The Design Your Own Designer Contest

[Styrofoamdeity]

I truly want to believe the ID movement that it is not actually trying to foist Christianity on kids in science class. I'm sure none of them would want that. The intention is not to establish some kind of official religion, but to "teach the alternative". But what about the alternatives to the alternative? Why stop with one alternative designer?

I'm hoping that someone- the Templeton Foundation, for example- will offer a scholarship to the best in alternative designer research. Some of my suggested alternative designers are listed. Any other alternative designers to consider? List 'em if you've got'em:

Malevolent Design- God has designed human life to maximize its misery. AIDS, birth pain, early infant death, cancer, Dick Cheney, and reality TV programing are all part of the plan. Evidence for the designer's malevolence is everywhere.

Alternating Deity Design- Actually there might have been more than one designer. One creates, for example, dinosaurs, while the other creates, say mammals. After creating dinosaurs maybe the dino guy took a break, then the mammal guy came off holiday and said, "Hey! What's with all these cold blooded animals down here?", so the mammal guy then tosses a big meteor at them to get them off his planet. (And when the dino guy comes off HIS break, it's not gonna be too pretty down here for us, I can tell you...).

Endless Regression Design- Since everything apparently requires a designer, and in scholastic Christian philosophy the cause of something must be as great as the effect, there has been a line of several thousand designers stretching back in time, like the Cat in the Hat's Thing A and Thing B, only they got to get bigger as they go back and smaller as they get near us. Actually we might have been designed by a cosmic head lice. The designer who started the whole thing must have been enormous and intelligent, but by the time things got to Human Creation the Designer just wanted a place to hang on hairs and swill blood in peace.

Raelian Design- The Raelians have come out in force to support ID and their teaching of "alternatives" to evolution (I am not making this up), so that schools will be required to teach that "some people" believe that life on earth came from UFO's. Of course the Raelians have no intention- just like Christian ID members have no intention- of foisting their beliefs on school children in science class (uh-huh).

[ModernHeretic]

Flying Spaghetti Monster Design- God is actually a Flying Spaghetti Monster. He created the world with His Noodly Appendage. Apart from the obvious reasonableness of believing in a Flying Spaghetti Monster, we actually have video of Him appearing to us. For more information, please see:

www.venganza.org

[ninewands]

The Incompetent Designer - see, Oolon's website (http://oolon.awardspace.com/SMOGGM.htm).

'nuff said.

[Malintent]

Ficticious Designer

The non-existant, non-entity that is not apart of this universe who is obviously responsible for all that is. oh he's out there alright.. and he will be pissed if you touch the 'bad' parts of your body.

[Sounder]

Apathetic Design: The Universe shows evidence of Design, and it points to a half-competent engineering undergrad suffering from sleep deprivation. His products function, but all too often break down because of flaws in the system, leaving the poor machination to limp through its remaining shelf life without full function.

[RBH]

Apathetic Design: The Universe shows evidence of Design, and it points to a half-competent engineering undergrad suffering from sleep deprivation. His products function, but all too often break down because of weaknesses in the system, leaving the poor machination to limp through its remaining shelf life without full function.Hm. Government design?

RBH

[Sounder]

Hm. Government design?

RBH

I recall a post on some humor web site detailing the creation of life and the universe as Design by Committee. Funniest damn article ever written re:ID.

[Karalora]

Bored Design: The Designer created the Universe just to see what would happen, and then lost interest.

[LambdaCalculator]

Dump Design: the Designer ate Mexican one night and had severe diarrhea for 6 days. After it was all over he was relieved and rested on the 7th. After that he told two small corns in his lumpy excrement that they shall have dominion over all that was his feces that week.

[RBH]

I recall a post on some humor web site detailing the creation of life and the universe as Design by Committee. Funniest damn article ever written re:ID.I will modestly point to Multiple Designers Theory (http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2004/09/introduction_to.html).

RBH

[Codec]

Kid Designer: the designer is a kid given a "create your own universe" kit, for his birthday. He plays with it for a few days and comes up with something that just about works, but is soon totally bored with it. His dad has to take over for several eons and paper over a few of the cracks and make it work properly so it won't disappoint the aunt who gave it to the boy. They've both got bored with the whole thing by now though, so its all running down. We are but the mold growing on the original shiny facade, just under a drop of glue.

[hyzer]

Fermented Grain Beverage Design Theory:

The designer begat the entire universe so that beer would be created and consumed. Evidence for this theory includes hops – obviously designed as a flavor ingredient for it is otherwise a completely forgettable plant, barley – the cultivation of which led directly to bread and hence to human culture, yeast – one of man’s early relatives, water – an obvious prerequisite for life and the process of fermentation – in which the entire process used by the designer to create the universe is mimicked in miniature.

[Mike Elphick]

Husband and Wife Team
A little bit like the Multiple Designers Theory, except that in place of competition there is reluctant complicity. The lady designer want's things just THIS way. The husband doesn't like it, but (nearly) always lets her have her way. The male designer is interested in what goes on under the bonnet (hood) -- biochemistry, structures, genes, even the chemical elements and all the laws of physics, everything that is REALLY important! The female designer, though disapproving of much of what her partner does, turns a blind eye and lets him get on with his little hobby. However, she cleverly uses much of the materials he invents, as she beavers away on the larger picture. She creates beauty, the warmth of the sunshine, love and tenderness. Ahhh! She makes the grass green, delicately colours the flowers and creates all the important food chains, including her husband's dinner.

Naturally, they depend on each other, they need each other, actually they LOVE each other. Yes they do, don't they? -- The man does all the hard work after all (!) and the woman, let's call her Mother Nature, flutters about arranges flower-beds, planting forests and stuffing fish into the sea. She puts coloured feathers on things (and incidentally invents flight by creating birds). The husband is not really interested when his wife shows him the wonderful things she's done, but he's wise enough to pretend.

While she's busy creating beauty, the irrepressible husband beavers away in his labyrinth of laboratories, where his wife in NEVER allowed to go. He makes disgusting smells as he experiments with viruses, bacteria and other dangerous organisms, under the illusion that none of them will ever escape into his wife's perfectly prepared garden...

When things do go wrong, they have blazing rows where not only plates get smashed, but huge object from outer space are flung about. Then there are the periods of no talking (ice ages) followed by passionate love making as they make up (earthquakes). When they decided to create human beings, unfortunately the husband got there first and made a man, but the story had to change when she found out...

[Aegeri]

The Insane Computer Game Geek Designer: A visual description I think would be best for this one (http://www.vgcats.com/comics/?strip_id=199).

[Oolon Colluphid]

Mike, why was I visualising Richard and Judy while reading yours...? :D

[Codec]

The Software Project Designer:
The original spec calls for a basic universe with a few simple planets. Its coded up, and version 1.0 ships. Its not what was wanted. Some of the planets need stuff happening on them, so its back to the drawing board, and some primitive bacteria are put on there, shipped as the 1.1 version. This works fine for a few billion years, then an unforseen side effect of the bacteria is recognised - they're making oxygen too fast, and the whole place is becoming unstable. An engineering change order is issued, and the original programmer, in a neat twist, codes up some new bacteria to use the oxygen as fast as the originals produce it. Version 1.2.

Management pontificate on this for a while, and then decide to go for the version 2 release, which will be feature rich. A new team of programmers is hired, and they have some great ideas. Lots and lots of great ideas, some of them turn out to be not so great actually. The Cambrian team release 2.0, which has some great new features, and a lot of weird quirky behaviour.

They tinker with the design for a while, then decide to go for a 3.0 release, part of the rollout requires trashing most of the 2.0 in what is to become a bit of a feature known as extinctions.

During the period destined to become the jurassic, the project suffers from bloat, and some truly massive constructions are made, before they become unmaintainable. A divide by zero causes the vast majority of bigger species to be deleted, and the whole database has to be rebuilt using whats left. The team are fired.

The next team, aware of whats happened to their predecessors don't tinker much, although it appears a midnight project is happening with one species of ape. Gradually its presecence becomes more obvious, and a new change order is prepared, to purge the database again, and attempt a new revision...

[JamesBannon]

The Incompetent Designer - see, Oolon's website (http://oolon.awardspace.com/SMOGGM.htm).

'nuff said.

The Lesbian Lizards are a hoot. :D

[JamesBannon]

....

[miss anthrope]

The Scientist Designer - A tenured proffessor wants to understand it's own universe better so creates a micro-universe to study. Research students turn in the proffessor for ethics violation once they realize that life has arisen on at least one planet. The university is currently arguing how to handle the issue, not wishing to destroy the newly arisen life but pissed that someone played god. The graduate students assigned to care for the micro-universe become frustrated with their responsibility and encourage the evolution of a sentient species from a violent hominid, hoping it will develop technology capable of destroying all life on it's planet.

[Vortex]

The Designer's Best Friend Design — Designer goes on a vaction for a week, leaving the Faithful Companion to hold the fort. Naturally, the dog runs rampant throughout the Kingdom, and scatters the Stuff of Life throughout the house (the Designer was gonna do that stuff itself, but procrastinated). And lo, on the seventh day, the newly-designated Designer was dog-tired and rested, this also being a ploy to look innocent. It appears that the Earth came together when the Faithful Companion went rooting through the Garbage and scattered it about the Kitchen. It came to be just near enough to the Blessed Stove for life to form, but not so close that it would be burnt. Hallelujah!

[Dlx2]

Malevolent Design- God has designed human life to maximize its misery. AIDS, birth pain, early infant death, cancer, Dick Cheney, and reality TV programing are all part of the plan. Evidence for the designer's malevolence is everywhere.

One word: candiru.

[aguy2]

Why stop with one alternative designer?

Any other alternative designers to consider? List 'em if you've got'em:


An intelligent designer tenaciously focused on achieving a reasonable solution to the 'problem of 1st cause'.
aguy2

[Styrofoamdeity]

One word: candiru.

I don't know, the candiru looks like it was designed more by a young teenage designer, that I will call the YOU TUBE Designer.

You Tube Designer- Designs a fish that swims up your urethra and then clamps itself to the inside of your penis. Because, well, it seems kind of funny. The designer then yells to another young deity, "Dude! you gotta see this fish I designed! Watch this, it's going to swim up this guy's penis! Let me get the camera ready! HOLY SHIT! HAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHA.....

[Mike Elphick]

Gaiah Hypothesis, or the selfish cyanobacteria

The cyanobacteria were the first plants to produce oxygen and have therefore had an important ecological role in the stability of life on this planet. In particular, the genus Prochlorococcus contains the smallest and most numerous photosynthetic organism on earth. Despite its size, hardly visible with a microscope at 0.5 to 0.7 microns, Prochlorococcus has a major impact on climate, simply due to its sheer abundance.

The Gaiah hypothesis, should not to be confused with the Gaia hypothesis, first proposed by James Lovelock, despite the similarities. Gaiah is a logical extension of Lovelock's original idea and takes it to its logical conclusion. In the Gaiah hypothesis, all other life forms on earth are there to serve the interests of Prochlorococcus and the pinnacle of their creation is a biological robot that provides them with CO2 and raises the temperature of the oceans. The robot was designed so that Prochlorococcus could multiply and reproduce on vaster scales. Being small does not mean powerless!

So how did they manage it? Let me reveal a very well kept secret: - Prochlorococcus has the ability to create 'new information' on a vast scale! Some of this information was used to first create few daughter organisms that were genetically isolated so as not to contaminate the perfected gene pool of Prochlorococcus. Packages of 'new information' were then released into the environment in a series of virus epidemics. These infected the organism they had just made, which quickly developed new features. Wave after wave of viruses pandemics, in which each virus contained different kinds of specialised information, were produced by Prochlorococcus, and every time an organism was infected, it advanced in complexity.

Their plan was slowly unfolding -- even in the care they took to provide trees and grass for animals to graze upon. Eventually an ape-like creature developed, and after another series of colds and flu (and worse), man was born! At last they could have the pollution they craved. Hardly did anyone notice, but almost simultaneously to man's appearance, a special 'religious' virus' was released, to generally confuse and befuddle. The intention was to hide the real identity of the creator.

You don't believe me? Then what caused the amylase enzyme to be switched on in your salivary glands?

[RBH]

Ran into a new one: The Cartoonist (http://bahnsenburner.blogspot.com/2005/03/cartoon-universe-of-theism.html).

RBH

[profplum]

The Insane Computer Game Geek Designer: A visual description I think would be best for this one (http://www.vgcats.com/comics/?strip_id=199).

:D :notworthy:

I should have started a poll on when a webcomic would make an appearance.

[Dr.GH]

Hm. Government design?

RBH
Who did "Multiple ?mutally hostile? Designers?" RBH right? (Is the "Mutually Hostile" part original)?

Terry Pratchett already covered the platypus as "Design by Committee."

[RBH]

Who did "Multiple ?mutally hostile? Designers?" RBH right? (Is the "Mutually Hostile" part original)?

Terry Pratchett already covered the platypus as "Design by Committee.""Mutually Hostile" (your original phrase, AFAIK) is consistent with the original stimulus for Multiple Designer's Theory, which was Nic Tamzek's ITWA -- Invisible Tinkering Warrior Armies.

RBH

[TheBear]

I like Escher's approach. :D

http://i115.photobucket.com/albums/n282/jahzzz/P22L.jpg

[RBH]

Yup. the self-designed designer. I love solipsism! :)

RBH