Atheist Armaments

The argument

A banana is so perfectly formed to human consumption due to shape, comestic characteristics, and mechanical aspects, it is self-evident of the existence of an intelligent designer.

[ Watch the Video ]

The Counter

The biggest, and most obvious, flaw in his argument is that cultivated bananas (the yellow, phone-handset shaped variety you buy at your local market) are the result of decades, centuries even, of selective farming. Cultivated Bananas, or Musa Sapientum, are a sterile byproduct of two other species of banana/plantains. This effectively means they are the “mule” of the Musacae family. Being sterile means that the banana that you and I eat, and that Ray Comfort shows in the video above, can only be produced by man. The “intelligent designer” here is man himself, through “manual selection” of crops over the ages.

Then there’s the issue of the coloration/discoloration process; Nature giving us a signal as to when it’s best to eat the banana. The actual reason behind the color fade is a little more complicated than it would seem. Pre-ripe bananas are still rich in chlorophyll, which grants them their green hue, much in the same way as virtually every other plant organism on earth. As the banana ages, it ripens due to a chemical known as ethylene. (C₂H₄) Ethylene is a very natural hydrocarbon, and has a number of benefits to the plant releasing it. The Ethylene works in conjunction with the oxygen in the atmosphere around it to ripen the banana at an exponential rate. (As an experiment, take 2 bunches of pre-ripe bananas that are the same age and place a single ripened banana with one group. All else being equal, the group with the ripened banana should all ripen noticeably sooner due to the presence of elevated ethylene gas.)

One of the other arguments Comfort makes (yet another Post Hoc fallacy) is regarding the shape of the banana: it’s size, curvature, and shape all make it easier to eat. While I believe this to be mostly due to the cultivation of the plant over the years, I’d also like to point out that there are a number of thing that are the correct size to insert into our mouths (but probably isn’t a bright idea): pine cones (uncomfortable to eat), mandrake roots (poisonous), smaller cacti (obviously uncomfortable without a lot of preparation), sea cucumbers, moles, etc. etc. And there are plenty of other fruits that are very pleasant to eat (and good for you!) that are extremely challenging to extract the fruit from: pineapples, cocounuts, dorians, chestnuts (technically a legume, I believe), pomegrantes — there’s a rather entertaining youtube video that I’m cribbing from a little here. He cites some very specific examples on this topic. (Including my favorite: the onion, whose vapors react with the tears in our eyes to form sulfuric acid. Yikes!)

In any case, I would almost call a debunking of this particular argument a straw man attack, but it’s a good starting point.

For those of you who haven’t heard about it already, there’s a museum opening up in Kentucky called the “Creation Museum” (first link on the list — I’m not directly linking to them). It’s a very professionally done (they had a guy from Hollywood special effects help do the displays, I think) museum that depicts the Christian version of history. The highlight is the exhibits that show dinosaurs and humans co-existing.

Yes, you heard me right.

Now some of you may think: “So what?” This is dangerous. It’s not that I think this museum alone, on its own, will bring down the pillars of science. It’s just that this is one of those things that, if it goes unchecked, will be one of many things of this sort — of Christianity attempting to re-write history based on shaky and non-empirical scientific ground. There are a lot of really ignorant and impressionable people out there who already follow this psuedo-science.

But why is it so frightening. Non-science types typically don’t immediately grasp the implication of mixing the tiniest bit of faith with empircal science.

Consider this notion:
Let’s accept, on faith alone, that dinosaurs and humans coexisted as the Creation Museum tells us is true. (They are indeed claiming this to be FACT, by the way, but their only proof is the biblical texts — so it must be taken on faith). This is what happens just by accepting that fact only:

1. If dinosaurs existed a mere 6,000 years ago, and the earth is only ~6,000 years old (the Creation Museum claims this), then our radiometric dating technology is highly inaccurate and unreliable. (places dinosaurs 65,000,000 years ago, and the earth as billions of years old)
2. If radiometric dating is that inaccurate, then what we know about nuclear decay gets thrown into question. (Radiometric dating is based on the tested science that an atom will decay at a measurable pace, called a “half-life”. Carbon dating is useful for identifying ages smaller than 60,000 years (which still puts it well past the “6,000 year” age the Christian Scientists tell you. Modern, more accurate, dating techniques use Uranium-thorium decay, which has a longer half-life and is more accurate.)
3. If nuclear decay is incorrect, then this throws the whole field of nuclear science / nuclear chemistry into question, as well as the experiments performed by those scientists. What were they really seeing when they did half-life experiments?

It sounds like a slippery-slope logical fallacy, I know. But empirical science only works when each new discovery stands on the shoulders of previous discoveries. It’s like a human pyramid — the top tiers are only as strong as those they stand on.

Fact is, we know that atoms decay at a measurable amount. The former citizens of Hiroshima, Japan are very familiar with that as well. The nuclear science used to make the atomic bomb was based on the idea of Beta-particle (electron) emission causing a chain reaction in a highly unstable Uranium 238 (an isotope) core. If that science was incorrect, then it would not have worked as predicted.

Nuclear chemistry has several branches of science devoted to it. There are a slew of experiments that can be (and have been) done to back up nuclear chemistry. Even without the use of scanning electron microscopes, spectrometry, or nuclear chain-reactions (which to this day, are still in use powering some very large cities), there are observable (and repeatable) experiments you can do in your own home to empirically prove various aspects of chemistry. (Acid / Base reactions come to mind — a few semesters ago in Chem II we did a whole qualitative analysis to identify unknown chemicals. This sort of experimentation would not be possible if nuclear chemistry wasn’t reliable).

If we accept the last two points, that nuclear chemistry is verifiably true, and that radioactive decay DOES happen, and IS measurable, then certainly the dating measurement techniques must be pretty accurate. (certainly not millions or billions of years off the mark, anyways)

I did a google search for “Is carbon dating accurate”,this was the first result. It says “Carbon dating is accurate, but only for a few thousand years.” The author cites a whole bunch of scientific data to sound more accurate. Then underneath all of that is a paragraph of Christian propaganda. In fact, the whole first page of search results on that google search were Christian science sites attempting to debunk Carbon dating. Presumably because it’s the one that most people are familiar with (heck, before doing research for this blog, I wasn’t aware of Uranium-thorium dating). However — our measurements of the earth’s age, dinosaurs time-period, and other way-back history events aren’t based on carbon-dating. Similar method, different isotope.

In any case — I really hope that this stuff blows over. I keep having nightmarish thoughts about more and more people, Christians and apathetic “I don’t care enough to state my views one way or another” agnostics letting this material become accepted and then it being taught in public schools, etc. The Salem Witch trials spring to mind.

If you’re a supporter of the Creation Museum, then the next time you go to the hospital and get an x-ray, or the next time you hear about someone close to you that needs chemo-therapy to treat cancer, you think long and hard about the scientists (and the science) that makes that possible. Empiricism has no room for faith-based facts.