I don't have a tremendous time to do much more than take little bite-sized chunks out of your website, and will be absent for the next three days or so. However, with what time I have:
An evolutionary conundrum: Evolution depends on "survival of the fittest" to give organisms the momentum to change in a direction of greater refinement, organization, and sophistication. And the idea makes sense if we only consider that a new trait may give an organism a greater chance to survive. But we neglect to consider that "natural selection" can select this new trait only if organisms without this trait are eliminated. The trait must mean the difference between life and death, or the new trait is not "selected".
Evolution doesn’t require that organisms change in any particular direction. Normalizing (also known as stabilizing) selection, for instance, maintains the given population in a position of
statu quo. Indeed, depending on the particular selection pressure’s effect on the population, evolution may actually make a population simpler over time, or drive it extinct. Evolution can even eliminate the middle of the curve — leaving only those members which are at the extremes of the distribution.
Secondly, you are incorrect that natural selection is a black-and-white matter of life and death. Marginal fitness increases (or decreases) are most often gradual over hundreds or even thousands of generations (assuming no significant change in the biotic and abiotic environment factors involved). Your strawman consists of an assertion that change has to be abrupt. The opposite is true — radical change is most often either immediately fatal or eliminated (Goldschmitt’s hopeful monster), especially in metazoans with their intricate interdependent components.
This fundamental misunderstanding of natural selection answers your question #1:
quote:
If the new trait is required for survival, how did the organism survive before it developed this trait? And how was it unable to survive after others in the population possessed the new trait?
The new trait is NOT required for survival, and a radical new trait appearing in a single generation is rather more likely to be eliminated.
As to your question #2
quote:
It is difficult to propose that the sophisticated refinement found in life on earth is necessary for survival. For example, what if the human nose were pointed sideways rather than down? Would this change be great enough to decree death to humans with sideways noses? Then why are human noses pointed downward? What if humans had a couple "useless" extra teeth growing in their armpits? Why would such a human not survive? And so then, why are teeth found in the mouth, but not in other places on the body where they must have occurred if placement of teeth in the body was by chance? Life on earth exhibits hallmarks of design which are not adequately explained by "natural selection".
once again you are misstating what evolution describes. The distribution of body parts is NOT chance. Every organism on the planet is constrained by historical contingency — they are the sum of the gradual evolutionary changes that have occurred since the beginning, whatever that might be. By the same token, every lineage on the planet bears witness to the evolutionary changes that have taken place through vestigial bits — organs or structures which, while possibly remaining functional in some context, are no longer serving the function for which they originally evolved, or which have obviously been co-opted (and not always really effectively) from other structures. Many of these structures are in direct opposition to what would be, in an engineering context, considered optimal design. If there is a designer, it is an incredibly inept and sloppy one. However, such structures are quite consistent with evolution, which is designed to make do, rather than make best.
Fitness is a prerequisite for survival. Therefore, survival cannot be invoked as fitness’ cause. In other words, survival of the fittest doesn’t explain the origin of the incredible engineering designs found in living organisms. It only predicts the survivability of a pre-existing design. Evolutionists can't have it both ways - Survival cannot be both fitness' cause and its result.
Incorrect. Fitness is a
measure of the potential for survival of a particular organism or population in a given environmental context. It isn’t a prerequisite, nor is it a cause. It is, in fact, utterly dependent on the conditions facing the particular population in their local context. Fitness also has nothing to do with the evolution of complexity. It is a snapshot of the current state of a population. Another strawman.
Evolution insults the intelligence: I have a difficult time envisioning how the theory of evolution and natural selection can be responsible for life’s design. It’s like looking at a neatly built cabin of Lincoln Logs, and trying to explain its existence. Would it make sense to hang your hat on the chance that someone dumped a can of Lincoln Logs on the floor, and, as luck would have it, a perfectly stacked Lincoln Log house formed from the dumping? An inference to a better explanation (and one most folks would bet their money on) is the assumption that an intelligence was imposed on the Lincoln Logs to form them into a neatly stacked cabin. In other words, someone built the cabin. If dumping out a can of Lincoln Logs is a good explanation for the existence of a cabin built from the logs, then evolution is a good explanation for the information encoded in DNA.
Although basically a rather poor argument from personal incredulity, I would like to note that your Lincoln logs example is exceptionally erroneous. Unless you can show a set of logs where each log self-assembles, then replicates, then joins with other logs on its own, and finally what selection pressures on the logs would cause them to naturally form structures and what environment would lead to assembly rules that, through trial and error, would ultimately lead to a log cabin structure, then your analogy is useless as an example of an evolutionary pathway. IOW, unless you can hypothesize an evolutionary history for your log cabin, with intermediates and supporting evidence (fossilized log outhouses, perhaps?), as well as related structures also made from logs that diverge from the log cabin, then your analogy is simply wrong. Basically, Lincoln logs are not alive — therefore your analogy is yet another chance cartoon version of evolution.
All I have time for today. If this is the best you can do, I think evolutionary theory is little threatened by the errors, strawmen, and cartoons on that website.
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