(This post has to do with sciencey stuff, but I’ll try keep things simple and easily understandable)
Ahh, the X-Men… Mutant superheroes who strive for peace between mutants and ordinary humans. Much emphasis is put on the ‘evolution’ of Homo sapiens (us) into Homo superior (them). But did you realize that the very existence of these so-called ‘mutants’ is a powerful argument for Intelligent Design?
A few quick tutorials first: Intelligent Design states that if you look at living things from a neutral, objective, unbiased point of view, you would conclude that life was DESIGNED by some sort of an INTELLIGENCE. (For monotheists, this amazing Intelligence that designed and created life would equate to God). Life, they say, is simply too complex and intricate to have occurred by Random Chance (the goddess of Darwin’s Evolution).
For example, imagine if one day humanity became extinct. 10,000 years in the future, aliens explore earth and discover all sorts of things like cars, computers and ais-kacang machines. The aliens think it over, and decide that these things were created by RANDOM NATURAL EVENTS like lightning, UV-rays and meteor impacts. These natural events SOMEHOW put together the complex machinery without any guiding forces overseeing the correct installation of Windows XP.
It seems silly that anyone could think complex inventions were assembled entirely at random, with no intelligence guiding their careful design. Yet organic life is vastly more complex and complicated than the greatest of human inventions! The brain, the cell, even DNA is so mind-bogglingly perfect in function… Yet the theory of evolution says that these were all the result of nature’s dice.
One key argument in Intelligent Design is something called Irreducible Complexity. This concept states that many features of living things (such as eyes, flagella and genes) cannot function at all if even one part is missing.
For example, if the eye had no retina, it wouldn’t be able to see. If it had no cornea, it wouldn’t be able to see. The eye needs all its parts TOGETHER to function. I mean, just look at how many things a Medic student has to memorize!
But the theory of evolution says that only small changes occur over a long time. So it would be impossible to evolve an entire eye suddenly – the cornea, retina, iris and etc would each evolve seperately. But since none of these things do anything useful on their own, they are useless baggage. The organism that evolved a cornea should die out, since it is less fit for survival.
Therefore, says Irreducible Complexity, the many parts of the eye must have been put together simultaneously and in the right positions – the work of an Intelligence.
Now back to the X-Men. Let’s use the example of Cyclops, real name of Scott Summers.
His mutant powers are to fire ‘optic blasts’ of energy from his eyes. The source of this energy is ordinary sunlight, which Cylops can somehow absorb.
Now although Cyclops is an extraordinary mutant with incredible powers, his parents were ordinary humans. This means that within ONE GENERATION, ‘random natural events’ caused Cyclops to ‘evolve’ the following traits SIMULTANEOUSLY and PUT TOGETHER FLAWLESSLY:
1. A system to absorb sunlight energy;
2. A system to store this energy;
3. A system to change this energy into optic blasts;
4. Eye that can release optic blasts;
5. Eyes, eyelids and other body parts that are not destroyed by his own optic blasts.
Wow, now that is a handful of random, non-intelligently put together features! Seems more like the work of an incredibly intelligent Designer, doesn’t it?
In fact, in a non-616 Marvel continuity, the X-Factor that causes superpowered mutations was implanted into humans eons ago by ultra-beings known as the Celestials! So much for the next step in ‘evolution’.
So even within the X-Men’s own comic-book reality, random naturalistic Darwinistic evolution has nothing to do with the miracle of life. From this day forward, let no Darwin-fanboy look up to mutants as an endorsement of evolution!
Lol!
PS. Take a look at this blog which reached a similar conclusion:
http://thenightwriterblog.powerblogs.com/posts/1159309880.shtml
Also, these posts:
THE SCOTTTCAST 
January 5, 08 at 7:59 am
I think that you are stupid. All know that it is fantasy and science fiction. You dind’t need put this because a lot of chilren can be sad and disappointment. You kill the illusions. Hey, please, let us believe.
March 12, 08 at 7:36 pm
Juan Manuel, stop acting like a kid. This is for adults, the thinking kind. And for kids whose minds love to explore and analyse..
April 15, 08 at 11:34 pm
My first responce to he X- Men being examples of intelligent design was okay yes. The writer a man ( and if one follows the logic of this argument “a god” did create the X-Men and he/ she was more intelligent than ” the fans” ( since they pay money for this fantasy) so the argument is proven if one wants to let things go.
On the other hand “intelligent design ” refers to events in nature in the past. The concept does not permit change to happen in the future. The frequency of a complexs of genes in a given population is constantly shifting. Does the concept explain why black cats have a few white hairs? The selective killing (social selection) of totally black cats because of religious fervors 300 years ago does explain why so few totally black cats exist today.
I wonder if ordinary men are irreducibly complex. Cut off a man’s leg, he lives. Cut off his ears , arms an gouge out his eyes…oops still alive Yet according to the devine manuscript, we were created in his image. If this is so what of the early hominids? Intelligent design or previous failed attempts until it was got right? If they are failed attempts to get it right the intelligent designer becomes the bumbling lab assistant
April 16, 08 at 8:23 am
IMHO, Intelligent Design does not preclude further descent with modification. Most people accept micro-evolution, such as the cat colour example you gave. But it’s a far cry from randomly mixing pre-existing genes, and assembling those genes from scratch (macro evolution).
What Irreducible Complexity addresses is how complex organs and organisms could arise in the first place.
Your example of an ordinary man getting his legs cut off shows your very shallow level of understanding of the subject matter. Irreducible Complexity delves far deeper than whole body parts, to the very building blocks of cells.
So you remove a man’s legs. He is still alive – but he cannot walk.
But in Irreducible Complexity, we ask: How did the ATP loop that provides the energy for the man to move his legs and run his entire life system evolve gradually?
If you gouge out his eyes, he can’t see but still breathes – but how did the eyes evolve bit by bit through totally random processes? In fact, for the millions of generations Evolution needs to evolve a functioning eye, the creatures would indeed be blind – and die easier becaus they would be wasting precious resources making non-functional proto-eyes.
And if I may add, you seem to be confusing Intelligent Design with the beliefs of Christianity.
Intelligent Design does not state that the Designer must be perfect, or that humans look like the Designer, or that the Designer must be good and kind and only make cuddly creatures.
That’s Christianity. Get your facts straight, dude.
August 3, 08 at 5:06 pm
napakatanga,walang kwenta
June 20, 11 at 4:35 am
Or, how about this, you do the research and find out that the X-Men get their powers from a SINGLE gene called the X-Gene, not several mutations, and as such one generation is all it would take. Its never explained why one gene causes so much change, but in all honesty, do you really want to know how one gene causes one man to shoot eye beams and another to turn his skin into metal, or do you want to see the guy shoot his eye beams at the metal skinned dude and let it ricochet into a giant robot?
Since they never explain why this gene does this, its left for the reader to think of their own idea, which is actually in a way kind of fun in a weird way. Like, you could say it just grants the power they needed at the time/wanted at the time/something random.
Also, another little trinket for you, Mutants ARE created by intelligent design, the design of inteligent aliens named the celestials that is. I’m not entirely sure on all the details, but Aliens came to this planet years ago in the X-universe, looked at the humans, gave them X-Genes, and left, after genetically re-engineering human DNA, which were already in existence due to, you guessed it, EVOLUTION! Also, The X-Men are good friends with Thor, the god of Thunder, And Reed Richards, who did actually make a PORTAL TO HEAVEN SO HE COULD YELL AT GOD!
June 20, 11 at 10:07 am
Lol thanks for the walkthrough, Awesomeguy.
Which ‘god’ did Reed yell at, One-Above-All or one the lower ranking sorta-deities? Asgardians and Olympians and other technologically advanced extradimensionals don’t count, naturally.
June 20, 11 at 2:14 pm
A video debunking creationist arguments for the “irreducible complexity” of: the eye, the bombardier beetle, the venus flytrap, and bacterial flagella.
June 20, 11 at 2:15 pm
Biology professor Ken Miller explaining the evolutionary development of the flagellar motor and blood clots.
June 30, 11 at 9:43 pm
reply to Scott Thong:
Jack Kirby actually, take that as you will.
July 23, 11 at 7:37 am
“DNA is so mind-bogglingly perfect in function…”
You must be a troll because I doubt anyone is that obtuse. If it is so “perfect” (what ever that means) then why can it develop something as horrible as cancer. It is not always caused by things in nature damaging DNA as it can sometimes be information inherited from, you know, your ancestry.
July 23, 11 at 10:14 am
First off, by perfect I mean functionally perfect – that is, it gets the job done almost all of the time – rather than infallible. As an example, compare the hyperbole where someone says “This game is perfect!” or “That purse is perfect for me!”
Second, I have my own metaphysically-linked theory of why DNA leads to horrible mutations.
https://scottthong.wordpress.com/2007/11/22/the-sin-theory-of-evolution-reconciling-evolution-creationism-and-intelligent-design/
November 25, 11 at 11:01 am
Wow. What about Mickey Mouse? Are his opposable thumbs evidence for or against evolution? *facepalm*
November 25, 11 at 4:40 pm
He is obviously Intelligently Designed, by Walt Disney.
November 26, 11 at 5:52 am
X-Men proves intelligent design?
….
You of course realize that they are not real people like you or I; but are in fact…
…FICTIONAL CHARACTERS!
*twiggly motions with fingers in front of your face*
FIC- *fingers* TION- *fingers* AL
CHARACTERS!
November 27, 11 at 1:45 pm
U SRS??? My whole entire worldview just got demolished!!! I renounce my religion (i.e. Marvel) and hereby become their most critical skeptics (i.e. DC)!!!
June 27, 12 at 3:14 pm
Scott I have a question regarding “an you give an example of a genetic mutation or an evolutionary process which can be seen to increase the information in the genome?”
reply to this is that Penicillin was working fine in old days , but bacteria evolved and immune to it now, also bird-flue , swine flue are evolutionary examples in genes….
further says, some may say its destructive to mankind not postive evolution, bur reply is, it may destructive for others but for bacteria and viruses its postive change?
Can you please explain this situation? or is the question is wrong?
Thank you.
June 28, 12 at 9:55 am
Yes, but did the bacteria actually evolve new information – that is, new genetic sequences in order to combat the effects of penicillin?
Or did they already have the information encoded in their genes, and only those with stronger expression of the anti-penicillin gene survived and reproduced – hence over many generations, all remaining bacteria have the resistance to penicillin?
Read this and tell me what you think:
June 28, 12 at 1:26 pm
I agree with and I accept that HGT happens not in generations, but tell me one thing “what about the change in the gene pool of a population over time which result in relatively small changes to the organisms in the population — changes which would not result in the newer organisms being considered as different species. Examples of such microevolutionary changes would include a change in a species’ coloring or size.”?
Then this mutation goes, through their generations. Is it not an example of evolution.
My Objective is to understand the topic, thanks for your time and comments.
Thank you,
June 28, 12 at 3:24 pm
Well basically we see organism populations shifting in ratios – more brown moths and fewer white moths in a polluted area, for example. Yet these are clearly still moths.
We have never observed an organism change completely into a new, different one – the kind of change any layperson would recognize and acknowledge, such as fish into amphibians.
So you are correct – we see mutation and shifts in population ratio, but not macro evolution.
For example, take this article:
http://io9.com/5872651/worlds-first-shark-hybrids-discovered-near-australia
It touts two different shark species meeting and mating as ‘evolution in action’.
But isn’t the definition of a species ‘can only reproduce with others of its own species to generate reproductively viable offspring’? That the two shark types can breed and produce fertile offspring should discount the idea that they are two different species!
And isn’t evolution supposed to involve diverging of separated groups of an organism that gradually drift apart genetically, to the point that they cannot interbreed – hence one species becomes two? The shark story is the opposite of that!
June 28, 12 at 5:00 pm
Thank you, but what is the possible best explanation for the useless organism in animals and like in humans
– appendectomy (we needed to remove, when it grows, and now a days it is useless in our body, but in previous evolutionary back in days it was being used)
-back teeth in our jaws
especially i would like to hear your thoughts on richard following video
That if there could be any intelligent designer how could these things have been created?
Thank you.
June 28, 12 at 5:42 pm
I have two separate responses based on different worldviews.
1) Intelligent design without invoking JudeoChristian theology –
a) Features that we do not think are useful, may have a use we do not yet fully understand. After all, appendix is disputed as to its uselessness, wisdom teeth were not useless if cavemen (or third worlders) regularly lose their more frontal molars. This includes so-called ‘junk dna’ that doesn’t seem to be there for any useful reason (that we can understand yet). http://www.cosmicfingerprints.com/junk-dna/
b) What is ‘optimal’ in our opinion may not be optimal in other situations. Sure, our eyes could be ‘better designed’ to have no blind spot caused by the optic nerve’s location. But other designs of the eye would bring other drawbacks.
2) Intelligent design invoking JudeoChristian theology – Basically, modern day organisms are NOT the original design planned out by the Intelligent Designer (i.e. God). After all, in the beginning there was no death and all creatures were herbivorous – so what use claws, poison and so on? But after the Fall, sin corrupted the original design (you could say, mutated) and introduced death to the world. Along with death came survival of the fittest, and thus adaptation and ‘evolution’. You can thus throw in all items useless to survival or reproduction into this category. https://scottthong.wordpress.com/2007/11/22/the-sin-theory-of-evolution-reconciling-evolution-creationism-and-intelligent-design/
June 28, 12 at 6:16 pm
Just to clarify: I do not discount that Darwinistic macro-evolution might really happen. I am merely less thoroughly convinced of it than the average layperson, and I find the arguments of Intelligent Design (e.g. irreducible complexity, analogy/comparison to human creations) to have some merit.
June 28, 12 at 8:30 pm
Not true.
Mice Roar Message: Genetic Change Happens Fast
That kind of change takes longer (as in millions of years).
Evolution: The change in genetic composition of a population over successive generations, which may be caused by natural selection, inbreeding, hybridization, or mutation. (biology-online. org/dictionary/Evolution)
For a free online primer check out Evolution 101.
June 28, 12 at 8:34 pm
^^Link Correction
Evolution 101
June 28, 12 at 8:35 pm
It’s just not my day: http://www.evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/evo_01
June 29, 12 at 10:04 am
Still mice. Still the same genes, just in a different ratio of frequency / activation.
Wait… Pergams said the Volo Bog change is best explained by the old mice being replaced by new mice migrating from distinct neighboring populations… Replacement with better-adapted genotypes from external populations, doesn’t this just mean the new mice moved in and the old mice died out? The old mice didn’t themselves change.
Someone please get some fast reproducing bugs, run a fifty year experiment and see if the change into other bugs.
Anyway as I mentioned, I don’t disbelieve evolution per se.
August 19, 12 at 11:12 pm
[…] that all the right parts came together in the right way, at just the right time and place (ala X-men style instant evolution)? And not just once, but multiple times over the history of life on Earth… As many times, in […]