The invention of tear ducts

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Research Submarine Asherah

Designer was riding Her submarine through the depths of the ocean one day, taking stock of Her work, and decided, “I’ve learned just about everything I’m ever going to learn from these prototypes. It’s high time to take the next big step toward the ultimate goal, a species of animal in which to ripen souls for harvest.” (Of course, souls that turn out goatlike go to Hell, to suffer eternal torment at the hands of Satan, and souls that turn out sheeplike go to Heaven, to kowtow forever at the feet of God. But Designer had to come up with something considerably more sophisticated than sheep and goats, to satisfy God’s requirement that the Fate of Souls be contingent instead of determined.)

Now, if Designer had done a complete redesign, when advancing from aquatic to terrestrial organisms, Hell might well have frozen over before there were any goatlike souls to fuel the flames. So Designer said, “I know that the optics are different in air than in water, but fish eyes are gonna have to do.”Gray896
Lacrimal system After observing that Her transitional prototype frequently took dips in the marsh to wash its eyes, She invented an organ to wet the eyes with saltwater. Compared to the eyes themselves, the lacrimal glands were a cinch to get right. As for eyelids, Designer had already tested them on some sharks. She did not anticipate that drainage would be a problem, but found that mammals with drops of water running down their faces looked very sad. In a flash of brilliance, Designer realized that eyewash could be reused to moisten the nostrils. And that was when She invented the lacrimal and naso-lacrimal ducts. What initially was supposed to be an aesthetic feature turned out to serve a useful function. God was highly impressed, and gave Designer, whom He called Asherah, a generous bonus at Christmas.

Ajrud

“Yahweh [front, flaunting large penis] and His Asherah [rear, working at computer]”

155 thoughts on “The invention of tear ducts”

  3. CharlieM: Speculating about some external designer building organisms in way similar to human designers is not something that I would contemplate.

    Seems reasonable, at some point one must end up with an undesigned designer, knowing how such an “ thing” would interact with the external world is probably beyond our understanding.

  4. newton:

    CharlieM: Speculating about some external designer building organisms in way similar to human designers is not something that I would contemplate.

    Seems reasonable, at some point one must end up with an undesigned designer, knowing how such an “ thing” would interact with the external world is probably beyond our understanding.

    Here you have assumed a separation of two entities. You have envisioned a being (the designer) who acts from without on an external world. But maybe what we think of as separate we only envision to be so because of our present vantage point. In our thinking we have separated into cause and effect what is in essence a unity.
    Ernst Marti wrote this:

    The world was now envisioned as some kind of aggregate. With a slight variation of one of Goethe’s aphorisms one could say: “Aggregate is the summation; element is the result of experience. To arrive at the aggregate, intellect is necessary; to grasp the element, reason is required.”

    This statement demonstrates Goethe’s concern with two different mental activities. The first activity he saw as taking what has been experienced and summarizing it in concepts. He referred to it as “Verstand” [intellect]. The second activity he saw as a process by which one patiently and carefully observes the visible and then, refraining from the urge to attach concepts to it waits until the phenomena themselves reveal the idea. This he called “Vernunft” [reason]
    Another quote from “Aphorisms in Prose” shows what he meant by these two processes: “Reason is directed toward what is in process of becoming, intellect toward what has already become. Reason does not ask: for what? Intellect does not ask: where from? – Reason rejoices in evolving, intellect wants to hold everything fast so that it may use it.”

    In addition, the following summary may be helpful.

    Processes belonging to inorganic nature, i.e.. limited to the world of the senses, essentially are caused and determined by other processes, also limited to the world of the senses. . . If I wish to understand such a process. I have to consider as one concept the whole process consisting of cause and effect.” Such a concept does not determine the process. It has no effect. It is not in it. “The concept only serves our mind to summarize cause and effect under one term.” It is abstracted from the observable by our mind, our intellect (Verstand). It makes possible our understanding of inorganic nature where interactions between observable entities and mutual dependency of the entities on each other is the rule.

    This kind of thinking was accepted by Kant as the only possible thinking. He called it discursive.

    “On the other hand, if we want to understand the organic in nature, we have to grasp the concept not as one that expresses something else, represents it, and borrows its contents from it. We have to recognize the idea as such, having a content by itself, not stemming from the spatial, temporal world of the senses.” It has to be an entity creating out of itself, manifesting itself by its own force, not according to the influence of other objects. That man is capable of grasping such concepts, which may be called intuitive concepts, was demonstrated by Goethe. He called such concepts “idea,” “entelechy,” “archetype,” and the means by which to grasp these concepts “Vernunft” (reason) as opposed to the summarizing intellect or “Verstand.” .

    Each organism is not in reality a separate entity designed or evolved from external forces, it is but one part of a greater whole and cannot be abstracted from it. Just as a single hair of my head (or a single tear) cannot be abstracted from my organism as a whole. A hair is not something that has been designed from without, it belongs to a higher entity from which it cannot exist in isolation without becoming just another part of inorganic nature.

    Organism can be modified from without, but they cannot be designed from without.

  5. Just checking in to see if there have been any new inventions! Not modified inventions, genuinely new ones. Hope we’re not going to have to wait millions of years.

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