Why would God make super-specialized organisms?

[Darth Wong]

Thought of the day: I'm just curious how creationists explain pointless super-specialized organisms, For example, specialized ocean-vent organisms live in deep-sea conditions, do not need sunlight, and have almost no interaction, either directly or indirectly, with the rest of the biosphere.

They are, in a very real sense, completely irrelevant to most life on Earth, and certainly irrelevant to humans, yet they are highly specialized to their unique environment: so specialized that they live off totally different kinds of nutrients than other life forms. If they were designed, then a remarkable amount of effort was expended on an incredibly specialized niche lifeform of little or no consequence to the overall experiment. Of course, they make perfect sense in an evolved biosystem. But how would "intelligent design" explain this?

Once again, I'm just curious how a creationist would answer this. To take one example, look at D. audaxviator: a bacteria which is totally isolated from all other life, hence totally irrelevant to the rest of the biosphere. Its life cycle is unique: it uses the heat from decaying uranium to power chemical reactions which extract minerals from surrounding sterile rocks and water. It is killed by oxygen. Of what possible use is this organism to the rest of the biosystem? Why would an intelligent designer waste the effort to create such an utterly useless over-specialized creature, especially since it is so unique that the designer would not be able to copy most of the design elements from other organisms (ie- the mechanism normally advanced to explain why so many species are so similar)?

Ask your ID friends. I'm curious what they would say.

[erik_t]

Supposing an omnipotent deity means that "a remarkable amount of effort" would be less than a drop in a bucket, of course. It's an interesting question though... but it doesn't seem terribly different from the question "Why did an intelligent designer decide to design anything?"

[Darth Wong]

Supposing an omnipotent deity means that "a remarkable amount of effort" would be less than a drop in a bucket, of course. It's an interesting question though... but it doesn't seem terribly different from the question "Why did an intelligent designer decide to design anything?"

Well, keep in mind that these people explain the remarkable family-tree similarities in common organisms by saying that the designer wouldn't bother to design every new species from scratch. This does imply that some effort is required. We also know that he supposedly rested after his exertions.

PS. I believe the reason given for God wanting to design anything is to create beings who will worship him. Even the other animals are only important insofar as they serve us, so that we can worship him.

[Shroom Man 777]

It could be for art! Why would anyone take time to sculpt a mound of crap into the likeness of a bunch of multicolored Campbell Soup cans, or something? Of what possible use to the great experiment could a dumb-looking Salvador Dali painting of a bunch of anorexic elephants walking on stilts be? Maybe God thinks dumb oceanic worms that feed on heat and minerals look aesthetically pleasing? Maybe specialized lifeforms and horrific parasites are God's equivalent of experimenting with "modern art"? An ocean-vent creature still looks prettier than many sad excuses of modern art, like the work of that guy who makes painting by swallowing coloring materials and vomiting them on canvas.

Anyway, like all great artists, God got a moodswing, ripped off his own ear, and drowned almost the entire population of the Earth and - in the process - destroyed a shitload of his unique creation.

He even wrecked his unique dinosaur portfolio.

[Vendetta]

Evidently, this forward thinking designer created such an organism for us to use in some as yet undiscovered industrial process.

Of course, the question of what kind of forward thinking designer came up with the recursive laryngular nerve rears it's ugly head at this point, but then it's obvious that mammals were a bit of a friday afternoon job all around, really.

[Zixinus]

"God is mysterious in his ways. We mere mortals are not in position to question Divine Providence or why he does what he does."

[Lagmonster]

The answer, Mike, is as simple as the minds who you're investigating: They start by not knowing ultra-specialized organisms exist (real answer: "I've never heard of that"). They knee-jerk with an idiot response (real answer: "Just because we don't know how they fit into God's plan doesn't mean God doesn't have a plan for them"), and they go in for what they can only assume to be the kill witha critique of science (real answer: "...besides, everything else has a place, and there's so much science doesn't know. They just haven't found out the right answer yet."). Finally, they end the discussion by reminding themselves that they weren't listening to you in the first place (real answer: "I'll trust God and His plan, thank you. You should spend more time reading the Bible and less time reading the words of man.")

[Shroom Man 777]

Questioning an intelligent designer's reasons to create super-specialized organisms isn't really that much of an argument against creationism. What if a creationist just says "because Yahweh thinks ocean-vent organisms look like dicks and gets a good laugh out of it"? I mean, geeze, the whole creation myth hinges on the rationale that God was bored and decided to amuse himself for a week by making shit up.

[Themightytom]

Actually I think according to Genesis God made all of creation to keep us busy. mankin is supposed to be the steward of the planet setting forth and naming things and what not. If thats our only purpose there better be a shit ton of things to name.

Alternately he created such creatures to test man's faith just like he put dinosaur bones in the earth and let nasa fake the moon landings.

[Serafina]

Ok, i just asked a creatonist - and she said "well, he re-used a desing from another planet, where it was the basis for the ecosystem".
That actually is a plausible reason if you believe in creation (in her case, its more of "directed evolution") - if you believe life on other planets, that is.

[Themightytom]

Ok, i just asked a creatonist - and she said "well, he re-used a desing from another planet, where it was the basis for the ecosystem".
That actually is a plausible reason if you believe in creation (in her case, its more of "directed evolution") - if you believe life on other planets, that is.

What? the bible doesn't mention other planets does it?

[Serafina]

Ok, i just asked a creatonist - and she said "well, he re-used a desing from another planet, where it was the basis for the ecosystem".
That actually is a plausible reason if you believe in creation (in her case, its more of "directed evolution") - if you believe life on other planets, that is.

What? the bible doesn't mention other planets does it?

As is said, she believes that god is responsible for the direction of evolution (and, generally, the universe) and therefore all lifeforms - she is not really a "creationist" that believes that god "created" anything.

Oh, and she ignores the bible completely, at least after i showed her Mikes website on the matter.

[Junghalli]

As Shroom said, this one is pretty easily explainable. Humans include such "irrelevant" things in their creations all the time. Decorations are essentially irrelevant to the function of a building, but architects decorate buildings all the time, because it's aesthetically appealing. Much of art in general is irrelevant from a functional perspective and serves only an aesthetic purpose. Maybe the Designer/God just thinks bacteria that deep sea vent communities and bacteria that can live in the deep crust are cool.

[Darth Wong]

It doesn't explain his laziness, however. If it's so easy for him, then why is he so spectacularly uncreative when designing normal organisms? Why is it so important for him to copy 99% of any given organism for use in the next related one? Why would his almost all of designs look exactly like cumulative minor modifications, when he can apparently just cobble up completely new unrelated species from scratch for no reason?

They're trying to have it both ways: they try to explain the incredibly uncreative nature of his "designs" by appealing to a "lazy design" logic, but they won't take the "lazy designer" logic to its conclusion.

[Junghalli]

It doesn't explain his laziness, however. If it's so easy for him, then why is he so spectacularly uncreative when designing normal organisms? Why is it so important for him to copy 99% of any given organism for use in the next related one? Why would his almost all of designs look exactly like cumulative minor modifications, when he can apparently just cobble up completely new unrelated species from scratch for no reason?

Maybe he finds making these "irrelevant" biomes more interesting than making lots of different mammals, fish, plants etc.

[Darth Wong]

It doesn't explain his laziness, however. If it's so easy for him, then why is he so spectacularly uncreative when designing normal organisms? Why is it so important for him to copy 99% of any given organism for use in the next related one? Why would his almost all of designs look exactly like cumulative minor modifications, when he can apparently just cobble up completely new unrelated species from scratch for no reason?

Maybe he finds making these "irrelevant" biomes more interesting than making lots of different mammals, fish, plants etc.

Sure, which only begs the question of why he made none of them except in places where evolution theory would just coincidentally happen to predict them.

[Junghalli]

Sure, which only begs the question of why he made none of them except in places where evolution theory would just coincidentally happen to predict them.

Maybe he didn't like the idea of leaving potential habitats with nothing living in them.

[Serafina]

Sure, which only begs the question of why he made none of them except in places where evolution theory would just coincidentally happen to predict them.

Maybe he didn't like the idea of leaving potential habitats with nothing living in them.

We are talking about an omnipotent being. Surely, it could have devised some organism to live, say, on the moon - another potential habitat.

Also, this argument is really quite laughable if you realize how inefficient the universe is if its "purpose" is bearing life.

Edit:
If we take only the earth, we have about 75 cubic kilometers of life , compared to 1 trillion cubic kilometers of planet.
This means that this video is one billionth of a percent life - lots and lots of wasted space.

Taken from this video, around 5:30

[Junghalli]

We are talking about an omnipotent being. Surely, it could have devised some organism to live, say, on the moon - another potential habitat.

True, but that depends on the Designer's priorities. Maybe he only cares about Earth.

Also, this argument is really quite laughable if you realize how inefficient the universe is if its "purpose" is bearing life.

Oh absolutely, if you assume the Designer's goal is actually to maximize the amount of life in the universe. But maybe he doesn't care about that, but just doesn't like leaving totally empty niches on the planets he does select to put life on.

If we take only the earth, we have about 75 cubic kilometers of life , compared to 1 trillion cubic kilometers of planet.
This means that this video is one billionth of a percent life - lots and lots of wasted space.

Sure, but most of that space can't support life anyway, or at least life as we know it. Good luck trying to make something that can live in a sea of lava or molten iron-nickel. So you could say it doesn't count. Space is a more persuasive argument as it makes up most of the volume of the solar system and it is possible to imagine lifeforms that could survive in it with sufficient biotech.

[Serafina]

If he only cared about earth, why did he create the rest of the universe? It's a frigging waste of space.

Really, if puny humans can devise a more efficient solar system (hint: Dyson sphere), then an omnipotent being should have created something better.

Unless you are talking not about the creatonist god, creating all of the universe, in which case your argument makes some sense.

[Junghalli]

If he only cared about earth, why did he create the rest of the universe? It's a frigging waste of space.

Maybe he thinks dead space and dead planets are aesthetically pleasing too.

[Shroom Man 777]

Explaining his laziness? Maybe he had writer's/creator's block or something. Maybe he had a moodswing and felt depressed because some of his angels like Lucifer didn't like him anymore and said bad things about his "art". Maybe like most people, 99% of his creations ended up being uninspired derived crap with only a very small minority of his creations being actually unique or inventive in anyway.

Why should a Creator make sense in making his creations, particularly when the guy turns out to be a total schizophrenic asshole later on in the Old Testament anyway? I think its pointless to try and make sense of the motivations of a being who later on had his own son ritualistically tortured and sacrificed in some hare-brained scheme at bringing "salvation" to his creations, most of whom he apparently hates forever anyway.

Yes, I think Creationism and Intelligent Design would make more sense if its proponents proposed that the Creator was a complete psychopathic asshole more in like with some Greco-Roman God who gets off on turning into livestock and raping women and making them give birth to moose-headed monstrosities.


Also, why would God even bother with making life in the rest of the planets? His first creation turned out so well, with him unsuccessfully trying to make his creations love him by drowning them in global floods and burning their cities and toppling their towers, and it basically ended up with his creations killing the crap out of his only begotten son. If we go with Creationism and ID and Biblical literalism, the reason why God hasn't done anything to Mars and stuff is because he's too busy sulking and crying because everyone hates him and he's just so angry and sad and confused and very depressed. Boo-hoo!

For all we know, maybe the Intelligent Designer ended up eating a gun and splattering his brains all over the cosmos.

[Someone should take this idea and write a very long-ass fic out of it, with copious SD.netter self-inserts and dumb TVTropers and Christians having nerd/christrages over the whole thing.]

[Oni Koneko Damien]

[Someone should take this idea and write a very long-ass fic out of it, with copious SD.netter self-inserts and dumb TVTropers and Christians having nerd/christrages over the whole thing.]

Dude, in all my fiction, all beings of godly power are pretty much dicks. Hell, one even got asked why the hell she didn't do anything about all the suffering on earth. She replied, in essence, that she alone governs the fate of several hundred thousand sentient races, as well as maintaining the bigger whole they are taking part in. She really doesn't give half a shit about the suffering of individual members of one of those races when she regularly sacrifices handfuls of races for the greater good.

EDIT - Though I realize that that isn't really applicable in this situation. My deities tend to consider humanity little more than one tiny part of a much greater system, if they deign to notice humanity at all. Not really comparable to a god who allegedly created everything there is just for the benefit of mankind.

[Lusankya]

Ok. I got some real quotes:

Well, it looks like God still has em talking and discussing His creations eh? If they're so utterly worthless to all of mankind, why are they interested in discussion or learning more about them lol? What about the planets and stars? They don't seem to play much role in how we live our every day lives. Jupiter and Pluto are up there minding their business. I believe God is an artist. And He is creative in so many ways.

Agreed. And to add to that, I belive GOD created the creatures.. and the vast expanse of planets, galaxies and stars which number in the billions to testify of Himself. As the Bible says creation speaks about HIM!

Personally I haven't got a clue...so you will probably find my contribution as pointless as the poor old D. audaxviator bacteria appears to be when viewed in a certain light.

(snip pointless attack on atheists and scientists)

Why G-d would choose to create a certain type of obscure specialized bacteria really holds no interest for me....there are so many questions any of us could challenge G-d on...it is a question of trust. Many things in this life seem unfair or too difficult to understand, and the fact is we don't have all the answers....but one day we will.

Yea because scientists have never found anything useful in strange bacteria living isolated- like the thermophiles found in hot springs that are used as polymerase in pcr DNA replication which have exonerated both innocent people imprisoned and allowed Maury povich to have a career ( he's not my baby's father!!!)

(From here: http://www.worthychristianforums.com/Go ... 11431.html. I hate everyone there so much. I only posted this afternoon, so the thread could get more replies.)

[Shroom Man 777]

Lusy-chan... are they commenting on this thread?

Yes! They agree with me that god is some shitty unimaginative artist whose most unique creations are pretty much ocean-dwelling worms that eat heated minerals and crap!