Why is the Intelligent Designer so inept?

How did our sins invert the retina in every vertebrate species? How did cephalopods avoid our sin?Edited by Taq, : No reason given.

The cephalopod eye does not have an inverted retina, and cephalopods do just fine. Also, surely and all-knowing and all-powerful designer would not be subject to "trade-offs". You would think that a competent designer would be able to figure out a way to get enough oxygen to the retinal cells without having to put the wires in the light path.

I am only debating this from the perspective of an all-powerful and all-knowing deity. Since, by definition, such a deity could produce an eye without the flaws found in the vertebrate eye it stands to reason that either the creator put flaws in the eye on purpose or the creator is not all-knowing and all-powerful. So the all-knowing and all-powerful deity that exists outside of time and space didn't have enough time to do it right, just good enough? You don't see the logical problems here?

Didn't you just say the following?"The both of you are debating this issue from the perspective of the way you think a creator should be running things."So you accuse us of overreaching, and then just a few minutes later you do the same. Would a computer built by an all-powerful and all-knowing deity need more memory and a bigger screen?

I remember when an 8086 processor (actually, it was an 8088 because it had an additional math coprocessor, cutting edge stuff) could run all of the software out there, and quite well. It outperformed all of the other personal computers at the time.So if I gave you an 8086 based computer would you think of it as perfect?

This argument is seriously flawed. Phyla have only existed for a few hundred years. They were invented by Linnaeus. Phyla are not real things, they are human contrivances. The only real, objective division in biology is at the level of species, and the number of species has increased over time. Could you expand on this a bit? How does Chien refute this theory?

You are confusing evolution with abiogenesis. Evolution (or neo-Darwinism if you want) deals with how life changed once it got here. Abiogenesis deals with how life got here.

Science has thrown the Linnaean system out, for the most part. A vast majority of taxonomists use cladistics.As I stated before, the only objective division in biology is at the species level. That's it. Everything above the species level (genera, families, orders) are human contrivances that we use to group species together.

Why aren't mammals, reptiles, and birds all in separate phyla? Who gets to decide these things? What are the criteria that are used? As it should be given the fact that the genomes we are studying are hte product of 3.5 billion years of evolution. You want to pretend that modern genomes are the product of accidents. They aren't. They are the product of a known process that is not accidental. That process is natural selection. What science has shown is that there is no such thing as a novel structure. All the structures we see are modifications of pre-existing structures. Our limbs are modified fish fins, as one example. Two of our middle ear bones are modified reptillian jaw bones, as another example. Both icthyostega and acanthostega are fish with feet.

There are legitimate differences between species of the same genera, and yet they do not get their own phyla.When Linnaeus devised the system so that life could be put into groups. At the level of Kingdom and Phylum Linnaeus wanted these to be very large groups that incorporate a lot of organisms so the number of shared characteristics needed to be in each phylum is quite low. Compare this to genera which require the members of a genus to share a lot of characteristics.Evolutionarily, these taxonomic levels are best described temporally. If a lineage has been around for a long time then it will probably be described as a phylum. If a lineage has been around for a very short time then it will be described as a genus. As one would expect from an evolutionary process, there is more diversity in a phylum then there is in a genus. For example, a genus of trout has less diversity than the phylum Cephalochordata of which trout are a member of as well. The cephalochordate lineage has been around for a lot longer than the trout lineage.What you also seem to miss is that evolution is descent with modification. You are what your ancestors were, plus modification. If your ancestor was a cephalochordate you too are a ceaphalochordate. You can't evolve out of your ancestry. Therefore, evolution can not produce new phyla once the phyla have been defined by humans. What needs to be explained away? Punk eek is an observed mechanism. No, it wouldn't. Punctuated equilibria produces a nested hierarchy, being an evolutionary mechanism and all. There is nothing forcing a creator to stick to this branching pattern. For example, if this creator has created both bats and birds then why don't we see a bat with feathers or a bird with teats? Why do we exclusively see a nested hierarchy, be it phyletic gradualism or punctuated equilibria?Edited by Taq, : No reason given.

I am talking about shared characteristics within the phylum. For all of the species within a phylum the number of shared characteristics is much lower than the shared characteristics within a genus. Compare a lancelet to a bear. They only share a few features such as a notochord, cephalization, and a few organs. Other than that they are quite different. However, both the lancelet and the bear are in the same phylum. Now compare a brown bear to a polar bear. Both in the same genus and they share a lot of characteristics.The goal of Linnaean taxonomy is to get things in groups that are easier to handle based on shared characteristics. That's it. That's why it doesn't make any sense when you ask why evolution did not produce new phyla over the last 200 million years. The would obviously be in the same phyla as their ancestors were, no matter how much they changed.Also, the "uniqueness" of a body plan is in the eye of the beholder. If you want to get picky, every human has a unique body plan that is their own. How else can we tell each other apart. At the most general level, all life shares characteristics so no single organism is uniqe. Both are extremes, but you can see why "unique" is a rather subjective measurement. The problem with any fossil is putting it in a direct lineage. It's impossible to do. Cladistics is the only solution where species are never put in a straight line between two others. Fossils don't come with birth certificates. The only thing we can do is organize life by shared characteristics, or in the case of cladistics by synapomorphies.As for the sudden appearance of fossils, how else are they supposed to appear? Are they supposed to fade in and out of existence as we look at them? Are they supposed to morph into different shapes between their ancestral and descendant morphologies as we look at them? What about the similarities? Are phyla not part of a cohesive taxonimic kingdom? Does not all life share characteristics? The same for cephalochordates. We can find them in the Cambrian and they are still around today. In fact, we humans are cephalochordates. The only animals on land prior to the emergence of vertebrate tetrapods were arthropods. There wasn't much competition for the niches that tetrapods are capable of filling. Also, these early tetrapods appear to be adapted to shallow and brackish water that held very little oxygen. Their ability to extract oxygen from the air was more than likely an adapation for shallow water environments. Given the abundance of prey (arthropods) on land and the competition in the water I don't think it is much of a stretch at all, and not at all a problem for evolution.You might also want to take a look at modern fish species that are semi-terrestrial. Lungfish and mudskippers are two perfect examples.

How so? Three mistakes.First, hyena-like does not mean hyena. It means something that somewhat resembles a modern hyena.Secondly, what the genetic comparisons suggest is that the closest living relative to whales is the hippo.Fixing your two first mistakes leads us to the real answer. Modern whales and modern hippos share a common ancestor that was hyena-like (but not a hyena). This common ancestor was an artiodactyl just as whales and hippos are to this day, but not hyenas.Third mistake is in trusting the Discovery Institute to accurately portray a quote. Here is the entire Rose quote:

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Despite this evidence that cetaceans (whales, dolphins, and porpoises) evolved from artiodactyls, substantial discrepancies remain, Rose said. "If cetacaeans belong to artiodactyls," he said, "then similarities in the cranial and dental morphologies of mesonychians and cetaceans must be the result of convergent evolution or must have been lost in artiodactyls.

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"Well-preserved ankles of the earliest ancient whales are now needed to confirm that the traits seen in the new skeletons are indeed inherited from early artiodactyls and not a result of convergent evolution," Rose said.

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There are still puzzles to work out, but nothing impossible or contradictory. So you are moving from the "no transitionals" to the "not enough transitionals" camp. The moving goal posts are noted.So how did you come to the conclusion that the transition is not smooth? Have we dug up every fossil of every species that has existed? If not, how can you come to this conclusion?

Like the poster above, I have to ask what a "Cambrian Phylum" is. Modern species are in the same phyla as species found in the Cambrian.Secondly, there may very well continue to be a lack of transitionals. However, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. We do not have a minute by minute itinerary for George Washington, but I am pretty sure George Washington existed for those days that we have no recorded history for his existence. We have by no means searched every inch of Cambrian strata, nor has every bit of Cambrian strata made it into the modern age. On top of that, there is still no guarantee that every species that existed during the Cambrian era produced a fossil. Gaps in the fossil record are not a problem for the theory of evolution. Fossils with features which violate the predictions made by the theory of evolution are a problem, and those fossils have not been found. The fossils that we do have prior to the Cambrian explosion are of soft bodied critters. During the Cambrian explosion we see the emergence of hard bodied animals and the number of specimens increases. It's not a stretch of the imagination that the increase in the number of specimens is due to the appearance of body types that are more easily preserved.As for you incredulity, that is your problem. I can state that airplanes shouldn't be able to fly, but that doesn't cause them to fall out of the sky. It's not heresy. It is an unfounded claim. You can not look at a fossil and determine that it did not have ancestors. There are no labels on fossils that says "do not have ancestors". If I dig in a cemetary and come across a human skeleton can I state that this skeleton suddenly appears with no ancestors? How can I do such a thing? I thought we were having an adult conversation.I have no doubt that scientists are looking for these fossils as we speak. However, the theory of evolution does not hang in the balance on whether or not these fossils are found. The genetic evidence is as conclusive as it gets. Even if no fossils had ever been found the genetic evidence would be enough to show that the theory of evolution is very, very accurate. Fossils are the icing on the cake, so to speak.Edited by Taq, : No reason given.

Both phyletic gradualism and punctuated equilbria fit nicely into neo-Darwinism. They work by the same mechanisms, the mechanisms of mutation, selection, and speciation. The difference is that punctuated equilibria puts more stress on the mechanism of speciation. They are still there producing more variation which is then selected by the environment. Selection and mutation work in opposite directions. Mutations produce variation. Selection pares down variation. In environments that are changing, new variation that is better adapated to the changing environment so what we see is a replacement of the old with the new. In static environments, new variations are much less likely to be better adapted than the old variation. If mutations lead to complex organisms that are better suited to the environment these mutations would become more and more common in the population, would they not? If that were true we would all be using 8086 computers right now (no offense to Mac users). We aren't. Your refutation failed.If I may, I will speak just a little bit more on the Cambrian explosion and evolution.When we look at embryonic development we see embryos go through stages that resemble simpler forms of life. It is not a straight recapitulation like Haeckel proposed, but the evolution of development is reflected in the stages of development. Each stage of development is based on the stage before it. In the Cambrian we see species that set the foundation for this process. These species evolved the first steps in embryonic development. Over time, embryonic development has continued to evolve. Stages that were once at the end of development are now at the beginning. As these early stages are built upon it gets much harder to change those early stages.As an analogy, which is easier? To change the foundation of a building or to change the faucets? Obviously, it is much easier to change the faucets. That is how it is with embryonic development. The end stages are much easier to change than the early, foundational steps. It is easier to change the number of phalanges than it is to change the number of tissues (endoderm, mesoderm, ectoderm) in a triploblastic organism. Once you start building on top of these early developmental stages you can no longer change them.This is what we see in the Cambrian. The establishment of the earliest stages of embryonic development due to the emergence of hox genes. Evolution of complex animals since then has added to this foundation.

The problem here is that there doesn't appear to be an evolutionary pathway that will allow us to change the flaw inherent in the vertebrate eye. The design of the eye is rooted deep in vertebrate embryonic development. IOW, there is no straightforward way to evolve from an inverted retina to a foward facing retina like that found in cephalopods (e.g. squids and octopi).There had to be two designers, one each for the cephalopod eye and one for the vertebrate eye, or the single designer purposely built the vertebrate eye with an inherent flaw. If you want to argue for a single designer then the conclusion that this designer was inept or purposely inept is well supported by this example.Let's bring this full circle. Let's say that Bill Gates claims to have built a camera that is "good enough". In that camera the wires pass in front of the light sensing diodes. Bill Gates even made these wires so that they were translucent which increased the light that could pass through them. However, the image is still slightly blurred by the wires passing in front of light sensing diodes. At the same time, there are known designs where the wires exit out the back of the light sensing diodes and never pass in front of the incoming image.Is Bill Gates (in this example) an inept engineer. I would say, unequivocably, YES. Do you agree or disagree? With all due respect, I would rather talk about evidence and how they support hypotheses than what you prefer to believe or not believe. I don't mean any disprespect, but I have found that butting heads over preferred beliefs doesn't get anywhere.Edited by Taq, : No reason given.Edited by Taq, : No reason given.