Evolution would've given us infrared eyesight

Hi Rick! Welcome to EvC. A couple of good responses already. Let me also kick in (sorry in advance for repeating some stuff). The additional ability (just the fact by itself, not considering possible "engineering" consequences as already pointed out by Larni) to have infrared vision would indeed be an advantage. But even acknowledging this, it doesn't follow that because of our lack of infrared vision evolution must be false.Evolution does not predict that organisms should be perfect. In fact, one of the consequences of evolution is that often an organism has to, metaphorically speaking, "row with the oars it has available" (is this English? ). Evolution has taken a certain path somewhere in the past, and as a consequence other paths which may have been followed by other organisms (branched off in the tree of life earlier in history), are simply not available to its own lineage. Bats for example will never have feathers like birds (though strictly spoken it might be possible in the very very far future), while it might possibly have helped to improve their flight abilities, because they took a different evolutionary path before feathers evolved in (the evolutionary branch of) birds.The principle that there is no "directed perfection" is quite obvious, because apart from the human brain you would probably find a better (than human) engineered alternative bodypart or function in at least some animals out there. Many animals have superior senses (the octopus eye without a blind spot, just sharper eyesight in general, additional senses like electrosensitivity in sharks etc.), or stronger bodies, or superior stamina, or superior reaction speed etc.As pointed out, this is in line with what we would expect if common descent is correct, but not at all obvious if a designer would be at work: why would he keep using inferior designs when better is available? Why would he use some of those inferior designs in the organism that is supposed to be the crown on his creation? Why would he follow a design pattern that is consistent with common descent?I will also speculate that most animals with infrared vision abilities are insects (?). Which could indicate that from an "engineering" point of view this ability is a more straightforward path to take for compound eyes than for our design of eyes.Edited by Annafan, : corrected English as suggested by Huntard

Hi Rick Gotta go home after this for today, but I wanted to point out again that this argument keeps puzzling me.The problem here is that you are assigning abilities and properties to evolutionary processes that are not part of our current concept of evolution (not anymore since Darwin even, probably). The combination of random mutation and natural selection (plus some other mechanisms like genetic drift, sexual selection etc.) would most definitely NOT result in what you are envisioning. Or it would certainly be orders of magnitude more "unlikely" than the situation we do observe (which is why we don't see it, obviously )The mechanisms as they are accepted currently, do much better explain than design why:- adaptations are often just "good enough" instead of anything close to perfect
- the existence of different mechanisms/strategies to handle similar challenges (hibernation next to seasonal migration next to developing a thicker coat etc.)
- the absence of combinations of traits, which exist in seperate species, that would seem to fit together perfectly (and seem to not exclude each other), because of historical reasons
- ...Evolution is not teleologic (it is not working towards a goal, since the mechanism that shapes it, natural selection, can only respond to the current environment and doesn't have the ability to look ahead into the future), and it is also not strictly progressive, since that environment is not necessarilly stable (today's positive adaptation can become tomorrow's burden).

Just a quick one before I leave What you must drop, is the idea that evolution is working towards a specific goal. The picture looks totally incomprehensibly unlikely if you start from the assumption that evolution was working towards something like Home Sapiens. But it isn't. If one would be able to rewind the process, things would look considerably different.A specific person winning the lottery is highly unlikely, but it's inevitable that *someone* will win the lottery. Evolution is closer to the latter than the former analogy. I'm sure somebody will tackle this... I wouldn't doubt that for a second. But I hope you also understand and acknowledge that (a) there's a whole whole lot that you (and me) don't know, and (b) more often than not, reality doesn't depend on what we feel is likely or possible. Not?

Hi Rick! Awwww... You make me feel bad, man, lol...Please reconsider. One thing you should keep in mind is the following: as someone else already pointed out, this is a science forum. If you look at the hierarchy of this forum-site, you will see that there is a "science" section next to "social and religous issues" and also a "coffeehouse". The forums under "science" have more or less strict rules that require you to substantiate your claims with evidence of some sort. It doesn't go well here (it's simply non-productive) to refer to the Bible or personal beliefs. Those are quite welcome in some of the other forums.So if you want to discuss evolution in this one, it's all about looking at the facts and observations, the evidence that we find out there and that support or would possibly rule out evolution as we understand it.Hope to see you around a bit longer, and work out the differences between what you currently think evolution says, and what it really is, and is based on.Take care and cool off,Annafan aka Joh