The Origin of Novelty

You guys are just repeating your two strawman arguments over and over again.
1) Some of you feel that the designer should make varieties that are highly individualistic, not in groupings of features, and that these organisms arranged in nests of features point to evolution.
2) some of you feel the exceptions to groupings points to evolution.(bats/penguins/ostriches)I am saying that a designer actually does groupings and exceptions, and both are perfectly logical, cars are such an example of intelligent design, or alternatively look at the wider category of forms of transport. (a balloon, a jetski, a car).By creating groupings, and yet exceptions to the groupings, it allows the one type to dominate if conditions become unsuitable for the other type. ie Large flying insect predators during the carboniferous, flying reptiles during the Jurassic, birds currently. If the atmosphere becomes too oxygen depleted, birds are more vulnerable in this area to bats, and then we would find bats filling the ecological gaps left behind by birds, even if not quite so swift in the air.By creating both groupings, and the variety of exceptions to the groupings, this shows creative design. The ability to dominate a niche, and the ability for some within the grouping to survive within another niche, creates a flexibility and a rapid ecological balance when there are sudden extinctions. This I believe is the major explanation for the fossil record, rather than evolution. Its the ability of rare organisms to rapidly dominate an environment when common organisms rapidly die off. Sometimes ecological gaps can be rapidly filled due to the fact that there was some exceptional "crossover" type that was already operating in that ecology and so can fill that gap. This all points to a highly creative Creator, even if to evolutionists, the variety seems to you guys to point to evolution.Edited by mindspawn, : No reason given.Edited by mindspawn, : No reason given.

I enjoyed this point, because it was well thought out instead of the usual "an intelligent designer wouldn't do that" repetitiveness on this thread.wikipedia indicates the cephalopod eye is specialized for marine purposes: They are apparently colorblind:
Squids and octopi imitate color despite being colorblind There eyes stay horizontal to gravity:
Viasat Internet Oregon | Satellite Internet Provider OR If you think the cephaloid eye is superior to humans, you can keep it, maybe you like diving? I prefer my human eye thank you very much, optic nerve, blind spot and all. We have two eyes that largely negates the blind spot propblem. E.Coli, hey I'm still not convinced. When this novel function was showed to me, the entire discussion of the extent to which the aerobic Staphylococcus resembles the E.Coli never became relevant. E.Coli could have lost an aerobic function , and merely regained this function that already exists in Staphylococcus, and so I'm still not convinced of this so-called "new function" in mutated E.Coli.As for a mole that looks like a mammal, and doesn't look like a reptile, being the great "missing link" between the two due to its ground vibration hearing, naaah I need something more convincing. (Its quite funny actually - the great missing link between mammals and reptiles, is a mole)The pocket mice?? Tell me more. I'm happy with mutation rates being extrapolated. Whenever anyone present this kind of information, there are normally bad holes in it, to account for evolutionary timeframes. You may do so.

Here is one thing we can agree on. "[A]n intelligent designer wouldn't do that" is a poor argument.In principle, the argument that some creatioon is a life form only an intelligent designer could have make is an infinitely easier argument to make. The theory of evolution can be used to make predictions about things that should never show up, while an omnipotent, intelligent, and unfathomable God could have created anything.But in practice the latter argument never works either. Those things that cannot be the result of common descent and the theory of evolution just never occur. Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

No, they don't. We can find a Subaru with a Porsche engine, as one example. We can find a Ford Focus and a Ford Taurus with the same color body paint while two Ford Focus have different paint. That is a violation of the nested groupings. There are many, many, many more examples of this. I can point to violation after violation of nested groupings amongst cars.Not so with life. Life does fall into a nested hierarchy. We do not find characteristics shared by bats and birds that are not also shared by other mammals, as one example.

We OBSERVE that designers do not force their designs to fall into nested hierarchies. We OBSERVE that there is not reason for them to do so. Therefore, nested hierarchies are not predicted by ID. Let's do look at a wider category. We can find vehicles with a mixture of characteristics from:1. Cars and boats.
2. Planes and boats.
3. Cars and planes.This is quite different from what we see with life. We do NOT see species with a mixture of derived avian and mammalian features. We do NOT see species with a mixture of derived cephalopod and fish features. We only see the mixtures of characteristics that fall into a nested hierarchy. Not so with vehicles. Nested hierarchies show a lack of creativity.

Then what was stopping the designer from including the cephalopod style eye in fish with backbones? That is only true for species that have a large overlap between the eyes for stereo scopic vision which is not all species.

I would not say it is superior, obviously there should be some differences due to enviromental niches. However what I would say is that if I was designing eyes for animals and I had already used a system that did not create a blind spot in the vision, I would still use that system in the new eye. Imagine the placement of the optic nerve as the four wheel drive capability in your car analogy, the cephaloid eye is a Jeep and the vertebrate eye is an off-road SUV (Original Hummer, if you will). In the cephaloid eye the optic nerve is placed correctly, so that it avoids the blind spot. This is analogous to the placement of the four wheel drive in a Jeep, placed where it should be and connected fully to ensure proper operation. Now, as the SUV is not exactly identical to the Jeep, so too the vertebrate eye must be somewhat different because of evolutionary pressures. But, the blind spot is something that could have been avoided through design and ensured better functionality of the eye. In the vertebrate eye, if there is a designer, he or she decided to change the placement of the optic nerve to force it to travel through the retina, causing the blind spot. In our car analogy, this is like the designer of the SUV trying to make it four wheel drive, but instead of hooking it up correctly, arbitralily deciding to try something new. So, instead of the four wheel drive going from the transmission to each axle, the designer decides to have the four wheel drive hooked up from transmission to engine, then to axle. Well, this would definitely hurt the performance of the vehicle, just as the arbitrary placement of the optic nerve in vertebrates hurts our vision.If the vertebrate eye was intelligently designed, the designer avoided parts that for sure worked. No need to bring up the parts that are less important in the terrestrial world (maintain horizontal vision, lack of color (which is less necessary in deep water), etc...) but the placement of the retina behind the optic nerve creates a negative outcome and yet was still chosen to be designed that way. The optic nerve could have been placed behind the retina in vertebrate eyes by a designer avoiding the blind spot without forcing the eye to become a marine eye, just as all designers of off-road crossovers connect the four-wheel drive differential from the transmission to both axles. The eyes will still be different, just like a Jeep and a Hummer are different, but systems that have worked in each will maintain their design when being used in a crossover model. That is how intelligent designers create, they use systems that have already been proven effective.Evolution makes far more sense than intelligent design in this instance because the eye systems evolved separately. Evolution could not correct the error of the placement of the optic nerve in vertebrates because of the stages that it took to build into that system. Once it has begun, there is no reverse engineering to fix errors. It becomes either survive to reproduce or don't that determines if the trait lasts. SourceEdited by Tempe 12ft Chicken, : No reason given.

Seriously? Did you enter this conversation without reading any of the thread? Well, fine, just for you I will post a link to every time, in this thread alone, that Taq has spoken about the mutations that led to dark fur in pocket mice...BTW, it has been mentioned a lot, so maybe you should follow the link in the first of these messages which will lead you to the study.Here we go, the list of number of times this has been mentioned with zero explanation coming from the other side... Message 22 Contains link to study...
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Message 538Do you still need more information on the Pocket mice and the fact that they definitely show a new feature arriving via mutation (actually through different mutations that both resulted in dark fur and the ability to produce melanin)?

Beautiful response.Though I think he was being sarcastic with the mouse. Edited by CoolBeans, : No reason given.

Hi, Mindspawn. You started out arguing that birds and bats were functionally distinct, designed to fill specific, different niches. But, now, you're arguing that they are functionally redundant, as a failsafe plan.These explanations make opposite predictions. Yet, you have said that both would be evidence of extreme cleverness on the part of the Designer. You've constructed your theory such that it cannot be falsified, even if it's actually wrong.You may not believe it, but I actually am fully willing to accept Intelligent Design. I'm under significant pressure from my family to do so, and it would make my life a hell of a lot easier if I could just give in and accept it.But, I can't accept an idea that's based entirely around an unfalsifiable framework of ad hoc rationalizations; so, I need to see that Intelligent Design is actually capable of making successful predictions, and I need to see evidence that its proponents are willing to reject it when its predictions are unsuccessful.----- I don't see the connection between needing a failsafe and needing to make a flying mammal. If oxygen in the atmosphere is the concern, then why not just make two bird baramins with different types of respiratory systems? All those other mammalian characteristics are just baggage.

I appreciate your thoughts regarding the intelligent design view as being an "easy argument". It is easy , that is why the arguments against it seem weak. It would be interesting to have a qualified biologist in this discussion, but I am sure they would freely admit that all the internal processes and interactions in the body are not yet known, and so to conclude that an organism is not an intelligent design, and more reflects processes of nature is a little difficult for you guys when even the well-studied human body has many unknown factors.HOWEVER, the evolution argument is also an easy one. You won't find me often saying the genome does not look evolved. I understand to you guys it looks evolved, its not a difficult argument. There are ways around the irreducible complexity argument, its conceptually possible, even if I believe its not practically possible for nature to create complexity. Unfortunately you are lacking key fossils between the biological kingdoms and between most phyla to back up your view.

I guess the guys who first put diesel engines into pickup trucks were deliberately jerking us around too. The fact that two separate designs look and behave the same HAS to point to evolution and not design according to evolutionist deductive reasoning. LOL really I do not see your logic, for God to duplicate a function and use two completely different "phyla" to do so, just appears to me like interesting creativity and does not even come close to evidence against creation. And it adds flexibility and adaptability to the ecosystem when two species that have different vulnerabilities can perform the same ecological job. When the one loses fitness, the other can maintain the function.

I'm not a biologist. Who knows, maybe the eye NEEDS to be continuously fed by the retinal artery in non-marine conditions. Maybe your land based cephaloid eye would make you color-blind AND shortly thereafter completely blind as your vitreous body dries up without being continuously nourished by the retinal artery. I'm just guessing here, my point is I do not know enough about biology and for you to say your designs would be better than my Intelligent Designer when most biologists know how little we know about biology seems a little overconfident. I personally have never experienced any problem with the blind spot, I have never noticed a problem in my 44 years of life. I kinda like the thought that my eye is being fed by the retinal artery and wouldn't want it any other way, the design seems to be well balanced to me (an insignificant problem seems a good trade-off). Regarding putting animal body parts into humans, I also wouldn't want a turtle shell. I wouldnt mind wings though but they would have to be so huge to counter my body weight that they would be a bit of an inconvenience behind my back as I sit on the chair typing. I would have to sit on a bench or stool and type, only problem then is that I would probably need a strong backbone if I am going to be typing a lot without a back support and with those heavy wings on. But a strong back isnt conducive to flying that needs a light backbone. Oh well, I will leave it to the designer to get the balance right, I'm probably better off without wings or octopus eyes.
Edited by mindspawn, : No reason given.Edited by mindspawn, : No reason given.

Thanks for posting the links. I still haven't read the early part of the thread, kept too busy by everyone since my first post here.
I readily admit mutations can cause improved fitness and novel functions. These are REDUCED complexity mutations, ie disabled regions. The insertion mutation of these mice caused the promotor to disable. A similar example is the duffy gene, where disabling mutations can increase fitness in humans exposed to malaria. Thus organisms can gain a net fitness and new function, even while losing some functionality and losing some complexity (they lose activity in a gene that in more normal circumstances would have some benefit). This loss of complexity over time, although one of the processes of evolution, cannot explain the appearance of modern life-forms.Edited by mindspawn, : No reason given.

Tempe,With zero explanations from the other side? Are you really going to say that?Did you even read the thread before you posted this?I realize your sides argument is not very strong, but is it so weak, that you are just going to outright lie? Do I need to copy and paste every time I have replied to this silly argument?Since you are already making about stories about zero explanations about the pocket mouse, here is one more for you to pretend isn't an explanation. If the light colored phenotype in the mice is a recessive allele, as Taq has explained it is, what is the dominant allele of this gene? Surely you don't believe you can have a dominant allele without a recessive one do you?