Really? Do you disbelieve every scientific theory that you do not completely understand?

The same perspective that Albert Einstein had about the tax code.

Raccoons. Raccoons are of no value. Nuke The Fecking Raccoons.

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Looking at your last paragraph.
Yes, evolution does occur. I studied it in high school over 40 years ago. We radiated Tse-Tse flies (?) and observed many generations of them. We saw variation in their wings and their eyes, and tracked those changes over the generations. But we never got a moth, or a house-hold fly, all we ever saw were variation of the flies we started with, and most of the variations were harmful, i.e. not beneficial.
As for humans, we have thousands of years of human history--all recognizable as human. Sure, we've developed, and become larger, but still--human--well, most of us.


The progress due to application of the Scientific Method is welcome. But using a systematic approach to create new things does not prove, or disprove how things originated.

I've given examples of complex systems--(sex and poisonous animals). Complex systems require ALL their components to be in place, and function before there is any benefit. How can such things "evolve"? Their is no benefit that would warrant natural selection until the system is complete. I don't need to understand the details of how that can happen--as others have alluded--I probably wouldn't understand them anyway. But it is important that someone can explain it, otherwise you are accepting it purely as a matter of "faith".
Again, my questions do not "prove" that evolution is false, but I raise them to dispel the idea that evolution has solved all its problems.

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1982 300SD " Wotan" ..On the road as of Jan 8, 2007 with Historic Tags

Thousands of years? Try going back a few million years and look at the fossils. A few thousand years in human history is like saying you are going hiking to the house next door. The differences between early hominids and present day hominids is staggering.

I am not aware of any systems in animals that did not function as they evolved. A penis did not appear prior to the plumbing happening. Poisons to my knowledge have always had a delivery system or other use. Unless you have specific examples (this is what I was asking for) of cases where this is evident I have no idea what you are talking about.

No one is saying that evolution has solved all the questions. Science is a fluid. Always changing as new evidence is found. Evolution is a fact. That we do not have all the answers does not negate what we do know. Given the preponderance of evidence of evolution, I believe it is safe to say that all life is the way it is due to natural selection and evolution. Some of the evolutions may not have been efficient, some of the evolutions may have been selected out at a later point an time but they are all a natural occurrence in my opinion. Since there is no alternative explanation what else could it be.

I think Holmes said something to the effect that once you have eliminated all other possibilities, the one that remains, no matter how unlikely, must be true.

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- With out god, life is everything.
- God is an ever receding pocket of scientific ignorance that's getting smaller and smaller as time moves on..." Neil DeGrasse Tyson
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- When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.

Actually we should probably clarify that evolution is a phenomenally SIMPLE process. All it does is select for traits that improve the reproductive fitness of a particular organism. This is a hugely important point - evolution is NOT a goal-directed process, i.e. evolution is not a process that automatically leads to a more complex, more sophisticated organism. (If it were, we would have no bacteria, or algae, or fungi, or viruses, or toads. Or raccoons, apparently.)

This is the fundamental misconception - that sex organs can't function until they are constructed in the fashion that we see today, or that poison delivery systems cannot function until they exist the way we see them in rattlesnakes, or that the eye cannot function until it is formed in the way we see it in the human form today.

The reason why this is a misconception is because you don't need sex organs to derive a benefit from sexual reproduction, you don't need hollow teeth before you can derive a benefit from excreting poison, and you don't need a human eye before you can derive benefit from sensing light.

Let's take the human eye for an example. It stands to reason that organisms that can visually perceive the environment around them would have a survival advantage compared to organisms that cannot. A number of simple, multi-cellular organisms have photoreceptors that can sense light and shadow. Not suprisingly, plants (which rely on photosynthesis) are also capable of sensing and tracking sunlight, despite the fact that they have no obvious "eyes."

It turns out the flatworms have optic "cups," with photoreceptors in the base of the cup that allow them to sense a directional component to light. Better than sensing just the presence of light or dark. The deeper that cup gets, the better the direction finding, and if the entrance of the cup narrows to a small circle (aka the "pupil," or in cameras the "iris" or "pinhole,"), you get shape perception. The smaller the pupil, the sharper the shape.

If you close off the front of the cup with a thin, transparent layer of skin cells, you provide protection to the light-sensing components AND you now have a substrate for the development of a mechanism to focus the light, etc. etc. etc.

A couple of interesting points about the eye - the human eye developed as an outpouching of the brain, and when we look at the back of the eye (as in your annual eye exam) we can actually detect abnormally high intracranial pressures because of that direct connection. The nerve fibers also stack on TOP of the light sensing cells (light from the outside has to pass through the nerve cells before it hits the photoreceptors). Mollusks, on the other hand, have a very structurally similar eye, but they evolved differently, and the nerve cells stack on the bottom of the eye. As a result, they have no blind spot (where the optic nerve enters the eye in humans).

Supposedly, the eye has been thought to have evolved independently about 50-100 times (according to wikipedia). I have no idea how accurate this is, but it makes sense in light of the immense survival advantage that vision plays in the environment.

Glad you're not saying it's a death blow to evolution, because it's not.

The equipment which evolved does have a benefit. Reproduction. Because reproduction is a vital thing, pleasure (at least in humans) is triggered by use of the equipment.

The equipment seems like more of blow to creationism. Why would god put a tally-whacker on adam when it was not intended to be used? But for that excellent piece of fruit, the apple, it would be just a handy thing to aim piss with.

The more complicated the system, the more it points to evolution. One would imagine god must be pretty smart, and would not make things that are needlessly complicated... So if it's complicated and possibly even unnecessary, doesn't that seem more like trial and error of evolution rather than an omnipotent god??

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You are expecting complex systems to evolve as a unit, it doesn't happen that way as per my understanding. The gene is the evolutionary unit. The ear didn't evolve to be an ear, the genes that code the structure and function of the ear are what evolved. All genes want nothing more than to replicate themselves, whether it is for the benefit or detriment of the host is irrelevant to the gene. Luckily, having an ear lessens natural selection pressure.

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You are attempting to dispel an idea that nobody has expressed, AFAIK. Who said evolution has solved all its problems?

Evolution need not be useful per se. It can just be a mutation that does nothing beneficial for example. Furthermore, if it does harm in the long run, a species can still get by and get to sexual maturity and reproduce and perpetuate its species...which can be a very short timespan for the majority of the earth's flora and fauna. Evolution doesn't function on a simple, linear scale.

Honestly there'd be a lot less debate on evolution if people actually knew what it was. It doesn't help that the usage of the word "theory" in science is different than it is for a layman.

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Thanks for that explanation.

I still think evolutionists approach complex systems with a great deal of "faith"--so many tiny, tiny steps over so much time.

I also appreciate that evolution does not claim any "direction" or goal-centered behavior--that the theory says we are what we are. WE, are the ones who see us as the "end result", and impose that as the goal.

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1982 300SD " Wotan" ..On the road as of Jan 8, 2007 with Historic Tags

I watch MSNBC Give some respect.