Just Accidental?

[SkepticThinker]

Defying logic is something science seems to do all the time. I know what science wants me to think, but when I see these creatures and the amazing variety even within species and how many of them co-exist in the same environment without that environment affecting them in the same way, it makes way more sense to me to believe that something so beautifully designed had to have a designer. I see design everywhere in nature, and we have the senses to appreciate them. Pictures of reality are worth more than many diagrams.

Science doesn’t want you to think anything. Science is the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment. Perhaps you could explain how such study defies logic.

Pictures are superficial. They tell us next to nothing about what lies beneath the surface. I fail to see how random photographs of things you personally think are pretty are worth so much more than rigorous and in-depth analysis, observation, and experimentation that go far beyond merely the surface. Knee jerk reactions are not how science is done and that’s one of the reasons why it’s been such a helpful tool in our discovery of the workings of the world around us.

Can you elaborate on your assertion that many species “co-exist in the same environment without that environment affecting them in the same way?” Do you have some examples you are thinking of? What is your definition of species? We have examples of coevolution where two species can affect each other’s evolution in a reciprocal fashion.

Reproduction for the most part, takes place in complete secrecy. All science has been able to do is show us "how" it happens, revealing the processes of the miracle.

They can also tell us the why and when.

I’m not sure why you think reproduction takes place in “complete secrecy.”

The "miracle" itself is that humans cannot reproduce the original life. They can transfer life from pre-existing life, but they cannot create life from scratch. So a miracle to me is something humans cannot duplicate from start to finish. They must work with the raw materials that already exist.

So what? That doesn’t stop us from seeking and providing explanations about reproductive function.

Humans create life via sexual reproduction all the time. Is sperm alive? Are ova alive?

Are you aware of the Miller-Urey, MacNevin, Oro and Bada (and others) experiments? It's quite fascinating:

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v191/n4794/abs/1911193a0.html
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0003986161900339
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v190/n4774/abs/190442a0.html
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11084-007-9120-3

Evolution just deals with life after it has already formed. We're talking about abiogenesis now.

Unlike scientists, I am not interested in accolades. I would rather give credit where it is due. "Natural selection" is like adaptation (micro-evolution).....it has limits....but science wants to take those limits to ridiculous degrees into areas they cannot prove and then pretend that it has all the facts. It clearly doesn't.

Scientists aren’t generally in it for the accolades, given that most of them work away in anonymity in labs all over the world.

My point was that what you are proposing defies most known science to date. If you could demonstrate that natural selection doesn’t drive evolution and/or that evolution does not occur, you’d be turning a great deal of science on its head. Such a thing is enough to garner a Nobel Prize as one of the great discoveries of mankind. See, scientists aren’t rewarded for towing the line; they’re rewarded for overthrowing currently accepted ideas and coming up with new discoveries and avenues of research. Bias towards awards and material gain would drive someone to want to falsify evolution, not to reinforce it. The latter just so happens to be where scientists always end up, upon examination of the evidence.

Everything has a place in the scheme of things....even tape worms.

I’m trying to address your point …

“Doesn't the fact we humans think they are beautiful mean something? None of these creatures admire each other except maybe for dinner.”

… Perhaps you could too.


If it means something that we think things are beautiful, what does it mean if humans think things are ugly? That we’re not designed?

I am talking about being endowed with the ability to appreciate something beyond a rudimentary level. Like seeing food and eating it. Seeing water and drinking it. Seeing a potential mate and being driven by hormones only to replicate.

Have you never seen an ape?

When I lived in the country, some of the most breathtaking views in that place in the high elevations, were from paddocks full of sheep and cows. I never once saw them admiring those views. Magnificent sunrises and sunsets came and went without even a cursory glance from any of them.

I never saw them consult a recipe book or demand food beyond what was in the paddock.

I never saw them inquire about changing the color of their coats or adding adornment to their ears or bodies.

I never saw them write poetry or organize themselves into theatre or poetry groups. Only humans do these things, so can you tell me why, out of all the species that exist on planet Earth, not one of them is equal to us in its ability to appreciate the world around them?

Maybe they appreciate and admire different things than you do.

None have the same communication skills and none have burial rituals or the inherent need to worship a higher power?

I implore you to study the animal kingdom on a deeper level. Just because animals don’t speak English doesn’t mean they aren’t good at communicating.

I don’t feel the need to worship a higher power. The sheep and cows and I have that in common, I guess.

All other creatures adapt to their surroundings, are non polluting, and utilize the food growing in their own environment....yet only humans permanently adapt their surroundings to suit themselves, have no concern about pollution because of greed and selfishness, and rape the earth and the oceans to feed people stuff they can't get where they live. Why do humans alone bear these traits, when no others do? We are the latecomers on the scene after all.

Indeed, we are the latecomers on the scene. In the grand scheme of things, human existence has been but a blip on the radar screen of life on this planet. I fail to see how that means all of this was created just for us. If anything, it seems it was created for all the other animals that have come and gone over the millennia. Sharks have been around for something like 400 million years. Maybe the universe was created with them in mind.

IMO the Bible's explanation is logical and agrees with what science actually knows, as opposed to what it thinks it knows.

I accept its writings, just as you accept the writings of teachers that you respect.

My truth is not your truth and your truth gives me no reason for my existence nor any hope for the future.

We are each free to choose what appeals to our own logic. Evolution is blind...but I am not.

Well then it’s bizarre that the views you have expressed on this thread fly in the face of science.

I don’t just accept the writings of people I respect. I think critically about them. I investigate their claims. I wish everyone would. I didn’t choose to believe in evidence; I accept what the evidence demonstrates. I follow where the evidence leads. As science does.

You don’t think I’d like to believe that my father is finally happy in some heaven somewhere, where I’ll get to see him again someday? You don’t think I’d like to believe that when my grandfather died last month, that he found my grandmother and they’re spending blissful eternity together? Of course I do. But I can’t force myself to believe something for which I have absolutely no evidence.

There is no individual logic where you just get to make up your own rules. There is just logic. Something is logical or it’s not. Things aren’t logical just because we like them.

Why would the existence of evolution have anything to do with your hopes for the future or the reason for your existence?

 

[Deeje]

All knowledge of the world is probabilistic. Certainty and proofs can only be found in mathematics, not in any field of science science and not certainly in the ordinary so called "common sense ideas" of the world people have. Scientific knowledge have far greater probability of being true than common sense knowledge.
You have once again dodged the question of why you accept some things in science and not others when all use the same methods of your so called "suggestions" in their explanations. There are no proofs in any of science. NONE. Do you know this?

Finally an admission! Now tell me why this theory that has "no proofs" is taught in schools and universities as fact?

You see, that is all I have ever asked.....that it be presented for what it is.....a theory. Something presented alongside creation so that young children are not raised to take the miracle of life for granted. (I am not suggesting creation be taught in a science class BTW) This is what we do with our kids. We counterbalance creation with what science actually knows, as opposed to what it assumes to know about the diversity of life on this planet. A picture is worth a thousand words and reality beats computer generated cartoons any day.

A scientific theory is not synonymous with hypothesis. A scientific theory is something that has been validated by many many observations and has made lots of successful predictions. A scientific hypothesis is a conjecture that has less or ambiguous evidential support and is yet to be fully validated by lots of evidence and predictions.

Ah, and therein lies the problem....who is doing the 'validating' and who is 'interpreting' the "evidence" and making the "predictions"? You can't be serious.

An aspect of your science denial is rejecting the terminology of science which is not English because science is not associated with any particular language or culture.

Evolution means the same thing in any language and scientist in all nations are taught the same basic interpretation of the evidence that they expect to find......all take it for granted that the evidence will support evolution and if it doesn't, they will force it to fit somehow or explain it away.

For me it is more than sufficient to show that you reject science and its methods as practiced in the universities and research institutions around the world and whose results are published in the journals like Nature or Science. That you reject this science is more than evident in your discussion here.

And the fact that you reject the truth as to evolution's basic foundation is equally evident. All the things you point to as "evidence" are no such thing if science cannot establish one important aspect of evolution's validity.....an unbroken chain, leading from a single celled organism to the diversity of all life seen on this planet. There is not a single shred of real evidence that this ever took place or that a link of any sort can be proven. It is an assumption backed up by biased interpretation of very flimsy evidence.
The fossils are silent unless someone is a good ventriloquist.

 

[SkepticThinker]

Finally an admission! Now tell me why this theory that is has "no proofs" is taught in schools and universities as fact?

You see, that is all I have ever asked.....that it be presented for what it is.....a theory. Something presented alongside creation so that young children are not raised to take the miracle of life for granted. (I am not suggesting creation be taught in a science class BTW) This is what we do with our kids. We counterbalance creation with what science actually knows, as opposed to what it assumes to know about the diversity of life on this planet. A picture is worth a thousand words and reality beats computer generated cartoons any day.

SCIENCE DOESN'T DEAL IN PROOFS. Not just evolution. SCIENCE. This has been repeated to several times throughout the thread.

If you want proofs, go do some math instead.

Evolution is a scientific theory. Please don't make me display your dishonesty again by having to provide the definition of a scientific theory. Again. Any kid (save for you, I guess?) taking science class is taught these terms. Creationism is not a scientific theory.

Your pictures are worth no words. You need to start looking beneath the surface and start doing some real in-depth analysis, like scientists have been doing for 150+ years. That's how we get to the bottom of things, rather than just taking a cursory glance at something and declaring that it's too complex to understand so "god did it." That's not an explanation - it's just an exercise in replacing a mystery with a bigger mystery.

 

[sayak83]

Finally an admission! Now tell me why this theory that is has "no proofs" is taught in schools and universities as fact?

Science has no proofs. No science class in schools or universities talks about proofs. A scientific fact is a piece of observation on which scientists have a lot of confidence in and thinks that it is very very likely to be true. One cannot even prove that the earth is round, only consider it very very probable inference from the evidence accumulated so far by scientists.

The fact that science is not about proofs but about the most likely evidence based explanatory inferences and models of reality that has shown to stand up to scrutiny and has predictive power is stressed repeatedly again and again and again in all science classes in all fields of science. That is why we use the language of probabilities from top to bottom.

Once again..proofs and absolute certainties are completely unwarranted and have no place whatsoever in science. This is true in the science of aerodynamics that keeps planes flying to the science of electronics that keeps computers working to the science of evolutionary biology that is used to make new crops or find new ways to treat diseases.

You see, that is all I have ever asked.....that it be presented for what it is.....a theory. Something presented alongside creation so that young children are not raised to take the miracle of life for granted. (I am not suggesting creation be taught in a science class BTW) This is what we do with our kids. We counterbalance creation with what science actually knows, as opposed to what it assumes to know about the diversity of life on this planet. A picture is worth a thousand words and reality beats computer generated cartoons any day.

You will not get what you ask. Because the evidence for the truth of evolution is so overwhelmingly vaster than the evidence for your speculation about creation. Science is probabilistic, but not all theories are equally credible. The idea that species were individually created is about as likely to be true as the idea that the aliens are making the crop circles. Based on the evidence, one and only one scientific theory is overwhelmingly likely to the true model of how life diversified in many many many species on earth (like 99.999% certainty) and that is the theory of evolution. Your speculation has a less than 0.001% likelihood of being true, given the evidence of fossils, biology, geology and genetics.

You can believe what you want and teach what you want. But you will not call it science. That word is copyrighted by actual scientific universities and institutions and has a prestige, a legitimacy and a brand recognition. If you try to teach your speculations as science, what you will get is a court case, just as if an astrologer tries to teach its methods as a legitimate "science of the stars".

Ah, and therein lies the problem....who is doing the 'validating' and who is 'interpreting' the "evidence" and making the "predictions"? You can't be serious.

By actual scientists with Masters, PHDs and working in universities and research institutions. Science is done by actual scientists, as law is done by actual lawyers and math is done by actual mathematicians, and machining is done by actual mechanics. Hard, credible work of trained experts have credibility and weight, lazy opinions of untrained people do not.


What is your science education again?Please answer the question?

Evolution means the same thing in any language and scientist in all nations are taught the same basic interpretation of the evidence that they expect to find......all take it for granted that the evidence will support evolution and if it doesn't, they will force it to fit somehow or explain it away.

No. If any real evidence does come that falsifies evolution, the theory will be overturned. Nothing has come up so far.

And the fact that you reject the truth as to evolution's basic foundation is equally evident. All the things you point to as "evidence" are no such thing if science cannot establish one important aspect of evolution's validity.....an unbroken chain, leading from a single celled organism to the diversity of all life seen on this planet. There is not a single shred of real evidence that this ever took place or that a link of any sort can be proven. It is an assumption backed up by biased interpretation of very flimsy evidence.

This just an empty claim you repeat again and again without a shred of justification.

 

[Deeje]

Science doesn’t want you to think anything. Science is the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment. Perhaps you could explain how such study defies logic.

How old is the theory of evolution? Can you tell me why Darwin was one of the first to think of it? Were the conditions in the Galapagos Islands really giving him proof for organic evolution?....or were they merely suggesting that a changed environment produced features that had adapted to a change in food source or in environmental differences?

Weren't learned men of that time sick of the church's negative influence in matters of science? Wasn't there a push in that era to come out from under that yoke? I can't blame them. But I believe they went too far. (as humans usually do)

Pictures are superficial. They tell us next to nothing about what lies beneath the surface. I fail to see how random photographs of things you personally think are pretty are worth so much more than rigorous and in-depth analysis, observation, and experimentation that go far beyond merely the surface. Knee jerk reactions are not how science is done and that’s one of the reasons why it’s been such a helpful tool in our discovery of the workings of the world around us.

Jaded eyes see things differently. Actual photographs, as opposed to computer generated cartoons, can confront the reality of what is being presented. Can anyone really study those pictures closely and attribute the appearance and instinct of these creatures to random mutations? Undirected chance plays no part in the production of such beautifully designed beings.

Can you elaborate on your assertion that many species “co-exist in the same environment without that environment affecting them in the same way?” Do you have some examples you are thinking of? What is your definition of species? We have examples of coevolution where two species can affect each other’s evolution in a reciprocal fashion.

If animals have evolved the ability to change their color to suit their environment, why are all creatures who live in the arctic region not white? Why have both predator and prey alike developed white fur?...but only in certain species? Same environment.....

 

[Deeje]

I’m not sure why you think reproduction takes place in “complete secrecy.”

Most conceptions are not visible to human eyes

.....before the development of microscopes, no one knew for sure "how" it happened....only "that" it happened through the act of copulation.

Humans create life via sexual reproduction all the time. Is sperm alive? Are ova alive?

Both have the potential to combine and create life. The mechanism is basically the same for most creatures. And sperm are most definitely "alive". No creature on earth "creates" life...they merely have the ability to pass it on.

Since both males and females are required for procreation, wouldn't they have had to "evolve" at exactly the same time and in specifically different ways to perpetuate the life of all species in the first place?

Are you aware of the Miller-Urey, MacNevin, Oro and Bada (and others) experiments? It's quite fascinating:

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v191/n4794/abs/1911193a0.html
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0003986161900339
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v190/n4774/abs/190442a0.html
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11084-007-9120-3

More of the same assertions and predictions...there is no real evidence for anything in these links.

Evolution just deals with life after it has already formed. We're talking about abiogenesis now.

I am aware of that, but to my way of thinking, where life came from is way more important as a game changer than how things adapted after they got here. If an all powerful Creator is the originator of life, and the one who created all life as it is, with inbuilt ability to adapt, then what happens to your theory? What happens to people like you?

Scientists aren’t generally in it for the accolades, given that most of them work away in anonymity in labs all over the world.

Huge grants for research are a big motivator for many scientists. Accolades are also important in what has become to many an ego driven field. A research scientist's salary is around $1200 - $2,000 a week. The anonymous ones working away in labs still have to be paid by someone.

My point was that what you are proposing defies most known science to date. If you could demonstrate that natural selection doesn’t drive evolution and/or that evolution does not occur, you’d be turning a great deal of science on its head.

"Natural selection" only guarantees the survival of the fittest. Cosmetic things like color or small physical changes do not demonstrate organic evolution. Adaptation is not in question.....its the lengths to which science wants to stretch these "known" things. Do you not see that one thing does not equal the other when there is no way to prove it?

Such a thing is enough to garner a Nobel Prize as one of the great discoveries of mankind. See, scientists aren’t rewarded for towing the line; they’re rewarded for overthrowing currently accepted ideas and coming up with new discoveries and avenues of research. Bias towards awards and material gain would drive someone to want to falsify evolution, not to reinforce it. The latter just so happens to be where scientists always end up, upon examination of the evidence.

There is no real examination of the "evidence" when interpretation only follows a predictable party line. Any scientist who dares to step over that line has years of ridicule and humiliation to endure before any acknowledgment is made.
Barry Marshall is a classic example of this.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Marshall

I implore you to study the animal kingdom on a deeper level. Just because animals don’t speak English doesn’t mean they aren’t good at communicating.

All living things demonstrate the ability to communicate either audibly or chemically, or both. But there are no creatures on earth who communicate like humans do. Not only do we have complex language skills abut we also have the ability to acquire information from written language, be that pictographic or alphabetic.

We have the ability to comprehend concepts such as past, present and future and to use information lifted from the printed page to form mental images that are interpreted by a superior brain. We can take that information and plan future events. This is not done by instinct, which is programmed into most living things by their Creator, but this is a deliberately planned action based on the computation of information gathered in various ways. Animals have no idea why they do anything.....instinct drives them to perform all the actions that contribute to their survival. It is programmed into them.....not by undirected chance.

I don’t feel the need to worship a higher power. The sheep and cows and I have that in common, I guess.

All through history human beings have displayed spirituality....something that is completely missing from the animal kingdom. Spirituality is like a muscle, if it isn't exercised, it shrivels up and becomes useless. When humans decided at some point, that they were too intelligent to believe in God, it never occurred to them that what they were rejecting was man made, flawed religion. God is not found in religion...evidence for his existence is seen in his Creation. He doesn't need religion or performance or rituals.....nor does he demand that humans serve him or even acknowledge him. All he does is tell us what his plans are for the future and leaves the decisions up to us.....we either want to be included in them, or we don't. He tells us how to be "selected".

Indeed, we are the latecomers on the scene. In the grand scheme of things, human existence has been but a blip on the radar screen of life on this planet. I fail to see how that means all of this was created just for us. If anything, it seems it was created for all the other animals that have come and gone over the millennia. Sharks have been around for something like 400 million years. Maybe the universe was created with them in mind.

The "latecomers" were to become caretakers of all the rest. A caretaker's job is to keep order and make sure things run smoothly. If there are problems that turn up, he can deal with them before they become an issue. If you are a gardener for example, how quickly do weeds take over in a garden if they are not controlled? A weed infested garden is not very attractive but a well kept garden is appreciated by all who see it. Beauty is not just in the eye of the beholder because we have an inbuilt standard by which we judge beauty. The majority of people will have the same standard. Culture may mean a small difference in the outward appearance, but by and large, we know when something is either attractive or repulsive.

Well then it’s bizarre that the views you have expressed on this thread fly in the face of science.

They do not fly in the face of science at all...they fly in the face of a theory that has been accepted by the majority despite the fact that it has no foundation in fact...only in supposition. You believe that the supposition is fact and I do not. It has nothing to do with real science. It has everything to do with being convinced....you one way...me another.

I don’t just accept the writings of people I respect. I think critically about them. I investigate their claims. I wish everyone would. I didn’t choose to believe in evidence; I accept what the evidence demonstrates. I follow where the evidence leads. As science does.

And you are free to do that. I, however demand more than you do to change my thinking on this issue. You accept the teaching of those you regard as experts in their field....but what if the experts are taught by those who have also passed on false interpretation of information?

I see this very thing also in religion. If the teachers are misled, then so will their students be equally misled. Evidence is presented in such a way as to suggest that A led to B when there is no actual link....it is a virtual one produced by suggestion and a lot of tap dancing.

You don’t think I’d like to believe that my father is finally happy in some heaven somewhere, where I’ll get to see him again someday? You don’t think I’d like to believe that when my grandfather died last month, that he found my grandmother and they’re spending blissful eternity together? Of course I do. But I can’t force myself to believe something for which I have absolutely no evidence.

Why do you think humans want to believe that a reunion with dead loved ones is possible? ( I don't believe in the heaven or hell scenario BTW because, contrary to popular opinion, this is not what the Bible teaches.)

Have you ever wondered why death is so foreign to the human psyche, when it is all we have ever known?

Why do we have a collective expectation that we should go on living?

Animals, by and large, accept death as a natural part of life....we on the other hand have great difficulty being separated from those we love. We all fight getting old or sick or incapacitated.....yet it will inevitably happen to all of us. Why have we not evolved to accept something that has been with us from the beginning? Why do we alone grieve so deeply, and have elaborate burial rituals for our family and friends, when none of those in the animal world go anywhere near as far as we do when death happens to those close to them? Even then, it is only species that are designed to form family groups. (or troupes)

There is no individual logic where you just get to make up your own rules. There is just logic. Something is logical or it’s not. Things aren’t logical just because we like them.

The study of human nature will demonstrate just how vastly separated we are from any other creature on this planet.
Our uniqueness should tell you something when no other life form has progressed to the state of being that we have...why is that? If evolution is true, why are there not many species who have progressed to an equivalent level? Why is there no one like us?

Why would the existence of evolution have anything to do with your hopes for the future or the reason for your existence?

As a human being, I need a reason for my existence and I need a hope for the future that isn't a black hole or a dead end. Why evolve a need for this with nothing to meet that need? What other need do humans have that cannot be met?
Is life meant to be one long frustration? Or can we rightly expect something better in the future? The Creator gives us life, reason and hope, fulfilling that need like nothing else can. You can live without it, but not in any truly satisfying way.

 

[Deeje]

so should we teach every unproven thing in class as possible? Where do you find the time to teach all the different versions of how the universe was created? And it should not be in a science class, because the science does not support it.

I don't believe that I advocated that every unproven thing should be taught in class....does it make you feel good to beat up strawmen?

Children should be exposed to various teachings of whatever is believed in their culture. A class that explores religious diversity and the origins of the various teachings could do no harm and maybe create bridges of understanding where ignorance only creates conflict and mistrust. No one suggested a science class for teaching religious diversity.

 

[sayak83]

If animals have evolved the ability to change their color to suit their environment, why are all creatures who live in the arctic region not white? Why have both predator and prey alike developed white fur?...but only in certain species? Same environment.....

[

1) Penguins do not live in the Arctic. They live in Antarctica where there is no land predator. Why would they need to be white. Their only predators are in the sea. Most sea mammals and many sharks have a white underbelly and a black back. This helps to camouflage them in the sea. Dive under-water and look up to the surface of water. It looks white because of the light above. An animal with a white belly will be hard to spot from below. Now look from the top down to the bottom of the sea. It looks dark. An animal with a black back will be hard to spot from the top down. Now you have a perfect explanation of why natural selection forced both the penguins (who need to hide from the killer whales) and the killer whales (who need to come close undetected for a successful hunt) the characteristic white belly and blacker (or blue, for dolphins) back. Sharks have the same coloration, for the same reason.

2) Most Arctic animals (rabbits, fox, polar bears and yes northern reindeers) have white furs to hide from each other in the snow. So too do seals that live exclusively in the Arctic

This is the difference between posting pretty pictures and trying to understand the natural world behind the pictures. l.

Next question?

 

[Deeje]

1) Penguins do not live in the Arctic. They live in Antarctica where there is no land predator. Why would they need to be white. Their only predators are in the sea. Most sea mammals and many sharks have a white underbelly and a black back. This helps to camouflage them in the sea. Dive under-water and look up to the surface of water. It looks white because of the light above. An animal with a white belly will be hard to spot from below. Now look from the top down to the bottom of the sea. It looks dark. An animal with a black back will be hard to spot from the top down. Now you have a perfect explanation of why natural selection forced both the penguins (who need to hide from the killer whales) and the killer whales (who need to come close undetected for a successful hunt) the characteristic white belly and blacker (or blue, for dolphins) back. Sharks have the same coloration, for the same reason.

2) Most Arctic animals (rabbits, fox, polar bears and yes northern reindeers) have white furs to hide from each other in the snow. So too do seals that live exclusively in the Arctic

This is the difference between posting pretty pictures and trying to understand the natural world behind the pictures. l.

Next question?

Thank you for the explanation and the pretty pictures......just these few questions....how did the animals in question know that it was a good idea to have a white belly and a black back if they did not have one to begin with? How do you know what color they or their ancestors were before? And how long did it take them to evolve this camouflage? How do you know that it is a product of natural selection and not designed by a Creator? If you cannot prove that this took place by natural selection then you are on equal footing with me in a belief.
Gotta love those Harp Seals.

Mumma isn't white though, only the pups are. How did they program the babies to be born white and change color later?

And I guess the splash of color on the Emperor Penguins was just because......

.....they wanted to look nice for each other? Oh hang on, males and females have exactly the same markings.....so what possible reason could they have for evolving the same look? Its not males dressing up for females...so what is this beautiful detail 'naturally selecting' for? That looks suspiciously designed to me..... Very artistic.

 

[sayak83]

Thank you for the explanation and the pretty pictures......just these few questions....how did the animals in question know that it was a good idea to have a white belly and a black back if they did not have one to begin with?

They did not have to. A mere 3-4 genes control the color variation in the feather of all birds, in the fur of all mammals and the skin color of humans. The same 3-4 genes. Slight alterations in the expression of these genes from one genration to next cause natural variation in the color pattern to happen between individuals. If one format of coloration makes the individual more "fit" (either by being camouflaged or by being more attractive to females) then that individual leaves more offsprings than others (by surviving longer, mating more and rearing more chicks etc.) Thus its specific form of expression of these genes spread, making its color type more frequent than other types. This goes on for generations, till the entire species have the "ideal" color for its environment.

Genetics of feather color in birds and mammals

http://www.isciencetimes.com/articl...ns-dont-gray-three-genes-determine-varied.htm

The speed at which new color arises is very rapid as breeder of colorful fish, birds or dogs know. I have already demonstrated the same to hold true for guppies in the wild as well. I am linking below an extensive experimental study done in wild mice with variable coat color showing how natural selection strongly selects for coat color that provides survival advantages by preserving the mutations that provide color variations in the color producing genes.

https://www.nescent.org/media/NABT2010/pdf/Hoekstra.pdf

http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/pigeons/color/

Many of the colors found in birds particularly are based on pigments of feather structures that have a direct relationship to how well suited they are for flight and resistant to parasites, bacteria and degradation from high winds etc. In such cases the color is a by-product of real adaptive reason for having these pigments (think of polish in shoes or furniture to preserve them).
https://www.theguardian.com/science/punctuated-equilibrium/2010/oct/12/1

How do you know what color they or their ancestors were before? And how long did it take them to evolve this camouflage? How do you know that it is a product of natural selection and not designed by a Creator?

Because scientists have extensively studied several birds, mammals and fish and conducted experiments showing that evolution combined with natural and sexual selection produces these colors. Unless you are positing that color in penguins was given by creator while colors in specifically those species that scientists studies just happened to be the product of evolution, your argument has no merit. Further the same few sets of genes are involved in everything from drab to colorful feathers, scales and fur in all these animals, and the kind of changes seen via natural selection in the test animals, are seen in all the others as well.

If you cannot prove that this took place by natural selection then you are on equal footing with me in a belief.

Once again. There is no such thing as a proof in science. Science cannot prove that the earth is round either. It can only show that this is a highly likely inference based on observations.

And the studies I linked above (and many others like this exist) provide extensive body of evidence that colors did evolve through mutation and natural selection in a few genes as they confer unambiguous fitness advantages to various species from predation, improved mate choice, or prevention of infection and wear.

What evidence do you have?

Mumma isn't white though, only the pups are. How did they program the babies to be born white and change color later?

And I guess the splash of color on the Emperor Penguins was just because......

.....they wanted to look nice for each other? Oh hang on, males and females have exactly the same markings.....so what possible reason could they have for evolving the same look? Its not males dressing up for females...so what is this beautiful detail 'naturally selecting' for? That looks suspiciously designed to me..... Very artistic.

The chicks do not venture into water before weaning. So their baby feathers are only selected for providing the best insulation in the cold air of Antarctic ice shelf.

Unlike most birds and mammals, emperor penguin males are serially monogamous and look after their chicks even more than mums. After laying eggs mums go back to the sea, while the dads constantly sit over the eggs through 4 months of winter dark without once getting up to eat, fasting all the while, till the chicks hatch with coming of spring. Given the huge parental investment of fathers, there is no preferential sexual selection in emperor penguins. Sexual selection operate equally on both males and females as both are choosy. So we have equal coloration and equal effort by both sexes to woo a good partner. Even more than humans.

 

[sayak83]

Beauty from simple geological processes:-

Chemical processes deposit limestone in underwater caves creating completely natural beauty without design

Natural process of charged particles impacting the earth's atmosphere causes this

An ice cave in Russia. Caused by a hot water geyser flowing out into a galcier. Again all natural

The simplest play of light and shadow

Just sandstones, all naturally formed by geology (in China)

Antelope canyon, water erosion of sandstone only...

Evidence that laws of nature acting on elements of nature by themselves are sufficient to create incredible beauty.

 

[ArtieE]

As a human being, I need a reason for my existence and I need a hope for the future that isn't a black hole or a dead end. Why evolve a need for this with nothing to meet that need? What other need do humans have that cannot be met?
Is life meant to be one long frustration? Or can we rightly expect something better in the future? The Creator gives us life, reason and hope, fulfilling that need like nothing else can. You can live without it, but not in any truly satisfying way.

So what you are saying is that you have some needs and inventing a creator fulfills those needs? Like people needed to know the reason for earthquakes so they invented Poseidon?

 

[SkepticThinker]

I don't believe that I advocated that every unproven thing should be taught in class....does it make you feel good to beat up strawmen?

Children should be exposed to various teachings of whatever is believed in their culture. A class that explores religious diversity and the origins of the various teachings could do no harm and maybe create bridges of understanding where ignorance only creates conflict and mistrust. No one suggested a science class for teaching religious diversity.

There is already a place for kids to learn about religion. It's called church and home. Maybe in a comparative religion class.

Science class is for science.

1) Penguins do not live in the Arctic. They live in Antarctica where there is no land predator. Why would they need to be white. Their only predators are in the sea. Most sea mammals and many sharks have a white underbelly and a black back. This helps to camouflage them in the sea. Dive under-water and look up to the surface of water. It looks white because of the light above. An animal with a white belly will be hard to spot from below. Now look from the top down to the bottom of the sea. It looks dark. An animal with a black back will be hard to spot from the top down. Now you have a perfect explanation of why natural selection forced both the penguins (who need to hide from the killer whales) and the killer whales (who need to come close undetected for a successful hunt) the characteristic white belly and blacker (or blue, for dolphins) back. Sharks have the same coloration, for the same reason.

2) Most Arctic animals (rabbits, fox, polar bears and yes northern reindeers) have white furs to hide from each other in the snow. So too do seals that live exclusively in the Arctic

This is the difference between posting pretty pictures and trying to understand the natural world behind the pictures. l.

Next question?

Yes!!

 

[Deeje]

So what you are saying is that you have some needs and inventing a creator fulfills those needs? Like people needed to know the reason for earthquakes so they invented Poseidon?

No actually....but you can carry on thinking that if you like.

 

[Deeje]

They did not have to. A mere 3-4 genes control the color variation in the feather of all birds, in the fur of all mammals and the skin color of humans. The same 3-4 genes. Slight alterations in the expression of these genes from one genration to next cause natural variation in the color pattern to happen between individuals. If one format of coloration makes the individual more "fit" (either by being camouflaged or by being more attractive to females) then that individual leaves more offsprings than others (by surviving longer, mating more and rearing more chicks etc.) Thus its specific form of expression of these genes spread, making its color type more frequent than other types. This goes on for generations, till the entire species have the "ideal" color for its environment.

So, how do Rainbow Lorikeet pairs, who look identical, fit in with this "ideal for their environment" scenario?

Wild Budgerigars, who also have the same coloration in both males and females, just ended up looking the same, when other bird species who share their environment have vast distinctions between the color, size and design of their plumage between the sexes?
The dad's don't raise the chicks in either of these....in fact, dad's raising babies is quite rare in the animal kingdom.


These are the birds I see every day where I live. You cannot tell males and females apart....and many of them are extremely colorful. Why "evolve" these striking colors if there is no survival or mating advantage?

And you are going to tell me that the Gouldian Finch or the Spangled Cotinga just evolved these color schemes with nothing but survival or mating advantage driving the design? ......seriously? Its easy to say that until you look at the images.

Or the Birds of Paradise just designed these little numbers accidentally?

And we just accidentally find them beautiful?

Many of the colors found in birds particularly are based on pigments of feather structures that have a direct relationship to how well suited they are for flight and resistant to parasites, bacteria and degradation from high winds etc. In such cases the color is a by-product of real adaptive reason for having these pigments (think of polish in shoes or furniture to preserve them).
https://www.theguardian.com/science/punctuated-equilibrium/2010/oct/12/1

Now read what you wrote below, with these images in mind.....then explain iridescence and how it was "evolved" to create this kind of magnificence....accidentally? Then explain the headgear?

Because scientists have extensively studied several birds, mammals and fish and conducted experiments showing that evolution combined with natural and sexual selection produces these colors. Unless you are positing that color in penguins was given by creator while colors in specifically those species that scientists studies just happened to be the product of evolution, your argument has no merit. Further the same few sets of genes are involved in everything from drab to colorful feathers, scales and fur in all these animals, and the kind of changes seen via natural selection in the test animals, are seen in all the others as well.

Yep.

Once again. There is no such thing as a proof in science. Science cannot prove that the earth is round either. It can only show that this is a highly likely inference based on observations.

I think astronauts put that one to rest a while ago...

And the studies I linked above (and many others like this exist) provide extensive body of evidence that colors did evolve through mutation and natural selection in a few genes as they confer unambiguous fitness advantages to various species from predation, improved mate choice, or prevention of infection and wear.

What evidence do you have?

What I see with my own eyes and conclude from my own life's experience. I also have a sense of the impossible that is opposite to yours apparently. You choose your unprovable "fantasy" whilst I choose mine.

The chicks do not venture into water before weaning. So their baby feathers are only selected for providing the best insulation in the cold air of Antarctic ice shelf.

But somewhere along the line, there was a 'programming' that camouflaged the babies until they were old enough to take care of themselves...right? We see this in so many species, so it had to have evolved individually in all these species....like eyesight and hearing etc....and it just happened with no intelligent direction at all according to science?

Speaking of camouflage.....all these were just accidental as well......

Unlike most birds and mammals, emperor penguin males are serially monogamous and look after their chicks even more than mums. After laying eggs mums go back to the sea, while the dads constantly sit over the eggs through 4 months of winter dark without once getting up to eat, fasting all the while, till the chicks hatch with coming of spring. Given the huge parental investment of fathers, there is no preferential sexual selection in emperor penguins. Sexual selection operate equally on both males and females as both are choosy. So we have equal coloration and equal effort by both sexes to woo a good partner. Even more than humans.

Perhaps you could then explain how the penguins know, that in order to keep the whole group of fathers and their chicks alive, they have to continually move to the outside so that the ones in the middle can huddle up to keep warm? Do they do this consciously because they have "fellow feeling" for their ice-mates? Are you going to tell me that this 'programming' came about because over time their genes figured out that the guys in the middle did better than the ones who froze on the outside of the group, waiting for Mom to do the shopping?

 

[SkepticThinker]

How old is the theory of evolution? Can you tell me why Darwin was one of the first to think of it? Were the conditions in the Galapagos Islands really giving him proof for organic evolution?....or were they merely suggesting that a changed environment produced features that had adapted to a change in food source or in environmental differences?

Darwin is not the first to notice that species change over time. Alfred Wallace came up with natural selection independently from Darwin a year before On the Origin of Species was published. (I would suggest reading that, if you are interested in Darwin’s thought processes and observations that led him to conclude that he was onto something. He lays it out, walks you through it and even addresses some concerns he has about it. It’s an extremely honest piece of writing. And it will answer your question.)

The ancient Greeks, Romans and Chinese wrote about many of the broader (and sometimes more specific) aspects of evolution (though they didn’t call it evolution then) that they had observed in nature. See Aristotle, Anaximander, Epicurus, or Empodicles for a few examples.

Al-Jahiz wrote about the influence of the environment on animals and how it may affect their likelihood to survive in The Book of Animals that he wrote sometime in the 8th or 9th Century. He was once accused of plagiarizing it from Aristotle’s treatises on the natural history of animals.

Al-Dinawari discussed the details of plant evolution in the 9th Century in his work called Book of Plants.

Nasiral-Din al-Tusi posited that all life on earth could evolve from the basic elements of nature in the 13th Century (Nasirean Ethics). He also wrote about hereditary variability and the influence of the environment on producing changes giving some creatures advantages over others.

As they learned more and more about the natural world, and as science became a more disciplined field of study, all kinds of people started gathering all the bits of data that they had observed in their fields of study that would eventually contribute to evolutionary theory (remember, this is long before evolution had a name). See Lamarck, Cuvier, William Smith, Matthew, Owen, Sedgwick and Agassiz. All of these naturalists/scientists were making their observations before Darwin wrote On the Origin of Species.

Darwin’s ideas weren’t all that new when he finally wrote them down on paper. Many of his own colleagues had been discussing various features of evolution (including natural selection) for years, before it was ever called evolution (Huxley, Haeckl, Lyell, Wallace). Darwin had all the information from the researchers listed here (and others), available to him (he discusses many of them in On The Origin of Species) at the time he was sailing to the Galapagos. He used his own observations to build upon the observations of the many other philosophers and scientists that came before him. That’s a big part of how science works – it keeps building and building upon previous discoveries to produce a body of evidence from which explanations can be provided, and conclusions can start to be drawn.

Weren't learned men of that time sick of the church's negative influence in matters of science? Wasn't there a push in that era to come out from under that yoke? I can't blame them. But I believe they went too far. (as humans usually do)

Most of the men I named above had religious beliefs. (Including Darwin). Some of the ones that were alive when Darwin proposed the theory of evolution and vehemently objected to it on religious grounds. And yet they provided valuable contributions to the fields of paleontology, zoology, comparative anatomy, geology and biology. All of which Darwin built upon when he proposed the theory of evolution by natural selection. And since then scientists have built upon all the evidence that has been accumulated since Darwin first wrote his book way back in 1859. And all this time later, evolution is still the explanation that best fits all the available evidence.

Jaded eyes see things differently. Actual photographs, as opposed to computer generated cartoons, can confront the reality of what is being presented.

Can we please note how ironic it is that you have been posting nothing but pretty pictures all over the thread as evidence for intelligent design yet you would not accept the exact same evidence were it presented to you to demonstrate evolution. The weirdest part is that you have been given far better evidence than what is provided by your photographs or the “computer generated cartoons” you keep saying are being presented to you.

Why must you be dishonest to make your case? Is it that flimsy?

Can anyone really study those pictures closely and attribute the appearance and instinct of these creatures to random mutations? Undirected chance plays no part in the production of such beautifully designed beings.

They can actually do MUCH better than that. They can examine the bones up close. They can measure them. They can examine their surface features with binocular light microscopes. They can study the microwear on their teeth to determine what kind of diet the animal might have had. They can carry out trace element and isotope analysis to glean information on the animal’s environment. Sometimes they can analyze the animal’s DNA.

Can you do any of that with your duck and flower photographs?

Another poster already pointed out to you at least twice, that cartoons and diagrams are produced to simplify it and make it easier to understand. It doesn’t mean there aren’t any fossils, as you well know since they’ve been shown to you several times after you demanded to see them.

If animals have evolved the ability to change their color to suit their environment, why are all creatures who live in the arctic region not white? Why have both predator and prey alike developed white fur?...but only in certain species? Same environment.....

I see that Sayak has already responded to this so I will refer you to that post.

 

[Deeje]

Beauty from simple geological processes:-

Chemical processes deposit limestone in underwater caves creating completely natural beauty without design

Natural process of charged particles impacting the earth's atmosphere causes this

An ice cave in Russia. Caused by a hot water geyser flowing out into a galcier. Again all natural

The simplest play of light and shadow

Just sandstones, all naturally formed by geology (in China)

Antelope canyon, water erosion of sandstone only...

Evidence that laws of nature acting on elements of nature by themselves are sufficient to create incredible beauty.

Thank you for these wonderful examples of art in nature.You will notice in each instance that "natural" forces created this beauty from "natural" materials. You see no intelligence or creativity behind any of these....yet that is all I see. You see blind "chemical processes"...I see thoughtful and beautiful design expressed even in inanimate things.

If I had a palette of colorful paint and a paintbrush with a blank canvas, but no ability to create art, then what use are the materials? How many flukes would it take before I accidentally painted something amazing?

Compare the surface of Mars to that of the earth. Then compare Venus as well, and you believe that the conditions on earth are just an accident....or should I say a series of millions of fortunate flukes that produced all we see here on this "Goldilocks" planet that is like no other...not even closest neighbors in the same solar system?

If I had all the materials and the ability to create masterpieces, yet I had no way to process the concept of beauty or design....what use is the masterpiece? Your theory leaves you with no appreciation except for the finished product that just happened because of blind forces.

When I see something breathtaking in nature, be it living or a magnificent vista....I am move to express gratitude....not to "Mother Nature"...but to "Father God".

I believe that you give credit to the wrong "parent".

 

[Deeje]

Darwin is not the first to notice that species change over time. Alfred Wallace came up with natural selection independently from Darwin a year before On the Origin of Species was published. (I would suggest reading that, if you are interested in Darwin’s thought processes and observations that led him to conclude that he was onto something. He lays it out, walks you through it and even addresses some concerns he has about it. It’s an extremely honest piece of writing. And it will answer your question.)

If you read what I said...Darwin was "one of the first". And I have read his "honest" admissions and doubts about various aspects of the idea. I still think that science has not addressed them, but merely postulated an idea of how things "might have" happened to address those concerns and make them go away.

The ancient Greeks, Romans and Chinese wrote about many of the broader (and sometimes more specific) aspects of evolution (though they didn’t call it evolution then) that they had observed in nature. See Aristotle, Anaximander, Epicurus, or Empodicles for a few examples.

Al-Jahiz wrote about the influence of the environment on animals and how it may affect their likelihood to survive in The Book of Animals that he wrote sometime in the 8th or 9th Century. He was once accused of plagiarizing it from Aristotle’s treatises on the natural history of animals.

Al-Dinawari discussed the details of plant evolution in the 9th Century in his work called Book of Plants.

Nasiral-Din al-Tusi posited that all life on earth could evolve from the basic elements of nature in the 13th Century (Nasirean Ethics). He also wrote about hereditary variability and the influence of the environment on producing changes giving some creatures advantages over others.

As they learned more and more about the natural world, and as science became a more disciplined field of study, all kinds of people started gathering all the bits of data that they had observed in their fields of study that would eventually contribute to evolutionary theory (remember, this is long before evolution had a name). See Lamarck, Cuvier, William Smith, Matthew, Owen, Sedgwick and Agassiz. All of these naturalists/scientists were making their observations before Darwin wrote On the Origin of Species.

And all came to the same conclusion from the same evidence.....not evolution but adaptation. Adaptation does not support organic evolution......you seem to fail to comprehend the difference as if one naturally explains the other if you throw a few million years into the scenario and stretch it from the observable to the impossible.

Darwin’s ideas weren’t all that new when he finally wrote them down on paper. Many of his own colleagues had been discussing various features of evolution (including natural selection) for years, before it was ever called evolution (Huxley, Haeckl, Lyell, Wallace). Darwin had all the information from the researchers listed here (and others), available to him (he discusses many of them in On The Origin of Species) at the time he was sailing to the Galapagos. He used his own observations to build upon the observations of the many other philosophers and scientists that came before him. That’s a big part of how science works – it keeps building and building upon previous discoveries to produce a body of evidence from which explanations can be provided, and conclusions can start to be drawn.

Again you fail to see the line of demarcation that separates adaptation from organic evolution. There is clear evidence for one but not a shred of real evidence for the other. Why keep arguing as if that is not true?

Most of the men I named above had religious beliefs. (Including Darwin). Some of the ones that were alive when Darwin proposed the theory of evolution and vehemently objected to it on religious grounds. And yet they provided valuable contributions to the fields of paleontology, zoology, comparative anatomy, geology and biology. All of which Darwin built upon when he proposed the theory of evolution by natural selection. And since then scientists have built upon all the evidence that has been accumulated since Darwin first wrote his book way back in 1859. And all this time later, evolution is still the explanation that best fits all the available evidence.

Religious beliefs at that time were a joke in any sincere person's estimations. Religion had become a millstone around the necks of those who could see right through it. Pretentious ritual and feigned piety were the order of the day. Any wonder people of intellect were keen to break free, but instead of acknowledging the Creator as separate from religion and their man-made creeds, they threw the baby out with the bathwater. That was a big mistake.

Can we please note how ironic it is that you have been posting nothing but pretty pictures all over the thread as evidence for intelligent design yet you would not accept the exact same evidence were it presented to you to demonstrate evolution. The weirdest part is that you have been given far better evidence than what is provided by your photographs or the “computer generated cartoons” you keep saying are being presented to you.

If there was "far better evidence" I would acknowledge it.....but all you have is the biased opinions of a group of scientists who have only supposition to support their conclusions. Making predictions and then forcing the "evidence" to fit them is not science fact...it is science fraud.

Why must you be dishonest to make your case? Is it that flimsy?

I know where the dishonesty is.....organic evolution has no evidence. It is all manufactured guesswork, with nothing to back it up but some educated person's "think" so.

They can actually do MUCH better than that. They can examine the bones up close. They can measure them. They can examine their surface features with binocular light microscopes. They can study the microwear on their teeth to determine what kind of diet the animal might have had. They can carry out trace element and isotope analysis to glean information on the animal’s environment. Sometimes they can analyze the animal’s DNA.

And since all living things share common DNA, they can't really tell if something found today is even remotely related to something they dug up a century ago. Creating a chain of creatures is a hoax.....because no such chain is provable by any means. They can suggest and speculate and predict till the cows come home...none of that is real evidence.

Can you do any of that with your duck and flower photographs?

Its a funny thing about the power of suggestion.....its hard to swallow one thing if the opposite image is staring you in the face. A photo tells a story that no amount of impressive language and fancy diagrams can do.

If I presented you with a da Vinci painting and told you that upon recent scientific investigation, the popular view has now been challenged.....the painting has been found to be just the product of natural minerals leeching out of rocks above a piece of cloth that somehow adhered itself to a frame. It is therefore suggested that da Vinci never existed and that all his other paintings are therefore also the product of other similar natural events. If that story made headlines around the world (and it wasn't April Fool's Day).....if that story was told by Joe Blogs who has toured a few art galleries, how many people would trust that story to be true? Now what if the person spreading the story was a noted art historian?

Another poster already pointed out to you at least twice, that cartoons and diagrams are produced to simplify it and make it easier to understand. It doesn’t mean there aren’t any fossils, as you well know since they’ve been shown to you several times after you demanded to see them.

The man-made diagrams and cartoons that are designed to give you a pictorial example of their theory, do not replace reality. They are just clever marketing tools disguising the fact that they have nothing else. Dry words on a page are not really convincing in this day and age....so the better the graphics, the more convincing the argument becomes, regardless of whether the evidence is real or imagined. Once you accept the concept, you accept all that goes with it. That is true for both ID and evolution.

 

[sayak83]

So, how do Rainbow Lorikeet pairs, who look identical, fit in with this "ideal for their environment" scenario?

Wild Budgerigars, who also have the same coloration in both males and females, just ended up looking the same, when other bird species who share their environment have vast distinctions between the color, size and design of their plumage between the sexes?

The evolution of colors in birds and their important function in life (camouflage, mating, signalling and feather health) has been extensively researched in scientific literature. Instead of going through one bird at a time, look at a book that explains how and why colors evolved through evolution and natural selection. In all birds that have so far been studied(which means most) scientists have found unambiguous evidence that the colors and plumage is being selected for through natural and sexual selection. The book below is replete with examples from hundreds and hundreds of bird species with actual evolutionary history of the genes that are responsible for the color variation.

Read the book. Go to the website and check the explanations yourself. No bird lives the same way and one really needs to study the life and behavior of each species in the wild to see why they have evolved the colors.

The BOOK
https://www.amazon.com/National-Geographic-Bird-Coloration-Geoffrey/dp/1426205716

Preview
https://books.google.com/books?id=MgycWCpnFMQC&lpg=PA1&pg=PT6#v=onepage&q&f=false



Introduction of the book by author (ornithologist and geneticist)
http://voices.nationalgeographic.com/2010/04/27/bird_color_mysteries_explained/

And his research website
http://www.thehilllab.com/

The book is available cheap in second hand stores
http://www.biblio.com/book/national-geographic-bird-coloration-geoffrey-e/d/729167823

The dad's don't raise the chicks in either of these....in fact, dad's raising babies is quite rare in the animal kingdom.


These are the birds I see every day where I live. You cannot tell males and females apart....and many of them are extremely colorful. Why "evolve" these striking colors if there is no survival or mating advantage?

See the book. There is unambiguous survival and mating advantage. Apart from the color pigments themselves being essential to the health of the feathers in parrots(see links in my previous post), the birds with the most vibrant colors are dominant and have first mate choice in the hierarchical social order of parrots.

And you are going to tell me that the Gouldian Finch or the Spangled Cotinga just evolved these color schemes with nothing but survival or mating advantage driving the design? ......seriously? Its easy to say that until you look at the images.

Yes absolutely. This has been clearly established in studies after studies by scientists. I don't see anything in any of your pictures that says otherwise. More such studies (entire books worth) appended below.

https://books.google.com/books?id=BnM8musSTS4C&dq=Geoffrey+E.+Hill&source=gbs_navlinks_s

Now read what you wrote below, with these images in mind.....then explain iridescence and how it was "evolved" to create this kind of magnificence....accidentally? Then explain the headgear?

Peacocks are native to my country. I have seen them from childhood. The males grow their tail feathers just before mating season and start dancing. The females carefully inspect the dance and color of the display and pick the most handsome dancer. Seen it every year. Peacock's tail and plumage is the clearest example of female sexual selection there is in the world.

I think astronauts put that one to rest a while ago...

False. Pictures for space are only evidence that suggest that earth is round is the most likely state of the matter, but it can never prove the conjecture. Proofs only exist in logic and math. One can only infer the most likely state of affairs based on observable evidence, never prove. Look up the difference between deductive proofs and inference to the best explanation.

What I see with my own eyes and conclude from my own life's experience. I also have a sense of the impossible that is opposite to yours apparently. You choose your unprovable "fantasy" whilst I choose mine.

Its simply your scientific illiteracy that is the cause of your false analysis of evidence.

What is your science education? Why are you not answering the question?

But somewhere along the line, there was a 'programming' that camouflaged the babies until they were old enough to take care of themselves...right? We see this in so many species, so it had to have evolved individually in all these species....like eyesight and hearing etc....and it just happened with no intelligent direction at all according to science?

All birds descended from a common ancestral lineage of dinosaurs which already has camouflage and insulating feathers for chicks. Those early genes were simply modified to fit the needs of the various birds as they evolved through natural selection over time. No intelligent direction was there or is necessary.

Speaking of camouflage.....all these were just accidental as well......

No. Natural evolution through mutation and natural selection.

Perhaps you could then explain how the penguins know, that in order to keep the whole group of fathers and their chicks alive, they have to continually move to the outside so that the ones in the middle can huddle up to keep warm? Do they do this consciously because they have "fellow feeling" for their ice-mates?

Yes. Birds are highly social creatures and do have considerable empathy and fellow feeling for their mates in the social group.

Are you going to tell me that this 'programming' came about because over time their genes figured out that the guys in the middle did better than the ones who froze on the outside of the group, waiting for Mom to do the shopping?

Genes do not have to figure anything out. Genes mutate naturally from one generation to the next. Some mutations make the birds more cooperative, others less. If being cooperative provides selective advantage then those birds and their genes outcompete those of the more selfish variants. Thus fellow feeling gets selected for. Simple

 

[gnostic]

If you read what I said...Darwin was "one of the first". And I have read his "honest" admissions and doubts about various aspects of the idea. I still think that science has not addressed them, but merely postulated an idea of how things "might have" happened to address those concerns and make them go away.

Then you are even further behind in your reading.

Although, Darwin will always be contributor to and pioneer for evolution, biologists don't rely on his works alone, even with Natural Selection.

There have been a number of advancements with Natural Selection, other biologists have amended where he was in error.

And during his times, he know nothing of other evolutionary mechanisms that have been discovered and accepted his death. Below are the list of 5 different mechanisms to evolution:

1. Natural Selection
2. Mutation
3. Gene Flow
4. Genetic Drift
5. Genetic Hitchhiking

I am not a biologist, but I do understand the basics of the 1st three.

The first two, I think most people are similar with.

Gene Flow has nothing to do with environment effecting changes. Instead, it relate to migration. Example, populations of two species, join and breed with each other, producing a new and third species.

The last two muchanisms relates to allele or gene variant...of which I know little of.

My point is that evolution don't rely on Charles Darwin. He didn't know about molecular biology and DNA, but for his time, he was ahead of his time.