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Author | Topic: Irreducible complexity- the challenges have been rebutted (if not refuted) | |||||||||||||||||||
crashfrog Member (Idle past 1497 days) Posts: 19762 From: Silver Spring, MD Joined: |
What I am basically saying is that there can be no compelling explanation for the fact that for a spider to make a web there needs to be all the aparatus and substances in place as well as the program in the spiders brain to be able to make it. I found the explanation you quoted quite compelling. Can you explain why you did not?
Maybee this is an argument from incredulity but to me it's the most common sense way to show the faulty logic of darwinian evolution. It is an argument from incredulity, and as such, bears no resemblance to common sense and no connection to logic. After all plenty of stuff in science seems to fly in the face of common sense - particles that go from point a to point b without being anywhere in between, or worse, being in both places at once - and I don't hear you saying that "quantum physics is illogical." Common sense has nothing to do with how the world works beyond the tiny little world you're used to. Crack a book, preferably one on biology. Maybe it'll expand your mind to the point where you don't try to use your ignorance as a basis for your arguments.
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NosyNed Member Posts: 9004 From: Canada Joined: |
Gemster, I suggest you look at living things present today. The hole in your arguement is apparent. Look at the full range of spiders and their behavior, look at the full range of snakes and how they are equipped.
And all of that is just the existing creatures. Fill in the blanks with species spread over 1,000's of millenia and what do you have? You arguement doesn't stand up at all. Just think about it yourself a little.
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zephyr Member (Idle past 4580 days) Posts: 821 From: FOB Taji, Iraq Joined: |
There are venomous reptiles with less advanced versions of the same system. Other snakes have less effective fangs than the cobra. Gila monsters just have poisonous saliva, and have to gnaw on you for a while to get even a little into your blood. If the "perfect" system in a cobra was designed by a deity, why didn't they all get it? More importantly, if there was no death before the supposed fall, why do cobras have fangs at all - for subduing and eating tomatoes? Or did they instantly develop them, or evolve them over time, after they left the garden? How much of this change can you pack into the few hundred years between the garden and the old cultures that coexisted with cobras as we know them today?
The questions could just go on and on, but I don't see the point.
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Brad McFall Member (Idle past 5063 days) Posts: 3428 From: Ithaca,NY, USA Joined: |
But as Gould said about who might be the person to bother with it at all?
Did you ever think that fangs have anything to do with GILL SLITS (as to the place of the fang but not the existence itself)? I know IBM cant write commericals from this site.
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zephyr Member (Idle past 4580 days) Posts: 821 From: FOB Taji, Iraq Joined: |
Fangs and gill slits? I've never considered or investigated the relationship. Why, is there reason to suspect one?
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Brad McFall Member (Idle past 5063 days) Posts: 3428 From: Ithaca,NY, USA Joined: |
Calcium and Cell Death- but the I'm not up for preparing a long essay tonite. I have yet to return to the "meta"physical data, which is far easier to include it all in less type. But thanks for the feed thru.
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Rei Member (Idle past 7043 days) Posts: 1546 From: Iowa City, IA Joined: |
quote: You aparently are unaware of the current day in-betweens. There are a number of spiders which ,in fact, do not make webs, such as jumping and wandering spiders. Jumping spiders in particular do use their silk, but as an *assist*. They dangle from it to try and get to prey, or to be able to get back to an earlier position. Thus, your argument about the brain is completely irrelevant. As for the silk itself, there's a clear evolutionary path back to weaker silks, which would have still been useful, but less useful than the strong silk. It would merely have taken larger quantities. You can trace this all the way back to a simple sticky waste product.
quote: Again, not true. There are many more primitive web makers in existance, ranging from silkworms onward. Many simple webs are little more than clumps of fiber. Modern skilled web makers already have to be able to adapt to their situation (i.e, they don't follow a preset program), so it's merely a situatuation of greater adaptability. A likely progression was from lumps of silk, to strung lines of silk between two objects, to making a single intermediary line before stringing cross sections, to making multiple intermediary lines before cross sections, to angular lines (which would make the cross sections angular), in a modern web fashion. Again, just looking at modern species alone completely diffuses this. Ignoring the whole "instinct to bite" part (as if any carnivorous reptile doesn't already have that), look at the coral snake. The coral snake cannot inject poison effectively, and so has to repeatedly bite its prey. It has a transitional toothline - its teeth are more like simple calcified growths that have encompased what was initially a simple, non-injecting poison gland. An example of an animal with no focusing of its poison would be the gila monster. These glands, in turn, likely were initially just salivary glands which produced digestive juices that just happened to be particularly dangerous to living prey, making for an easier kill and thus a selective advantage. You can go beyond the standard snake injection system by looking at the progression to spitting cobras. The poison glands get larger and have stronger injection muscles. The teeth elongate, and the hole for injection begins to point more forward, steadily making it easier for the poison to have range. The need for the ability to swallow the prey whole only becomes more necessary as the fangs become larger, and is not needed in the beginning. As it progresses to a more effective injection system, biting becomes harder, and the ability to swallow prey whole becomes more advantageous. ------------------"Illuminant light, illuminate me."
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NosyNed Member Posts: 9004 From: Canada Joined: |
but the I'm not up for preparing a long essay tonite Maybe there is a god after all.
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nator Member (Idle past 2200 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
quote: The "Argument from Incredulity" is, in itself, a logical fallacy. A "fallacy" in an invalid argument, in other words. Therefore, one cannot use a logical fallacy to show a logical error. In addition, the so-called "common sense" of humans isn't actually very useful in scientific or logical matters. Humans are not logical, by nature. After all, it was considered "common sense" that the Earth was flat, not a sphere, for thousands of years. It was "common sense" that the sun, stars, and planets revolved around the Earth. It was considered "common sense" that heavy things dropped faster than light things. etc.
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Dr Jack Member Posts: 3514 From: Immigrant in the land of Deutsch Joined: Member Rating: 9.2 |
Note from a pedant:
Technically, it's the 'Argument from Personal Incredulity' that is a logical fallacy. In other words where the argument simply consists of 'that sounds absurd to me', there is a logically valid from of the 'Argument from Incredulity' where one supports the argument with evidence for the event(s) in question being fantastically unlikely.
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Rei Member (Idle past 7043 days) Posts: 1546 From: Iowa City, IA Joined: |
I also would like to point out that, notice how there are very few animals with "poison claws", while there are plenty with "poison teeth", to so speak? This is expected in evolution, while is not a prediction of creationism. The mouth begins with liquids that are designed for digestion (and thus more easy to make into a poison), while sweat and sebaceous glands in skin do not (quite the opposite actually). Thus, it is a much easier transition to poison fangs than it is to poison claws, even though poison claws would be incredibly useful in some animals.
I actually can only think of one poison "claw" - the duckbill platypus. Also note that the structure of its poisons ("defensins") are utterly different than those of venemous reptiles (there are none that even resemble any other animal poisons in the world), another prediction of evolution (poisons derrived from very different types of proteins will likely be very different in structure, even when they converge on the same purpose). In fact, it is likely that the toxins from platypuses are developed from blood proteins (unlike the salivary proteins of snakes) - they bear many similarities with immune-system proteins, and likely initialy were part of simple adaptation that made their immune system cause pain in other animals when it got into wounds during fights. ------------------"Illuminant light, illuminate me."
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Gemster Inactive Member |
I don't think one needs to read another biology book to formulate a good argument against evolution. the gap between a spider using a dragnet silk and one making a geometric web is like the gap between reptiles and primates. if a spider were to experiment on making a web then it would have intelligence like us humans. the things that we learn by experimentation we pass on through education to our offspring (unless you count learning to walk)
so the spiders web making must be an instinctive program. A highly complex program integrated with spinnerets and various different types of silk which it uses for different functions in its web. If it learnt to make a web by trial and error then when it finally made an adequate one, a mutation would have to occur in the spiders genes to ensure that its offspring could do the same. This mutation would have to involve many thousands of alterations to the genetic code. It cannot be explained by evolution and I think that some of you can sense this and so, the 'appeal to ridicule' . If you want to hide behind your text books, that is your prerogative but please don't think that your untenable position is made more defendable by attacking my use of simple logic.
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crashfrog Member (Idle past 1497 days) Posts: 19762 From: Silver Spring, MD Joined: |
the gap between a spider using a dragnet silk and one making a geometric web is like the gap between reptiles and primates. If by which you meant "they're both bridgable by incremental improvement, generation after generation, then you're absolutely correct.
If you want to hide behind your text books, that is your prerogative but please don't think that your untenable position is made more defendable by attacking my use of simple logic. But you haven't used any logic. Just your own personal incredulity. Spider webs are explainable by evolution. You have yet to explain how the proposed pathway is in error - you've just subsituted your incredulity for argument. Who wants to argue with that?
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Gemster Inactive Member |
My very point is that I havn't been given a pathway.
I have offered you more than my own personal incredulity, I have offered an argument. Perhaps you will next tell me I must prove that the web making faculty couldn't have evolved. Do you want me also to prove that the graphiti on a brick wall didn't come by way of a paint truck overturning.
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crashfrog Member (Idle past 1497 days) Posts: 19762 From: Silver Spring, MD Joined: |
My very point is that I havn't been given a pathway. You yourself provided this one:
quote: and never gave any other argument for why you found it insufficient beyond your own incredulity. For the third time, what about this explanation do you find lacking?
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