I've been reading Kenneth Miller's "Finding Darwin's God":
http://tinyurl.com/yw8qs2 (Amazon.com)

I highly recommend it, not only because it is well-written, with
fascinating observations and examples, but also because it's written
by a practicing Catholic who is living proof that the Theory of
Evolution has nothing whatsoever to do with being an atheist.

The first part of the book sets up a solid platform of support for the
Theory of Evolution. The second part of the book (which I haven't
reached yet) claims to show how evolution actually glorifies some
god. I'll see about that when I get there.

Meanwhile the book is studded with material I can use in this series.

The only mammals which lay eggs are the monotremes: the platypus, and
some four species of echidna.

You can argue that they almost failed to qualify as mammals, but
because of the limits of the Linnean classification system that's
where they find themselves, this side of the reptiles, lumped in with
us humans. Kind of a transitional form, you might say (you know, the
kind that creationists lie doesn't exist).

None of the rest of the mammalian class lays eggs. You have to ask
yourselves then, why it is that mammalian embryos, and humans in
particular for my purposes here, have a yolk sac?!

Is it because creationists need to be born with a yellow streak down
their back?

The sac contains no yolk. Some might argue that the vitelline fluid
it does contain serves some nutritive purpose, but there's no solid
evidence for this, and even if it did have a purpose, why would an
intelligent designer, starting from scratch with humans, create us in
the same format which he used to create the egg-laying classes?

Was he really an intelligent designer, or was he patently stupid? Did
he actually create us ex nihilo, or did he steal the designs from one
of the other gods that the Bible loves to discuss and try to fudge
them into something different to avoid patent lawsuits?

Or is it simply that there *is* no design at all, just evolution
making the best of a bad job, and that's why organisms are so mixed
up, half-way made, full of vestigial material, with fins kludged up
into digging, flying, and walking devices, and the same material that
provided scales re-employed to provide nails and feathers?

Budikka

I've been reading Kenneth Miller's "Finding Darwin's God":http://tinyurl.com/yw8qs2(Amazon.com)

I highly recommend it, not only because it is well-written, with
fascinating observations and examples, but also because it's written
by a practicing Catholic who is living proof that the Theory of
Evolution has nothing whatsoever to do with being an atheist.

The first part of the book sets up a solid platform of support for the
Theory of Evolution. The second part of the book (which I haven't
reached yet) claims to show how evolution actually glorifies some
god. I'll see about that when I get there.

Meanwhile the book is studded with material I can use in this series.

The only mammals which lay eggs are the monotremes: the platypus, and
some four species of echidna.

You can argue that they almost failed to qualify as mammals, but
because of the limits of the Linnean classification system that's
where they find themselves, this side of the reptiles, lumped in with
us humans. Kind of a transitional form, you might say (you know, the
kind that creationists lie doesn't exist).

None of the rest of the mammalian class lays eggs. You have to ask
yourselves then, why it is that mammalian embryos, and humans in
particular for my purposes here, have a yolk sac?!

Is it because creationists need to be born with a yellow streak down
their back?

The sac contains no yolk. Some might argue that the vitelline fluid
it does contain serves some nutritive purpose, but there's no solid
evidence for this, and even if it did have a purpose, why would an
intelligent designer, starting from scratch with humans, create us in
the same format which he used to create the egg-laying classes?

Was he really an intelligent designer, or was he patently stupid? Did
he actually create us ex nihilo, or did he steal the designs from one
of the other gods that the Bible loves to discuss and try to fudge
them into something different to avoid patent lawsuits?

Or is it simply that there *is* no design at all, just evolution
making the best of a bad job, and that's why organisms are so mixed
up, half-way made, full of vestigial material, with fins kludged up
into digging, flying, and walking devices, and the same material that
provided scales re-employed to provide nails and feathers?

Budikka