Evolution Bashing Thread

Ok, hippy.
You're wrong, though, in asserting that there is no such thing as "wrong". It is wrong to say that I was born in America, that the desk at which I'm writing is made of jelly, that the moon is made of green cheese, that it is possible to travel to a logically untenable (Cantgotu) environment, that Tony Blair is president of France, that I can't speak Japanese...
 
Absolutely, Kimpatsu. There are a lot of cases where there is right and wrong. I guess I was just going off on a little side-trip about opinion vs fact. I definitely agree with you on that though, there are times when wrong is wrong. Other times though, it's a little less clear.
It's funny to hear me say stuff like this though. Every time I type it I laugh to myself, because I never thought it would be me writing it. Weird. Pretty early in the morning though too. Ah well. I'm jealous of your ability to speak Japanese though.
 
Early? It's exactly 18:00 here as I type this.
Anyone can learn Japanese; you just need a good school.
 
That life was already there (perhaps blew over on the breeze from a nearby hill). It's not the result of the volcano. It existed before the volcano, and in spite of the volcano.

Doesn't look like evolution to me.
 
I didn't specify any level of vision, and you didn't answer my question (not that I have an answer either). Why evolve any part of the eye separate from it's mate with which it is designed to function? Half an eye would be a lens without those receptors to which the lens beams the image. Or, vice versa. Utterly worthless. You might as well not have an eye whatsoever. Or maybe half an eye it would be the eyeball without the part of the brain that can make sense of the images that they eyeball picks up. Again, utterly worthless. There are lots of parts that can't work without some other part(s). We could list more examples, and this is true regardless of the level of vision, e.g. 20/100 vision, 20/50 vision, 20/40, 20/20, 100/20. Pick any level of vision, and I still have the same question.
 
Yopu misunderstand the nature of optical evolution; the "purpose" wasn't to evolve an eye, for there is no purpose (this is why the eye has evolved at least none times independently around the animal kingdom); the point is that as there is no end intention (remember, the watchmaker is blind), any improvement on visibility is to be welcomed. Start with a single light-sensitive cell, and within half a million years (which is peanuts on the geologic scale), you'll have a fully functioning eye. Gradual steps, remember? Nature ratchets up what works (even slightly improved visibility improves the chances of evading a predator), and the rest gets eaten.
Now, how does that NOT answer your question?
 
Attention! if you see any of this 'anti evolution' stuff going around masquerading as fact, then you can report it to: [email protected] . The guy runs this weekly column on pseudoscientific retards- always a fun read.
 
I say the mutant with the single light-sensitive cell gets eaten just as quickly as his non-mutant companions. There's no benefit from that single cell.
And so, there's no reason to believe that those genes will affect the gene pool. Seems more likely to me that this mutation will be washed out of the gene pool. So, no, that does not answer the question. (I don't have an answer either, so I'm not picking on you.)
 
A mutation is unlikely to only cause a single light-sensitive sell to appear. If you look at most mutations, they affect quite a large area on any creature. Additional height affects an entire creature, slightly larger brain is a whole lot more brain cells. A mutation which causes some light sensitive cells to be linked to the nervous system will affect a larger surface area than just a single cell. DNA is such that once the ability to create a songle cell is in place it will be able to do so again. Yes the chances are against it, but with a sample size of even just millions a low probability soon becomes a likely event...
 
AikiMac, it seems to me that you've avoided my examples altogether. Here, read them again. It might help.


So, according to your logic, if I was wearing glasses that completely unfocused my vision, I would be completely unable to avoid being hit by a car, unable to find food, and unable to reproduce, just because my vision was unfocused? Trust me, unfocused vision is a huge advance over no vision at all, and would make a significant difference in the survivability of an organism.

And no, parts of an organ do not just appear in a random order. Only useful ones stay. If an animal with eyes but no receptors was born, it would fare as well as an animal with no eyes at all. But if an animal with receptors but not lense was born, it has a massive advantage over any animal without vision at all. These animals are much more likely to survive than the ones with useless parts developed. As these animals survive and pass on their new feature, further mutations develop the subsequent features in due time. Natural selection compells the creatures to only keep the most beneficial characteristics. As these characteristics accumulate, they develop into functioning organs as we know them today.

So, state your case clearly AikiMac. Do you honestly think that a creature with unfocused vision holds no advantage over a blind one?
 
Of course he does, but my question was how the vision got there in the first place. There are lots of parts to an eye, any eye, whether the vision is cloudy or clear. Mucho cells make up each discrete part of the eye. It's quite complicated, and hence, I wondered.

You did not give a provable answer, just a statement of belief, but that's okay. You helped me. Thanks for the help.
 
Actually simulations have been done to test this. Over millions of generations, if you start out with a small area sensitive to light (bear in mind that infra-red is a form of light, so something sensitive to heat works too), then one of the possibilities that develops from it, in fact the most common one, is an eye.
 
What is that you're talking about? About the passage from the bible about dust or dirt?



See underline part of the text above and compare with the article below:



Can you explain to me, how people of 1.0 million years (exaggeration on the 1.0 million part) ago knew to write "dirt or dust of the ground" as an ingredient in the creation of man? What technology did they have to even say "dust from the ground" is what man is made of?
 
Think about this for a moment. What did people see coming from the ground, plants, life, just growing. The ground has always been viewed as a source of life, so why is it suprising at all that people assumed humans were constructed from what they saw as the life-giving earth. Their food either grew in the ground, or grazed on the things that grew, or ate the things that grazed, but it all came from the ground.
 
You start with a flat sheet of light-sensitive cells, then. It doesn't matter.
Actually, at the time, there were ONLY single-celled organisms , and they used other methods of feeding; the origin of cyanobacteria changed the landscape forever.
 
No, that's not a statement of belief, it is the correct answer; you've just chosen to disregard it because it doesn't jibe with your religion.
The eye is complicated, but not impossibly so. That's why it has evolved at least nine times separately throughout the animal kingdom. Read Richard Dawkins's "The Blind Watchmaker" for details.
 
That's your twisted interpretation; the reality is that the "out of the dust" creation myth exists in many cultures (including Mesoameican), because the earth is important to agriculture, so all such cultures viewed the earth as a mother womb. No mystery there.
 
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