Unintelligent Design

I was listening to President Obama begin to deliver his housing program on Here and Now this afternoon. I valued this opportunity to here Obama speak, because WWHY seldom broadcasts his speeches. Suddenly the broadcast was broken in for at least 10 minutes of less important material. Then we rejoined the president’s talk. I was given no reason for the interruption, and when the speech resumed, I was not told if we lost all the interrupted portion, or if perhaps we were hearing a recording of what was interrupted. I resented not being told why the interruption occurred or how long it would be. The result was that you made the news and advertising more important that our contact with the president. Also, the written speech on this site does not give me any response. Thank you for considering this complaint. I do listen to WWHY all the time. Sincerely, Burton Froom

It blows my mind … the fact that shallow thinkers are able to write books and get them published … that so many are able to obtain advanced degrees and land prestigious jobs in academia. I agree with the premise–humans were most certainly not designed by an intelligent force, but how can the reasoning behind it be so far off as expressed by your guest? She concentrates on the physical aspects of human design–birth canals, blind spots and, for heavens sake, the male sexual apparatus. OMG. This has no more to do with questionable or marginal human design than it does with ANY mammalian life form on the planet. How could anyone who has thought about these arguments for more than five minutes take them into publication and onto the public airwaves?

Here’s the answer your guest should be putting forward. Humans have no ability to pass on even a small fraction of their collective intelligence to the next generation–call it “generational memory inheritance,” if you will. Everything ever learned by the species all the way from 1 + 1 = 2 to E = MC(2) must be relearned by each and every generation that comes along. Even we humans know how to create permanent memory using electical and electrochemical devices. There are scientists today who could tell you exactly how this could be done through our DNA and by using what we know as nanotechnology. The inefficiency in this huge design oversight is positively inexcusable if intelligent design is involved, and believe me if we can figure this out, an all powerful, infinitely intelligent force in the Universe could certainly match our puny abilities.

Another point to consider: even animals possess what we think of as “instinct” yet humans seem to have been bypassed even in this simple example of generational memory inheritance. The evidence? … humans who have been raised in the wild (by animals, it is assumed) retain fewer human traits than the traits of the animals they’ve been raised with. Even a rudimentary human language never develops in these individuals under such conditions. There is absolutely no logical reason for this when one considers the fact that a large brain is usually credited as the factor behind the success of Homo sapiens, our species. And by the way, if we’re going to talk about the success of species, Homo sapiens is not the one we should be pointing to. Does anyone see Man exisisting for 150 million years as did the dinosaurs? Our pitiful species will be lucky to exist (in higher intelligence form) for 150 THOUSAND years let alone millions.

Dear Rev. Froom,

Our deep apologies for breaking into the President’s speech yesterday.

Many of our stations are running on an automated system, and we have to keep the timing of our show consistent for them- or give them much notice. In retrospect, we should have planned for the President’s speech to begin later than scheduled and alerted stations ahead of time.

We hope that you will listen to the uninterrupted audio on our website:

http://www.hereandnow.org/shows/2009/02/rundown-218/

Thank you for your honest feedback,

The Here & Now Staff