What kind of god would design such creatures?
(source)
Intelligently Designed Guinea Worms
May 27, 2010 By 36 Comments
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Thank Bob Dobs for Jimmy Carter. Carter might be a religious nutjob, but his brains are in the right place. He was worked to kill this parasite, and has removed it from many countries in Africa. Thanks to his work, Guinea worm might be eradicated completely in the next 10 years.
Of all the ex presidents alive, I think he is the hardest worker who has done the most.
And god didn’t like that he was undermining his punishments of the heathens. That is why he sent an aquatic rabbit to attack Carter.
Just one of the truly Horrifying creatures that serve no practical use in Nature. Isn’t God great?
Well that’s the nature of parasites. You can’t really hold it against them, can you? That’s how they survive and it’s worked for them for countless years.
Only 6,000 years, DDM! ;-)
Ummmmmmm yeahhhhhh…. check this out:
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2010-05/wuis-dlw052510.php
Lung worms from crayfish. Ew.
Organisms don’t have to “serve a purpose”, they just have to survive and reporduce. :)
Kind of reminds me of my second cousin on my mom’s side. No real purpose other than to pop out kids like a pez dispenser. (that sounds mean I know, but its twue, its twue)
I have an innate repulsion to worms, leeches and anything else of this sort. Reading how it works just grossed me out and has made this my least favourite UF article.
But the point was excellent!
Y’know, considering that the human race is in the process of destroying the entire planet, you’d have a better case saying they were the creatures that serve no practical use in Nature.
I think Carlin said it best when he said humans are not going to destroy the planet. The planet is fine. It will be fine. We’re arrogant to think we need to “save it”.
Certainly. We are very unlikely to kill more than 90% of plant and animal species currently on Earth.
Hey, 99.8% of all previous life on the plant has already been made extinct without human intervention…
Yep. Isn’t it time we made it 99.98%?
ah, that would be ‘planet’
So my blister may be a wormhole?
Please set to Warp 5.
Haha! Win!
You think this is nutty, you should read about the process of blood clotting. If there’s a god, she’s Rube Goldberg.
You unrependant fools!!!!
Can’t you see that God designed this wonderful creature with his infinite wisdom that is beyond our mere human comprehension?
It is but a tool to test the faith of the infected, to hold them in awe of the mysterious ways God works through their bodies.
Praise the Lord Goddamnit!
Uch! I hate parasites. Bleeargh!!! I remember working in animal medicine & seeing all kinds of things. Yech, yech, yech.
I saw some pro-god vid recently & one of the questions was something like – why is it that all teh colors of flowers look so beautiful to us? with the implication being that god wants to give us something good to look at so he made the flowers all pretty.
So….we find the parasite gross sooo….it’s the devil making it ugly? Signed, confused.
Why do flowers come in colors we can’t even see?
god made parasites, that was for practice…
then he created politicians and religious leaders…
(thnx to SLC)
Thread over. v wins.
Actually, thanks to Mark Twain…
“In the beginning God created monkeys, that was for practice. Then He created school boards.”
Mark Twain
Simple, because God is a sadist dick.
http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=1857#comic
Be sure to mouseover the red button ;)
Well…you see..it’s because Eve and Adam ate the apple…that’s what created the worms. It’s OUR FAULT the worms exist.
I just made that up, but I think that is the actual argument. :)
The worm was in the apple and Eve’s bite set it free.
and she was like “Ew!” and then Adam was like “Just bite around that bit, hun, don’t throw away the whole fruit.”
Y’all should check out the Wikipedia article on the male angler fish (or better yet, The Oatmeal’s version of it :)
I must be weird, I find codependence of species facinating. And this UF post is tame compared to the wasp/catepillar one. That was messed up!
There’s a great (but a bit graphic) video report by New York Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristof about a kid stuck with the Guinea worm in Sudan.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtE0clOnGhg&playnext_from=TL&videos=phUIUPPBFaM
This video was just posted a few days ago, I wonder if that’s where Daniel heard about the Guinea worm and decided to post this.
That ‘water flea’ is actually a copepod. The NYT mislabeled it as a cladoceran (commonly called a water flea).
Why can’t they just get someone with a scientific background to look over science articles before publishing them?
Also, the word ‘larvae’ is pleural; they should have used ‘larva’
Best example: Why did a loving God create the smallpox virus? It causes immense suffering to people, has a 60% mortality rate, incredibly contagious, leaves survivors with horrible scars, isn’t even a living ‘creature’ (being a virus) and best of all ONLY attacks humans… Got to be the best work of creation – if you had a god who hated humans…
“And then He created the parasites capable of going through human tissue causing an intense pain, and He thought it was good”