Speaker: Abby Hafer from Curry College, Department of Human Anatomy and Physiology

Abby Hafer is a speaker, writer and humorist who particularly loves taking on Intelligent Design, Creationism, the politics surrounding them, and science denialism in general.

A few years ago, she realized that Intelligent Design is a political pressure group, not a scientific issue. With this figured out, she realized that what we need are political-style arguments in defense of evolution. Her presentations contain bulletproof science, but are short, easy to understand, easy to repeat, and make the opposition look bad. She uses humor to puncture bad arguments.

Topic: Unintelligent Design: Why Evolution Explains the Human Body and “Intelligent Design” Does Not

Dr. Hafer argues that the human body, though no less beautiful or marvelous for being flawed, has many faulty design features that would never have been the choice of an intelligent creator. In addition to pointing out problematic aspects of human anatomy, Dr. Hafer also gives examples of solutions to these problems that are found in other members of the animal kingdom. She then asks why other animals got better body parts than humans did, and wonders if this means that the designer prefers other animals to human beings. She also deals quickly and comprehensively with the idea of irreducible complexity.