How can evolution explain body symmetry?

Thanks, Mick. As soon as I get the time for it.
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Here is a very nice a-symmetric animal: This message has been edited by Peter van der Hoog, 05-07-2005 01:32 PM

can I ask what it is?Mick

thanks for the replies, I got some really useful info. If anyone knows any web pages that have more on the subject i'd really apreciate it since i'm writing a paer on the subject.

A sea squirt ??

Yup, it's a Sea Squirt.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

I appriciate your question, Mick. As a junior, it is nice to get some attention.It is a sea squirts or ascidean. All sea squirts have two 'holes' or siphons, one in which water is drawn into the body (inhalent siphon), the other through which water is expelled from the body (exhalent siphon). With the water comes plankton, which is extracted in the net-like stomach before the water is expelled. These animals are therefore filter feeders.Sea squirts are an excellent proof evolution does not care about symmetry. The only thing that matters is: Does It Work.

Thanks!Is that its real colour, or is it under UV light?mick

No idea, I did not take the picture myself. What do you think?----------------
Something else, I liked this article from the New Yorker: Why intelligent design is bad science

quote:

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Smelling or feeling symmetry is out of the question.

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I dont think smelling or feeling "symmetry" is "" out of the question. Do you think that MIT is actually engineering this whole human sense or perhaps they are not and the researchers think like you but are missing this possibility completely? I think this is the paper I am thinking of.http://www.itpapers.com/whitepaper.aspx?scname=Artificial...

Feeling symmetry is not impossible but a visual check is more accurate. This mole found a solution for bad eyesight: Do you know how these moles flirt? They put their heads very near to eachother and then feel the symmetry of the tentacles.Isn't nature beautiful?

Pretty much, yes.The issue develops as if one thinks that any ornamentation has selective value. I would agree the effect of photons is likely to lead to some turn of form that might not but shed light on that which looks if nothing else, like a flower.

Its hard to tell from your picture exactly how symmetrical the Sea squirt is. It certainly isn't symmetrical along the axis running down the middle of the picture, but what about one running through the center of the oral and aboral siphons? It may certainly be as symmetrical as a human being, in that it dispays external symmetry along one axis and has asymmetric internal organs. The juvenile swimming larvae are certainly bilaterally symmetrical. TTFN,WK

Yes, indeed!
It was by thinking that there still was symmetry there THROUGH the opening that I was lead to apply the geometric triangle to the same inter alia. Only on my view it is the the maths' vertex that gets the brunt of the question mark, not the difference of ontogeny and phylogeny of twisted entrails.Fabulous remark WK.

Haven't read the whole thread, but the following comment is one reason I am highly skeptical of evolutionists claims to approach the data with a scientific approach. Evolutionists bring up God more than the creationists do, but then have the gall to claim they are merely basing things on science.What a joke!I haven't read the whole thread, but the pure idiocy of crash's comments frequently echoed by evolutionists and the sheer numbers of false arguments put forth to try to refute their critics makes an objective person wonder why they claim to be using a scientific approach.Maybe working scientists are, but comments like Crash's seem to be the dominant way evolutionary theories are promoted and defended.

Good point on DNA. I would argue that the OP's initial idea may not have an answer due to lack of evidence.What has occurred is reproduction producing similarities (common ancestry) is a more easily observed process and has thus garnered undue influence in the thinking of evolutionists, for lack of a better term, eager to prove their theories absent the data really sufficient to make good assertations. The process has thus been tainted.There is overwhelming evidence for design, and the fact evolution is not really random, but totally governed by a number of factors. Mutations are not random. DNA displays some convergent tendencies for instance, and the principles of chemistry and matter underlying DNA are not ever-changing, but exert a guiding force on evolution.For me, as far as the Creator, I tend to think universal common descent is so implausible and statistically insane that if it is true, it is indeed a mighty miracle of God.I do think there is evidence for evolution, but I don't think the mechanisms presented are sufficient.Symmetry, convergent evolution, adding of new information to genomes to go from a initial life form to all see today, and a whole host of details suggest to me that trying to pin evolution on randomness is false.One poster argued that design was clearly there but produced by the physical properties and laws already in place.If that is so, one has to wonder who made those physical laws and properties that hold within them the keys and blueprints of the design.