Yet more on JEHOVAH'S folly v. man's genius.

Oral Cavity’s Supposedly “Lousy” Design Is a Key to Human Speech
Evolution News | @DiscoveryCSC

It’s a staple for Darwinists who compile lists of human anatomical features supposedly demonstrating “unintelligent” or “botched” design. We’re constantly told that the design of the human larynx, trachea, and oral cavity is poor because it allows for choking on food.

The point is made by the snarky Centre for Unintelligent Design, which lists “The ease with which we can choke” as an example of “unintelligent design,” and by Wikipedia. On the “Argument for poor design“ page they include this under “Fatal flaws” in human anatomy:

The existence of the pharynx, a passage used for both ingestion and respiration ,with the consequent drastic increase in the risk of choking. 

In a conversation with Edge on “Unintelligent Design,” anthropologist Scott Atran complains, “Humans are more liable than other animals to choke, as they attempt to simultaneously coordinate eating, breathing and speaking.” RationalWiki adds, “Drinking and laughing at the same time — makes the drink come out of the person’s nose. Or potentially choke the victim of such a lousy design.” And so on.

The design does come with an increased chance of choking, but it’s also something that allows us to speak as we do. An interesting new article at The Scientist goes into some detail. From “Why Human Speech Is Special,” by Philip Lieberman:

  

In On the Origin of Species, Darwin noted “the strange fact that every particle of food and drink which we swallow has to pass over the orifice of the trachea, with some risk of falling into the lungs.” Because of this odd anatomy, which differs from that of all other mammals, choking on food remains the  fourth leading cause of accidental death in the United States. This species-specific problem is a consequence of the mutations that crafted the human face, pharynx, and tongue so as to make it easier to speak and to correctly interpret the acoustic speech signals that we hear.

At birth, the human tongue is flat in the mouth, as is the case for other mammals. The larynx, which rests atop the trachea, is anchored to the root of the tongue. As infants suckle, they raise the larynx to form a sealed passage from the nose to the lungs, allowing them to breathe while liquid flows around the larynx. Most mammalian species retain this morphology throughout life, which explains why cats or dogs can lap up water while breathing. In humans, however, a developmental process that spans the first 8 to 10 years of life forms the adult version of the SVT [supra-laryngeal vocal tract]. First, the skull is reshaped, shortening the relative length of the oral cavity. The tongue begins to descend down into the pharynx, while the neck increases in length and becomes rounded in the back. Following these changes, half the tongue is positioned horizontally in the oral cavity (and thus called the SVTh), while the other half (SVTv) is positioned vertically in the pharynx. The two halves meet at an approximate right angle at the back of the throat. The tongue’s extrinsic muscles, anchored in various bones of the head, can move the tongue to create an abrupt 10-fold change in the SVT’s cross-sectional area….

As it turns out, the configuration of the adult human tongue’s oral and pharyngeal proportions and shape allow mature human vocal tracts to produce the vowels [i], [u], and [a] (as in the word ma). These quantal vowels produce frequency peaks analogous to saturated colors, are more distinct than other vowels, and are resistant to small errors in tongue placement. Thus, while not required for language, these vowel sounds buffer speech against misinterpretation. This may explain why all human languages use these vowels.
  
o Darwin and his latter-day followers may complain about the design of the oral cavity but they’d have a harder time doing so (and being understood) if it weren’t for this instance of “poor design.” Note that “all human languages use these vowels,” an indication that this is no negligible feature for clear communication. And speech, of course, is arguably the keystone of humanity’s exceptional status in the world of life.

None of which, of course, is to make light of the peril of choking. But to put things in perspective, according to the National Safety Council, “5,051 people…died from choking in 2015,” which works out to 0.0018 percent of all deaths in the United States, and of those “2,848 were older than 74.” (See  here and here.) There is no doubt some relationship to the prevalence of age-related conditions like Alzheimer’s disease. As an article for The Conversation points out, “The result is that millions of brain disease patients are at risk for inhaling food and saliva into the lungs, leading to death by pneumonia or even choking.”


That having been said, the design of the human oral cavity looks more like a trade-off than a botch. As Evolution News has put it, “Trade-offs are compromises made to optimize the highest design goal.” They are not errors but necessary features of design in a material world.

God continues to make fools of the 'wise'.

^{Ecclesiastes8:17ESV"}then I saw all the work of God, that man cannot find out the work that is done under the sun. However much man may toil in seeking, he will not find it out. Even though a wise man claims to know, he cannot find it out."

Why Does Biology Still Have the Ability to Surprise Us?

Ann Gauger

About forty years ago, a biochemistry professor told my class that now that the genetic code had been worked out and the lac operon discovered, the only thing left for us students was to work out the details. Boy, was he wrong!

If there's one thing I've learned over the last forty years, it is that every ten years or so the biological apple cart is upset, and a long-established "fact," an assumption based on incomplete knowledge, is proven to be wrong.

I am sure you can find textbooks that still include some of these old "facts." Below is a partial list of those assumptions that have had to be revised, and some that are still under discussion.

1. Old fact: DNA is stable and genes don't hop around.

New discovery: Mobile genetic elements can hop from place to place in the DNA, duplicating themselves and changing gene expression. Sometimes they carry surrounding genes with them.

2. New "old" fact: Mobile genetic elements are selfish DNA that replicate themselves without benefit to the organism, thus cluttering the genome with garbage.

New discovery: Mobile genetic elements appear to be involved in the regulation of many important genes, and their distribution in the genome is nonrandom.

3. Old fact: A gene is an uninterrupted stretch of DNA that encodes a single protein. Genes are arranged like beads on a string.

New discovery: Genes in eukaryotes are interrupted, sometimes multiple times, by non-coding sequences called introns. The introns get spliced out of the messenger RNA before the message is translated. Because of splicing, one gene can produce many different but related proteins.

New discovery: Genes can overlap one another on the same stretch of DNA, on the same strand or on opposite strands. Thus one piece of DNA can produce multiple different proteins.

Take home message: 1 stretch of DNA ≠ 1 gene ≠ 1 protein

4. Old fact: There are only 3 forms of RNA: messenger RNA, transfer RNA, and ribosomal RNA.

New discovery: New classes of short and long RNA transcripts serve to regulate gene expression.

5. Old fact: Pseudogenes are useless broken remnants of former genes.

New discovery: Not all pseudogenes are useless. Pseudogenes can be transcribed, and their products can be used to regulate the expression of their full-length sister genes. Related to #4.

6. Old fact: The genome is full of junk, the remnants of wasteful evolutionary processes and selfish DNA (see #1, #2 and #5 above).

New discovery: "Junk" DNA isn't junk after all. It has many important regulatory functions in the cell.

Revolutionary discoveries like these often happen when someone tries something new, stumbles across some contrary evidence, and begins to question the validity of an established "fact." The results have been astonishing -- and have even won the Nobel Prize. Because of these discoveries we have gained a new and better, though still imperfect understanding of biology.

Why should we still have the "facts" wrong? After all, we've been studying biology for sixty years after the discovery of DNA's structure, and 50 years after the code was worked out.

Perhaps a better question would be, "Why does biology have the ability to surprise us?" It's because life is much more sophisticated than anything we can imagine. We look at biology from our very limited perspective, and at almost every turn we are puzzled or amazed. You can even read it in the understated, carefully couched language of published articles, where words like "surprising" or "unexpected" appear often.

Remember that biochemistry professor who claimed that all the important work in biology was done? He also said we'd never find gears or wheels in biology. Poor guy!

You'd think that scientists would be more cautious about our pronouncements if we can be so wrong. But we are only human, like everyone else, and our accepted "facts" are often deeply entrenched in our thinking. In truth, though, only one rock solid "fact" exists -- that some time in the not too distant future a strongly held "fact" will be proven mistaken.

Like Darwinian evolution, perhaps?