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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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@David
If I though my position was untenable I wouldn't have adopted it. Its worth noting that, although everyone says I'm wrong, there isn't consistency across commenters as to why that is. Yet I've defended my position against those that disagree these things co-evolved and those that do; as well as the rest of diverse responses I've gotten, coming at me from different angles and perspectives on evolution.
It seems to me that everyone here disagrees with each other about as much as they disagree with me.
If we thought your position was remotely tenable we wouldn't be pointing out you are delusional.
Since you're offering your subjective opinion as if it is definitive, again...
"Its worth noting that, although everyone says I'm wrong, there isn't consistency across commenters as to why that is."
Yes there is, they all point out that you are denying a scientific fact, and have no scientifically validated evidence.
"I've defended my position against those that disagree"
No you haven't, to do so your risible claims would have to be submitted to the same global scientific scrutiny that validated and still validates the scientific theory of evolution. Claims in a chatroom quite obviously don't change scientific facts.
"It seems to me that everyone here disagrees with each other about as much as they disagree with me."
This is irrelevant, we could all disagree on Newton's theory about gravity, this doesn't negate that scientific theory.
@ʝօɦn 6IX ɮʀɛɛʐy
Your position is that further advancement is impossible, thus species cannot evolve. Yet all you have to do is open your eyes to see that this planet is populated by thousands of different species.
Your argument flies in the face of overwhelming evidence.
My pastor told us something similar once. If you don't believe in God, all you have to do is open your eyes and see how this planet is populated by thousands of different species.
In a sense you're both right.
"If you don't believe in God, all you have to do is open your eyes and see how this planet is populated by thousands of different species."
LOL.
The same question to your objection still applies, why are you addressing it to atheists in a chatroom, instead of being published in a worthy peer reviewed scientific journal? If the objections are valid how has the entire scientific world missed them for over 160 years of intense scientific scrutiny, during which every new piece of evidence has validated species evolution?
"In other words, to have vision in any meaningful sense, requires not only some ability to process what you are seeing, but also the ability to recognize how your body can interact with what you are seeing."
Err, we have that, it works, and science has evidenced species evolution beyond any reasonable doubt, ipso facto the ability evolved. Could you offer a cogent scientific explanation (in a worthy peer reviewed scientific journal) why a deity using magic needs to be added to that, beyond what appears to be at best an argument from ignorance fallacy? What explanatory powers does your creation myth have, have you published them?
I call this argument, evolution of the gaps. Whenever you encounter a problem with how something could have evolved, always remember, evolution occured no matter what. It's true a priori.
Ideally, when evolution is invoked as a possible explanation, it goes from the general to the specific, and not the other way round.
Sure and a good reason for that is because things can be generally true, but collapse under a microscope. Which is why the Sheldons approach is an issue. He doesn't progress from the safety of generality, and investigate the details of evolution.
It is known from the fossil record and from direct observation that species evolve, i.e. that evolution is true - knowing this, it is not unreasonable to consider evolution the default hypothesis for features such as sight and self-awareness. No alternative explanation has yet supplanted the predictive power of the theory of evolution.
So a scientific fact is suspect because I don't fully understand it?
Try again. The details of evolution have been and are being fully investigated, and every piece of evidence uncovered in over 160 years globally confirms the scientific theory of species evolution. Not one scientists anywhere has falsified it, and all the experts globally concur that evidence is overwhelming, only creatards try to pretend science is remotely divided here.
Ever heard of project Steve? Look it up.
You can claim you are more knowledgeable about evolution all you want, but it is not me you're disagreeing with John, and this tired old lie won't become compelling through repetition.
I am accepting this scientific fact, as I do all scientific facts.
You are denying a scientific fact, and pretending your denial is valid in an atheist chat room. That is not how the scientific method works John, ask one of your professors to explain it.
Nothing is collapsing except your argument, John.
It would appear that my argument is solidifying. Consider the following quotation that I came across today:
The first thing to notice is that they agree that these two things are inseparable in living beings. As I was describing yesterday to Nyar, there are a host of issues that emerge when one part of the system undermines the rest; the literature is full of examples of what happens during these neurological anomalies.
Perhaps more interesting, is that the quote arrives at the same conclusion I did in the OP. These functions had to have evolved together. Any narrative that theorizes the evolution of the eye, and ignores the brain and the environment, is fundamentally flawed. The only difference is that these authors state the evolution as a matter of fact, without any reference to more sources or evidence,; hile I question the likelihood of it evolving, based on our current mechanisms of evolution, and the clinical outcomes that emerge when one variable changes. Their quote is an isolated comment, which doesn't lead to anywhere, but does show my argument isn't collapsing.
Reference:
Varela, F. J., Thompson, E., & Rosch, E. (1991). The embodied mind. Cognitive science and human experience. Boston: MIT Press.
And since you haven't given a single indication of a contradiction in them evolving together, your (fundamentally flawed) argument is collapsing. Instead of indicating what other scientists say that you agree on, shouldn't you be explaining how they are wrong?
He would need to demonstrate a valid argument first. .
Nothing claimed in here is a valid objection to scientifically validated facts and established scientific theories. Only a creatard would even try to have the shameless temerity to claim otherwise.
All the while boasting about their credentials and insulting the intellect of anyone who dares side with science over John's superstitious guff.
I call this the lying creatard argument, where a creatard makes up a blatant lie. Since no one has claimed evolution has occurred "no matter what".
Science doesn't accept things "no matter what", it's theists and creatards who do this. I'd have thought even a student of psychology could glean a basic scientific premise like that.
It;s about time for one of your appeal to authority fallacies now isn't it John?
You are funny, science accepts things a priori and creationists demand evidence. Hilarious even for you.
evolution is evidenced.
how is the god of the gaps argument fairing in comparison?
The thing with such exercises is that you reduce a feature to a point where many would not recognize it.
You wouldn't for example say that hydrogen and oxygen "know" how to form water, for example.
But you might recognize for example that simple organisms have self-awareness when they engage in a process like osmosis, or when they attack other organisms but not itself.
Should Animals Have More Eyes?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUOAZisYQjM
Evolutionary change first occurs at the level of single genes not organs or organisms.
Hi John,
You wrote: "The issue here actually goes beyond the eye itself. It implies that for every bodily change that an evolving organism undergoes, there needs to evolve a simultaneous representation of that change in the brain.
For the two to evolve independently of each other, and at different times will most likely prove disastrous."
Why do the respective changes have to be major. Incremental changes in either eye or brain would not render the organism inoperative and would allow time for the other to "catch up."
A million years is a long time in evolution.
The nature of the changes is far more important than the time it takes to achieve them. A bad change is a bad change irrespective of how slowly you implement it. In fact, I would argue that time is always against you. Suppose you have a knife perfectly balanced on its tip, functioning as a fulcrum for a horizontal bar. Assume that one side of that bar represents the brain, and other part represents the eye.
I have no idea if you can add a small amount of weight, such as a grain of sand, on one end without tipping it over. But if so, there is a limit to how much sand you can add before it tips over. So either you add sand on both sides as simultaneously as possible to maintain balance, or once the tipping starts, you have to race against time to balance it before it collapses.
Time, once the tipping begins, is a bad thing. The longer you take before adding a counterbalancing change, the more likely you'll end up with a collapsed structure.
Yet we see all around us evolved species with functioning eyes and brains that interpret that data.
So either science is right, or John has bestedevery scientist for the last 160 years including Darwin?
Hmm, if I'm going to accept this is wrong based on a student's religious beliefs who has zero qualification in the field I'm afraid that would render the scientific method entirely useless.
Might as well just pretend the bible has all the answers.
Nah, I'm sticking with science John.
"A bad change is a bad change irrespective of how slowly you implement it. "
Oh dear John, you have a fundamental blind spot here for some reason. A bad change would disadvantage that organism or species, thus over time those genes would disappear as they are less likely to be passed on.
Implement? Blind but complex forces work constantly and together including of course bad luck like a cataclysmic event wiping out dinosaurs.
It doesn't matter how likely a positive change is, it only matters that you are capable of understanding that only positive changes can be passed on in the long-term.
Time scales in evolution are fundamental to even a basic understanding of the process.
It helps when you talk about the likelihood of advantageous and disadvantageous genes being passed on, if you understand that evolutionary terms the advantage *IS that they are more likely to be passed on. The more suited to the environment the more likely a genetic trait is to be replicated in that environment. This has worked relentlessly for billions of years to leave only species that are perfectly evolved for their environments.
@ʝօɦռ 6IX ɮʀɛɛʐy
"I have no idea if you can add a small amount of weight, such as a grain of sand, on one end without tipping it over. But if so, there is a limit to how much sand you can add before it tips over. So either you add sand on both sides as simultaneously as possible to maintain balance, or once the tipping starts, you have to race against time to balance it before it collapses.
Time, once the tipping begins, is a bad thing. The longer you take before adding a counterbalancing change, the more likely you'll end up with a collapsed structure."
Then how come man has the most developed brain and not the most developed or efficient eyes? And my dog has better ears than me.
So what if everything is not in perfect balance, so what? It only means that one set of an organism is not optimized. It is not a pathway to extinction, it is living proof that everything is an intermediary species.
Well, clearly, because the brain is the central executive for a bunch of functions beyond vision. So if you want to look at the brain as a whole, you have to look at the body and it's behavior as a whole.
It's not about cross-species comparisons. If your dog has better ears than you, then it probably has a better auditory brain than you, and lives in an environment where that information is available for it, along with a body that had need/use for it, and not you. A dogs brain might even have abilities you and I don't. For example, their sense of smell makes them able to perceive time. Light and sound exists in the present moment, but smell decays. Smell can tell you the direction of something, and how long ago it was there. It allow you to sense the past, as such, a dog's olfactory brain will be far better than ours, not just because they have better noses, but because they have access to new information.
To sort of drive the point home, and perhaps complicate it a bit more, take into consideration that the body that a particular species inhabits, acts as a constraint for cognition as well as a distributor for it. Species that are embodied differently, will think differently. In other words, having a different sort of body, produces different kinds of thoughts: "Long flat creatures would not be able, as we are, of conceiving the world in terms on ‘front’, ‘back’, ‘up’, and down’. These concepts arise and are articulated thanks both to the particular body we have and the specific ways it navigates in and through space" (Foglia & Wilson, 2013, p 322).
The body of an animal doesn't merely relay sensory information to the brain, and deliver motor behavior to the environment. It has an active role in the processing of information itself. This idea often places limits to how much comparative research can be done across species. A mouse, through the very fact that it is shaped like a mouse, can be expected to think in mouse-like ways that will not transfer over to human brains with human bodies.
The problem is that these ideas within cognitive science often assume that a balance between the organism, its brain, and its environment exists. Yet within natural selection, it appears that if a shift occurs in any of these three points, which is not matched by the other two, the animal doesn't survive.
Reference"
Floglia, L., & Wilson, R. A. (2013). Embodied cognition. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Cognitive Science, 4(3), 319-325.
Not one word of that creates any problem for evolution or natural selection.
The scientific fact / theory of species evolution through natural selection remains scientifically valid with universal support from the global scientific community.
Why would you even bother trying to defend such nonsense. Hey! Another obstacle to evolution. Have you ever notices that when you are walking along and really smack that little toe on a rock, your eyes begin to water. Or what if you are having a really painful dump and your eyes begin to water. These are certainly obstacles to evolution. What if you were being chased by a dinosaur and suddenly hit your little toe or had to take a painful dump. Obviously the evolutionary process would have been interfered with. You would not be able to see where you were going and you would be leaving behind a trail that the dinosaur could easily follow. This proves evolution can not account for the development of the human body.
This is the most moronic topic I have yet seen in the forums' We need a fickle finger of fate award for this one.
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