Design or Evolution?

There are a lot of people I have met on the Internet who thinks that the universe is designed. Myself, I do not. There is nothing in this world that to me is unquestionable evidence for design, not even the human body in all its marvelous chemistry and biology.

To me there is no thing as a soul or a spirit. We are what we are and our brains create the illusion of free will. I am an atheist and therefore I do not believe in any gods at all.

Recently there has been a discussion in which I was involved dealing with the design or not of the universe and I decided to write this little piece, perhaps it will give you something to think about. Perhaps not. Anyway, there are things in this universe that clearly look to me as if they where NOT designed by an omnipotent, omniscient just god.

The Bedbug

Cimex lectularius, the first of the two species I’d like to mention is equipped with a very long and sharp, hard penis which it uses to stab-rape females of its species and to ejaculate into the female body cavity—bypassing the usual genital opening in the female. The sperm travels through her blood stream to special receptacles where she can store it until she ovulates.

Xylocaris maculipennis has developed this method even further. The male of this species stab-rapes other males! In fact a male of this species may even be assaulted by another male while copulating with a female.

The sperm of the rapist enters the vas deferens of his male victim and is used by the victim during copulation. Which is not to say that the sperm of the rapist is injected directly into the raped male’s vas deferens with accuracy – the sperm simply ”migrates in the recipient’s blood to his testes”, ”and hence to the vas deferens tubules attached to his testes, where the rapist’s sperm is then pumped out of the penis of the raped male, and into the female.” [MacQuitty & Mound, Megabugs]

The Wasp

The ichneumon wasp is a lovely creation. It paralyses the caterpillars and lays its eggs inside them. Their larvae when developing will eat the caterpillar alive from the inside. Imagine the mind of the god which designed something like that. I wonder what he thought of.

My conclusion

Creationists may want to conclude that this is the creation of an all-loving, omnipotent being they call god, but I have a feeling that there is no such thing. This together with all the rest of the compelling evidence that biodiversity is a result from evolution.

Thanks to zawawa@space.net.au for his post to alt.atheism regarding this issue and this little article is based much on that.

Ref:

1. Adrian Forsyth, A Natural History of Sex.

2. MacQuitty & Mound, Megabugs.

3. Richard Dawkins, Climbing Mount Improbable