There is plenty of information for how the eye evolved if that is the best you got, then your arguments are old. Time to pick up a book that wasn't printed 150 years ago.

Wrong, this implies a lack of knowledge regarding what is a species, we have most certainly seen in action speciation.

It really is too bad your not interested in watching the videos. Usually the only people who sensor themselves do so for emotional reasons.

This is a totally bogus argument against evolution. We don't need to be able to explain every little detail to recognize that evolution had to have occurred. To even claim such a thing is silly.

Things that have not yet been explained in detail are not "holes".

A "hole" in a theory implies something that can be asserted about the theory that denies what the theory is actually stating. There mere fact that every little feature of all living creatures has not been throughly explain does not constitute a 'hole' in the theory.

Moreover, I've read plenty of plausible explanations for the evolution of an eye which are totally practical and feasible. So we even have working explanations of how it could occur. So the evolution is an eye is completely compatible with all the other evidence we have. It does not constitute a 'hole' in the theory at all. That's a totally misleading comment about evolution to the point where it could sincerely be called a misreprestation of truth.



This is could be a matter of personal perference of what a person accepts as 'proof'. If you demand that evolution hasn't been proven until it can show undeniable evidence for how an eye evolved then you will never accept evolution as having been 'proved' because your very criteria for proof would most likely be impossible to find evidence for. The reason simply being that eyes are not boney and flesh doesn't perserve. So to even expect to find fossil evidence for the precise evolution of an eye will probably never happen.

However, to deny all the other evidence that live evolved on planet Earth just based on one specific fleshy feature of animals that you are having personal problems with is not scientific at all.

It most certainly doesn't constitue a 'hole' in evolution. That is very poor terminology that is quite misleading and basically untruthful.

Moreover, how could you even possible speak like this and then turn around and suggest that the Bible could be the actual word of an all-wise, and all-powerful God.

You want to talk about 'holes'? There are so many logical contradiction in the Bible that I'm quite frankly in awe that any intelligent person could even suggest that it could be the word of God.

The very behavior and demands of the God defy the very characteristics that the God is supposed to have.

An all-loving God who is appeased by blood sacrifices?

That's an utter absurdity right there!

No need to even go any further than that. It's already in total conflict with itself. It already shot itself in the foot and has blown a major hole in its own premise that God is all-wise, and all-loving.

And you claim that evolution has problems?

This is something that baffles me too. Why would a creationist spend so much time trying to find holes in the theory of evolution when he or she has not explained or 'proven' creationism?

If creationism is what they want to believe go ahead and believe it, but it will never be science until they can actually prove HOW IT IS DONE. By that I mean, details about HOW DID GOD (or anyone) DO IT?

How do you create a solar system? A planet? Stars? How do you get things to grow on it? How do you create a human being and animals? How do you program the DNA instructions.. etc. etc.

Just saying "God did it" ain't gonna cut it guys and gals.

I'm only going to say this once. NEITHER theory is completely proven and I'm not taking one side or the other. Post a video showing me how an eye could evolve or give a good, detailed argument on 'speciation' and I'll gladly watch/read them.

Secondly I am NOT a creationist.

Thirdly, the fact that you so blindly criticize arguments against your own theories show a lack of commitment to said theory. I investigate all of my theories and try to prove them wrong so that I can come up with better theory. Yell and scream all you want, but evolution is a good theory, not a proven fact. That's why it's called a theory.

I've viewed some of the videos that you've posted only months ago, Bush, and they still demonstrate a survival of the fittest philosophy, so who's running on outdated material? I would be more than happy for you to show me something new, but I don't waste time trying to defend one argument or the other now days, I only look for ways to strengthen them, and last I checked, there weren't too many many novel ideas on this argument on either side of the equation, but evolution was "on top."

Truly.

What could be sillier? Other than,.... oh well,... never mind that.

It's utterly absurd for creationists to nit pick about unexplained details of evolution when the fossil records for evolution are overwhelming, and chemistry, physics, and astrophysics all back-up and explain how the process in-general occurred and has been driven.

In the meantime they reject it as not being 'proved', and then turn around and suggest 'creationism' which has utterly no evidence whatsoever, nada, zip, zilch. NOTHING.

NO EVIDENCE WHATSOEVER!

Talk about a 'hole'?

Creationists are utterly asburd. They don't even have a theory as to how it could have been done other than to say that Merlin waved a magic wand. And most of them probably don't even believe in wizards anyway.

Great posts Abra, and JB!!!!

I agree completely. 100% of the evidence backs evolution from multiple independent fields of research.

If you have an alternate theory I am all ears, I will even use my evolved eye to see what you have to say.

My evolved eye is watching all...
Yeah, all the beautiful woman at the Calgary Stampede that is...
Last night it's as if my eyes had a mind of their own. They went right for the booty and boobies....ha!
Doesn't the bible say I have to pluck them out now?

Yep.

Appreciating the beauty of God's creation is a sin.

Eyes are to be held shut!

Shame on you!

May Satan have mercy on your soul! Because we all know where you're going buddy!

I agree that the evidence points to evolution, but if the evidence is so striking, then lets have a thread about the specifics of it and an adult discussion instead of bickering about it. There is no need to DEFEND evolution, it is a pretty well formulated theory.

I on the other hand like to investigate all of the smaller pieces as well, and there is something fishy happening with evolution that needs to be fixed. Survival of the fittest doesn't explain much, and something that can't be replicated in a laboratory is not proven, even by the scientific model (not perfect, but pretty rigid compared to any other means availible).

It's not my intention to "bash" science or anything else, but I like digging for the answers that are harder to get to. So if y'all don't mind, let's look at fishy detail number one. If this is beyond the scope of this thread let me know and I'll start another for this topic.

Fishy Detail #1
Protein synthesis can be repeated in a laboratory, it is a valid theory and the conditions of the earth prior to the first life forms support the theory. We can demonstrate in a lab how to make protein soup from primordial goo. But what is the mechanism that makes this goo form up together to make complicated structures like whole cells? I seem to remember something about RNA being produced in a lab but did a quick search and didn't turn up anything. RNA -> DNA, This one I can accept without needing an experiment to show it to me, but take something slightly more complex like forming bacteria, and we seem to be at a loss. Has anyone heard any GOOD theories about how bacteria form from protein soup? I would be happy to know this thing and expand my knowledge of the subject area.

Watching some of those videos from the first post while packing to go offshore. This guy actually makes some valid points which is not normal for evangelists, but (as scientists do as well) carries his conclusions outside of the scope of the argument. The problem as I see it is that on both sides of the argument are skewed this way. The problem is that people want to take emotional reactions rather than just concentrating on the evidence.

Creationists believe in the bible.
Evolutionists believe in the speculation of scientists, not the data.

Both want to push their beliefs rather than trying to figure out what is really going on. Evolution is far too simple an explanation to be completely true, and Creation doesn't have a stem in any kind of scientific thought and is based on a book that has been ripped up and revised so many times that it hardly exists anymore.

Instead of claiming the the person on the other side is stupid, try looking at their evidence (if they are scientists) or where their faith (and I really hesistate to say this because most kinds of faith really are a little silly) might fill in some gaps, do some experiments, and investigate everything, rather than rushing to conclusions or throwing out evidence of any kind. There actually is some nice evidence around that the general scope of science doesn't even talk about, because it's weird (Like a persons DNA chains throughout their entire body changing suddenly or sealed glasses of water from the same bottle registering different contaminants when studied later) and doesn't fit into the typical scientific paradigm.

I've been a member of this forum for several years now and I've already given several lectures on the processes of evolution.

I should have saved all those posts so I could just repost them. There truly are wonderful explanations for these things, but it requires a lot of knowledge of chemistry and physical processes.

In short, it goes something like this.

Atoms "naturally" tend to form into molecules that "naturally" take shapes that cause them to then bind together in ways the "naturally" form complex structures that can then "naturally" do interesting and complex things, which give rise to even more complex structures and so on.

Now I know that doesn't sound like much help.

But what I'm trying to say is that evolution occurs because of two things. First, the shape and structure of the atoms themselves (the way they can bond together though the electronic forces of their electron configurations), and secondly, due to the laws of physics that demand or dictate what role the 'environment' plays in driving this process.

Where 'environment' simply means the conditions at the location in question. For example, how many atoms of each kind are there and in what abundance of each? What medium are they in? What is the thermodynamic available (energy considerations). Etc, etc, etc.

As you can see, this requires a lot of knowledge of chemistry, physics, and thermodynamics, etc.

If there is anything "miraculous" about evolution, then the miracle had already existed in the atoms and the forces of nature long before the Earth was ever even formed.

I always like to say that if DNA is the blueprint for life, then the carbon atom is the blueprint for DNA.

Of course, all the atoms play a role, but carbon is particularly special as it is the basis of all life forms on Earth. It is the versatility of the carbon atom that allows for the complex chemistry of evolution to take place.

From my point of view, to look at the birth of biological evolution as somehow being the 'miracle' is truly missing the point. The 'miracle' occurred throughout the entire evolution of the universe over the entire lifespan of the universe.

What is it that are we calling a 'miracle' here?

That 'life' evolved?

Why is the existence of a star not also seen as a equally powerful 'miracle'?

Also, I think a lot of people view life from the point of view of the end product. And then ask things like, "How could evolution know ahead of time how to create an eye?"

But it didn't. We just happen to have eyes, and that most likely came about simply because electromagnetic radiation is flooding our planet all the time. Light just happened to be there.

Therefore, any complex structure (or even a light sensitive molecule) could benefit by taking advantage of that physical phenomenon.

When the goo in a primordial soup is evolving it is "vulnerable" to any influences that can be physically sensed. Atoms and molecules are themselves made of electromagnetic forces. Atom and molecules are affected by photons in huge ways. To a molecule being hit by a photon is like a human being hit by a bowling ball that had been thrown at them at a very great speed. It's not going to happen without having a major affect on the molecule.

It's just a physical process.

If there's magic in this universe, it's not associated with some intelligent hand guiding evolution every step of the way like a baby-sitter.

If there is magic in this universe it was in the role of the original dice called "atoms" and the "laws of physics".

This is why even theories of "Intelligent Design" are often misguided. If there is intelligent design it was in the creation of the Lego set. Not in the things that the Lego set has since evolved to become.

Humans are clearly just one thing that can evolve. We most certainly weren't the "goal" of evolution.

So if you are looking at the 'miracle' as having occurred somewhere between goo and humans I personally feel that your investigation is misplaced. The goo is already a miracle.

The idea that an eye would require either a baby-sitter to evolve, or that it had to have been pre-designed is simply an erroneous idea.

What was "pre-designed" (or simply preexisted) is simply the structure of the atoms and the laws of physics that ultimately evolved into an eye.

But there are countless other things they could evolve into as well which we also see around us.

In other words, the universe is a toss of dice. The shapes of the atoms are the numbers on the faces. The laws of physics are the shape of the dices and the number of faces on each die.

You could argue that the DICE themselves were pre-designed. And in that sense perhaps any number that comes up on the dice was then also "pre-designed". However the actual numbers that come up were never a particular predetermined goal of the toss.

Humans are just a number on the cosmic dice.

If you want to argue for "Intelligent Design" you need to argue from the point of view of a God who throws dice and the "Intelligent Design" was in the design of the dice, not in the specific numbers that come up on the dice during a roll. (at least not in the sense of a baby-sitting God). It's more in the sense of a dice-tossing God.

It's not entirely random, yet it is.

Just like normal dice. If you roll dice, are you rolling a 'random' number?

Well, yes and no.

If you have a pair of standard dice then all you can roll is a whole number from 2 to 12 and only the whole numbers between them. You'll never roll a 1 or a 13. Nor will you ever roll a fractional number.

You designed the dice and rolled them. You know exactly what is possible, but you have no clue precisely what will unfold. Is that rolling a random number or not? I ask you?

That's the way the universe works. Humans are a roll of the cosmic dice. Determined by the quantum structure of atoms and the laws of physics.

If there is an intelligent designer he/she/it/them designed the cosmic dice and then rolled them. And that process is what we call 'evolution'.

The question now becomes, "Were the dice themselves intelligently designed? Or were the dice themselves just a random accident?"

I hope this post has, at the very least, been an enjoyable food for thought as it took quite a while to type it in.

Very nice post abracadabra, well written and a good overall breakdown of how evolution is currently believed to operate.

As far as the dice rolls go, it's funny that you should mention it. When I get time I work on a philosophical book (that I have been working on for quite a while) where I show that randomness, in its definition meaning that something can happen without cause (like rolling a die or an event occuring without any cause, such as spontanious radioactive decay, or other strange quantum happenings which are supposed to be entirely random and without cause), is impossible, and the argument is very well founded. Articulating it becomes a problem in some cases, which is one of the reasons I invest so much time to write very little comparatively. It's nice to see by your response of "yes and no" that someone else out there has contemplated the problem.

A generalized response, of saying that atoms can group together to form complicated structures naturally (crystalline structures, complex products produced by living organisms like tannin and photosynthetic "juices" like chlorophyll) is a good generalization of the possibility for atoms to group up and form more complicated structures, like a cell wall, but I don't think that it really digs at the heart of my question. A cell wall or even a container for a virus is the most basic structure neccessary for every life form that we know about, and would have had to come about by chance. If we could find the conditions that make this structure possible to occur, then we would know a great deal more about evolution, conditions on earth at the time of evolution, and the conditions neccessary to bring it about. We would also have a better idea of how fast it can take place. IMHO, evolution will remain no more than a strong theory that I happen to agree with until something like this can be demonstrated in a laboratory. Most of what we think we know about natural history is speculation, though, and very little actually has documentation of experiments that could make it possible. Exactly the same kind of reasoning justifies aliens, "there's just too many stars and planets for their not to be aliens." Maybe so, but it's still just speculation.

I've taken courses in biochemistry that explain how cell walls would naturally form based on nothing more than the the physics and chemistry of macro molecules (molecules that form due to the complext bonds of Carbon).

Not only did they demonstrate various methods of how such celluar walls could be constructed naturally, but they also showed how these walls were diverse enough to create all sort of different membranes that could control different rates of osmosis, and even have the ablity to dynamically change the proprties of osmosis.

This is, of course a very common property of cells. They need to be able to let things in and out through the cell wall in a myriad of differnet ways.

So as far as I'm aware this kind of biochemistry is already quite well understood, not only how it works, but how it would naturally be driven to assemble itself (given a soup of the correct ingredients). That seems to be the only criteria. Get the ingredients of the soup right, and evolution is is a natural by-product of the soup.



I agree with this. In fact, it may be more than just speculation. It may actually be a mathematically provable necessity.

Consider this,...

We know that in the entire observable universe the elements (the soup) has the same consistency thoughout. In other words the abundance of the elements is pretty much homogeneous throughout the entire universe. We can tell this from the spectra of star and galaxies. If the universe was different in different regions, the spectra of those start sould show it. But they don't. All stars and galaxies are pretty much identical in atomic conctent. The unvierse "soup" is the same everywhere.

What is that soup made of? Well, it only made of just over 100 atoms, only about 30 of which are truly important to life and also the most abundant and also in the precise perfect proportions (at least perfect form our perspective if we want to make life like is on Earth).

So we have 100 or even really only 30 different kinds of atoms in the proper proportions in the cosmic soup.

How many pots of this random soup mix are our there cooking? (i.e. how many stars are out there?)

Well, just in the observable universe alone there are over 70 sextillion stars.

That's 70 thouand million million million stars.

Or to put that another way,...

That's 70 thouand million million million rolls of the dice in a soup where evolution is a natural occurance if the thermodynamic environment just happens to be favorable.

Sounds to me like somehow it could be shown that with those odds the probably that life evolved more than once is an absolute certainty.

I personally believe that life is most likely quite common all thoughout the universe. Esecially if we're considering non-technological life, like had lived on earth for millions of years before we came along.

Very close-by planets could contain non-technical living plants and animals and we'd have absolutely no way of knowing it. They aren't going to be sending radio signals out into space for example.

Clearly self-conscious life is not easy to create via evolution. Look at how many FAILURES evolution had just on planet Earth to create humans. How many non-technological speices of animals live on planet earth? There must be billions of them!

Assuming we call all non-human life forms a 'failure' in this case.

Then clearly we are a rare exception of this even on planet Earth!

So evolution could be quite normal and prolific everywhere (maybe even within our very own solar system!). But evolution to something that becomes self-aware and technological would still be quite rare.

This is why the discovery of even microbes on another planet in our solar system would basically be screaming, "Evolution is a snap!"

To find a microbe on a moon of Saturn say, would just about prove that evolution is a very common event in the universe as a whole.

And it may very well be that common.

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No not at all. This is not even a detail of evolution. I am getting tired of people claiming to be knowledgeable about evolution and then within 5 minutes they illustrate how little they actually know.

Abiogenesis is not evolution.

Evolution says nothing about Abiogenesis.

Obviously you have no knowledge of the studies done with Fruit flies . . . or bacteria, or virus's. We do see this in the lab . . . well documented and the conclusions have led us to amazing discoveries. Sigh.

The reasons we can document the process with these species is generation time. Short generation time means we can advance 1,000 plus generations which is a rather short time on evolutionary scales, but the fact we can do this within a scientists lifetime is helpful you think? 100,000 would be more meaningful for full on morphological changes. 1,000,000 generations for every species would be nice, too bad we don't live long enough and have only been studying this for 20 years.

some geologists have theorized that it was, but by the draining of a huge glacial ocean, not by the finger of god.