Evolution versus Creationism

[Simple Simon]

Exactly how does the "Blind Watchmaker" create the complex eyes so everyone can see?

Smidlee, I remember a long detailed post, specifically answering this very question by you, in one of perfection's KOing threads. You ran from that thread and did not answer.

now you show up here and ask the same question again. What should I conclude now? That you are not interested in an answer at all?

 

[AngryZealot]

This is an statement of faith so there not much to debate here. It's been stated that today even most biologist realizes you need more than a blind search even with the almighty "natural selection".

"It has been stated..."??? An ambiguous statement from an unnamed source is no argument. I'm a biologist. None of the fellow biologists I know believe such a thing. Random mutation, selection, and common descent from a universal ancestor are sufficient to explain both the complexity and diversity of life -- that's what most biologists believe.

Actual data: Not the exact same question, but similar.

Q: Regarding the issue of “Intelligent Design theory” vs. current biological consensus on the mechanisms of evolution - is there a difference of professional opinion within your department that you feel could be accurately described as a scientific controversy?

97.3% (71) answered no.
1.4% (1) answered no, but.
1.4% (1) answered yes.

But even then,

It must be noted that this lone “Yes” response came from a theological medical university.

A typical response:

This question has been discussed several times amongst my faculty and I can respond definitively that 100% of the faculty in my department (26 persons) support the theory of evolution and not a single person considers ID a legitimate scientific concept. Thus, there is no professional controversy. The claim by ID proponents that there is growing support for ID by trained scientists is simply not supported by the data. The lack of data, by the way, is the fundamental problem with ID as a scientific concept.

 

[Flying Pig]

A Wikipedia policy, which probably should be in place here, is that 'some people say that...' or variations on that do not constitute an argument any more than 'I think that...'. If you can't say who says it, then it's not worth anything.

 

[El_Machinae]

When's the last time Creationism was used to make a prediction regarding undiscovered fact, and then motivated the researching of that fact? Where's the genetics of ancient mummies, proving their long lives? Where's the mechanism by which we get such massive allelic diversity amongst humans in such a short timeframe?

 

[peter grimes]

I'd like to clear up a factual error:

But nature has repeatedly built complex life out of less complex life. Complex life must be beneficial to the survival of less complex life.

I dont' think that's true, but I'm really not certain. I haven't heard of an event where all multicellular life was wiped out, only to redevelop later on. From what I understand - and please correct me if i'm wrong - the record shows that during the ~4 billion year history of life on earth, 'bacterial', or unicellular life was the only game in town until about .5 bya. in other words, for 7/8 of the time - close to 90%!!, the was no life more complex than single celled creatures.

Now that's not to say that the level of complexity wasn't slowly increasing through that long time. Inside the protective cell wall, the incredibly intricate biochemical pathways we see today were evolving, slowly being refined, redundant error-checking mechanism arose, etc.

But it seems that multicellular life is a relatively new development. But once it developed, it spread far and wide, into the millions of ecological niches available, and the unicellular life evolved along with it. When there were mass extinction events, it's not so much that Nature Favored Complexity - it's simply that the multicellular life was equally resilient as the unicellular life.

And over the last 500,000,000 years, the methods for building more and more articulated structures, biochemical processes, and parasitic relationships unfolded - and are still unfolding today (though some would say unravelling).

Human evolution is in reality a combination of the evolutionary path of thousands of different organisms.

Well-said, indeed!

It's been stated that today even most biologist realizes you need more than a blind search even with the almighty "natural selection".

This is only partially correct... As far as I know professional biologists, to which class I do NOT pertain, it must be noted, do not believe there is any need for further explanation for life's history beyond saying 'evolution'. There are several possible mechanisms, and some find greater favor under different circumstances. No thinking person would be so narrow-minded to say 'it's all sexual selection, and nothing else!', or 'genetic drift is The One'. There are many channels available for evolution to work through, but they are all Natural. None of them directed, planned, or intended: that's the important thing to keep in mind.

You can always explain it as incredible dumb luck no matter how small the odds are. This does not mean it's the most reasonable nor likely explanation.

Again, you're choice of language shows that you don't understand what the science of biology has discovered. Using phrases like 'dumb luck' and 'small odds' indicates that you see all adaptation as a roll of the dice. This simply is not so!

[disclaimer: I'm no biologist! I'm likely pretty wrong on the specifics! But I don't think we need to get into details of Evolutionary Development and hox pathways, etc.]
Consider a developing fly embryo. There are signaling genes in each cell growing in each limb. The antennae are actually built with the same genetic instructions, with the same genes, as the other legs. The only difference is in the timing of certain cascades of signaling chemicals. When a cell receives a signal from one of its neighbors, it stops producing the chemical. That stuff is regulated by the genetic code. A small adjustment in the code may result in the signal being a little weaker, or possibly the signal being kept off for longer: end result is the antennae might grow a little longer than its mother's. It is easy to imagine that slightly longer antennae confers an advantage - a selective advantage - if the creature is able to detect predators a little sooner, or perhaps longer antennae result in being able to detect mates better...? Get the idea? It is really an extremely simple, reasonable, and as it so happens, proven idea.

The argument is to find flaw with our inverted retinas and called it bad design. As Dawkins put it no intelligent designer would have done it that way. Muller cells themselves address the issue of the so called disadvantages of the inverted eye. Muller cells was discover after Gould death so he arguments can be likely become outdated as our knowledge of living cells increase.

You still haven't explained how Muller cells constitute evidence against the natural development and origin of the human eye. In fact, Muller cells only go to show how manifestly powerful adaptations can be! Perhaps Gould was unaware of Muller cells, but that doesn't mean that his arguments are no longer valid, nor outdated. His reasoning is sound, and knowledge about Muller cells only further fleshes out the details about how the eye works - their existence has no counter-factual weight at all.

And I might point out, that I'm pretty sure that the whole 'eye' argument far antedates Darwin himself. I seem to recall one of Gould's essays that talked about it at length

 

[Perfection]

WRONG! WRONG! WRONG! Oh, and by the way; you're wrong! Just look at the numver of species of bacteria next to the number of species of human - billions to one; or billions of billions to about ten in history.

Well it gets to splitting hairs, any given organism has no strong trend toward increasing complexity, however complexity increase of the most complex organisms seems to be something recurring quite freuently in evolution.

 

[El_Machinae]

There's a bit of selection bias, since you're only noticing cases where complexity occured, and then was preserved. Organisms are a slave to their history, and so there only needs to be a temporary benefit to being multicellular, and then a great number of the decendents will continue to be multicellular,, and thus appear more complex.

In counterpoint, though, there are scenarios where bacteria colonies will shuck genetic components because there's a reproductive advantage to simplicity.

 

[Flying Pig]

We only look at dinosaurs an people and say: "Look, life is complex!" But we never look at the lice on people and the worms in the guts of dinosaurs.

 

[AngryZealot]

When's the last time Creationism was used to make a prediction regarding undiscovered fact, and then motivated the researching of that fact?

About 200 years ago, when it predicted that the earth should be young and that all organisms should be evenly distributed throughout its layers. Then we found that the earth is old and that organisms are distinctly stratified; most converted, but a few continue to resist reality. In that regard, I consider Creationism a better scientific theory than Intelligent Design, because Creationism at least makes some very specific predictions that you can test. Intelligent Design uses ambiguous wording to turn itself into an unfalsifiable idea.


Here's an interesting evolutionary development: a photosynthetic animal. How long until these guys can reproduce their own chloroplasts? This could be the beginning of a very important evolutionary development. Could the world become dominated by mobile photosynthetic creatures?

 

[Birdjaguar]

But even after repeated evolutionary setbacks (masss extinctions) life seems to favor "more complex" rather than "less complex" forms.

WRONG! WRONG! WRONG! Oh, and by the way; you're wrong! Just look at the numver of species of bacteria next to the number of species of human - billions to one; or billions of billions to about ten in history.

Wow! Wrong four times in a single post of 19 words. I must be slipping.

But wait a minute. You seem to be equating complex life with humans. I have never done so; in fact, I think that I equated it multicellular life and that is a pretty broad category with more than one species.

Let me try to be a bit clearer. If as you said above in a post, "evolution is not random", and if after multiple mass extinctions, complex life repeatedly evolves to recreate very complex forms of many types, how can you say that there isn't some evolutionary benefit towards complexity? If there isn't, then why does it repeatedly come back and expand?

 

[Aramazd]

Wow! Wrong four times in a single post of 19 words. I must be slipping.

But wait a minute. You seem to be equating complex life with humans. I have never done so; in fact, I think that I equated it multicellular life and that is a pretty broad category with more than one species.

Let me try to be a bit clearer. If as you said above in a post, "evolution is not random", and if after multiple mass extinctions, complex life repeatedly evolves to recreate very complex forms of many types, how can you say that there isn't some evolutionary benefit towards complexity? If there isn't, then why does it repeatedly come back and expand?

Complexity is beneficial because it allows organisms to grow and reproduce with much less competition.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Complexity is beneficial because it allows organisms to grow and reproduce with much less competition.

I would agree, I'm not sure Flying pig would though.

If, as you imply, there is a bias towards complexity, it may not be in every environment. there might well be environments where simplicity is a better adaptation. But as environmetns get more complex, complex life appears tome to get more complex.

Can we say:

1. Evolution is not random
2. It is biased towards survival and then reproduction

and...

3. In situations where the complexity of life and its environment increases, complex life is likely to get more complex

 

[AngryZealot]

2. It is biased towards survival and then reproduction

Wouldn't it have to be the other way around? If you survive for 10000 years but never reproduce, you are still an evolutionary dead end.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Wouldn't it have to be the other way around? If you survive for 10000 years but never reproduce, you are still an evolutionary dead end.

I thought about that and decided that if a species can't survive long enough to reproduce, it would be doomed. I have assumed that reproduction takes some amount of time during which survival is necessary. But, yes, both are required.

 

[Aramazd]

I thought about that and decided that if a species can't survive long enough to reproduce, it would be doomed. I have assumed that reproduction takes some amount of time during which survival is necessary. But, yes, both are required.

I'd consider survival until reproduction, as biased towards reproduction. Survival past reproduction is only beneficial if it helps reproduction, either by allowing more reproduction or to make sure that offspring survive.

 

[sanabas]

I would agree, I'm not sure Flying pig would though.

If, as you imply, there is a bias towards complexity, it may not be in every environment. there might well be environments where simplicity is a better adaptation. But as environmetns get more complex, complex life appears tome to get more complex.

Can we say:

1. Evolution is not random
2. It is biased towards survival and then reproduction

Surviving to reproduce makes more sense, as mentioned. And if I was going to simplify it, surviving and reproducing as a population is a bigger factor than doing it as an individual. Some species only tend to have a few kids, and invest a lot of resources in getting them to reproduce, some species have stacks of offspring, and it's a lottery which will survive and reproduce.

and...

3. In situations where the complexity of life and its environment increases, complex life is likely to get more complex

There's lots of talk of complexity in this thread, but not much mention of what constitutes increased complexity. Eukaryote > Prokaryote, Multicellular > Unicellular, Triploblasts > Diploblasts all seem easy to agree on, but how do you measure complexity after that? What's more complex, a human or a cockroach? If a species splits into a robust and a gracile subspecies, which one is more complex?

Let me try to be a bit clearer. If as you said above in a post, "evolution is not random", and if after multiple mass extinctions, complex life repeatedly evolves to recreate very complex forms of many types, how can you say that there isn't some evolutionary benefit towards complexity? If there isn't, then why does it repeatedly come back and expand?

As I said, not sure how you measure complexity, or conclude we're going from complex survivors --> very complex descendants. What we do have is mass extinction = vacant ecological niches, so complex survivors evolve in different directions to fill those niches, and in the process open up more niches for other organisms, i.e. various parasites. Stuff like photosynthesis, or being warm-blooded, open up lots more niches too. There's an evolutionary benefit towards filling an available niche, some change to complexity level seems like a side effect of that.

 

[Birdjaguar]

I left "complex" deliberately vague just because of the problem in defining it. As a starting point I would say that life that is visible to the naked eye is probably "complex", perhaps, excluding the odd, giant, single-cell jelly fish and the like. I don't know enough biology to push it smaller, but I would not exclude smaller things out of hand. The idea though is not to draw a line, but to think about how "complexity" fits into evolution.

 

[El_Machinae]

I still think you're having selection bias. You're only noticing the successes, where 'complexity' is being preserved. As well, the number of environments where unicellular life thrives (not just survives) is vastly higher than the number of niches that multicellular life survives.

 

[BasketCase]

RRRRrrrggh. Ever have a thread make you lose sleep? This one did.

That whole thing Smidlee wrote about how the existence of human life is like tossing a handful of coins on the floor and having them all stand up on top of each other was just bugging the hell outta me. I knew it was baloney--that wasn't the problem. The problem was that there's an old saying I took to heart about how you don't really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother.

Uhhhhh.....no--Smidlee isn't my grandmother.

Anyway, what was bugging me was how to explain it in layman's terms without extensively convoluted terminol---errrrr, without lots of big words. I think I've got it down--here goes.


Nobody ever wonders why the Earth has magically stayed in one piece for five billion years without exploding into a billion asteroids. It's called gravity. When you've got a big ol' cloud of rocks floating around in space, gravity must inevitably pull them together--and once it forms, it's gonna stay that way until something gigantic happens, such as a supernova. The existence of Earth is a great big "duh" on a cosmic scale; thanks to the way the Laws of Physics happen to be, the formation planets is no miracle--it's a given.

So is human life.

The formation of the Earth out of space debris was a rare but inevitable event that is dynamically stable. Once it happens, it doesn't unhappen unless something really big knocks it good and hard. Pieces of paper generally don't magically burst into flames, but once a piece of paper does catch fire, the laws of physics REQUIRE that it keep burning. Once you release a quarter from your hand, it MUST fall downwards.

But if you've got half a dozen coins all standing on end, nothing requires that they stay that way. In fact, the laws of physics require that they will not. That's an example of a dynamically UNstable event.

The evolution of life was dynamically stable. The formation of self-replicating organisms is rare, but once it happens, that organism is going to keep replicating. Once it got started, the end result--us--was inevitable.

And another note: the evolution of life wasn't a single event. It was lots of events. There aren't just humans--there are dogs and cats and mice and birds and snakes. Hop into the oceans and things get really, REALLY wierd. Dive a few hundred feet down and you start seeing living things that look like they're from another planet. The point of all this is that Evolution didn't just happen once. The process of evolution tried out EVERY SINGLE METHOD possible: two legs, four legs, fangs, wings, venom--hell, even critters with NO limbs at all. The ones that actually worked are still around. The evolutionary failures, such as dinosaurs? Gone.


There, that should do it.

 

[Simple Simon]

uh, BC, you should be very wary calling dinosaurs a 'failure'! After all, they are still around and prospering quite nicely, thank you, dominating the air today and since the beginning of the Tertiary as they did solid ground from a solid 150 million years. Across all climatic zones and altitudes.

Whatever killed the terrestrial dinosaurs would most probably kill most mammals, too.