waste disposal system?” he said.
Humans also are inferior compared to the abilities of some animals. Insects and birds can see ultraviolet light, dogs hear high-pitched tones that we can’t and pit vipers can see infrared light.
Sasmor, a former biomedical engineer and technical school dean, made a presentation Monday to the Villages Civil Discourse Club on intelligent design and evolution as explanations for the existence of the universe.
The term “intelligent design” originated in a 1989 high school textbook as a way to teach creation without religion. The concept maintains that certain features of the universe can best be explained by an intelligent cause instead of an undirected process like evolution. Evolution maintains that changes in a biological population occur as those better adapted to survive are most likely to reproduce.
Scientific arguments for intelligent design are that the messages transmitted by DNA are so complex that they must be specified by intelligence and that conditions on the earth must be fine-tuned to allow life. Proponents also say it’s also unlikely that positive, multiple genetic changes can occur without harmful intermediate steps.
But Sasmor said a low probability that genetic changes will occur does not mean they are impossible, especially given enough chances. He said the vast majority of animals that undergo genetic changes do not survive.
Recent evidence of evolution can be found, Sasmor said. Light-colored peppered moths, for example, survived in greater numbers than dark-colored moths on white birch trees until soot from burning coal and wood darkened the trees and reversed the trend so that the darker moths survived.
Intelligent design and evolution are not necessarily opposed to each other, he said, and both require a degree of faith either in a supreme being or scientific principles.
“The theory of evolution says nothing about the origin of life,” Sasmor said. “You cannot prove a theory. You can disprove it.”
He said a belief in evolution also can co-exist with a belief in God.
“We are starting to find that DNA itself evolved,” he said. “Did somebody design that? I don’t know.”
