Atheism vs. God's Existence

[Mister Agenda]

There's design that's less than perfect, and then there's design that gets people killed. In the former, the designer is human. Nobody's perfect. In the latter, the designer is incompetent (or malicious).

Where would you put the esophagus then? I bet that wherever you want to put it would lead to more problems than it would solve. Just be thankful that someone managed to have an epiglottis back when the interface first evolved, or else every single member of the species would have choked to death.

One: That's a good question. Our trachea is enlarged to allow speech, 'pushing' both the trachea and the esophagus farther down our throats. Our upright postures make them nearly vertical. That means there's a good chance of food or drink going down 'the wrong tube' if the epiglottis doesn't cover the trachea in time, causing choking. I have neither sufficient biology or engineering knowledge to know how to improve on this system; but a plumber might.

Two: That's bullshit. It's not like our ancestors would have all stood on their hind legs one day with a huge trachea already formed and would have all choked to death on the first apple they ate while standing upright. All three things: upright posture, enlarged trachea, and epiglottis would have evolved gradually together. The epiglottis permitted humans to stand more upright and have more 'swollen' tracheas, and it's evolution was probably driven by a fairly low choking mortality rate, though likely considerably higher than it is currently (about .8 in 100 deaths), though even that would be enough to select for another favorable mutation of the epiglottis, if there's still room for improvement there.