anastasia writes:
What are the odds that the most simple eye could appear in one mutation?
Did you know that it may take only one mutation in a certain hight level gene to cause a finch to grow a long pointy beak instead of a stout one? Reading this
article on evo-devo might help you understand how.
if countless things get on without [eyes], what is the sense in getting one?
Exactly! Sense, that is what this whole thing hinges on. Or rather, senselessness.
Most animal species without eyes live in environments where there is no light. It would indeed be senseless to develop them because the cost of maintaining them is too high in relation to the negligible benefits they might bestow on the creature. But creatures
with eyes live in environments where there
is light. In those circumstances it would be senseless
not to develop eyes, because of the great advantage they give creatures that have them, an advantage which definitely outweighs the cost this time.
But however senseless developing eyes may seem (or
not developing them, as the case may be), it should really have no bearing on our perspective on evolution, because evolution does not proceed in a sensible way. It is a mindless process of stunning simplicity, with equally stunning results. But above all, it's a process in which whatever happens, just happens. There are no goals, no plans, and no foresights.
Those are just things we humans tend to look for all the time, because that is how
we operate. This has long been our handicap in trying to understand how living nature came to be so diverse. If you look for a sensible explanation, by which I mean an explanation for perceived meaningfulness, you tend to go overboard on intricacy, and you end up with an explanation that's more inexplicable (e.g. God) than that which you want to explain.
But if you, like Darwin, come to understand that what is perceived as very meaningful may in fact be totally devoid of meaning, then you may stumble on a simpler explanation. And the theory of evolution is actually so simple a theory that it can be expressed in just one or two sentences, in plain language. That fact alone, its simplicity, lends the Darwinian explanation a strong sense of veracity if you compare it to the alternatives.
And then there's the small matter of a 150 years' worth of physical scientific evidence of course.
Edited by Parasomnium, : No reason given.
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." - Charles Darwin.