Jesus ‘n’ Mo ponder Ray ‘n’ Kirk:
Unintelligent design
December 28, 2010 • 6:47 am
Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
Jesus ‘n’ Mo ponder Ray ‘n’ Kirk:
from Wikipedia: “Cultivated bananas are parthenocarpic, which makes them sterile and unable to produce viable seeds. Lacking seeds, propagation typically involves removing and transplanting part of the underground stem (called a corm). Usually this is done by carefully removing a sucker (a vertical shoot that develops from the base of the banana pseudostem) with some roots intact. etc.”
Yep, perfectly natural and God-made, all right.
Most wild bananas I’ve seen also have no seeds and propagate via shoots in the soil. The odd banana will have a seed or two (but of the few dozen I’ve ever bothered to plant, none have ever grown and I’m betting they’re generally if not always sterile). Some bananas (and one cultivated variety comes to mind) *do* have seeds. The banana itself is edible and tastes good but the seeds make it extremely annoying to eat. Imagine the typical store bought banana – each seed is smaller than a poppy seed; imagine if each seed were the size of a peppercorn.
I just thought picking the culivated banana as an example of divine design was especially ignorant, since it is the product of a long human effort to produce something quite different from its wild ancestors.
It’s a bit like taking picking some modern brassicas (cabbage cultivars) as examples of God’s design.
You guys are totally missing the point. You see, god knew that we would cultivate the banana to that shape, so he shaped our hands like this in anticipation. There. I run rings around you logically.
…oh, INTERCOURSE the banana!
It was intelligently designed for that, too.
Are you saying that there is another part of your body that can accommodate the size and shape of a banana? Wow, the designer truly is amazing!
Ray is absolutely correct when he claims that the banana is an excellent example of intelligent design. It’s just that we have met the designers, and they be we.
Cheers,
b&
Sure. Just like the dairy cows’ udder. “Designed” to produce the most milk.
Nothing like a few hundred years of selective breeding…
…oh wait, except the process of evolution.
Apply selection pressure and BINGO!
Succinct, as always!
how do you explain the coconut?
Coco frío.
Because, just like a banana, a machete fits perfectly into the hand.
BTW, coconuts are satanic, but not for reasons of design. According to God’s final and unalterable revelation to Mo, you’re like the devil if you don’t slaughter animals and eat meat:
This is just a rip-off of an old Nick Gisburne bit.
Jump to 4:01
He forgot to point out that it’s easier to open the banana the way the monkeys and chimps do, which is to squeeze the pointy end rather than to tear at the ‘tab’ (which can be quite tough if the bunch was picked while fairly immature).
That is a Quality Assurance mechanism. See… perfect 😉
Yes, god made the entire Earth for the benefit of mankind so we could dwell on it. Designed it with us in mind.
Why, just yesterday I was thinking about my cousins who farm apples at the South Pole. And my sister who lives a comfortable life raising wheat in the Sahara Desert. And, of course, the entire extended family of second cousins that lives a toil-free life in the ocean, happily swimming without a care in the world, just munching on kelp and the occasional mackerel. They don’t even wear clothes!
And for the rest of us, who could possibly forget the Christmas dinner with the salad of foxglove, nightshade, and poinsettia leaves? Mmmm.
Yes. Nature is the kindest, gentlest, most caring mother one could hope for. The people of Haiti will attest to this.
I can’t believe how incredibly myopic folks like Comfort can be. And not just about the environment. Blithely assuming everyone enjoys the same privileges they do. Or at least, could, if they weren’t lazy feriners.
Speaking of the coconut being satanic – many decades ago when my dad worked in the public hospitals up north, almost every year he’d get some guy who’d gone on holidays to Florida and bought a coconut and injured himself trying to open the damned thing. The most impressive injuries were by a guy who tried to open the infernal fruit using a small chainsaw.
Meanwhile back in Asia I see folks put a sharp stick into the ground and remove the coconut husk in all of 4 or 5 seconds. The seed cleaves nicely in two with only a few taps with the blunt edge of a machete. No chainsaws and no injuries. I tried my hand at husking the coconuts and the natives had a good time laughing at me; I took close to 2 minutes to take the husk off.
I think Ray has the tab part wrong. It’s a misidentified convenient handle. You’d think the bush would have told him!
If you try it, it’s actually easier to eat a banana from the other end. When it’s ripe you can squeeze the tip between your fingers, the banana opens and the skin peels off. The bitter stringy bits attach to the skin in this direction (as opposed to either having to peel them off individually or eat them). I read somewhere – although I can’t find the link – that this is the way that non-human primates eat this fruit. Can’t vouch for the truth of that, but it does work.
What a lovely bunch of coconuts:
I’m going to have this song in my head for the rest of the day.
Ah, that original explains why one of our humorists and song writers [Povel Ramel] made an ‘evil’ pastich.
Let me see what google translate can do with some help:
Father I can not open up my coconut,
Any way I’ve tried was very wrong.
With my little hatchet
I struck ’til I was stiff,
The table was hacked, parquet floor collapsed,
but the nut is still intact.
Father I can not open up my coconut,
No, not even using hammer and some nails.
All the walls now has small marks here and there,
It’s only the coconut which is the same.
Yes, it’s only the coconut which is the sa-a-ame!
Everything else seems more like disaster.
Tell me do you remember the organ father?
Forget it, if you please,
’cause it is only the coconut which is the same at home!
Father I can not open up my coconut,
Though I tried to break it against a door.
For however I beat,
I must have beaten wrong.
For the door opened and mother went in,
but the nut is still intact!
Father I can not open up my coconut,
No, though I gave my mother a new facial.
When you see her, I think you smile
’cause it is only the coconut which is the same.
Yes, it’s only the coconut which is the sa-a-ame!
Everything else seems pretty much game.
Mom’s nose got color,
And the chins were lost.
It’s only the coconut which is the same at home!
Father I can not open up my coconut,
No, not even using nitroglycerine.
For when I had charged
very carefully and well,
Away I ran and then came the bang.
But the nut is still intact.
Father I can not open up my coconut,
For I have not mastered heavy explosives.
Our little house you know?
See it stands there no mo’.
It’s only the coconut which is the same!
Yes, it’s only the coconut which is the sa-a-ame!
Everything else seems more pyromania, so to speak.
Fire brigade has it easy,
the easiest they’ve seen.
For it is only the coconut which is the same, the same, the same!
For it is only the coconut which is the sa-a-ame!
Bananas also fit perfectly under ones foot. Because God needs a laugh too.
Unrelated thought: coconuts falling from trees kill more people on average than sharks. And we all know how evil sharks are.
How does Ray Comfort explain the fact that bananas can be deadly?
My favorite example is the soft comfortable clothes that grow on bushes in every cold climate on earth. So thoughtful.
God made the earth just for us. That’s why we need to drink water but 97% of it is no potable.
That’s because of SIN!
Reminds me of Willy musing to Ethel – “Ethel…I sit here in complete awe a the complexity and precision of the evolutionary process! Look how perfectly the beer can fits the hand of a man.”
If coconuts are satanic, what are durian?
Hey, don’t dis the durian! I loooove durian, and even better no-one else in my family eats it so I get it all to myself, perfect!
How do you like it? A friend raved about it in a milkshake, but didn’t care for it plain.
My first one is still hanging in the kitchen, waiting for some more adventurous friends to return from Christmas vacation to share it with.
One of my friends got one of his friends to try durian by telling him that it tastes “just like mango.”
Consider the anus, and how perfectly it accommodates a rectal thermometer; to me, this is the greatest evidence for a loving, benevolent God.