Thursday, August 04, 2005
Five Fingered Fraud
Why did the intelligent designer (if there is one), put five fingers on each human hand? Did he/she/it roll dice and up came a 4 and a 1? That wouldn't be intelligent design, so let's see if we can work through the reasoning.
Let's suppose you start with one finger on each hand. It becomes obvious pretty quickly that these hands are only good for picking noses.
So let's move to two fingers on a hand. That's not a lot better, although theoretically you could pick both nostrils with one hand freeing the other hand for other tasks. But if you convert one of those fingers to an opposable thumb, now you've got something. So it looks like a hand with the thumb and the finger next to it is about the simplest configuration that would make any sense.
OK, we see the need for the thumb and index finger, so why was the middle finger added? That's obvious, to make obscene gestures. So now we have reasons for two fingers and a thumb on each hand.
On to the next finger. Do we really need a ring finger, besides for hanging a ring on it? This one is also pretty obvious. Have you ever tried to hold a cold, wet bottle of beer with your thumb and two fingers? Take a close look at your ring finger. It's strong. You need a strong finger here to grasp heavy objects and hold them for a long time. The fact that the weight of the ring can become unbearable is inconsequential.
Surely the pinky finger is not needed. Its small size is occasionally helpful, like when you need to clean your ear, but all and all it doesn't have much use. Think how much easier it would be to play scales on a piano without a pinky. So I vote that the pinky is not necessary and represents bad design.
I'm sure some of you will insist that we need a thumb and all four fingers. Some of you would probably advocate for even more fingers or two thumbs instead of one. That gets too complicated. I'm a simple guy and three fingers and a thumb sounds fine. Look at the Sunday funnies, cartoonists are no dummies and most of the characters they design have only three fingers and a thumb.
When I have more time I'll talk about why we have five toes on each foot. But I can tell you this right now. I'll never agree to replacing the big toe with an opposable toe like a thumb. The thought of seeing a woman with an opposable toe in flip-flops is gross.
Religion
Satire
Unintelligent Design
This post is an example of the
Theory of Unintelligent Design (TUD), things in the universe that don't seem to be created by intelligent design.
Let's suppose you start with one finger on each hand. It becomes obvious pretty quickly that these hands are only good for picking noses.
So let's move to two fingers on a hand. That's not a lot better, although theoretically you could pick both nostrils with one hand freeing the other hand for other tasks. But if you convert one of those fingers to an opposable thumb, now you've got something. So it looks like a hand with the thumb and the finger next to it is about the simplest configuration that would make any sense.
OK, we see the need for the thumb and index finger, so why was the middle finger added? That's obvious, to make obscene gestures. So now we have reasons for two fingers and a thumb on each hand.
On to the next finger. Do we really need a ring finger, besides for hanging a ring on it? This one is also pretty obvious. Have you ever tried to hold a cold, wet bottle of beer with your thumb and two fingers? Take a close look at your ring finger. It's strong. You need a strong finger here to grasp heavy objects and hold them for a long time. The fact that the weight of the ring can become unbearable is inconsequential.
Surely the pinky finger is not needed. Its small size is occasionally helpful, like when you need to clean your ear, but all and all it doesn't have much use. Think how much easier it would be to play scales on a piano without a pinky. So I vote that the pinky is not necessary and represents bad design.
I'm sure some of you will insist that we need a thumb and all four fingers. Some of you would probably advocate for even more fingers or two thumbs instead of one. That gets too complicated. I'm a simple guy and three fingers and a thumb sounds fine. Look at the Sunday funnies, cartoonists are no dummies and most of the characters they design have only three fingers and a thumb.
When I have more time I'll talk about why we have five toes on each foot. But I can tell you this right now. I'll never agree to replacing the big toe with an opposable toe like a thumb. The thought of seeing a woman with an opposable toe in flip-flops is gross.
Religion
Satire
Unintelligent Design
This post is an example of the
Theory of Unintelligent Design (TUD), things in the universe that don't seem to be created by intelligent design.
