Some questions about evolution.

[lunakilo]

How about this...

If a creature has a mutation which makes slightly different from the rest of the creatures of that type, and this difference increases its chances of surviving long enough to have children, that mutation is passed on to its children.
...

You are assuming mutations are beneficial. In fact, the great majority of mutations are harmful, rather like poking a sharp tool into a a complicated machine.

You seem to have skipped part of the line.

I said IF it had a mutation AND that mutation was beneficial THEN ...

Many mutations are as you say not beneficial, but harmful mutations decrease the survival rate and so are not passed on as often as the beneficial mutations. So over time the beneficial mutations win.

And there is no empirical evidence that mutations produce new species. Thus a key foundation of evolution proves to be sunk into sand. A human eye is far superior to the most advanced camera, and no intelligent person would opine the camera evolved through a series of happy accidents. In truth, it took an intelligent designer to create the first camera, and every camera created since. The same is true of the human or animal or insect eye.

Genesis 1

The Beginning

1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

2 Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

... (You can find the rest of this story here)

31 God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day.
Genesis 2

1 Thus the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array.

2 By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work. 3 Then God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done.

Now I understand...

 

[Dirty Penguin]

You are assuming mutations are beneficial.

Where did you get that idea?

In fact, the great majority of mutations are harmful, rather like poking a sharp tool into a a complicated machine.

It's well known, as PW and others pointed out, mutations are neutral....

And there is no empirical evidence that mutations produce new species.

Sure there is and we've presented them to you time and time again. The fact that you disagree with biologist the world over hardly changes the fact the evidence exist.

Thus a key foundation of evolution proves to be sunk into sand.

Not like the claim of a creator god hunhh!!.... one of many may I add..

A human eye is far superior to the most advanced camera

The human eye, while it is an awesome biological evolutionary development, is not as good as some of the most sophisticated camera/telescopes created and it fails in comparison to many animals in the animal kingdom.

and no intelligent person would opine the camera evolved through a series of happy accidents.

Where is it said that eye development happened through "happy accidents"?

In truth, it took an intelligent designer to create the first camera, and every camera created since. The same is true of the human or animal or insect eye.

We know how the eye evolved. We have the evidence to show. Can you show evidence that a "designer" did it....?

 

[painted wolf]

Actually most mutations are neutral.... neither harmful nor helpful. Everyone has at least a hundred such mutations.

wa:do

 

[idav]

Actually most mutations are neutral.... neither harmful nor helpful. Everyone has at least a hundred such mutations.

wa:do

We could say that all mutations are neutral as they don't really have an agenda outside of ID. Whether they are harmful or beneficial depends on where you live and if it were on Mars no mutation would likely help survivability and we would have all gone extinct.

 

[painted wolf]

We could say that all mutations are neutral as they don't really have an agenda outside of ID. Whether they are harmful or beneficial depends on where you live and if it were on Mars no mutation would likely help survivability and we would have all gone extinct.

I mean neutral in the sense that they do absolutely nothing. I'm talking about functionality not valuation.

Most codons are very redundant... so that changing from GAA to GAG does functionally nothing. (ie. it is a silent/neutral mutation).

But yes you are right that harm/benefit is often influenced by situation and a mutation that is harmful in once instance can be beneficial in another.

wa:do

 

[camanintx]

Sure different cells can form a symbiotic relationship but if nothing had eyes in the beginning how did they decide they was light? They never saw it.

There's your first problem. Evolution does not require the organism to make a decision.

 

[painted wolf]

I think people expect that the detection of light to be a complicated process... in reality it's just a change in shape in a particular protein.

All it took for life to start noticing light was for a single protein to use vitamin A in it's structure. That's it...

When light hits a protein containing vitamin A in it's structure, it changes shape, that in it's most basic form is "sight".

Pretty mundane really.

wa:do

 

[jarofthoughts]

I think people expect that the detection of light to be a complicated process... in reality it's just a change in shape in a particular protein.

All it took for life to start noticing light was for a single protein to use vitamin A in it's structure. That's it...

When light hits a protein containing vitamin A in it's structure, it changes shape, that in it's most basic form is "sight".

Pretty mundane really.

wa:do

I guess a lot of things seem mysterious when you don't understand how they work.
I truly wish that people would try to educate themselves a little instead of just assuming that the knowledge they have inside their heads is all the knowledge there is.
"I don't understand how this works so it must be magic" is not an argument... :sarcastic

 

[Alceste]

I think people expect that the detection of light to be a complicated process... in reality it's just a change in shape in a particular protein.

All it took for life to start noticing light was for a single protein to use vitamin A in it's structure. That's it...

When light hits a protein containing vitamin A in it's structure, it changes shape, that in it's most basic form is "sight".

Pretty mundane really.

wa:do

You have to admit, entire eyeballs poofing into existence fully formed with a magical snap of the fingers is even less complicated, as long as you don't ask questions (like "who's doing the snapping and what made them?" or "Where did the matter for making all this stuff come from?")

 

[painted wolf]

You have to admit, entire eyeballs poofing into existence fully formed with a magical snap of the fingers is even less complicated, as long as you don't ask questions (like "who's doing the snapping and what made them?" or "Where did the matter for making all this stuff come from?")

As long as you don't ask questions, magic is always the simplest answer.

wa:do

 

[Looncall]

I was asking about the sensory organs and the brain. I know things change over time I am not denying that I am simply saying it is not just natural progression because of some of the intricacies involved that evolutionists don't even try to understand.

Blind faith. Sounds exactly what you accuse others of.

The great thing about science is that it uncovers general principles that can be used to understand many specific phenomena.

An example of such a principle is the very simple algorithm that is the theory of evolution: given imperfect replication, change happens through time and if there is selective pressure from the environment, the change tends to track the enivironment. Easy. No faith needed. No matter what silly mystics may think.

If you wish to claim that something extra is needed, it is up to you to demonstrate that that is the case. So, what are these untended intricacies you mention? Be specific.

 

[Father Heathen]

Creationist debate tactic: If you can't take out a tank with a wiffle bat, bring more wiffle bats.

 

[Alceste]

As long as you don't ask questions, magic is always the simplest answer.

wa:do

Whereas, if you do ask questions, even magic becomes incredibly complex.

 

[jarofthoughts]

Whereas, if you do ask questions, even magic becomes incredibly complex.

While I sympathise with people who find science, or aspects of science, to be hard to understand, that in no way entitles them to make up their own fairytale about how the universe operates.
For instance, Quantum Theory is notoriously difficult to grasp, but it is one of the most successful Scientific Theories we have, with amazing predictive power backed up by thousands of rigorous experiments.
The only reasonable conclusion is that that is how the universe operates on a subatomic scale, at least until we find a better Theory that fits the data better.
But for a layman, like myself, to question, challenge or even reject it based on my poor understanding of the Theory (or lack of understanding even)?
That would just be plain silly.

 

[crocusj]

A human eye is far superior to the most advanced camera, and no intelligent person would opine the camera evolved through a series of happy accidents. In truth, it took an intelligent designer to create the first camera, and every camera created since. The same is true of the human or animal or insect eye.

The camera has, of course, evolved through intelligent design processes. But is it not a happy accident that some chemicals are darkened by light and that photography is a combination of discoveries that were not initially related to it? And it did not take an intelligent designer to create the first camera, pinhole cameras occur in nature and were even recognised as such by ancient Greeks. Humans, as intelligent animals, have taken natural processes and worked them into an obviously created method of preserving images; ie, a camera. As creators they strive for perfection in this. Why would they create anything obviously flawed? And if they did they would strive to correct it, by design. Human eyes, on the other hand, have a variety of flaws which clearly would not have occurred if intelligently designed but could easily occur through "messy" evolutionary processes.

 

[ScottySatan]

Read most of it before. Theories and good ones but I wanted someone here to explain it. The reason for this is that I personally think most believers in pure unguided development of components of the whole really have no clue what they believe.

If you or others cant really completely understand the exacting science without quoting sources then do you really know what you are talking about. Do you?

So you just want me to prove myself to you? What you're asking takes considerable effort. I naively spend this effort on people online years ago, never to hear from them again. So first, I require incentive. Make me give a damn about your opinion.

Quoting sources is what science is all about. In a scientific journal article of 10 pages, you'll find 150 references.

How are you going to prove to yourself that people typed this without cheating? How satisfied are you going to be when someone responds to your request and it reads exactly like the content of the first link you got?

 

[johnhanks]

So you don't understand it then. Is that what you are saying? Only a person trained in biology can truly grasp evolution yet you believe in it?

'Believe in' is the wrong expression here. We say we 'believe in' things when we approve of them and want them to exist (justice, democracy, human rights) or because we have been persuasively taught that they exist even though direct evidence may be lacking (god, angels, astrology).

Biologists do not profess to 'believe in' evolution in this sense, any more than you would say you 'believe in' grass or bicycles. The theory of evolution has become the central paradigm of modern biology because it best fits the available evidence.

 

[rusra02]

The camera has, of course, evolved through intelligent design processes. But is it not a happy accident that some chemicals are darkened by light and that photography is a combination of discoveries that were not initially related to it? And it did not take an intelligent designer to create the first camera, pinhole cameras occur in nature and were even recognised as such by ancient Greeks. Humans, as intelligent animals, have taken natural processes and worked them into an obviously created method of preserving images; ie, a camera. As creators they strive for perfection in this. Why would they create anything obviously flawed? And if they did they would strive to correct it, by design. Human eyes, on the other hand, have a variety of flaws which clearly would not have occurred if intelligently designed but could easily occur through "messy" evolutionary processes.

Thanks for your thoughts. The answer to your question about chemistry being a happy accident is No. Chemistry and chemicals are the product of an orderly mind, and did not just happen. What are called natural processes are events of truly astounding complexity. As to the human eye, I'm not sure what you mean when you speak of a variety of flaws. Even a cursory study reveals the eye's astonishingly brilliant design. So-called flaws in the eye have been shown to be, after careful study, instead perfectly constructed. And real flaws in all parts of our anatomy are the result of sin and imperfection at work in us, not in any design flaws. (Romans 5:12) Scientists cannot, with all their intelligence and effort, fully duplicate the functioning of the human eye. To attribute the eye to evolutionary process is to blind our eyes (excuse the expression) to the manifest facts.

 

[rusra02]

I think people expect that the detection of light to be a complicated process... in reality it's just a change in shape in a particular protein.

All it took for life to start noticing light was for a single protein to use vitamin A in it's structure. That's it...

When light hits a protein containing vitamin A in it's structure, it changes shape, that in it's most basic form is "sight".

Pretty mundane really.

wa:do

Where did the vitamin A come from? Where did the protein come from? Where did the light come from? How did the protein know how to use vitamin A? Why does the protein change shape? Pretty mundane...REALLLY?

 

[rusra02]

While I sympathise with people who find science, or aspects of science, to be hard to understand, that in no way entitles them to make up their own fairytale about how the universe operates.
For instance, Quantum Theory is notoriously difficult to grasp, but it is one of the most successful Scientific Theories we have, with amazing predictive power backed up by thousands of rigorous experiments.
The only reasonable conclusion is that that is how the universe operates on a subatomic scale, at least until we find a better Theory that fits the data better.
But for a layman, like myself, to question, challenge or even reject it based on my poor understanding of the Theory (or lack of understanding even)?
That would just be plain silly.

Evolutionists make up fairy tales all the time and call it science.