Quite an eye opening article. Ha ha.
So intricate is the eye that its origin has long been a cause célèbre among creationists and intelligent design proponents, who hold it up as a prime example of what they term irreducible complexity—a system that cannot function in the absence of any of its components and that therefore cannot have evolved naturally from a more primitive form. Indeed, Charles Darwin himself acknowledged in On the Origin of Species—the 1859 book detailing his theory of evolution by natural selection—that it might seem absurd to think the eye formed by natural selection. He nonetheless firmly believed that the eye did evolve in that way, despite a lack of evidence for intermediate forms at the time.
Direct evidence has continued to be hard to come by. Whereas scholars who study the evolution of the skeleton can readily document its metamorphosis in the fossil record, soft-tissue structures rarely fossilize. And even when they do, the fossils do not preserve nearly enough detail to establish how the structures evolved. Still, biologists have recently made significant advances in tracing the origin of the eye—by studying how it forms in developing embryos and by comparing eye structure and genes across species to reconstruct when key traits arose. The results indicate that our kind of eye—the type common across vertebrates—took shape in less than 100 million years, evolving from a simple light sensor for circadian (daily) and seasonal rhythms around 600 million years ago to an optically and neurologically sophisticated organ by 500 million years ago. More than 150 years after Darwin published his groundbreaking theory, these findings put the nail in the coffin of irreducible complexity and beautifully support Darwin’s idea. They also explain why the eye, far from being a perfectly engineered piece of machinery, exhibits a number of major flaws—these flaws are the scars of evolution. Natural selection does not, as some might think, result in perfection. It tinkers with the material available to it, sometimes to odd effect.
The alfie debate time line.
article posted
alfie disagrees
alfie is refuted
alfie argues
posters argue back
alfie posts link which may or may not relate to the original argument
posters read links
posters post links back refuting alfies link and his argument
alfie posts further link while ignoring posters link
Posters post more links
alfie posts ignoring or misrepresenting posters links as well as his own
posters ridicule alfie
alfie posts
alfie posts
alfie posts
alfie answers his own post arguing the opposite of his previous post
alfie posts
alfie posts
alfie is refuted and his argument shown to be specious and lacking in actual evidence. His links shown to be misrepresentation of the article posted or taken out of context
posters ridicule alfie further
alfie resorts to posting biblical passages
posters further ridicule alfie
alfie posts calls others losers and vows to let them have the last word as he has better things to do
alfie lies and posts further
alfie loses again
start process over again
#126 That is good, I am going to use that in my next class if you don’t mind.
Conspiracy theory number 42:
Alfie is really the pen name of Uncle Dave (or [gasp] John himself), who is attempting, very successfully, to maximize his hit rate.
#121 alfie “While I confess my self education has gaps, I am aware of what I don’t know and so walk with some humility when discussing subjects I don’t know.”
So your a liar as well as a high school drop out.
Tax said: “#108 Nothing about plate tectonics contradicts physical law (unlike evolution)”
You’ve failed to show how evolution violates any natural law.
Tax lied: “there are reams of high school experiments that can demonstrate the phenomena
http://liamscheff.com/2010/07/how-the-earth-works-plate-tectonics-a-beginners-guide-for-experts/”
No plate tectonic experiments. The experiment it offers is analogous.
Tax said: “Never heard of scale?”
You mean corn syrup and molten rock are the same things? Buy a clue. A syrup experiment is not evidence for tectonics. You simply hypocritically have one standard for science that doesn’t violate your dogma and another one for science that does.
The truth is that the small changes in millions of organisms that spread through populations are small scale of the large changes. Here scale, which you’re committed to is TIME.
Tax misrepresented: “And there are experiments that have proved the curvature of space time, time dilation: http://sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/63657/title/Everything_really_is_relative
Your standard was HS experiments. You mean HS’s have “superprecise atomic clocks”? ROFLMAO.
Tax said: “Evidently you suppose “natural experiments” alone can test evolutionary hypothesis…”
I gave you the lab experiements for ERVs. You dishonestly ignore them.
Tax lied again: “If Evolution occurs, it should be easily demonstrable in the laboratory and given it accounts for the incredible diversity of life all around us, easily replicated in High School Biology.”
Done, but you in your commitment to willful ignorance pretend they don’t exist. Are you trying to give Christians a bad name?
#131
I thought that on more than one occasion. If so, UD or JD would need to be near genius writers and have a lot of time on their hands. I wonder if one could make an Alfi knee jerk response machine akin to the old Dilbert mission statement generator.
Many people have been wondered how the eye evolved, but few people have put their inquiry into such artful form as the late Louis Armstrong, singing the words of lyricist Johnny Mercer…
Jeepers, creepers
Where’d you get them peepers?
Jeepers, creepers
Where’d you get those eyes?
Gosh oh, git up
How’d they get so lit up?
Gosh oh, gee oh
How’d they get that size?
Alfie stupidly calls Gary a misogynist.
Alfie recently said “any man whose wife won’t give him a son…shouldn’t be running a country.”
Time to unconnect the dots?
#137, And there you are, worshiping a god whose stock-in-trade is GROUP PUNISHMENT — the infliction of pain upon all, no matter how innocent, for the sins of the guilty.
That’s the same reason your God drowned innocent children in the Great Flood. And that was why he hurled fire and brimstone upon the children of Sodom and Gomorrah, along with their allegedly wicked parents. That was also why your deity allowed Moses to slaughter thousands of innocent children of Midian, along with all of their parents.
Yes, it’s my fault that others suffer, because the omnipotent Creator of the Universe, omniscient of all sins and their perpetrators, chooses of his own free will to punish innocent people for my sinfulness, even though he has the capability to punish with laser-like precision.
Jews, Christians, and Muslims must be so proud to worship such a demonic, evil deity. No wonder they see him as such a shining example of love. Only if I repent can innocent people of the world hope to have their suffering abated. What a bunch of morons!
Are we to the alfie goes away part of the timeline?
Alfie you really, really, really, REALLY need to seek some professional help.
Because that last post just jumped the trifecta grand canyon shark of stupidity, insanity, and hypocrisy.
No doubt in my mind. It’s a two way tie: wireless & clancys_daddy
I’m a sucker for beer goggle jokes.
And alfie posts again in 5 4 3 2 1.
Apparently alfie and charlie sheen have multiple commonalities.
They both misunderstand the definition of winning.
Both are unable to construct and defend an argument in any rational manner.
They are both unemployed.
They are both completely batshit crazy.
Declaring victory and leaving yet again, eh taxdude? That is such a lame thing to do.
You still haven’t told me why Mitochondria have their own DNA.
#135 Thomas
“an Alfi knee jerk response machine”
Hey, great idea. One could achieve that relatively easily using 3 random number generators:
a. Book of Bible [where Genesis = 1]
b. Starting verse number
c. Number of verses to cite
Then award a rubber banana to anyone who can show the relevance of the citation to the topic at hand. Could be great fun. 🙂
Ah, yes, once again I have suffered humiliating defeat at the hands of Overtaxed Alfred, who can logically prove through infallible scripture that there’s absolutely nothing wrong with group punishment, even when it includes killing children, because even little children aren’t so completely innocent of sin.
Taxed Enough wrote in #141, “But there are no innocents, we are all born sinners, with the principle of death and decay killing us, the moment we are conceived till we die. God didn’t want this, Adam and Eve chose it for themselves and their descendents.”
So there you have it! Adam and Eve made a choice, and we all suffer, and in the eyes of the truest believers like Alfred, there is nothing wrong or even slightly unjust about the fact that we all bear the consequences of Adam and Eve’s decision to sin. Always suspend the concept of individual responsibility while you are reading the Bible, otherwise the frequent acts of group punishment will offend your ordinary human sense of justice.
I’m so grateful we have the infallible Holy Scriptures to explain why it was all right for God, sometimes assisted by his greatest servants like Moses and the Israelites, to slaughter entire groups of people without any regard for the specific acts or innocence of each individual person. They were all guilty of sin because they were the human decendents of Adam and Eve, so killing was always justifiable homicide in the eyes of the Lord and his servants.
Alfred, you are well prepared to enter the zone known as Heaven, where no brain cells exist to get in the way of your heavenly existence.
Alphie,
# 79 Mr. Fusion said, on June 24th, 2011 at 8:34 pm Alphie,
Where did your god come from?
That’s inconsistent, why don’t you first answer “from where the singularity came…you know, the one which suddenly decided to blow up, in a “big bang.”
As for me, the question implies a “finite God,” one who exists in something greater than Himself.
Christians believe in an infinite God:
Sorry Alphie, bad answer and you LOSE
You claim the “scientific” explanation can not be valid due to the “hole” in the theory as to what happened to the cosmos before the singularity. Yet, you claim the entire “god” explanation requires no explanation.
There is a large amount of evidence supporting the origin of the cosmos. There is none for the “god” creation. Similarly, there is a great deal of evidence supporting the Theory of Evolution”. There is none for the “god” explanation.
Science openly admits we don’t know what happened or existed before the Plank Event. Simply because there is no evidence to support a theory. The “Christians”, however, claim they don’t need to explain where their god came from. They are above the very demand they place on the accepted scientific origin or the universe.
As others have repeatedly pointed out, challenging “scientific evidence” does not automatically refute it. Nor does absence of evidence, for or against any point, give credence to that or any other point. You have yet to present any cognizant point or evidence.
BTW, the bible is not evidence of anything other than some people will believe anything.
Mr Fusion: a small quibble, you say: “some people will believe anything.” //// I think the evidence is MOST people will believe anything.
Sad.
Tax misrepresented: After the fall of creation, speciation happens, as well has harmful mutation, and what you describe are examples of degeneration of the race, defects God didn’t create.”
Exactly how are blue eyes, which resulted from a mutation in Slavs 10,000 years ago, is a “defect”. Are you claiming that God didn’t create blue-eyed people. What is degenerate about blue eyes.
The sickle cell mutation evolved because those with the sickle cell trait don’t die of malaria as easily as those without it. Now exactly how is that a “defect”? What is degenerate about have a mutation which doesn’t kill you in childhood?
Is your idea that God wants children to die of malaria? So, evolving a resistance is degenerate.
Why don’t you admit you’re a cynical atheist, committed to making Christianity look as mind-numbingly stupid as possible.
Tax the Cynical Atheist blathered: “So it is with God, children died with their parents, not because God wanted them to die, but because they rise or fall with their parents, and that is proper.”
So, you commit a crime and god kills your kids? That’s proper? God is so dimwitted that it can’t get its head around even the most basic concepts of personal responsibility and justice?
While modern civilization tries to minimize “collateral damage” to the innocent, your god can’t be bothered and simply offers some type of future compensation to victims? ROFLAO
Admit it, you’re an atheist.
Tax the Cynical Atheist insanely blurted: “Pain in child birth is a judgment of God for what Eve did, but death and disease Adam and Eve’s fault, that didn’t exist in paradise.
“Its also YOUR fault, yes you. If you with your fellow infidels would repent and believe in Jesus, if everyone in the world fell upn their faces and confessed Jesus Christ is LORD to the glory of God the father, the Kingdom of God would be here, and all sickness and death would end.
“So women dying is your fault, you are the misogynist, moreover you hate children too, because all birth defects are YOUR fault as you continue to resist repentance, and the Good God hase for you.”
So, let’s get this straight. Your god has set up a program in which women, especially the poor and ignorant (really the ones who cannot afford spinal taps and good hospitals), get tortured in childbirth unless 6 Billion people convert to Christianity? Or is it just the posters in this forum?
Thinking about it. A rich Buddhist or Jew who can afford a spinal tap and good hospital gets a pain-free, low risk childbirth, but a poor Christian in Africa doesn’t. Seems to me Tax, your god wants you to worship money. You worship the God of Wall Street.
This is very perplexing! Overtaxed Alfred may have left for good! This could be the greatest miracle of all, but infidels and atheists won’t know who or what to thank for it.
Oy vey!
#156 It appears what alfie is saying is, that the reason the world is the way that it is. Is because the world doesn’t believe what he does. If the world would just believe what he does, all pain and suffering would go away. So not only is alfie an atheist but he is by his definition a progressive liberal because there is no personal responsibility for ones actions its all the fault of someone else.
#157 I doubt he is gone for good, he’s probably just cooking up some more bible verse for us poor sinners/atheists.
#143
I won the debate, I thank you for participating
Again with the childish behavior. This is akin to a team claiming victory while losing 100-0, You have won nothing (i.e., not even something). You have deflected direct questions and weaseled around, if not outright avoided, clear contradictions in your point of view. Like I said, you cannot seem to reconcile in your mind problems where science directly contradicts your faith and so you make up excuses and pseudo-science fairy tales for why this might be the case.
Don’t believe in God? Death for you and your community is entirely justified. Do believe in God and are killed by people that do not believe in God? Must be original sin or your parent’s fault. Species evolve? It’s a liberal conspiracy. Your opinions are hilariously twisted, incongruent and hypocritical.
#158
It appears what alfie is saying is, that the reason the world is the way that it is. Is because the world doesn’t believe what he does.
The irony is that the world for people that do believe what he does is just as bad as the world that does not. It’s as if believing doesn’t fundamentally change the nature of the world or something.
Since our esteemed antagonist, Alphie, has failed to defend his views, I hereby declare Alphie to be the biggest loser !!!
And the winner is, THE NORMAL WORLD.
On eagles and eyes:
Eagles have such similar eyes to our own because we both got them from a common ancestor. As the article points out, the complex eye that do amazes creationists evolved half a billion years ago in fish. It has been inherited with only minor modification by amphibians, and later my reptiles, and later by birds and mammals (including us).
Trilobites, on the other hand, had radically different eyes, and although, as far as we can tell, there were quite effective in their environment, these alien calcite eyes died out when the last pair of the last species of the last genera of these venerable creatures perished.