Problems with Mutation and the Evolution of the Sexes

Hi Lyston,If you are here to learn, then I applaud you. Too many creationists decry evolution without displaying any understanding of what it really entails. Learning is never wasted. Even if you end up deciding that evolution really is nonsense, at least no-one will be able to accuse you of ignorance and you will be that much better equipped to take the theory on in debate. The basic advantage derived from sexual reproduction is genetic recombination. This allows novel mutations to become distributed throughout the population and prevents the build-up of harmful mutations that would result from asexual reproduction. There is a page on this available on Wikipedia, but I suggest that you start with the pages Percy linked to above.

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Mutate and Survive

Hi Lyston,I think the important point to note is that fossilisation is a very rare event. It's even rarer that we actually find them. Nonetheless, there are huge numbers of fossils around and they show gradual changes, taking place over time. The claim in your pamphlet is just false, we do see transition, as noted in the wiki article you mentioned, with later trilobite species displaying more complex eyes.The reason that complex forms seem to "appear suddenly" is because we only get a tiny glimpse of the entire story of life when we look at fossils. Each fossil shows us just one individual, at one stage in its evolution, at a single point in time, so the glimpses we get are just fragments of the whole story. Gradual changes are taking place all the time, but we only see the results in the fossil record intermittently.It is a bit like trying to get an idea of a movie just by looking at a handful of disparate frames.The wiki article on the Evolution of the Eye is pretty good, give it a read. Luckily, there is a wealth of material out there debunking creationist objections to the evolution of eyes.Added by Edit; As has been noted above, we are off-topic here, but I too would be happy to discuss this with you, should you care to open a thread. What I said about the fragmentary nature of the fossil record could apply to the evolution of many traits though.Edited by Granny Magda, : No reason given.

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Mutate and Survive

Hi godservant, welcome to EvC, Woah! Let me stop you right there. We are not perfect. Even a casual inspection of my dodgy short-sighted eyes, or the failing kidneys that nearly cost me my life should tell you that.Also, perfection requires some kind of standard against which it can be measured. Evolution has no such standard. Natural selection does not require that an organism be perfect, only that it is just good enough to get by. Perfection is a human conceit, which does not exist in the real world.I'm sure that it is very reassuring for you to consider yourself to be "as perfect as perfect can be", but I am afraid that this is just a delusion of yours, with no relevance to evolution. Sorry.Added by Edit: By the way, whoever told you that the process of evolution breaks the second law of thermodynamics was (I'm being charitable here) mistaken. The second law only refers to a closed system. The earth is not a closed system, since it constantly receiving energy from the sun, a constant source of input. Here is a page that explains this in more detail. I suggest that you take a look and that you assess the source of this claim about the second law more critically in future.Edited by Granny Magda, : Added last bit.

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Mutate and Survive