All eyes evolved from a common ancestor!

Originally posted by KazetNagorra
Abiogenesis is completely irrelevant to evolution, in the sense that you don't need to understand the process of abiogenesis to understand the process of evolution. If a supernatural deity had in fact created the first life forms, they would have evolved in the way evolution theory describes. Therefore discrediting some particular variation of an abiogenetic theory does not discredit evolution theory in one bit.

If Abiogensis cannot happen without design, than design is the only
game in town. If Design is the only game in town, how the design
started is now up in the air, because it could have started at any point
lifes development. It is as much a part of this subject than any other
point of the process under discussion.
Kelly

Originally posted by KellyJay
Yes you can, if you cannot get out of the starting block by having that
take place, the process is now in question as it is currently believed.
Kelly

Originally posted by Andrew Hamilton
Very well said 🙂
Can’t argue with logic.

Originally posted by KellyJay
Yes you can

Lol 🙄

Originally posted by KellyJay
No, I have not denied evolution at all by natural selection, you are
reading into my posts what is not there, the degree of evolutionary
change I have issues with, not change itself. You should really just pick
my words and quote them. Natural selection occurs in my opinion,
I've no issue at all with that; however, have issues with statements
projected ...[text shortened]... me they like it, it isn't a matter of evolving, it
would be changing just to suit you.
Kelly

I see nothing, and I mean nothing that
suggests to me in the fossil record life has been proven to have
common ancestors, we see simpler life forms today, and more
complex life forms today, the variety is staggering and in the
fossil record we see simpler life forms and more complex ones.

This is a logical fallacy known as "the argument from personal incredulity":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_personal_incredulity#Argument_from_personal_incredulity

Originally posted by KellyJay
If Abiogensis cannot happen without design, than design is the only
game in town. If Design is the only game in town, how the design
started is now up in the air, because it could have started at any point
lifes development. It is as much a part of this subject than any other
point of the process under discussion.
Kelly

Who says abiogenesis cannot happen without design? Like anything, it can happen with divine intervention, that does not imply everything cannot happen without divine intervention.

Originally posted by KazetNagorra
Who says abiogenesis cannot happen without design? Like anything, it can happen with divine intervention, that does not imply everything cannot happen without divine intervention.

I did not bring up Divine Intervention, please stick to the point I
made when saying I am wrong. If you wish to debate someone about
Divine Interention do so, design does not have to be by Divine
Intervention.
Kelly

Originally posted by KellyJay
I did not bring up Divine Intervention, please stick to the point I
made when saying I am wrong. If you wish to debate someone about
Divine Interention do so, design does not have to be by Divine
Intervention.
Kelly

If your hypothesized designer is not in fact divine, who/what designed the designer?

Originally posted by KellyJay
No, I have not denied evolution at all by natural selection, you are
reading into my posts what is not there, the degree of evolutionary
change I have issues with, not change itself. You should really just pick
my words and quote them. Natural selection occurs in my opinion,
I've no issue at all with that; however, have issues with statements
projected ...[text shortened]... me they like it, it isn't a matter of evolving, it
would be changing just to suit you.
Kelly

So you accept some level of evolution due to natural selection. It´s unclear from what follows what you mean by the degree of evolutionary change. Do you mean that it happens too slowly to account for all the species we see, or that speciation is not possible without the designer´s intervention?

Your example is faulty since we established that octopus eyes are unrelated to vertebrate eyes above. When there is evidence then it is not a matter of pure belief. However to answer your point, the overall theory can be correct (or at least a reasonable approximation) without specific cases being correctly identified - for example, DNA evidence has moved the groupings of species around and changed estimates of when various species and groups diverged from one another.

What you seem to be saying in the next paragraph is that the evidence that simpler forms existed before more complicated ones is suspect due to the possibility that the dating method could be faulty.

You have to bear in mind that things like mass extinctions and possibilities like rates of evolution changing due to local selection pressures make evolution a little non-linear. Descriptions like ´simpler´ and ´more complicated´ don´t really tell you what order species originated in. In the evolutionary terms it´s having decendants that counts not complexity. There are single celled species that have emerged in the recent past. It is the case that some adaptations do appear in certain orders - of necessity you need a cranium before you can evolve a jaw to attach to it.

What is the case is that you see intermediate forms in the fossil record and that species, and entire groups, appear and then disappear in the fossil record and we have estimates of when particular species were around. You appear to be disputing the accuracy of the dating method. For example we turn up from about 160,000 years ago - are you saying that date is faulty, or just the much more ancient ones like Cambrian?

In any case the statement that the dating methods are not verifiable is not correct. They are based on theories which can be tested - laws of radioactive decay for example are well understood. The results of different dating methods are compared with one another and results are expressed with confidence intervals. There is a degree of uncertainty, but not enough to justify what you seem to be claiming which is that there is no progression to evolution over time spans as long as geological eras.

It is possible that dating estimates are out by some amount, but it is very difficult for major geological eras to be in the wrong order. There are no problems with the theory of evolution which require a designer. This doesn´t mean there isn´t a designer - just that the theory of evolution by natural selection can account for the evidence without the necessity for one.

In your post you talk about ¨a common ancestor¨ have you been talking about ¨the last universal common ancestor¨ - in other words the (presumed) last species that all living things are decended from? Or do you mean more recent common ancestors - for example the last common ancestor of chimps and humans?

If you mean last common ancestor of all living things that is a rather complicated thing because in the very distant past there appear to have been several instances of the merging of (very simple) species to make a new entity - it is believed that our mitochondria which do the aerobic respiration - were originally symbiotes where the symbiosis started with the failure of a predator cell to digest the mitochondrion ancestor.

The start of photosynthesis caused what is called the oxygen catastrophe which wiped out a lot of anaerobic life which cannot survive in oxidizing environments. Abiogenisis is difficult in oxidising conditions, but before photosynthesis started the earth had a reducing atmosphere - it took a billion years for the oxygen sinks to fill up - there is clear evidence for this. The reducing atmosphere is necessary for life to start. Life probably started as auto-catalysing molecules. Essentially a molecule that acts as a catalyst for the formation of new copies of itself. It almost certainly started (and stopped...) more than once and in more than one place. In fact there is a suggestion that abiogenesis is happening now - the idea is to look in places like hydrothermal vents with a reducing environment for species which are totally unrelated to us, and yes I do realize that this also does not in itself rule out a designer: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7893414.stm

Now I agree that the evidence for the theory isn´t as good as, for example, general relativity or quantum electro-dynamics. But there is simply no evidence for the critical part of the design hypothesis which is evidence of a designer. To some extent I think this is inevitable in any theory based around design.

I really do not think that aliens provide a sensible designer - they have to get here - start life and then leave without trace. Interstellar distances are prohibitively huge and life seems to have appeared quite quickly after the solar system finished forming (late heavy bombardment period). Unless the aliens are so powerful they may as well be called God (like the alien species that forces the evolution of humans in 2001 A Space Oddessy), I think that if there is going to be a designer then you are talking about God. This means that verifiability is totally out of the window as he/she/they can hide themselves completely.

Essentially there is a position of pragmatic agnosticism. We expect the universe to be explainable without including God a priori. If we ever did find a flaw in nature which was only explainable by God then if you think about it God isn´t God. Essentially it does not make any difference to science whether God exists or not - we cannot distinguish the two cases.

Originally posted by PBE6
If your hypothesized designer is not in fact divine, who/what designed the designer?

Again, as I pointed out before my point is about design and common
ancestor. Taking that to the Divine is another subject altogether, and
one as has been pointed out here, not the topic of discussion on this
board. So why do people who profess to want nothing to do with that
topic, always bringing it up? If you want to worry about who designed
the designer, I suggest you start up another thread.
Kelly

Originally posted by DeepThought
So you accept some level of evolution due to natural selection. It´s unclear from what follows what you mean by the degree of evolutionary change. Do you mean that it happens too slowly to account for all the species we see, or that speciation is not possible without the designer´s intervention?

Your example is faulty since we established that octop ...[text shortened]... make any difference to science whether God exists or not - we cannot distinguish the two cases.

No, I discount it because to many things have to be just right, through long periods of time, across a vast array of variables for the amount of diversity of life we see today to simply appear over time with nothing but random chance and laws of the universe at play. As you agreed to earlier it is quite easy to miss design even if it is right in front of us, but given the enormous amount of variables to just occur not only in the right sequence, but at the right time and so on, should stagers the imagination in my opinion. It is no different than finding all the pieces of a scrabble board laying about a table top, if there were no patterns discovered in the way the parts were found, it could be either random chance or design that put them there; however, if the letters were found in such a way that information such as words and maybe sentences were there contained within the layout of the letters, the odds of random chance should thought of as less likely, and design increased, the greater the amount of information found within the patterns the more likely we should concluded design was in play. I don’t have time to address the rest of your points now, but I’ll attempt to come back to them shortly.
Kelly

Just for you the format I normally use I'll stop. 🙂 Don't get use to it.

Originally posted by KellyJay
given the enormous amount of variables to just occur not only in the right sequence, but at the right time and so on, should stagers the imagination in my opinion. .

That is simply because of your belief that the result was 'right' or special in some way. Once we remove that illusion we realize that it is equally possible to point out that since the variables turned out to occur in not only the wrong sequence at the wrong time, there is no reason for you imagination to stagger.

Originally posted by twhitehead
That is simply because of your belief that the result was 'right' or special in some way. Once we remove that illusion we realize that it is equally possible to point out that since the variables turned out to occur in not only the wrong sequence at the wrong time, there is no reason for you imagination to stagger.

The trouble with the 'the wrong' is you get dead end results, if you
you get life and or life improving you cannot call those bad now can
you? To not always have it all fall out just right for life to continue, but
also over time improve into more comlex life forms should cause you
to look at it and wonder could it really happen that way? If you are not
having those question is like buying into a belief system.
Kelly

Originally posted by KellyJay
The trouble with the 'the wrong' is you get dead end results, if you
you get life and or life improving you cannot call those bad now can
you? To not always have it all fall out just right for life to continue, but
also over time improve into more comlex life forms should cause you
to look at it and wonder could it really happen that way? If you are not
having those question is like buying into a belief system.
Kelly

….The trouble with the 'the wrong' is you get dead end results,
..…

If only you acknowledge what twhitehead actually said, you would be forced to admit he clearly implied NOTHING more that there is no 'right' or ‘special’ evolutionary path which means he CLEARLY did NOT imply that there must be a ‘wrong’ evolutionary path and nor (I presume) would he believe this.

Although some evolutionary paths will lead to better adaptations than others, there is no ’right’ nor ‘wrong’ evolutionary path at least in the way you seem to think for there is nothing ‘special’ about any particular evolutionary path.

….To not always have it all fall out just right for life to continue,
..…

There is no ‘just right’ for life to continue.

…but also over time improve into more complex life forms should cause you
to look at it and wonder could it really happen that way?
..…

Why? to 'wonder' this would be like ‘wondering’ if an avalanche could have illogically gone uphill instead of downhill and inexplicably defy gravity a few moments ago into the past. -Logic determines that evolution would make life forms better adapted to their environment over time and there is not a scrap of evidence/reason to the contrary.

Originally posted by KellyJay
The trouble with the 'the wrong' is you get dead end results, if you
you get life and or life improving you cannot call those bad now can
you?

I never called anything 'bad'. I called it 'wrong' as apposed to your claim that the current situation is uniquely 'right'.

To not always have it all fall out just right for life to continue, but
also over time improve into more comlex life forms should cause you
to look at it and wonder could it really happen that way? If you are not
having those question is like buying into a belief system.
Kelly
What is your actual argument as it appears to be changing. Is it:
1. There is only one 'right' outcome and therefore the fact that it is what we observe today is mind staggering.
2. There are many 'right' outcomes but they are significantly smaller than the possible 'wrong' outcomes and since we are apparently one of the 'right' outcomes it is mind staggering.

I believe that Darwin realized that the effect of natural selection is that the 'right' outcomes are actually statistically far more likely than 'wrong' ones and that your mind should only 'stagger' when the 'wrong' ones happen.
You seriously should consider reading and then thinking about some well written book on evolution. I believe Dawkins has done one or two.

Originally posted by KellyJay
I did not bring up Divine Intervention, please stick to the point I
made when saying I am wrong. If you wish to debate someone about
Divine Interention do so, design does not have to be by Divine
Intervention.
Kelly

Alright, I assumed you did not follow the "alien designer" scientology-esque theory, but since there is not much difference with an actual divine intervention I fail to see your point.

Originally posted by Andrew Hamilton
[b]….The trouble with the 'the wrong' is you get dead end results,
..…

If only you acknowledge what twhitehead actually said, you would be forced to admit he clearly implied NOTHING more that there is no 'right' or ‘special’ evolutionary path which means he CLEARLY did NOT imply that there must be a ‘wrong’ evolutionary path and nor (I pres ...[text shortened]... o their environment over time and there is not a scrap of evidence/reason to the contrary.[/b]

I acknowledged him; any way you get life or improve life is a right
way, period! The ways that do not as I pointed out lead to dead ends.
I simply defined dead ends; I did not suggest there was only one
way to do any of this, the point of many of the beliefs surrounding
evolution is that random mutations occur so vast arrays of ways are
explored so to speak each giving a unique spin on so we get a
variety of life that would eventually arise from the various changes.

I suggest you actually just read my post and stop crying over some
thing that isn't there. Logic determines what? You push your beliefs
here as if there where some how valid beyond debate! The fact there
are gaps suggest there are issues, but those issues are just swept
under the rug as if they don't matter, because they can just be
explained away as if that some how justifies calling the beliefs
about evolution factual. Throw a good story at the gaps, they can be
ignored, instead of looked at critically and acknowledged that the
many of the beliefs surrounding evolution should be suspect.
Kelly