The Origin of Novelty

I believe one of the biggest failures of the evolution camp is their inability to elucidate any plausible chain of events that leads to a new novel feature, which can be seen in modern animals.The theory about how new novel features have arisen, such as eyes, or noses, or internal organs, always are explained as taking thousands, millions of years, and thus are not easy to see. But in order for this to make sense, you need to propose a realistic scenario of how this can occur. I think your side severely lacks the ability to do so.All of the arguments against irreducible complexity propose suggesting that any new novel feature which appears irreducibly complex, could easily have had another usage in an earlier time. So all these features were at one time some other useful feature. But at some point you can't always use the excuse that it was something else, at some point you must be able to say what an original use was, before it was adapted from some other use. What was a nose before it was a nose? How did it start. How did a hand start?If you say that it was a useless mutation, that eventually gained usefulness and then caused an increase in survivability, I think it is incumbent on your side to give a example, a reasonable pathway.Everyone of these mutations that started out as harmless defects can't have only happened in the past. If this is the pathway to all animal features, the mutations must be continuing today. What are some plausible examples of how this could happen in modern animals, starting from scratch?Edited by Admin, : Change title from "Plausible Examples" to "The Origin of Novelty".

Ok, so, webbed feet, let's start off simple.So, what kind of semi-aquatic creatures do you have in mind, that were descended from a species of animal with no skin between their toes? Do you imagine that there were mutations of excess skin in all sorts of parts of their body, like say their scrotum, or forehead, and that the ones with the excess skin in the fingers got a head start?Are you at all concerned that if those who don't believe in evolution see that the only example you can imagine is a mutation for webbed feet to explain how web feet came into being, that they will be even more skeptical that your side has ever really thought about this problem?

Ok, the good old eye, now we are getting somewhere (I will try to ignore that you all seem to have not really thought about the problem yourself, but are just going to rely on things you have read or seen printed online).But let's look at this more seriously than the sort of canned explanation that is popular amongst evolutionists. Ok, so we start with a mutation for a light sensitive skin patch. Have you ever seen or heard of any modern animals getting mutations for light sensitive skin patches? If you have, do these like sensitive mutations occur in any part of the body? And do these light sensitive skin patch mutations get passed on hereditarily like in the adult species? For instance, if an animal got a light sensitive skin patch on its shin, would this then be passed on to its offspring, also in the shin? Would it have a similar size and shape?Because these are the bare minimum requirements it would seem we would need to get started right? Edited by Bolder-dash, : No reason given.

subbie,Read the first sentence, I said elucidate a plausible chain of events. (BTW elucidate means to make clear. )Now, just posting a bunch of photos of a shallow eye, and then a deeper eye, and then suddenly a liquid filled eye, is not even closer to actually contemplating the problem, or explaining a chain of events that makes sense.But what are you worried about anyway. This is a good chance for your side to really make your case. You can show that you have actually thought about the problem-not just swallowed a bunch of half diluted kool-aid.First you have a small eye, then a bigger eye, then a bigger eye-I mean come on, exactly how intellectually lazy is your side anyway?

So that's the first mutation that leads to an eye ? Ok fine,gets go with that. so then I just need a mutation which leads to a dimple or depression somewhere on my body and I will be able to feel that sunlight even more. Amazing.Next we need the dimple to be passed to the next generation. I have not yet heard of these skin dimples which get passed along like this, would it be like a dimpled chin? It's still kind of hard imaging a dimpled chin focusing light.

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.

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.

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.

Taq,You can't just quote talkorigins, and say that these shows we have lots of evidence for the neo-Darwinian theory of evolution. In what way does any of the evidence we have point towards a random path of development, and away from a teleological path? None of the evidence you have does that.So when you say your theory works to explain things, in what way does it work as an explanation? We don't see meandering, we see precision. So if we are not sure how life developed and we have to to choose between a path which has direction, and one which doesn't, everything we see looks much more like a path that shows direction.

Taq,It is not very imaginative to simply say that just because an earbone was once part of the jaw, that this can rationalize how a complete system was built, through unplanned mistakes.An ear needs much more than just a bone. It needs a hole in the head for one. No actually it needs two holes in the head, (symmetrically placed, with fluid inside that works as part of a balancing system, which can detect fractions of an inch of movements and automatically adjust the entire bodies muscle system, to compensate for every movement and balance it out so that we can walk on a tiny wire, juggle bowling pins, all the while listening and discerning the exact frequencies of a symphony orchestra) -holes that weren't there before.Have you seen other mutations for holes in ones head, that could lead to some useful advantage for survival in the future? Why have the holes stopped?You seem to have a tremendous ability to suspend any level of skepticism.

Drosphillia,First off, why don't you man up and go blow yourself.Secondly, I have to describe a process that stops the progression of adaptive features? You mean, you can just come up with any baloney you want, and now I have to show you why it can't happen? Is that the same as you explaining why little magic leprechauns couldn't come out at night and repaint the sky whenever your eyes are closed? Can you explain a process of why this can't happen? Maybe we just haven't figured out the small details yet.Saying that chemistry is stochastic leads to the inevitability of sophisticated useful functions coming into being? The only obvious answer to that trash is, not it doesn't you idiot.Can you describe a mechanism which stops the development of directed life? That makes as much sense as the crap you are saying.

Yea but we know that small people exist. And we also know that paint exists, and that sometimes you close your eyes. So all of the key elements you need for leprechauns painting the sky exist in the real world. That is just as effective of an argument for saying that just because there are mutations we know of (it just so happens that so far the only ones we know of pretty much destroy life, but never mind that) that it is inevitable that they will create something good. This seems to be a recurring problem for you. You can't see the difference between saying stochastic processes exist and saying that stochastic process would inevitably lead to a world of useful functions. To you it is saying the same thing. Maybe you can only concentrate long enough to read parts of phrases. So don't take offense if I don't respond to a lot of your posts, because just to be honest, I don't find you to be very intelligent when you can't see the difference. Plus, you seem to have some kind of hang-ups or scars about religion which have nothing to do with me-so since I am not a psycho-therapist its just not that fruitful.

I am not ready for this topic to be in summation mode. I am still holding out hope that someone, anyone will even make a decent attempt at explaining how they believe novel functions have developed.So far no one seems to have given it much thought on the evolution side, mostly they just can say, well yea, we don't know, but so what, why should we need all these details, I am already sold on the possibility anyway.But I am holding out hope, maybe there is a person who believes strongly in the theory, and also has actually thought about it.