The power of accumulation in evolution is common sense!

First of all, damn I wish I could communicate like you. Your paraphrases of what I wrote are actually better than what I wrote. This is indeed the core question that I posed. I am just a little surprised that this question hasn't been made a big deal yet. I must admit that I had to google "hopeful monster" to know what it was. Good to know there's an official name for this argument. Not so good to know this argument is still being used by mainstream creationist organizations everywhere. And to be blunt, how dishonest can they get? Since this topic will be closed soon by adminmoose, permit me to draw a parallel.I think Slevesque wants us to believe that the creationists who make the arguments I portrayed (hopeful monster, eye, etc.) are on the fringe of creationist society, that they only make up a small minority of creationism. This is, of course, a complete lie. Mainstream creationists still use these arguments all the time.This is similar to the gay rights debate. Christians continue to tell me that homophobia and anti-gay agendas only make up a small minority of christian society. And yet we know from all the referendums and legislations that these people don't make up a small minority of christianity. Mainstream churches continue to preach hate.I guess what I'm trying to say is that we keep getting hit with this delusion of "the quiet majority" thing. In both cases above, there are individuals who would like us to believe that the extreme only make up a small minority. Yet, we continue to see examples to the contrary. Can I get at least a reference when you're rich and famous for publishing this new law?

Hi RAZD, Ok it's being a a while since I posted this, but usually I do not use the 'strawmen' accusation lightly. If I remember correctly, it was that TAZ was attacking an unnuanced position of a creationist, as if a creationist cannot make any nuance concerning accumulation, that nothing comes through with accumulation. Of course, attacking this position is very easy and simply requires to show that thigns can come through accumulation. (The way TAZ expressed this in the OP also implied that therefore, everything could come through accumulation)The stronger argument, of course, is that the creationist mind can make nuances. I can see that many things come through accumulation. I can easily imagine myself a river over millions of years carving the rock slowly in the formation of a canyon. Same for a lot of things. Therefore, in front of this position, TAZ's argument has no value. I guess a grenade making a hole into the ground would do. Or maybe an asteroid hitting the earth. Both of which produce ''instanteneous'' results.But of course, this is all tricky. Since time is continue, we can always take a small enough elapsed time as to come down to an accumulation-like appearance. Even for the explosion of a grenade, if the time is flowing slowly enough it will appear accumulative. However, if we are talking reel-time (which we should, since this is the time in which we live in afterall) then a grenade explosion carving a hole in the ground isn't really cumulative.Of course, my knowledge of quantum mechanics isn't great yet, but I would see this as the complete opposite as to what I have described earlier. On a macroscopic level, energy for example seems to accumulate. But if you go smaller on the smallest of scales, quantum mechanics tells you that it isn't continuous accumulation, but rather that energy goes in leaps and bounds because they come in bundles of quanta. So it jumps from one to two quanta, without accumulating through all the in-between. I can imagine the eye, just as a canyone, accumulating over time to what it is today. In fact, Behe in his book (black box) had such a description of an accumulation of the eye. However, that I can see it dos not mean that this is therefore what has actually happened.Got2go, but I hope this was a good read.

No, I didn't. I thought I already made this clear.

No, I'm pretty sure I understand what it is. A common IC argument is that a complex thing, such as the eye, could not have formed step by step because it can't function as an eye with anything less that what it has already. Now, what you're saying is there are alternative things the pre-eye could have been doing as it was evolving which is why it would be selected. And I agree with you. My argument is that there are some parts of the eye that are now necessary for any function at all, but they weren't always there. Since they've been incorporated into the structure, they've become necessary, but it wasn't always the case. Our arguments are not mutually exclusive, just looking at two different aspects. My internet society metaphor was not a perfect one, but I think it illustrated the idea that gradual accumulation can produce something that becomes necessary even though it wasn't originally, giving the illusion of so-called irreducible complexity

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We have many intuitions in our life and the point is that many of these intuitions are wrong. The question is, are we going to test those intuitions?
-Dan Ariely

Hi slevesque, thanks. Ah, so the quibble was about the portrayal of creationists, not about the principle of accumulation of characteristics\traits\features. Thanks for clearing that up. (not like creationists don't do it too ...) And yet, from the perspective of the grenade or the asteroid this is just a (final?) accumulation of events in their existence, as they did not appear de novo instantaneously. From the perspective of the earth, this is just another in a long line of accumulated explosions\impacts that temporarily modify part/s of the landscape. I disagree, the explosion is the result of the accumulated design and manufacture of the grenade, the conveyance of it to the point in question and the initiation of the explosive mechanism, and all of these happened and accumulated in real time. The process of the the explosion from the moment of initiation of the event to it's final end, with the last piece of dirt landing back on the earth and the echoes of the sound dying away as the sound energy is absorbed by various objects, this all occurs in real time and can be modeled as discrete moments that combined result in an accumulated effect. I'd have to let one of the physics mavens reply to this, but I don't think this is entirely accurate. We can think of the energy as a particle, and thus the exchange of energy from one object to another is just the accumulated exchange of energy packets from one to the other. Accumulation doesn't have to be a continuous process, just that the result over time is an accumulation of small incidents that add up.Mutation is also not a continuous process but one that occurs relatively constantly (in real time) to all organisms through quantified changes in their DNA. This is true for reproductive cells and all the other cells in your body. When such mutations occur in other parts of your body the accumulation over time can result in tan (the response to damage to the skin following sun energy causing a change in skin cells) or cancer. Agreed, it is not evidence that this is precisely what happened long ago in the evolution of eyes, however what it does do is show that the argument that the eye could not have evolved because it either (pick your pratt) had to evolve all at once or is too complicated, because these are just arguments from incredulity. Seeing as you can imagine the eye accumulating characteristics\traits\features from a light sensitive skin patch to the mammalian or octopus eye, means that you can see these arguments are logical fallacies.We can also see that the retina being one side up in one eye and the other side up in the other eye is just a logical result of which side was up in the initial process before more characteristics\traits\features accumulated to turn the eye into the visual instrument we now use, and not a product of specific design or intent.Further, we can see that the different mechanisms to focus the eye are also the result of something that worked being accumulated into the development process, where once it was operational in an organism would be passed by hereditary to all their descendants. Thus, the octopus focuses the eye by squeezing the entire eye to change it's shape and move the retina towards or away from the fixed focal length lens, while the mammalian eye is focused by the lens being squeezed to change it's focal length to match the fixed distance to the retina.We could also discuss how insect eyes work, or this litle guy: This is a little critter (a copepod, shown here as a larvae) that has a single eye and a single photoreceptor ... and yet it has a lens, and the single photoreceptor is moved around to accumulate an image of what the lens shows.Thus we see that they eyes in question are an accumulation of characteristics\traits\features that are not necessarily the same every time. Instead we see that each hereditary lineage was just opportunistic in taking any characteristic\trait\feature that proved advantageous to the reproduction or survival of the organism at any one stage and passing that on to following generations.Curiously, I do believe that anyone who understands evolution would have to agree, if evolution is true, that this process adequately explains how eyes would develop, in whatever lineage is involved.Enjoy.

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Of course it was clear, but as I had said at the time, this was the clear impression your text gave me. And I find that the way you expressed it in the OP still does, since you never changed it.

Even if I intended to literally say EVERYTHING came about through accumulation, it would still be an insignificant point in the OP. The point is that we are surrounded by things that came about through accumulation. By nitpicking a single word that I sloppily used, you've diverted attention away from the main point and toward an insignificant part of the OP.It's like attending a concert but you couldn't get over the fact that the drummer's haircut is slightly lopsided.

OK - Wasn't near a computer yesterday.Closing time - More specific topic theme(s) needed. Also, good topic titles.Adminnemooseus

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