July 19, 2008

Coconuts Prove a Designer

I am sure you have seen this video by now:



Apparently my argument was so very compelling he took the video down.

I will submit, on the other hand, that the coconut is proof that it was thought out with precise design.

Pacific islanders recognize different stages of growth, assigning to them different names. When the nut is young, it is without the white endosperm ("meat"), but filled with "water" and is used for drinking. When older the endosperm is soft and rubbery, a stage preferred by some. When still older, the husk is still green, but the shell is now brown. At this stage the water tastes like sparkling water, though I don’t know if this is from dissolved gases. Finally when mature and the husk brown, the endosperm is usually ground off on a serrated blade and added to other dishes or rendered for oil.

My wife also taught me, to tell if a pineapple is ripe, you pluck one of the pointed leaves and if it comes out easily then it is ready to eat. What a great design!

Ah, the versatility of the Coconut and the Pineapple. There you go atheists, the coconut is proof that God exists. There is no more excuses. Repent and Trust in Jesus today and seek Salvation through Christ. What are you waiting for? Seek the Lord while he may be found.

15 comments:

  1. Is it a coconut carried by an African swallow? But they are non-migratory. And a European swallow could never carry a coconut.

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  2. Praise the designer?

    It seems to me that people had to discover for themselves the ways they could make use of a natural resource. It's not exactly self explanitory.

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  3. God knew who the coconut was for coconut crabs and us! He gave us the brain to figure out seasons and stages of fruits. He knew we had the capacity to figure out fire, tools and to explore the universe. This is why we are just vicariously between two belts of the galaxy. If we were in the milky way's belt or cloud then we wouldn't be able to observe the vast universe. We need to thank God we are here instead of being mucked up in a cloud of gasses. Thanks Jesus!

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  4. "This is why we are just vicariously between two belts of the galaxy. If we were in the milky way's belt or cloud then we wouldn't be able to observe the vast universe."

    Say what? Unless we were in the middle of a nebula (unlikely, to say the least), Sol could be shoved most places in the Milky Way and we'd be able to see just fine.

    In fact, we're in a pretty awful spot: we're in a sparsely populated segment of the galaxy, which puts other stars too far away to easily detect much. We're too far away from the centre of the galaxy to learn much: the intervening space is simply too bright. We would certainly benefit from having closer galaxies, and the most valuble phenomena, extreme objects like pulsars and black holes, are too far away for anything hugely useful. Ultra-Distant objects, like quasars (:D), are so far away we can only guess at what they truly are.

    Don't even get me started on the incredible distances full of lethal vaccum which means we'll never get to see it first hand.

    I applaud the incredible minds which have allowed us to learn so much about all this, but if scientific discovery was truly one of the motives of the designer, then perhaps the designer should have thought things through beforehand.

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  5. Basically, Dan, your argument is simply backwards. Conditions here on Earth are not propitious for life because they were designed to be so; rather, life evolved here because conditions were propitious. Coconuts were not designed to be nutritious for coconut crabs and people; they have nutrients stored for their own propagation, and coconut crabs and people have evolved to take advantage of those nutrients (and others). And people are nutritious to tigers, sharks, mosquitoes, and innumerable other creatures- did God design us that way, as He designed coconuts for coconut crabs?

    It's easy for people to see themselves as the crown of creation, and look at the rest of the world as having been created for their benefit. But truth is, we, and sharks, and coconuts, are the product of billions of years of evolution, and the fact that we fit the world well enough to enjoy life (most of the time) is testimony to untold generations of natural selection, not a designer.

    Need I point out, also, that there are countless counterexamples of "bad design" as well? You say "Coconuts Prove a Designer". I say "Allergies Prove No Designer". You can substitute "Down's Syndrome" or "Lower Back Pain" for "Allergies" if you prefer. In any case, evolution can explain these things- religion cannot.

    cheers from sunny Vienna, zilch

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  6. Quasar,

    "We're too far away from the center of the galaxy to learn much: the intervening space is simply too bright."

    So you say with that intellect of yours. You have no idea what you are talking about, obviously. You do understand what is in the center of all the Galaxies right? If we are very close as your great mind is suggesting there wouldn't be life, we would be stretched and pulled apart atom by atom into the black hole. We are, in fact, in the perfect position to sustain our life for now. Jupiter and the moon absorb the debris flying around, there is enough blackness to understand and observe our surrounding in clarity, without obstructions. God know better then you, change your presuppositions about God and you will understand His greatness and your fallibility.

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  7. doubting foo, that was hilarious!

    Dan,

    Was this the debunking?

    "What are you waiting for? Seek the Lord while he may be found."

    Maybe I missed it, because the video you showed actually did debunk something....is the name of your blog correct???? I notice that when you theists know you are wrong, you try and laugh the argument off rather than tackling it. This basically hits at the whole argument from the design, which is actually still one of the most common arguments for design today.

    I mean, this is not an argument:

    "God knew who the coconut was for coconut crabs and us! He gave us the brain to figure out seasons and stages of fruits. He knew we had the capacity to figure out fire, tools and to explore the universe. This is why we are just vicariously between two belts of the galaxy. If we were in the milky way's belt or cloud then we wouldn't be able to observe the vast universe. We need to thank God we are here instead of being mucked up in a cloud of gasses. Thanks Jesus!"

    Here is my argument:

    All this, but your God is replaced by a different god, with a different holy book, with a different message. How do you differentiate between the two? How can you determine whether you are on firm ground in your statement or just basically spewing your own opinion?

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  8. "We are, in fact, in the perfect position to sustain our life for now. Jupiter and the moon absorb the debris flying around, there is enough blackness to understand and observe our surrounding in clarity, without obstructions. God know better then you, change your presuppositions about God and you will understand His greatness and your fallibility."

    Sorry, Dan, I am going to call foul here. I am invoking the anthropic principle, which unlike what theists think is not an argument for design. That we are here is obvious...why we are here is not. You just claim that Jesus Christ is responsible...you haven't provided any evidence. On the other hand, we would expect to find ourselves or any life in regions propitious for their eventual evolution.

    Also, that this was the intended place for the pinnacle of creation is laughable. This planet is only habitable on some of its surface, some of the time. Most people are born into abject poverty, drought and sickness. If you have a Liebnizian bent, I wonder what the 'worst of all possible worlds would look like'!!

    I have yet to see a refutation of ANYTHING that atheists have said.

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  9. Whew now my day is complete, Zilch is here! Welcome

    Allergies Prove we are in a fallen creation

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  10. Dan said,

    "Allergies Prove we are in a fallen creation."

    Calling foul!!! You have to demonstrate this is a fallen creation...also, we have testable hypotheses for why T and B lymphocytes undergo Type 1 hypersensitivity. Search "hygiene hypothesis"...this makes much more sense than "fallen creation", particularly when god is claimed to be "omniscient"...how did he not see "the fall" coming, and if he didn't like it, why did he set things up this way?

    Read the quote from here from Sagan on this topic:

    http://flingingdust.blogspot.com/2008/07/great-atheist-quotes-award-and-some.html

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  11. "So you say with that intellect of yours. You have no idea what you are talking about, obviously. You do understand what is in the center of all the Galaxies right?"

    No, because we can't see it. The intervening space is too bright.

    However, some incredible minds have worked on the problem, and the theory in vogue currently is that the centre of our galaxy is dominated by at least one supermassive black hole, but probably two in binary orbit. But we may never know for certain: it's something we can't observe, powerful as our telescopes may be.

    "If we are very close as your great mind is suggesting there wouldn't be life, we would be stretched and pulled apart atom by atom into the black hole."

    Thanks for the sarcasm, but you're simply wrong. We could be positioned much, much closer without any ill effects, simply because of the massive distances between stellar objects even towards the centre of the galaxy. This galaxy is no longer a quasar: the black holes are no longer eating everything nearby.

    "We are, in fact, in the perfect position to sustain our life for now. Jupiter and the moon absorb the debris flying around, there is enough blackness to understand and observe our surrounding in clarity, without obstructions."

    Jupiter does a good job at attracting extra-solar objects, but the asteroid belt is an accident waiting to happen. Earth recieves six times as many meteors as the moon (a result of being six times as large), and there are over 150 major land craters documented on the surfact of the earth. Take into account water impacts and erosion effects, and the earth has suffered at least 300 major impacts since life began, and possibly as many as 600.

    Add on supervolcano's, climate change, tsunami's and others, and earth looks less and less hospitable all the time. Thank goodness it's all spread out over 4.5 billion years: if it had to be condensed into a few thousand, we'd be looking at a mass-extinction level event every couple of years.

    Which would be painful.

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  12. "but the asteroid belt is an accident waiting to happen." valid point but could be reworded to say: asteroid belt has purpose, waiting to happen.

    "Add on supervolcano's, climate change, tsunami's and others, and earth looks less and less hospitable all the time...if it had to be condensed into a few thousand, we'd be looking at a mass-extinction level event every couple of years. "

    Touché but aren't you now arguing my point here? We are just a speck in this fallen creation, yet there is a plan of salvation. Take God's word for it, trust Him and get saved,we both then can go explore those centers of galaxies together. What do you say?

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  13. "You just claim that Jesus Christ is responsible...you haven't provided any evidence."

    I have answered that here

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  14. Dan, here is my response to your link..this is the first of several:

    http://ofmicrobesandmen.blogspot.com/2008/07/dans-invisible-clothes.html

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  15. Sigh. Dan, you replied exactly as I thought you would (perhaps I am a prophet!): "good stuff is proof of God the Designer, bad stuff is proof of a Fallen Creation." With an argument like that, you've got all bases covered! Sorry, but that's not an argument at all: it doesn't explain anything, it simply categorizes stuff in an arbitrary manner. As clostridiophile said about allergies, science provides testable hypotheses for their existence: religion provides nothing. You talk about "proof", but as Inigo Montoya said, "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means".

    I could, with just as much justification as you have provided, claim that the existence of spaghetti proves the existence of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, and the existence of, say, liver and onions, proves that we have slipped from His Noodly Appendage.

    And you still have not answered my question: if God designed coconuts for people and coconut crabs, did he design people for tigers and mosquitoes? Or are we only tasty to them because of the Fall? Please.

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