Geoffrey Simmons has another breathtakingly inane post on the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and
When it comes to citing examples of purposeful design, nearly every author likes to point out the hen’s egg. It’s really quite remarkable. Despite having a shell that is a mere 0.35 mm think, they don’t break when a parent sits on them. [emphasis added]What makes this so remarkable is that apparently natural selection would favor eggs that break when the mother hen sits on them. Otherwise, this wouldn't really be that amazing...it would simply be a case of evolution laws in action. But recall that raptor eggs (the avian variety, eg. hawks, eagles, etc.) were frequently broken by the mother when DDT was entered into the mix, resulting in thinner eggshell walls. Obviously, the intelligent designer didn't plan on that ever happening! He goes on to say
Under microscopy, one can see the shell is a foamlike structure that resists cracking. Gases and water pass through 10,000 pores that average 17 micrometers in diameter. Ultimately, 6 liters of oxygen will have been taken in and 4.5 liters of carbon dioxide given off. The yolk is its food. All life support systems are self-contained, like a space shuttle....except for a heat lamp, otherwise the hen would have no need of sitting on the egg. Say, that reminds me of all the hard-shelled eggs deposited by reptiles. Often have I seen the nurturing tortoise and alligator sitting on their nest of eggs. I mean, they do do that, don't they? Why else would a designer design hard-shelled eggs for reptiles, as well as an egg-tooth for the hatchlings?
Hopefully, you've used your snarky-tooth by now to puncture through my hard-shelled snarkiness. We all know that reptiles do not sit on their eggs. Mostly (though not always) they lay 'em and leave 'em. So, you can either accept these two contradictory examples of intelligent design, or you can accept that hens eggs and reptile eggs are connected by a common thread in evolution and, while egg shells certainly offer protection from the weight of the mother, this is incidental to the reason why hard egg shells were developed in the first place.
One more point. Eggs are vulnerable to predators. The fox, snake, and gila monster like to raid nests and partake of these tasty morsels. And why not? Nature makes them crunchy on the outside, gooey on the inside. But if I was a designer concerned about a hen breaking her eggs when she sat on them, I might also be concerned about the ferret running off with them. So, I think I would choose some composite material for the egg shell, something made of nanotubes, something indestructible by prey. I think I would also include an internal Air Conditioning/Heating unit. And I would program this new eggshell (Eggshell 2.0) to open automatically at the proper time, like a flower blooming. That'll make entering the world a little easier on the chick...no need to make it work so hard in its very first few minutes of life.
But that's just me. While I think the egg is indeed remarkable, it doesn't make me dizzy as it apparently does for Geoffrey Simmons.
P.S. - see my latest on Simmons here.
(edited 5/19/08 - correct typo)
(edited 5/21/08 - add link)