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Your Environment May Change Your Genes
An anonymous reader writes "Recent experiments indicate that your environment alters your genes. The longer identical twins live apart, the more their "epigenomes" (genetic sequences that activate or suppress other genes) differ. This possibility could cause a radical shift in the assumptions of biological inheritance (namely that, with minor exceptions, an individual's genes do not change), and indicates the possibility of return of Larmarckian inheritance which had formerly been consigned to the dustbin of biology."
You've misrepresenting what the article says: Environment alters gene EXPRESSION, not genes. That makes the whole "Lamarckian" inheritance comment irrelevant, too.
You just need to learn more statistics.
Just imagine.
10 out of 100000 organisms get a light sensor.
They are better, so they become dominant.
Of the mutant offspring, lots do have a tendency to develop more than one light sensor.
More light sensors are better than one.
Now you have a fly-like eye.
Focusing lenses are easy.
The sensor must be protected by something, because it doesn't work otherwise, and the clearer the better, and those who have better focusing clear flesh covers for their eyes, can sense better their environment, and find better partners.
What you view as a huge advantage, can be broken into lots of incremental advantages that are easily explained by evolution.
Of course, it's almost magical that evolution can happen just by birth and death.
You never stop to think that all the tasks a modern computer can perform are just the result of the arrangement of "nand" gates, but there's no magic, and we understand it, because it's simple enough to be understood.
For evolution, it has the advantage of thousands of millions of years of incremental design.