What happened to this elementary power of looking in the mirror and testing your own impression in the mirror.

If you say i can't be right because i have a gene for believing in god, what is stopping you from looking in the mirror and saying, "hey maybe i have a gene for believing what i believe, and if i do, what good is my view? I can't help believing what i do. And if i don't, why am i suppossing this guy has?"

It's possible to be a Christian without being a complete ****** when it comes to evolution and science in general.

Hint: people aren't blasting you for being a Christian. It's because you're regurgitating the same non-arguments against evolution that we've seen and dealt with hundreds of times.

I can't help believing what I do - the evidence is very compelling. I've looked into evolution quite a bit and focussed on speciation in particular, since it's the usual point of attack by creationists. Studies of speciation are notoriously difficult and ultimately not very interesting to those working in the field since they don't have such a fascination for the idea of new species arising. After all, they recognise the distinction is pretty much arbitrary anyhow. In contrast to seeking out the evidence and examining it, you prefer to grant yourself some sort of power to 'divine the truth'. You've already said that there's nothing to research so why bother learning about it and other silly things.

If you don't look at the evidence, it's probably true that you won't change your mind (unless you get better at guessing what the truth is) but that isn't particularly surprising or insightful. It tells us something about you, nothing about evolution.

I don't think that this example would refute my experience, but there really was not enough info on that wiki page. Was these receptors the same receptors that we see in the current eye? it didn't say (unless I missed that).

Not to say that I am right that there is not a clear pathway that we see in animals, but that I cannot remember being presented with such evidence.

What I think would need to be necessary to show this is if we have say 6 organisms A,B,C,D,E, and F where A->B->C->D->E->F

And then we see parts of the fully functioning eye of F in A then a couple more parts in B a couple more parts in C etc until you get the full eye that we see today in F.

I don't think that it is sufficient to show A has a 6/8 complete eye and C has a 4/8 complete eye E has a 3/8 complete eye etc. As that would not seem to indicate a progression of the eye at all, but something else.

I don't know the example you're referring to (I'm sure there are examples of vestigial eyes somewhere), however there have certainly been observations of creatures with 'primitive eyes'. That doesn't imply they will ultimately evolve into 'complete eyes', of course - there's no way to predict what will happen. It just contradicts the idea that an eye couldn't have evolved unless it was all-at-once - based as it is on the fallacious claim that anything other than a fully formed eye is valueless.

As I said though, this objection has been so soundly refuted, I don't believe demoneyez is a genuine creationist. They're usually much cleverer than that.

You're falling into the creationist trap of 'show me every intervening stage'. Evolution makes a claim as to how an eye could evolve, creationists counter by saying that the intervening steps would be valueless - that they wouldn't provide an advantage so the process of natural selection wouldn't work. The existence of 'proto-eyes' refutes this claim and that's all. It does not mean "We used to have these blobs of photoreceptors", nor does it mean "In a billion years these things with photoreceptors will evolve fully functional eyes". It just refutes an essential step in the creationist argument.

And unanswered questions should remain just that. Unanswered. Whether you like it, or not.

Succinct and complete.

bunny answered it better than I

But what if they have been reasonably answered?

I don't think that I am falling into that trap. first, I am not saying that not having actual evidence for the slow progression of the eye refutes evolution. I don't think that it does. It could very well be that the eye developed very rapidly through a mechanism that we have yet discovered.

Secondly, saying that the eye developed through a slow progression over many different organisms is something that requires evidence, not hand wavy speculation. To show one or two mismatched examples of "proto-eyes" does not validate the claim being made by some.

What not take the atheist mantra here and say that "we don't know" how the eye developed at this stage. That seems perfectly reasonable a stance barring the type of evidence that I described in the previous post.

I have often said that I do not believe that darwinian mechanisms is powerful enough to be the primary mechanism of the grand sweep of evolution. If this is the case then we don't have to give a "slow one little step at a time over long periods of time and many organisms" explanation for something like the eye.

I wish i could remember the poster and book marked the thread, but there was a poster (atheist if that matters) who worked in the field of evolutionary biology that claimed darwinian mechanisms was not seen as the primary mechanism of evolution within the field.

Dawkins explains.

Or if you hate Dawkins too much, just read the wiki page on eye evolution. It's a bit harder to follow but makes the same points.

Appealing to the supernatural/mythological is not a reasonable answer. It is replacing ignorance with a perceived "knowledge" that accomplishes nothing more than making you feel better since you invented that explanation devoid of fact or substantive evidence.

Just curious, what do you mean by "darwinian mechanisms"? First you say "darwinian mechanisms" and then refer to "darwinian mechanisms" as "the primary mechanism" in the same sentence. One would think if you were well versed in these subjects you would at least have an idea if mechanism(s) should be plural or not. What exactly is it that you mean when you say "darwinian mechanisms"?

I highly recommend this series to anybody who is skeptical or doubts evolution. It speaks from a perspective of question and doubt and explains many misconceptions. I challenge all 3 of you, Jib, demoneyez, and OP to watch this short series of videos and comment on them ITT. I have taken the time out of my day to link these for your ease. I urge each of you to watch this short series if you plan on conversing on the subject of evolution any further.

Specifically pertinent to this discussion, there is a segment about the evolution of the eye starting at ~7:30 in part 2.

You do realize that you are just setting up a self fulfilling prophecy, right?

Delete happy there Jibs?

srsly

all I saw was KB24's post complaining about getting his post deleted, twice.

In before more deleted posts.

None of those posts were constructive in any sense. Just trolling, so now they are gone.

I almost want to say "fair enough". And it probably is.

Just a suggestion though, but wouldn't just editing them to say "deleted for trolling" or "deleted for being off topic" be a little more transparent, especially since the topic had degraded into talking about you? It would also serve as a bit of a warning in general for people to keep the threads on track.

And since this is also a derail, I won't post anymore on this tangent.

That's a good idea, I will make note of that.

Why do I have this funny feeling none of you 3 are going to watch that series and I wasted my time

You are falling into the trap if you think it's evidence for creationism in favor of evolution. If you're just pointing to an eye for some reason and saying "We don't know exactly what steps had to occur in order for this to evolve" then you are, of course, correct. There are very few (In fact, I suspect we don't have any) specific features where we have a complete list of steps it undertook in order to 'evolve'.

To recap the argument:

1. Evolution provides a theoretical mechanism for something we observe, in this case the complicated organ known as an eye (there is not claimed to be a demonstration of this one specific feature, the claim is this is one of many things we observe which are explained by the theory of evolution).

2. Creationism says "A-ha! This can't possibly be the way it happened - an eye is completely valueless unless it is fully formed."

3. Evolution responds "No it isn't. Here's a few examples of organs (not eye-predecessors) which provide an advantage even though they are far inferior to a 'complete' eye.



Of course it will probably continue along the following lines:

4. Creationist "A-ha! What about the second law of thermodynamics?"

5. Evolutionist: The Earth is not a closed system.

6. Creationist "A-ha! We've never observed speciation in the lab. Show me just one example of one species giving birth to another"

7. Evolutionist: We wouldn't expect to - it takes far too long for that to be observed definitively. We have observed speciation in Drosophila and various plants. There are some candidates for ring species, though it is very difficult to determine if they are genuine or not.

8. ...

9. "A-ha! Evolution can't explain the eye, can it? An eye is completely valueless unless it is fully formed!"

Etcetera
------

You seem to be requiring evolution to fill in all the gaps from blob to eye - as I said, this is similar to the creationist tactic of "show me all the intervening species from monkey to human or you haven't proved a thing".

Evolution provides a general framework which, if correct, explains all the various features of biodiversity we see. It explains all the clever mechanisms life has discovered for solving various problems of survival. It explains why the creatures we find in the wild are so peculiarly suited to their environments. It explains why DNA is so similar across disparate species. It explains why antibiotics stop working. It doesn't claim to be able to provide an encyclopedic list of each feature with a step-by-step 'where did this come from?' That's how science works - a general hypothesis explains a vast array of facts so it is accepted as 'true'. If there is a competing hypothesis we can weigh them against one another - until then we go with the (incomplete and not yet fully understood) theory of evolution.

So are you going to watch and give us your comments Jib?