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.
Speaking of evolution we can observe–I found the recent shows about dogs and foxes to be fascinating. Take a littler of fox babies/pups/kits and choose the 2 that are least fearful/aggressive towards humans and breed them. Repeat the process. Turns out you have nice docile domesticated fox doggies in about 10 generations. The fox farm was doing this for pelts and the exercise didn’t cost them anything but foxes and wolves are closely related. Any doubt the same thing happened with only slightly less intent in the history of the wolf/dog transformation?
What bothers me is why these friendly foxes aren’t on the market as pets. Same with cats. Why not breed some friendly cats?
then we could work our way up to humans. Why not breed friendly females? Should be easy to do–just take longer than what we could observe in one lifetime given the age to fecundity in humans.
All you have to do is just look. – – LOOK!!!
Wow, Kansas is actually getting tough on abortion clinics? What’s it been, like ten years since they were shown to be in criminal violation?
First the abortion industry bankrolled an opponent for the attorney general pressing charges, and managed to win that. But the the defeated attorney general was made a local DA, and he went after Planned Parenthood on the same charges. After dragging that case out, they got the next attorney general to go after the DA and demand that he return all the evidence he had. Then the later DA never pressed charges. So the case is still in limbo.
Mike–that all sounds fascinating but the point was the Pukes are “supposed to be” anti Big Government regulation–which they are until their ox gets gored then they act just like the Dumbo’s except with the hypocrisy noted.
I don’t recall any criminal cases re abortion clinics but I have always thought Planned Parenthood should be counseled if they fail to counsel ALL THE OPTIONS on pregnancy including keeping the kiddie. Same for the thumpers who want to pretend a fetus is a person.
Its serious and “an issue” when a service or organization violates the law. Much worse when its the government doing the same thing.
Alphie,
Where did your god come from?
#74
Swing and miss…again. I’m guessing that “Taxed Enough” refers to your brain because clearly it is having trouble functioning. Google “evolution laboratory evidence” and you get 47 million hits.
Then there’s this:
http://talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/
You might as well try arguing that the world is flat. Here’s a challenge for you, prove the Earth was made in six days without using a single religious text or quote.
#74
Btw, adding a link to an argument you resoundingly lost doesn’t exactly help your cause.
#82
That similar organs exist in dissimilar genus follows from being in the same ecosystem, but only if there is a Creator reusing the same design.
Did God create animal life in its current form as is or did it create simpler forms that evolved into more complex ones? You have pushed the idea of the former. However, that would not explain the current biodiversity nor the observable changes in biodiversity. Octopuses are vastly different in their structure than whales even though they are in the same ecosystem today.
In addition, if we presume a creator was using the same design, shouldn’t all life have the same flaws and benefits? Why do some animals have vastly superior ocular structures over other animals? If a creator was reusing the same design, we should expect to see more animals with superior eyesight. Ants can carry many times their own weight yet no larger animals have equivalent benefit of strength. In addition, if mankind were supposedly the favored animal, you would think your deity would have given them all the physical benefits that it clearly gave other animals.
Lastly, this does not explain vestigial organs. If man was stamped into its current form by your creator, why maintain our tailbone and appendix even if he was using the same stamp?
#86
On the contrary, that disproves evolution for it is unlikely a mindless force acting the same on very different elements, would produce similar organs.
To illustrate, an oven baking ice cream and cookie batter, wouldn’t change both into similar cookies.
Your example is a strawman. Cookie batter and ice cream are not the equivalent of living organisms and you conveniently excluded an important element: time. If you leave out ice cream and cookie batter for long enough in the same environment, they both will likely develop similar molds. Is it reasonable to say that a Creator threw a lightening bolt and created the mold or that it is directly involved in making the mold day by day?
Evolution simply states that organisms will adapt to their environment and we have tangible evidence from numerous branches of science that confirm this observable fact.
The intelligent designer forgot to remove the leg bones from the humpback whale. That’s one dumb shit intelligent designer.
Apparently a single cell organism can surf the net. And post comments.
+100
Called it. Too easy.
“Its all one massive violation of Occam’s Razor.”
I do not think it means what you think it means.
foobar said: “MikeN is quoting Tom Bethell who is actually a pretty good writer.”
Thanks, found the article. Bethell may be a good writer, but clearly doesn’t understand evolutionary biology. He confuses popularization of science, where a great narrative is key, with actual science. A lot of his statements show he’s never looked at any of the primary literature.
He clearly doesn’t know what “fitness” means and has no idea about neutral theory, which has nothing do to with fitness.
Bethell is also either disingenuous or lazy. He quotes Popper’s attack on evolutionary theory, without ever acknowledging that he retracted those comments later upon more careful investigation of the theory.
Bethell takes one evolutionary mechanism, natural selection, and makes that evolutionary theory. That’s just polemical and dumb.
Now it’s become very common for creationists to use the “just so stories” canard as an appeal to ridicule. Claiming that evolutionary theory is trivial. This allows them to comfortably wallow in their ignorance.
Bethell, like Tax and Mike N. all wallow in ignorance.
Tax blathered: “And the title 29 evidences, is hilarious…if evolution accounted for all life in existence, from bacteria onward…then there should be thousands of evidences, easily demonstrable in the laboratory…our students should be proving the hypothesis daily in biology, as part of their education…”
if plate tectonics accounted for all continental drift, ….. easily demonstrable in the lab…
When is Tax going to build continents in his local HS? Otherwise, God just moves the plate around. You know, Intelligent Moving…
I’m also looking forward to Tax’s article on Intelligent Falling… I mean, has anyone shown in a HS lab experiment the curvature of space-time? If they haven’t then obviously it doesn’t exist.
Tax, look up natural experiments. And get an education.
rr, Bethell is completely potty. He doesn’t think there is a link between HIV and Aids.
Tax said in response to fusion’s comment: “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.”
Tax as always is making the case for atheism. Why? Because he turns God into a placeholder for human ignorance.
Just because we don’t know what preceded the singularity or the expansion, one cannot conclude that the cause is an intelligence, much less a transcendental one.
Clap-trap theology…
Yet another failure of the Intelligent Designer. He gave Tax a brain but failed to show him how to use it.
#101 alfies response is his adult version of the childhood insult you first. A typical comeback when you can’t defend your argument. It keeps coming back to those two books. The two books alfie will refuse to read as they would destroy his carefully constructed universal belief in a divine plan and being.
alfie instructing students on his view of the universe.
http://tinyurl.com/6y5wotw
#95, #96
God’s plan is perfect. God knew before He created, all who would choose him. He also knows the fall, the seductive power of evil, and just common human ignorance, would prevent many of these from finding Him in this life
First, given this description, there is no concept of free will. Your God knows every decision that will be made by every person at every moment in the their life from birth through death. Just like characters in a movie that have no free will, neither do we according to your description.
Second, your deity punishes people for mistakes they make knowing that they will make them. That describes a sadistic being.
#103
#80 All of that is inductive speculation, not deductive proof as one gets from a laboratory experiment.
This is a cowardly evasion. That link provided information about numerous experiments done in a lab. Did you not say it is truth until proven otherwise? I’ve provided proof that species evolve. You need to show that every scientific test that concludes species evolve is flawed. Every one!. The evidence, through laboratory experiments, that species evolved is overwhelming. Claiming that species do not evolve is equivalent of claiming that objects do not fall when dropped or that the Earth is flat.
#112
We HAVE provided examples demonstrating evolving species in a laboratory. The simplest example is the mutation of a virus. You can Google millions of hits about experiments.
#112
Yet another 10 second Google search:
http://newscientist.com/article/mg21028184.300
#113 Now Thomas, alfie answered all those complicated questions and refuted all of that evidence in the Miss USA thread.
Oh wait a second, no he didn’t.
We live in a democracy, I say we vote to change alfies name. I have on many occasions recommended two very good books plus many more that destroy his argument using logic and evidence from multiple scientific fields including, biology, chemistry, biochemistry, physics, geology, archeology, paleontology, cosmology, and anthropology. Much of which alfie has distorted in an attempt to fit his narrow views
I say we change alfies name to “alfie two books” or by his own admission “alfie the high school dropout”
All in favor signal by saying aye and your preference, all those opposed need to get an education.
#116
Aye!
(Two books? Did he double his library?)
Alfie–“explaining” god? You’re gonna suck a turd in hell for that vanity.
Its like you don’t think god is responsible for gravity.
Don’t you luv god?
Shame!!!!
I vote the editors REQUIRE Alfie to explicitly state what the undistributed middle is in Post #116. So–don’t ban him, just set a threshold condition -OR- to simply admit he’s heard these words/ideas mentioned in polite society but doesn’t have a clue as to what they actually mean.
Its a start.
Alfie–your choice: condemn me to hell forever, or prove me wrong?
Ha, ha.
Alfie two books, I am a lot of things, one thing I am not, I am not a high school dropout. Your “critical” thinking is a continued recitation of religious dogma, not from thinking or actual knowledge. Which is why I keep referring those nice books to you. I don’t want you to go to the library, I want you to learn. The books are available on Amazon. I want you to be a better human being. I want you to educate yourself. Your continued rejection of anything that is contrary to your selective narrow view of the universe shows your lack of education, knowledge, and real critical thinking skills.
Perhaps if you took the time to actually get an education you could release yourself from the bonds of your own ignorance.
My parents loved me enough to stress that I finish high school.
I chose to get an education and pursue and obtain a degree in the natural sciences.
You gave up on you at the tenth grade.
You choose to remain ignorant even when given the option not to.
“Fear always springs from ignorance”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Axiom:
Alfie is right in his own eyes.
Alfie quote (#87):
“The way of a fool is right in his own eyes: but he that hearkeneth unto counsel is wise.
(Pro 12:15 KJV)”
Quod erat demonstrandum.
Evolution does not result in something perfect, just something that works. This is why we have flaws, and why we age.
#120
Whenever you shoot youself in your foot, its not God’s fault, its yours.
Not if your God is omniscient. Omniscience means it knew you would shoot yourself in your foot before you did it. It designed the very universe knowing you would shoot yourself in your foot. Your God is sadistic.
#121
#116 Yes, I dropped out of the 10th grade,
That explains a lot. Ignorance is bliss. There is much about the world you think you understand but do not from the responses you make here. If someone came to you and said that Jesus endorsed killing cripples, how would you help them? You would presumably encourage them to read the Bible to show them this was untrue. In a similar vein, you have made claims or statements about science showing you really do not know of what you speak. Similarly, we have encouraged you to read proper materials on the subject, take some courses, even do your own experimentation so that you can learn how science works.
If your deity plopped all species down on the planet as they are now, it shouldn’t be possible to alter them into something different and yet people and nature do it every day (dogs, cats, plants, bacteria, viruses…). The problem is evolutionary science contradicts your religion and therefore you do not want know why this might be the case. Instead, you stopped your learning at “it’s a liberal conspiracy”. That’s your knee jerk reaction to anything that shows flaws in your religion.
If the “intelligent design” of our bodies proves that we have a Creator, then our Creator must be a misogynist. He intentionally gave the females of our species a design that causes them unnecessary pain and often death, without modern medical intervention, in the course of their biologically necessary childbearing function.
In these instances where the woman dies from the complications of giving birth, which happens much more frequently without medical intervention, the father is left without a wife, and the child (if it survives) is left without a mother. This has to be the intention of our Intelligent Designer, and so it constitutes an attack on the family itself.
Why does God want nearly every woman to experience such pain while giving birth? What is it about pain that He enjoys seeing?
Why does God want many women and babies to die in childbirth?
Why does God hate women, children, and families?
Why are many people so irrational and gullible as to describe this as the design of a supremely intelligent being? Sheesh!