The Origin of Novelty

I think that many people, like me before I studied the issue much, just assume that those who are supposedly informed about evolution have already thought through the tough problems and come up with reasonable theories as to how new features have evolved. But as this thread clearly shows, it is not the case. In fact, no one on the entire planet has a reasonable description of how you go from nothing to a sophisticated body part made up of hundreds of inter-dependent parts. Not Richard Dawkins, or P. Z. Meyers or Kenneth Miller or anyone on this site has even a simple clue as to how this comes about. Just look what we are talking about here.Well, if you can feel the sunlight on your body with your eyes closed, just imagine what would happen if you then had a dimple. I mean, wouldn't that make it even easier to fell the sunlight? So an accidental dimple would be very beneficial to those beings struggling in the dark with no eyesight. Its so funny, it hard not to be amused. As if you could feel the sunlight better in your clavicle depression then you could on your shiny forehead. As if somehow a dimple is going to focus light and make you get around better enough to win more mates. Its so preposterous that its hard to know where to start about how illogical this is. And this is from people who claim to really know all about evolution.And that's not even the tiny tip of the iceberg of ridiculous. Eventually with enough mutations (random throughout your whole body) that depression is going to get deeper and get a mutation for a cornea. And for an optic nerve. And its going to fill with liquid, and this is also going to make an animal live better. This will happen by accident. Eventually, that depression will accidentally mutate into a hole in ones skull, and boy isn't it lucky that that hole is right on top of one's head, instead of on ones knee so it doesn't get infected before the eye becomes really good, and has eyelids and tear ducts and all.These are the experts talking now mind you. They really have got it down.Like Blue jay said, it is hard to get one's mind around the fact that things have happened so fortuitously. And don't think its any less believable, just because we have zero evidence for this-zero fossils that explain this, zero dead end mutations that started to lead somewhere then got mangled, zero corneas mutating on one's underarms, zero optic nerves dangling out of ones ears-which is what we should really expect from a bunch of random mutations looking for a use.Anyone who is unsure about the scientific foundation for how evolution works, needs only read this thread and see just how unable the evolution side is in being able to make any sense of this.Its an empty theory, built on faith greater than any scientific idea in history. Its simple incredible.

Hi Boulder-dash,Great discussion! I seem to remember a lecture on the flatworms that have rudimentary photo sensitive dimples on the dorsal.This was advantageous to keep such a creature from drying out in the sun which is why they are nocturnal. Platyhelminthes such a planeria live in water ponds or streams under rocks. Some are even semi terrestrial. They crawl along the surface of rocks and such to feed. Those that could I suppose better regulate their body temp with such a crude "eye" would be better suited to that niche. If you could be the first one back under your rock when the sun came up you'd stand a better chance of surviving a fish attack or the sun drying you out.

Hi Bolder-dash.You're certainly right that we don't have all the answers you think we should have. I hold no reservations about admitting that. And, if the conditions of victory were getting your opponent to admit that they don't know something, well, I guess that means you won. But, I have no idea why this seems so damning to evolution in your mind.We have never claimed that science is not a work in progress, nor have we ever claimed that we understand everything about evolution, life the universe, etc. If we already knew all this stuff, why would we still be doing science?The whole point of science is that it allows us to make use of our knowledge, even when that knowledge is imperfect. And that's what we need, because our knowledge will never be perfect. What you're quibbling with are the facts of evolutionary history. But, as you should know, facts are just specific pieces of information, and the universe offers no guarantee that we will be granted access to every specific piece of information that ever existed. All we can do is gather the bits of information we do have access to, construct hypotheses that allow us to estimate information we don't have, and try to see which hypothesis is the most likely.You're stuck on this stupid notion that, because we don't have all the answers, we must not have any of the answers. But, you'll notice that neither you nor Arriba has been willing or able to provide an answer for how God created the eye, or for why the peacock has a long feather-train on Darwinism Cannot Explain The Peacock. In fact, neither of you seems to even want an answer to those questions: "God did it somehow," is perfectly acceptable to you.So, in your mind, our inability to answer every single question is utterly damning to our worldview, but your inability to answer every single question is apparently immaterial to the validity of your worldview, and is, in fact, preferable in some cases.The sooner you can get over this stupid notion that we have to know everything before we can know anything, the sooner you'll actually start to understand our worldview, and the sooner you'll actually start to learn things.

You have a long history of being an ignorant arse - and clearly you intend to uphold that tradition.Edited by Panda, : No reason given.

I may not be able tell you how many millimeters it is from the top of the namesake ceremonial mound to the center of the intersection of Cross Timbers and Long Prairie roads but I do know Texas exists and that Flower Mound, Texas, exists.The level of detail you are asking for is not available. The people here are not "experts" on the evolution of the eye, though we obviously know more about the subject than you do, which isn't all that hard actually. Neither are Dawkins, Meyers or Miller.To the level of detail you are so want to press no one knows. Unlike you, we do know how the general mechanisms of evolution work. We know the overwelming evidence, the facts, the reality to which you are so willingly blind. You have not studied the issue at all. This thread is proof. You have no conception of what the mechanisms of evolution entail. People speculate on how this or that could have happened within the mechanisms available and all you can do is laugh like an ignorant idiot because ... well ... you are, not realizing how foolish you make yourself look.You dig and dig for details until you get to the point where we just do not know then point to this lack of specifics giggling like a little school girl and say the whole theory falls. You are truly a moron. Case in point. The speculation that this led to the eye may not be accurate in the specifics, no one can know, but we do see such creatures with crude light sensitive spots that so exist today having an advantage over those that do not. Within the known mechanisms of evolution, of which you remain so hopelessly ignorant, these speculations have a lot more efficacy than your poof, god done it with magic crap.God poofed it. Talk about empty theories.

The problem is the arrogance your side has, in declaring it a proven theory, when in fact you know next to nothing about how it happened, and what you try to guess happened is so illogical any little child should be able to see its ridiculous. Random corneas popping up out of no where-and you have the nerve to call my notions stupid.At least your side should be honest enough to just say, somehow life has developed in a stepwise fashion, but let's keep an open mind about how. But no instead, they want to say, kids can only learn about our shrine of random mutations and natural selection, no matter how illogical it seems to everyone including you.

Panda,Were you on the debate team in school? Because clearly you are gifted.I mean, I assume your cave had a school.

You know, if all that we presented in this thread were hypotheticals and maybes, your objections might be more defensible. However, given that this thread contains actual real world examples of living organisms showing each step in the process, you simply look like a typical creo, fingers in your ears, eyes closed, refusing to acknowledge reality.

Were you even in school?You appear to be home-schooled.

Hi, Bolder-dash. I can see how that might be frustrating for you. But, I feel like I (and those around me) have been very clearly and very carefully not "declaring it a proven theory"; making a big deal about it not being such, in fact. I'm sure some other evolutionists somewhere have declared it such, but I don't appreciate being held responsible for what some other evolutionist may have said.Can you direct me to an instance where I personally declared evolution a "proven theory"? If so, I will gladly amend my ways and (once again) admit to you that I was wrong about something.I will state that I regard the Theory of Evolution as the best theory available, and, frankly I regard it as so accurate and reliable that the truth of the matter regarding life's diversity and history is probably not very far at all from what the current theory suggests. This is exactly what I was trying to convey to you in my last couple of posts, and it's a bit disappointing to me that you didn't pick up on it. I suspect that random mutations and natural selection are sufficient to explain the emergence of the eye, but I do not know that, and am willing to entertain other possibilities.The beauty of science is that it allows us to not only come up with hypotheses, but allows us to assess the uncertainties involved with our hypotheses. I can see that there is considerable uncertainty about many things: e.g., the evolution of eyes, the evolution of the peacock's feather-train, the evolution of avian flight, etc. But, I do not see how that uncertainties associated with these specific examples are so great that they pose a serious challenge to the overall framework of the Theory of Evolution.In truth, it's entirely possible that some Intelligent Designer caused the "dimples" on mollusc eyespots that paved the way for the evolution of eyes. But, if that were true, we still wouldn't have access to that information, so we would be in the same boat we are in now: i.e., we would still need some evidence of some kind to show us that it's even a viable hypothesis.For hypotheses based on evolution, such evidence has been found in the form of large-scale patterns in biodiversity; incomplete, but compelling fossil sequences; and direct observations of the molecular mechanisms in action in example systems. So I consider many of these hypotheses to be viable (although there are a fair share of non-viable evolutionary hypotheses, too).I do not believe that equivalent evidence has been uncovered for any hypothesis contingent on Intelligent Design, so I relegate those hypotheses to the "unlikely" bin. I am willing to have my mind changed, but I will not do so in the absence of compelling evidence. And, arguments along the same vein as this thread (i.e., "evolution has trouble explaining X") are not particularly compelling.Edited by Blue Jay, : No reason given.Edited by Blue Jay, : No reason given.

I see you totally ignored my previous message to you. So I repeat:Given that the world is replete in organisms with every possible stage and level of detail of every adaptive feature that is out there, and given that there has NEVER been a case of irreducible complexity evidenced......please describe the mechanism for how adaptive features cannot evolve through the simple process of mutation + Natural Selection.You do realise that since chemistry is a stochastic process and that genetics is organic chemistry - then it follows that evolution MUST take place - simply because chemistry is stochastic......to not be able to see this is so basic, I feel so sorry for you.On the other hand, I can't for the life of me see why you adhere to a bronze age ignorant myth....now that does take some explaining!!

Arguments that evolution is not good at explaining the development of life features is not very compelling? Of course its compelling.You seem to want to just dismiss that not knowing the "finer details" of how things actually developed as just a little gap in our nearly complete theory. If nothing around you is pointing towards a random, chaotic, meandering type of evolution, and if even the entire universe appears to be much more sculptured, to be void of the failed dead ends of randomness; to be void of the things you would expect to see if your theory was true, its not just a casual oh so what if there isn't any evidence for any of what we believe. There is nothing compelling at all about a theory that says you can get step by step development of highly complex and precise systems through a random series of mistakes, when we NEVER see the side effects of those random, purposeless series of mistakes. Instead what we see are very purposeful, very specific series of steps, that don't have any of the meandering your theory calls for. "Oh well, we can't know everything..." That's absurd.I said that your side should be more honest about this. If you want to repudiate your sides attempts to control the debate about the huge gaps in your theory, then you can do so. I made a statement about the blindness of your side to see and admit the obvious-yet you still want to stick by them and say, well, it comes close enough to explaining things for me. That's not that scientific if you ask me.The observations that we see in life, in our everyday world, as well as in the world of fossils, points much much much more toward a directed process-steps don't meander, fossils, don't show numerous failed attempts at body parts, we don't see any of the random, partially beneficial mutations attempting to evolve unsuccessfully. NOTHING we see is the way we would expect it to be under your almost perfect theory. Your incredible faith in it none the less, is nothing, but well, faith.

What in the world is that even supposed to mean? A case of irreducible complexity evidenced? If someone can describe 100 systems that all don't make sense as partial systems, and then your side says, well, just because it couldn't be useful as a partial system for its present use, doesn't mean that it couldn't have had some other use...that doesn't make your case of it not being irreducibly complex valid.Just because Kenneth Miller can blithely say, well, you see, a mousetrap makes a great tie clip, you seem to think that this is actually making a point about evolution. So you have a million different systems of life features, (more like a billion really) and everyone of them (without the slightest thread of evidence) you are going to claim were once as useful as a mousetrap as a substitute for a tieclip. That would make for a pretty ******* messy looking world of fossils. And so is that what we have, a really messy bunch of fossils?Of course not, we have very clean fossils, fossils which as you noted showed every stage of development (and absolutely zero stages of failed developments). Maybe that should be telling you something, when you don't see all of these pieces of a mousetrap scattered all over the floor like a random process such as yours requires.

Evolution is extremely useful in explaining the development of life's features. What you are asking for is specific historical events which we may never have enough evidence to reconstruct even if we understand the mechanisms that were involved.Let's use gravity as an analogy. I say that gravity is a very good explanation for why planets orbit their star. You tell me that gravity is not a good explanation. Why? Because I can not show that planets in the Andromeda galaxy are moving about their star in a way consistent with gravity. I point out that we simply can not see those planets because they are too distant, but this does not stop you from using this absence of evidence to try and refute gravity.We will never know the history of every feature found in life. Never. What we can do is test the theory of evolution using the evidence we have found, just as we test the theory of gravity against the planets we can see. Time and again, the evidence we find fits the predicts made by the theory of evolution. That is why the theory is accepted by biologists, because IT WORKS, just as the theory of gravity works. We have mountains of evidence supporting evolution.29+ Evidences for Macroevolution: The Scientific Case for Common Descent

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There is nothing compelling at all about a theory that says you can get step by step development of highly complex and precise systems through a random series of mistakes, when we NEVER see the side effects of those random, purposeless series of mistakes.

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We do see the result of those mutations. The differences between us and chimps is a perfect example. Evidence please. We are not the ones ignoring the evidence we do have. That would be you.Edited by Taq, : No reason given.Edited by Admin, : Fix quote.

No one has yet shown that IC systems can not evolve. That is what is being referenced. Just because Michael Behe can blithely say, well, you see, a mousetrap missing a part stops functioning as a mousetrap, you seem to think that this is actually making a point about evolution. I can point to bones that once functioned as jaw bones but now function as ear bones. This is seen in the transitional fossils between reptiles and mammals. We can actually observe the evolution of an IC system in the mammalian middle ear.29+ Evidences for Macroevolution: Part 1