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The Eye: Evolution versus Creationism
Sox2 writes "SciScoop is running a story about researchers in Germany who claim to have solved the "mystery" surrounding the evolution of the mamalian eye. The work, published in Science, goes some way to answering the issues raised in the "intelligent design" debate that has become the mainstay of creationist thinking."
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I thought Dawkins basically pulverised the "intelligent design" thesis in his "Climbing mount improbable". Maybe I didn't read it right.
This article supports what the Bible says about all humans descending from Noah in Asia (i.e. Noah's ark settled in Armenia after a global flood about 4200 years ago.)
How got this rated "Insightful"?
The idea of the evolution is of a scientific one. It is continously checked against new findings, modified, refined and is open to scientific rebate.
Creationism is something that some people dreamt up and is pretty much based on only two thing: "because the Bible says so" and "it is highly unlikely" (well, try telling a lottery winner, that because it was utterly unlikely to win, he, in fact, did not win), and it is unlikely, because they think it is).
Yeah, no difference, right?
Real life is overrated.
I recommend this site: http://vuletic.com/hume/cefec/ It has a bunch of commonly used creationist arguments and rebuttals to them.
Vivin Suresh Paliath
http://vivin.net
I like
That's not a counter-argument... I'm not even sure where to start...
No species evolves in a vacuum, and evolution (effectively) is constantly trying to find the most advantage for the species within a given environment. Even laying aside the argument that just because one thing is increased doesn't mean another is decreased (some creatures have good sight, good smell, and good hearing, for example), it is the environment, not the species that dictates what path evolution takes a species.
Consider a massively pungent environment, where all smells are rendered undetectable against the background within a metre or so. If you hunt over large distance, your species will likely only use smell for identification within social groups. Sight, hearing, maybe sonic radar, whatever will become far more important, and therefore more prominent to your species.
Consider the opposite - a constantly foggy environment. Here sight (unless you evolve a radio-sense) will be pretty useless, smell and hearing will take control.
The real world is neither of the above extremes, but given the prey and lifestyle of any given species, it is highly unlikely to ever result in a *real* stagnation in evolution. Even if so (hah!) there is more to it than just evolution at work - if you read Stuart Kauffman's 'The origins of order' (and you manage to finish it, which took me a few tries), he derives theories that both place limits on what evolution can acheive, and shows how jumps can be made from the stable state to a worse or better state across fitness landscapes.
People think that apes/chimpanzees/whatever are less evolved than humans, which is rubbish. People are more intelligent, but apes are just as evolved - a human wouldn't survive anywhere near as long as a great ape in the ape's natural habitat. Evolution and environment go hand in hand.
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!
A hypothesis. They have not seen it actually occur or any stages of it occuring.
It's not so much a hypothesis as it is supporting evidence for evolution. Evolution makes the hypothesis that a complex structure like the eye can't come from nowhere, and since there are a bunch of animals with eyes out there, that there's probably a common ancestry.
What the researchers have found is that an organism that essentially stopped evolving a long time ago has photosensitive areas (read: extremely primitive eyes) that use extremely similar molecules as our eyes. This doesn't lead to any new hypothesis, but it does support the hypothesis that eyes evolved.
It's very similar to looking at the similar genetics and body chemistry of apes. Any animal that is 1% different from us is probably very closely related.
Finally, science never 'proves' anything. There's lots of supporting evidence for things like relativity, evolution, quantum physics, etc., but they've never been (and can never be) proven to be true. They work very well right now, but there may be a theory or method that comes along to usurp them (much like relativity usurped Newtonian physics in describing motion).
I agree. Most molecular biologists who are in the intelligent design camp are not against "micro-evolution", but are instead against "macro-evolution" -- primodial soup-type theories of genesis of life
Evolution theory does not cover the ultimate origins of life. The ultimate origins of life is a matter not in any way addressed by evolution, "macro" or otherwise. This is a common Creationist misconception, but they repeat it anyway because ignorance of the facts is no barrier for them.
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
The other thing to remember is that the human eye is NOT the most advanced eye in the animal kingdom. We essentially have three channels of vision for perception of our world, red, green and blue, whereas other organisms such as many fish, turtles and birds have much more advanced retinas (and complex) that our own. For example, the turtle likely sees in at least seven channels of vision, perceiving a world we could never hope to imagine.
Oh, and here is another fact: In the zebrafish, despite their retinas being much more complex and sophisticated than ours, can repair their retinas from damage whereas we are currently screwed if our retinas go bad.
IAAVS (I am a vision scientist), and neuroscientist.
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Functionally, your eyes are good as they have to be to fulfill your role in the vast scheme of things.
Actually, no. Human eyes have blind spots, which would not be present if the eyes were better designed. Cephalopod eyes evolved independently, and don't have blind spots. Their eyes are very good indeed, and can see a wide range of colours (Octopuses and Squid hunt using binocular vision).
or
"God exists" is a belief, not a fact.
No matter how much you believe it, it doesn't make it a fact.
You can't take the sky from me...
Ummm, I'm an atheist, but I live in the fundamentalist bible-belt of the world, so I think I can give you two pretty good reasons why biblical literalists cannot accept evolution:
1) The bible is the literal, breathed, inerrant Word of God. For this to be the case (so the argument goes), the stories of creation in Genesis cannot be mere alegory, they must be literally true. Otherwise, who's to say what else is not literally true. Yes, I realize that this is a weak argument.
The second, and IMHO, MUCH stronger argument is the following:
2) Fundamentalists believe in a literal heaven where you go to live after you die. That's not metaphorical. They also believe that non-believers literally go to a hell after they die, which is also not metaphorical. In fundamentalist Protestantism, the only thing that will get you into heaven is belief in Christ. That's it. End of story. But the fundamentalists have to explain WHY this is (in other words, if I live my life in a good way, why do I still go to hell if I'm not christian?). Here's why (again, so the argument goes):
- God is perfect. So perfect, in fact, that He must not allow imperfection in his sight. To avoid this, all those who are not perfect go to a place without God (Hell) and so will not be in His site.
- The fall introduced evil into the world. In so doing, God's creation (Mankind) was made evil. That's ALL of his creation, not just the original "evil doers" (that would be Adam and Eve). As the new testament says "All fall short of the glory of God." And "Man's best deeds are but dirty rags." So basically, since you are inherently imperfect (hence away from God, or "sinful" technically) there is nothing you could possibly do to earn your way to heaven. Woo hoo! We're all going to hell!
- But, what if God made a sacrifice to atone for the fall on behalf of all mankind? The argument is that Jesus did this. In so doing, whomever would accept that Christ did this for him would basically have their own sins atoned for by Christ Himself (who was also God), so that when that person stood before God in Heaven, God would see the atonement of Christ (himself) instead of that person's sins. Hence, heaven is possible, but only for believers.
There's protestant theology in a nutshell. Now, here's where creationism comes in (again, so the argument goes):
If there was no literal first man and woman, then there was no talking snake to tempt them into eating an apple. If that didn't happen, there was no literal fall (the fall had to be by CHOICE, protestants don't accept that God just made humans imperfect from the start). If there was no literal fall, then mankind is not in need of redemption. If there is no need for redemption, there is no need for Christ. This would basically invalidate protestant Christianity.
Usually this combined with the first argument about biblical literalism ensures that it will indeed be a cold day in Hell before protestants can reconcile their beliefs with mainstream science.
Just thought you'd like to know. Christians, feel free to correct me if any of the details are wrong.
All mammalian retinas are "inverted" as well as many other organisms. This seems backwards from a developmental perspective, but when you realize the anatomy and physiology of the retina is designed around a high metabolic load system, it makes more sense. The retina has one of the highest metabolic requirements/mass in the body and all that metabolic machinery requires some mechanism to supply nutrients and remove wastes. This is the function of the RPE and vascular choroid. So, you make the retina essentially transparent and flip the bits with the highest metabolic requirements over to face the tissues that would be very difficult to make transparent and you have a reasonable solution.
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Really? Did you skip Deuteronomy?
21:18: If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, which will not obey the voice of his father, or the voice of his mother, and that, when they have chastened him, will not hearken unto them:
21:19: Then shall his father and his mother lay hold on him, and bring him out unto the elders of his city, and unto the gate of his place;
21:20: And they shall say unto the elders of his city, This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton, and a drunkard.
21:21: And all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, that he die: so shalt thou put evil away from among you; and all Israel shall hear, and fear.
Or, in logo-illustrated form for the biblical-language-challenged.
R: That voice. Where have I heard that voice before? B: In about 365 other episodes. But I don't know who it is either.
Years ago, Richard Dawkins pointed out that 1) simple light sensitivity is an advantage over none at all, as (for example) if a predator is swimming over you it may mess with the light source at which point you might decide to "freeze" or hide, 2) that some simple light sensitive cells in a small depression can confer some directionality sensitivity which is better than not having any, 3) larger depressions with more cells are even better at it, 4) a depression that becomes a "pore" can confer some level of pinhole-camera vision, and a 5) pore that fills with mucus can provide further improvements over that. Each of these steps have more useful light sensitive mechanisms over the previous step, and with EACH of them, there are examples of actual animals in nature who have such features.
There's no "poof" here at all, that suddenly we've "magically" figured it all out--, multiple progressive incremental scenarios exist and it's not new news. All that is new here is a specific detail has been filled in.