There's a certain kind of fungus that lives inside a cow's stomach until it is excreted out of the cow, where it resides on or about the cow pie. This poses a problem to the fungus. In order to replicate its lifecycle, it's offspring must be re-ingested by the cow, and cows, along with other animals, (sensibly) like to avoid areas where they have deposited their dung.
What's a fungus to do?
If you were this fungus, you would, randomly and purely by chance without any thought at all, develop a squirter-mechanism that would allow you to propel your spore away from the cow pie towards, shall we say, greener pastures six or seven feet away.
Not only would you do this, but in doing so, you would create the most powerful propellant mechanism known to man. Scientists have calculated that the squirted spores travel at a speed of 25 metres per second with a measured acceleration of 180,000 G -- "the fastest airborne acceleration seen in the living world". (By way of comparison, astronauts achieve a G acceleration of less than four.)
These fungi are our friends; they degrade the millions of tons of dung produced by cows and other herbivores each year. They're also much smarter than us, or something is, wait a minute, wrong again, they developed their propulsion system purely by chance -- which demands the question, "how did they survive until they developed their propulsion system, by chance, over 1,000s of generations?
It's all about the adequacy of the mechanism: is time+undirected mutation+necessity sufficient to produce elegant designs that cannot be matched or approximated by even the smartest darwinist on the planet?
So let me ask you: Are You Smarter Than A Fungus?
You can check out the fungi, complete with acceleration photos, over at New Science.
http://environment.newscientist.com/article/dn14747-fungi-break-acceleration-record-to-escape-dung.html
(Try not to be put off by the intolerance displayed by the darwinists towards commenters who believe that darwinian evolution is an insufficient mechanism to explain such a marvelous mechanism.)
6 comments:
You've likely got the order of events wrong. It is much more likely the fungus (well, it's ancestors) developed the dispersal mechanism first, and then developed the specialization for cow digestive tracts and excrement.
Framing it one way versus another makes it sound more improbable than it actually is.
And here I thought it was just because the spores were really, really, motivated to get away from the cow pies!
Notice the language of design and intelligence that is inevitably and almost unavoidably used:
developed
then developed
mechanism
You would think that evolution would have given us ways of expressing darwinian reality without resorting to words implying design and intelligence. Bummer.
So, the fungus first developed a mechanism that would allow it to propel its spores 6-7 feet away from itself, and then went looking for an application.... and found cow pies.
Perfect!
Simply because you assert that what you observed suggests design does not make it actually so.
Similarly, in none of your arguments have you ever demonstrated that evolution is an "insufficient" model of explanation.
It may not be emotionally satisfying to you, but that does not render evolution incorrect or invalidated.
By the way - the language that foster karcha used does not in any way imply design or intent. It is the language appropriate for describing a sequence.
Mgs: "Simply because you assert that what you observed suggests design does not make it actually so."
1. We're dealing with probabilities here, and inference to most likely cause. I'm not aiming to "prove" to a scientific certainty; I'm aiming to show the reasonableness of belief in an intelligence behind creation; that it is not irrational or foolish to do so -- as many so delight in saying.
2. The observed design does, in fact, objectively "suggest design". You really have to work hard to not "see" design.
"Similarly, in none of your arguments have you ever demonstrated that evolution is an "insufficient" model of explanation."
I am not arguing against evolution per se; I am arguing against darwinian evolution. "Natural selection" is reasonable, but first you have to have something to select. Of course nature will "select" spores that can shoot themselves 6-7 feet away from a cow pie, the issue is the mechanism that produces the projection system. Random mutation just doesn't cut it for me. And it doesn't cut it for many evolutionists either -- they just keep their heads down because they know that as soon as they point out the inadequacies of darwinian evolution, those pesky IDers will shout "design!".
"It may not be emotionally satisfying to you, but that does not render evolution incorrect or invalidated."
It is both emotionally and intellectually satisfying to me. Spiritually, too. I've got it all!!!!
"By the way - the language that foster karcha used does not in any way imply design or intent. It is the language appropriate for describing a sequence."
I checked the dictionary; you're right -- they've added "evolve" to the meaning of the word "develop".
To my way of thinking, most development has a developer, especially when it is something like a mechanism.
Thanks, as always, for commenting.
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