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Bringing you atheist articles and building active godless communities takes hundreds of hours and resources each month. If you find any joy or stimulation at Atheist Republic, please consider becoming a Supporting Member with a recurring monthly donation of your choosing, between a cup of tea and a good dinner.
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@Breezy
Why can't you understand that shitty eyes and shitty brains; could easily be an advantage over no eyes? You don't need perfection to reproduce; and that is a good thing since our eyes are not perfect, no matter what you say.
Because vision is there to guide behavior, thus, impairments in vision lead to impairments in behavior. It's better to not have eyes at all, than to have them provide you with incorrect information.
Sensory information attracts and depletes attentional resources too. That's why people turn off the radio in the car so they can focus on looking for the house number. To give a species rudimentary eyes is to spend mental energy on a system than could be better spent elsewhere.
As mentioned above Nyar, Jellyfish don’t have a brain or central nervous system.
Furthermore, they have more eyes, yet poorer vision comparatively to humans.
And still, They have existed before there were even dinosaurs roaming the land.
Crappy eyes, no brain.
They seem to be doing rather well one would say.
It's a scientific fact that all life evolved, and we can see perfectly functioning eyes. You're claiming something can't happen when it demonstrably HAS happened. Even if your claim we don't fully understand how it happened is valid, it is not a valid objection to species evolution, it is merely an argument from ignorance fallacy.
" If you transplant a dog's eyes on a human, the human isn't going to see half a good, they're not going to see at all, or might even see wrong."
You'd think an omnipotent deity could manage to make a better eye than that. However this is what one would expect, since they evolved.
Wow, irreducible complexity, this is like new information.
Oh wait a minute, this an old widely debunked piece of creationist propaganda, well who else is as shocked as me that John is rehashing old creationist arguments and pretending they are valid?
ha ha ha ha ha ah ...... ROFLMAO..... The eye is evolving without the brain! Do you have any idea at all what "evolution" is. This claim is on par with the most absurd claims ever made by creationists.
1. Why are there still monkeys?
2. God Created the banana.
3. Evolution has never been observed.
4. Where's the missing link?
And now, ------ For your entertainment ------------ Ladies and gentlemen!
5. Eyes can evolve without brains evolving.
@"A woodpecker finds in a tree the opportunity to do some pecking, a monkey the opportunity to climb, a bear the opportunity to scratch its back, and a human the opportunity to build a house." A BIRD WANTS TO SEE ITS PREY ON THE GROUND. A HUMAN WANTS TO STAND AND SEE WHAT IS OVER THE TALL GRASS, OR PREVENT ITSELF FROM DROWNING IN THE SHALLOW WATERS.
In each step of the evolutionary process. brains, eyes and bodies work together.
@ "implying that the frogs are aware of what sizes allow its body to pass through (Ingle & Cook, 1977). "
And so we conclude that the frog's brain and eyes work together to prevent the frog from injuring itself. You just defeated your own position.
When two things need to work together, as they often do, it implies that impairments in one creates impairments in the other. It narrows down the bottleneck through which species can evolve, and in my argument, it might close the lid completely.
Get your argument published in a worthy scientific journal, and peer reviewed.
Creationism of course would still remain an absurd unevidenced myth.
John, you wrote, “t narrows down the bottleneck through which species can evolve, and in my argument, it might close the lid completely.”
Hahahaha....that’s probably happened umpteen times. So what?
Except you don't believe it did close the lid completely, right?
Which lid, breezy? There arelijely billions of them.
The one which stops you and the species around you from having evolved.
ʝօɦռ 6IX ɮʀɛɛʐy,
"The one which stops you and the species around you from having evolved."
You're making a major mistake in your thinking. All life forms are transitional and will continue to evolve to adapt to the environment. The current model of human that exist today is very different from the one that existed just 100,000 years ago and the one that will exist 100,000 years from now will be completely different from us.
Hmm I wouldn't say that's a mistake in my thinking, given that that is the premise of what I am contesting. If it is impossible for a species to survive at state B; then any theory that claims a species transition from A to B to C must be wrong.
I couldn't agree more. But that is exactly what you haven't shown (bold).
Your idea that the "shape of your eye has to be perfectly balanced" is crazy; shitty eyes are better than no eyes; ask anyone with a astigmatism if shit vision is worse than no vision.
Perhaps its because you are under the impression that perception is a direct representation of reality, as a opposed to an optimized construct. When vision is treated as directly perceiving the environment, crappy vision becomes a percentage of the accuracy with which it detects the environment. Someone with astigmatism perceives the environment with 50% accuracy, which is better than someone that doesn't perceive it at all.
However, this is again why the brain is an important factor. Given that it has the job of translating the firing rate of neurons into a visual representation, any issues in the translation means you are now creating visual imagery for things that aren't there, or removing information that should be there. Take for example experiments which raised kittens in rooms filled with only horizontal lines from birth. Their brains lose the ability to detect vertical lines as a result. They'll bump into the legs of a chair because they do not see it. This is a blindness different from that of astigmatism; this is a blindness that affects the cats behavior and decisions. It walks towards an object that his brain thinks doesn't exist, and it is crashing into it.
It is better to not see at all, than to see misleading information. If you are at a fork on the road, it is better if there are no signs giving you direction and you guess which way to go, than to see a sign that tells you to go the wrong way.
Bullshit.
Have you heard of people that lose their ability to recognize faces, whether of themselves in the mirror, or family and friends? Sometimes they become aggressive, thinking it is an someone impersonating that person. Even better, issues with the brains ability to recognize, or embody itself. They'll see their leg attached to them, but don't recognize it as their own. These people often chop their limbs off as a result.
Evolution has to give these cognitive abilities at the same time it provides visual information, or risk an animal that fights itself or others.
As long as you keep getting hung up on this perfection shit, you will never get it. It is just a new version of your old best and brightest goals of evolution ideas. You need to get that garbage out of your head, instead of just finding new ways to express it.
It's not garbage, it's what we observe from the study of the visual system, applied to the concept of evolution.
It's also worth noting that this comparative approach of yours, misplaces what's important too. It doesn't matter if two legs are better than one, if you need wings to survive. It doesn't matter if astigmatism is better than blindness, when you need to discriminate between two points that are now perceived as one due to the blurinesd.
The question to ask, is if it's good enough, not if it's better than.
Right; which is why you telling us it has to be perfect is so crazy.
Where have I told you it has to be perfect? You've brought up perfection much more than I have. My argument has continually emphasized the balance and interplay between the organism, its brain, and the environment.
If anything that's my definition of perfection, that balance. A frogs eyes are perfect, in so far as it properly perceives the affordances of the environment, in relation to its unique body and brain. Likewise a hawk's eyes are perfect by the same criteria. To compare and contrast the two sets of eyes, and say one is better than the other is meaningless.
You could use this with any appendage at all. Your fingers would require you to have motor-neurons attached to conduits in your brain for you to have any effect with them.
What would be your first indication that something has evolved with an appendage as complicated as the eyeball (or opposable thumb) without evolving the brainpower to use it?
They're a perfect match for their environment because billions of years of evolution has "favoured" only traits that are perfect for that environment.
Looking at the end process and claiming it's unlikely is a very basic misconception creationists often have of the evolutionary process. Likewise pointing to an organism that perfectly matches its environment, but ignoring a) the sheer scale of time involved to achieve this for complex organisms like frogs and eagles, and b) the massive failure rate of random changes, are fairly typical creationist cliches.
"It's not garbage, it's what we observe from the study of the visual system, applied to the concept of evolution."
We? The entire scientific world doesn't agree, no matter how many times you try to imply otherwise.
Or are you saying the entire scientific world has entirely reversed it's position on a scientific theory that is the bedrock of the entire field of biology.....and it didn't even make the news?
You really are funny.
If by we you meant delusional creationists then that's a different matter.
"Evolution has to give these cognitive abilities at the same time it provides visual information, or risk an animal that fights itself or others."
I see a claim, I understand an even larger claim is implied. Now when are you going to publish your claims and get them peer reviewed? Until you do this is no different to Kirk Cameron banana story, "behold the atheists nightmare" apparently. It;s hard to say as I was laughing so hard it reminded of your posts.
https://youtu.be/zyzF8SMQOxU
" If it is impossible for a species to survive at state B; then any theory that claims a species transition from A to B to C must be wrong."
This is the very definition of a straw man argument, it's textbook. Clearly no one is claiming or has claimed that species that arrive at point c from A via B, can't survive at state B. Dear oh dear John.
you Actually think there is just one?
@ʝօɦռ 6IX ɮʀɛɛʐy
"The one which stops you and the species around you from having evolved."
Do you understand that your position is untenable? Do you understand that you are arguing against the existence of all species?
"Do you understand that your position is untenable? Do you understand that you are arguing against the existence of all species?"
No David, as astonishing as it is, he doesn't see it, his posts leave little room for doubt.
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