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Thursday, October 20, 2011

The banana is proof of intelligent design?

Ray Comfort, Christian apologist and professional liar for Jesus, makes the outlandish claim that the banana is proof that the Christian god created bananas for humans.

Below is a video in which Ray makes this claim.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2z-OLG0KyR4

However, Ray seems to be unaware of a few facts about the banana he is discussing. All widely cultivated bananas today descend from the two wild bananas Musa acuminata and Musa balbisiana. While the original wild bananas contained large seeds, diploid or polyploid cultivars (some being hybrids) with tiny seeds are preferred for human raw fruit consumption.[33] These are propagated asexually from offshoots. The plant is allowed to produce 2 shoots at a time; a larger one for immediate fruiting and a smaller "sucker" or "follower" to produce fruit in 6–8 months. The life of a banana plantation is 25 years or longer, during which time the individual stools or planting sites may move slightly from their original positions as lateral rhizome formation dictates.

Cultivated bananas are parthenocarpic, which makes them sterile and unable to produce viable seeds. Lacking seeds, propagation typically involves farmers removing and transplanting part of the underground stem (called a corm). Usually this is done by carefully removing a sucker (a vertical shoot that develops from the base of the banana pseudostem) with some roots intact. However, small sympodial corms, representing not yet elongated suckers, are easier to transplant and can be left out of the ground for up to 2 weeks; they require minimal care and can be shipped in bulk.

So, yes, the modern banana we enjoy was designed. However, it was designed by men.

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