How Crazy does Evolution Seem?

[Purple Knight]

This is not a question of whether or not evolution is crazy, but how crazy it seems at first glance.

That is, when we discard our experiences and look at claims as if through new eyes, what do we find when we look at evolution? I Believe we can find a great deal of common ground with this question, because when I discard my experience as an animal breeder, when I discard my knowledge, and what I've been taught, I might look at evolution with the same skepticism as someone who has either never been taught anything about it, or someone who has been taught to distrust it.

Personally my mind goes to the keratinised spines on the tongues of cats. Yes, cats have fingernails growing out of their tongues! Gross, right? Well, these particular fingernails have evolved into perfect little brushes for the animal's fur. But I think of that first animal with a horrid growth of keratin on its poor tongue. The poor thing didn't die immediately, and this fits perfectly with what I said about two steps back paying for one forward. This detrimental mutation didn't hurt the animal enough for the hapless thing to die of it, but surely it caused some suffering. And persevering thing that he was, he reproduced despite his disability (probably in a time of plenty that allowed that). But did he have the growths anywhere else? It isn't beyond reason to think of them protruding from the corners of his eyes or caking up more and more on the palms of his hands. Perhaps he had them where his eyelashes were, and it hurt him to even blink. As disturbing as my mental picture is of this scenario, this sad creature isn't even as bad off as this boar, whose tusks grew up and curled until they punctured his brain.





This is a perfect example of a detrimental trait being preserved because it doesn't hurt the animal enough to kill it before it mates. So we don't have to jump right from benefit to benefit. The road to a new beneficial trait might be long, going backwards most of the way, and filled with a lot of stabbed brains and eyelids.

Walking backwards most of the time, uphill both ways, and across caltrops almost the entire trip?

I have to admit, thinking about walking along such a path sounds like, at very least, a very depressing way to get from A to B. I would hope there would be a better way.

[alexxcJRO]

Posting a bunch of pictures is hardly a rebuttal, I could talk at length about this too, but you're not interested, you've already formed an opinion and nothing will ever sway you, not even facts. I suggest you scroll up to here and read the post I made to Jose and the comments by scientists (including paleontologists) about Meyer's book, you'd do well to read that book and then send your objections to the host of scientists, professors and teachers that are listed, I'm sure they'd appreciate your insights, clearly they are not real scientists, clearly opinions like this:

Q: Why do you bore with irrelevant nonsense huh?
You mention discontinuity and trilobites, eyes of the anomalocaris, evolution of the eye.
I responded to that.
So please respond to what I posted and don't send me to read books. Here is a debate forum not a place we just post links to books.
I could have easily myself send you hundreds of links to book and peer reviewed articles on evolution.

Can be safely ignored, he like all of the others praising the book are clearly religious nutjobs, I mean look at the Wistar Institute, I mean what do these people know!

Q: What is this?
Q: Are you forcing an argument I did not made in a pathetic attempt to distract?
I don’t understand creationists, argument from ignorance proponents, the religious sometimes .
They really are unable to stay on point.
Q: When have I talked or made claims of Meyer, Meyer books?

[Sherlock Holmes]

You keep saying this as though there's a scientific controversy over whether or not evolution actually happened. There's not.

Why do you think there isn't?

I have a better-than-average familiarity with the literature and I'm not aware of one. Seriously, if you know of a paper challenging evolution from the last sixty years, tell us about it.

First you claim there are absolutely no controversies within evolution and now you change that and claim that you know of no "papers challenging evolution" which must, I assume, in your mind, be your definition of "controversy".

A controversy is any kind of disagreement, alternate views and opinions among people with some expertise in a field, nothing to do with "papers", yes some controversies may manifest in a peer reviewed journal but that is not a necessary condition for a dispute to be a controversy!

So let me ask a different way - are there any scientists who question the efficacy of evolution? The answer is a very obvious yes, this is trivial to discover too so why you are struggling I can't imagine.

The Dissent from Darwin site publicly identifies hundreds and hundreds of researchers, professors and other specialists who say exactly that, so there is controversy, right there in front of your eyes, why can't you just admit it? what are you afraid of?

Moreover let me say that any discipline that claims to free from controversy is by definition a dead discipline, controversy and dissent and necessary, normal and nothing to be afraid of unless one has something to lose.

So, of course there's controversy and if you refuse to admit that then you'll start to lose my respect.

There are social and religious controversies about how scientific knowledge should affect religious thought, but there have been no serious scientific challenges to whether evolution actually occurred via mutation and natural selection since the early 1960s at the latest.

Are you sure?

As sure as anyone that reads journals for fun can be, I guess. Let's just say that if you were to find one, I'd be genuinely surprised.

It comes as something of a shock that someone who claims to be educated and more familiar than most with a subject is unaware of the various controversies present, I can only say that you are either very selective in what information you consume (that is filtering out anything that might be controversial) or do not understand what a controversy is.

The above is just one remark from a scientist commenting on Meyer's book about how Cambrian explosion is a huge problem for evolution.

That's right. It's just one remark from a scientist. One scientist claiming a controversy while endorsing a friend's book doesn't itself create a controversy, though. Lest you've forgotten, Meyer himself took a whole chapter to explain why science should be redefined so that his controversy can be called "science."

Here we go again, the popularity of evolution is its best defense!

If diversionary tactics and strawmen is your method of debating then sure, if asking us to talk about something else is your means of defense, then fine; but they aren't mine.

You know, you've been asked repeatedly to put up some sort of evidentiary defense of any of your claims and you haven't, instead insisting on making a purely rhetorical case that is both devoid of evidence and heavily peppered with patronizing attempts to tell us what our goals and philosophies actually are. To pretend that a rhetorical analogy between creationism and other failed theories of the past is anything other than apt, let alone "diversionary" or based on a straw man is the very epitome of chutzpah.

I just showed you Meyer's book and one (of the many) comments by academics on his book, that admit he is identifying a problem in evolution. I have previously showed you the Dissent from Darwin lists of over 1,000 scientists, professors and academics who dispute the efficacy of evolution.

So how can you claim I am not providing evidence? the evidence is easily found, in Meyer's book, in many other articles and books.

So there is evidence and plenty of it but if you live in a world where controversy does not exist, where no "real" scientists question Darwin, then of course you'll never see the evidence, you'll never comprehend it.

If you want to examine an actual scientific controversy that involves evolution, it's been notoriously difficult to place the divergence of testudines (turtles and tortoises) from the rest of the amniotes.

Sure, lets discuss yet another claimed endorsement of evolution, lets pick a controversy that isn't controversial, ask that we politely just turn and look the other way, lets all follow your lead and cheerfully put our intellectual blinkers on, how sadly predictable.

Seriously? You think that's not controversial within the field? I thought you said that you studied evolution.

But you clipped your own text! You committed this which was part of your original remark:

If you want to examine an actual scientific controversy that involves evolution, it's been notoriously difficult to place the divergence of testudines (turtles and tortoises) from the rest of the amniotes. That only became possible relatively recently with the advent and improvement of gene sequencing. That kind of discussion might be instructive for more advanced students to show the kinds of questions that are still debated within evolutionary biology.

See? you picked what you deem to be a controversy but one that is now less of a problem, you chose a controversy that has now diminished, you want to discuss a controversy but one that does not undermine evolution! I'm not interested in those!

There are several large clades that are hard to place based on fossils and sequences from a limited number of species due to deep phylogeny and large, often opaque differences in morphology. Turtles are one of those groups because the lineage is so old and because their shells placed them in what ecologists would call different ecological niches than other organisms, even those in the same environments. One of the limiting factors in molecular analysis has been the collection of tissue samples from enough species to reduce the effects of so-called "long branch attraction" errors in phylogenetic studies. Like anything else, more data means more resolution, which also means that previously competing estimates will be resolved into winners and losers. You think nobody cares? That's because you're not a biologist! Other clades with controversies that are still controversial and being resolved are snakes and whales.

I wouldn't think that a creationist trying to find an elephant in the room would overlook a whale.

[Sherlock Holmes]

You keep saying this as though there's a scientific controversy over whether or not evolution actually happened. There's not.

Why do you think there isn't?

I have a better-than-average familiarity with the literature and I'm not aware of one. Seriously, if you know of a paper challenging evolution from the last sixty years, tell us about it.

First you claim there are absolutely no controversies within evolution and now you change that and claim that you know of no "papers challenging evolution" which must, I assume, in your mind, be your definition of "controversy".

A controversy is any kind of disagreement, alternate views and opinions among people with some expertise in a field, nothing to do with "papers", yes some controversies may manifest in a peer reviewed journal but that is not a necessary condition for a dispute to be a controversy!

So let me ask a different way - are there any scientists who question the efficacy of evolution? The answer is a very obvious yes, this is trivial to discover too so why you are struggling I can't imagine.

The Dissent from Darwin site publicly identifies hundreds and hundreds of researchers, professors and other specialists who say exactly that, so there is controversy, right there in front of your eyes, why can't you just admit it? what are you afraid of?

Moreover let me say that any discipline that claims to free from controversy is by definition a dead discipline, controversy and dissent and necessary, normal and nothing to be afraid of unless one has something to lose.

So, of course there's controversy and if you refuse to admit that then you'll start to lose my respect.

There are social and religious controversies about how scientific knowledge should affect religious thought, but there have been no serious scientific challenges to whether evolution actually occurred via mutation and natural selection since the early 1960s at the latest.

Are you sure?

As sure as anyone that reads journals for fun can be, I guess. Let's just say that if you were to find one, I'd be genuinely surprised.

It comes as something of a shock that someone who claims to be educated and more familiar than most with a subject is unaware of the various controversies present, I can only say that you are either very selective in what information you consume (that is filtering out anything that might be controversial) or do not understand what a controversy is.

The above is just one remark from a scientist commenting on Meyer's book about how Cambrian explosion is a huge problem for evolution.

That's right. It's just one remark from a scientist. One scientist claiming a controversy while endorsing a friend's book doesn't itself create a controversy, though. Lest you've forgotten, Meyer himself took a whole chapter to explain why science should be redefined so that his controversy can be called "science."

Here we go again, the popularity of evolution is its best defense!

Can you explain what you mean too by "while endorsing a friend's book"?

Are you attempting to discredit Dr. Ewert? if so why? why can't you stick to the material facts, the science rather than launching an ad-hominem attack against a fellow scientist? so that's the kind of "scientific argument" you fall back on when you are shown evidence of controversy? disparage, reject, attack the person not the argument, I've seen all I need from you now.



Don Ewert, PhD
Research Scientist

Dr. Ewert received a Ph.D. in microbiology from the University of Georgia in Athens, GA; an M.B.A. in administration from Eastern University in St. David’s, PA (Administration); and he received postdoctoral training in developmental and comparative immunology at University of Alabama in Birmingham, AL. He operated a laboratory at the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia, PA, where he lead a team of researchers in molecular and cellular biology investigating the role of the immune system, endogenous and exogenous viruses, oncogenes in cancer, and normal development of the immune system. He has authored and co-authored over 60 technical papers. Currently at HEI, he is involved in studies to develop pharmacological approaches to preventing hearing loss induced by loud noise or exposure to blasts. Dr. Ewert has served in administrative positions as Director of Research Administration and Resources at The Wistar Institute; Associate Vice President for Research at the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation, Oklahoma City, OK; Director of Research at HEI; and is currently a Research Scientist at HEI.

If diversionary tactics and strawmen is your method of debating then sure, if asking us to talk about something else is your means of defense, then fine; but they aren't mine.

You know, you've been asked repeatedly to put up some sort of evidentiary defense of any of your claims and you haven't, instead insisting on making a purely rhetorical case that is both devoid of evidence and heavily peppered with patronizing attempts to tell us what our goals and philosophies actually are. To pretend that a rhetorical analogy between creationism and other failed theories of the past is anything other than apt, let alone "diversionary" or based on a straw man is the very epitome of chutzpah.

I just showed you Meyer's book and one (of the many) comments by academics on his book, that admit he is identifying a problem in evolution. I have previously showed you the Dissent from Darwin lists of over 1,000 scientists, professors and academics who dispute the efficacy of evolution.

So how can you claim I am not providing evidence? the evidence is easily found, in Meyer's book, in many other articles and books.

So there is evidence and plenty of it but if you live in a world where controversy does not exist, where no "real" scientists question Darwin, then of course you'll never see the evidence, you'll never comprehend it.

If you want to examine an actual scientific controversy that involves evolution, it's been notoriously difficult to place the divergence of testudines (turtles and tortoises) from the rest of the amniotes.

Sure, lets discuss yet another claimed endorsement of evolution, lets pick a controversy that isn't controversial, ask that we politely just turn and look the other way, lets all follow your lead and cheerfully put our intellectual blinkers on, how sadly predictable.

Seriously? You think that's not controversial within the field? I thought you said that you studied evolution.

But you clipped your own text! You committed this which was part of your original remark:

If you want to examine an actual scientific controversy that involves evolution, it's been notoriously difficult to place the divergence of testudines (turtles and tortoises) from the rest of the amniotes. That only became possible relatively recently with the advent and improvement of gene sequencing. That kind of discussion might be instructive for more advanced students to show the kinds of questions that are still debated within evolutionary biology.

See? you picked what you deem to be a controversy but one that is now less of a problem, you chose a controversy that has now diminished, you want to discuss a controversy but one that does not undermine evolution! I'm not interested in those!

There are several large clades that are hard to place based on fossils and sequences from a limited number of species due to deep phylogeny and large, often opaque differences in morphology. Turtles are one of those groups because the lineage is so old and because their shells placed them in what ecologists would call different ecological niches than other organisms, even those in the same environments. One of the limiting factors in molecular analysis has been the collection of tissue samples from enough species to reduce the effects of so-called "long branch attraction" errors in phylogenetic studies. Like anything else, more data means more resolution, which also means that previously competing estimates will be resolved into winners and losers. You think nobody cares? That's because you're not a biologist! Other clades with controversies that are still controversial and being resolved are snakes and whales.

I wouldn't think that a creationist trying to find an elephant in the room would overlook a whale.

[Sherlock Holmes]

Posting a bunch of pictures is hardly a rebuttal, I could talk at length about this too, but you're not interested, you've already formed an opinion and nothing will ever sway you, not even facts. I suggest you scroll up to here and read the post I made to Jose and the comments by scientists (including paleontologists) about Meyer's book, you'd do well to read that book and then send your objections to the host of scientists, professors and teachers that are listed, I'm sure they'd appreciate your insights, clearly they are not real scientists, clearly opinions like this:

Q: Why do you bore with irrelevant nonsense huh?
You mention discontinuity and trilobites, eyes of the anomalocaris, evolution of the eye.
I responded to that.

No you did not, you reacted to that, not the same.

So please respond to what I posted and don't send me to read books. Here is a debate forum not a place we just post links to books.
I could have easily myself send you hundreds of links to book and peer reviewed articles on evolution.

I did respond, I pointed out that a bunch of pictures does not a rebuttal make.

Can be safely ignored, he like all of the others praising the book are clearly religious nutjobs, I mean look at the Wistar Institute, I mean what do these people know!

Q: What is this?
Q: Are you forcing an argument I did not made in a pathetic attempt to distract?
I don’t understand creationists, argument from ignorance proponents, the religious sometimes .
They really are unable to stay on point.
Q: When have I talked or made claims of Meyer, Meyer books?

I never said you did make any claims about Meyer's books. I suggested you take a look at a prior post, a response to Jose, where I quoted a Prof of Microbiology.

You said nothing, ignored the fact that this person and perhaps thousands of others, do not agree with the fanciful fairy story about the fossil record.

Do you disagree with what the Prof said:

It is no secret among professionals that recent findings by developmental and molecular biologists are challenging current Darwinian theories of evolution. Meyer has condensed the research, made it accessible to the non-specialist and put it in the context of the debate over the origins of biological novelty. He makes a case for intelligent design as the only currently viable scientific theory for the origin of biological novelty, as found in the explosion of new species during the Cambrian geologic era. Meyer’s challenge to the dominant paradigm of naturalism will no doubt be strongly resisted by those committed to a materialist world view, but provide food for refection for those who are searching for truth.

-Dr. Donald L. Ewert, Molecular Biologist, Associate Member (retired), Wistar Institute.

Be specific, what exactly does he say that you think is false, untrue, incorrect?

[Clownboat]

Now how do you think we can tell if some "thing" was or was not designed? how can you tell? what exactly is the test for this? if there is no test then you cannot say something was not designed can you?

Simple logic.
Is the designer claimed to be intelligent for example? Like the biblical designer. We can sure test for claimed charicteristics.
Would an intelligent designer put testicles on the outside of the body?
Would an intelligent designer use the same pathway for both eating and drinking?

Perhaps one could try to argue for random design. Intelligent though, not so much.

[Jose Fly]

[Replying to Sherlock Holmes in post #279]
FYI, I will wait until you finish replying to the rest of my post before I post my reply.

[Difflugia]

First you claim there are absolutely no controversies within evolution and now you change that and claim that you know of no "papers challenging evolution" which must, I assume, in your mind, be your definition of "controversy".

I haven't changed anything. I've never claimed that there were no controversies within evolution, I've claimed that there's no scientific controversy about whether or not evolution in fact happened. The reason I'm specific about my definition is because of your repeated attempts to characterize a religious controversy as a scientific controversy.

A controversy is any kind of disagreement, alternate views and opinions among people with some expertise in a field, nothing to do with "papers", yes some controversies may manifest in a peer reviewed journal but that is not a necessary condition for a dispute to be a controversy!

It is for it to be a scientific controversy.

So let me ask a different way - are there any scientists who question the efficacy of evolution? The answer is a very obvious yes, this is trivial to discover too so why you are struggling I can't imagine.

What is it that you think I'm struggling with? That there are people with scientific credentials that are also creationists? I came to grips with that a long time ago. Being smart doesn't make one impervious to being wrong. I'm the one that mentioned Linus Pauling, remember?

The Dissent from Darwin site publicly identifies hundreds and hundreds of researchers, professors and other specialists who say exactly that, so there is controversy, right there in front of your eyes, why can't you just admit it?

When they have collectively worked up a scientific basis for that controversy, then we'll have something to work with. I admit it.

what are you afraid of?

Spiders. I have been since I was little. Weird.

Moreover let me say that any discipline that claims to free from controversy is by definition a dead discipline, controversy and dissent and necessary, normal and nothing to be afraid of unless one has something to lose.

What is your thing with fear all of a sudden? Does emotional language sometimes help hide your attempts at equivocation?

So, of course there's controversy and if you refuse to admit that then you'll start to lose my respect.

Oh, no!

In case you haven't noticed, your attempts to recast this as a purely rhetorical debate haven't really gained you much. Not only have you apparently no evidence to present for anything, but it's also apparent that you didn't really understand the one book on the subject that you've read. If you did, you presumably wouldn't have overextended your own argument so badly right out of the gate. Meyer's book doesn't even challenge evolution so much as it simply presents a gap into which God (sorry, "the intelligent designer") might fit. Even at that, Meyer still had to dismiss phylogenetic data in the minds of his readers for the gap to seem large enough. This brings me to another point that I feel that I have to make at this point, even if it's a bit of a tangent:

Not everybody's bluffing.

There is no shortage of internet debates, particularly involving science and religion, in which neither participant really understands the subject matter. A lot of those end up turning into games of chicken, where both sides try to present the appearance of expertise without getting called on it. That works when the opponents have roughly the same level of understanding of the subject and if you're just playing the odds, there's a pretty good chance that's true any given time. Even the best odds aren't a sure thing, though, and you sometimes crap out.

It comes as something of a shock that someone who claims to be educated and more familiar than most with a subject is unaware of the various controversies present, I can only say that you are either very selective in what information you consume (that is filtering out anything that might be controversial) or do not understand what a controversy is.

You crapped out.

Let's discuss some controversies, shall we? None of the actual scientific controversies surrounding evolution call into question whether or not evolution happened or even broadly how, but unfortunately for you, they're what we have to work with.

One of the controversies mentioned by Meyer (so you should be aware of it) is whether and to what extent a "molecular clock" can be established and calibrated to give us information that we can't get from fossils alone. It certainly works within small clades and sometimes even within larger ones, nearly always allowing us to accurately estimate divergence times at the genus level and quite often between families or even orders. The "controversy" isn't whether genetic differences accumulate at consistent rates for closely related organisms or whether those rates themselves begin to diverge, but why those rates diverge. If we can narrow down exactly what variables are responsible, we can estimate the divergences themselves, allowing a much more accurate determination of when various clades diverged from each other. Various causes have been proposed, like organism size, genome length, reproduction rate, and even things like local climate conditions. Researchers have identified correlations with all of these, but nobody has thus far been able to come up with a synthesis that shows enough predictive power to be useful. Individual researchers have ideas and particular directions for their research, but there's no consensus. It's a controversy.

Another controversy is how to relate phylogenies generated from nuclear genes to those generated with mitochondrial data. You see, mitochondrial data don't always result in exactly the same trees as nuclear data, even when both sets of data are extremely robust. Most of the differences are at the species or genus level, indicating that the problem is sometimes just incomplete lineage sorting, but that's not always the case. Mitochondrial genes are obviously passed on to offspring differently than nuclear genes. Mitochondria aren't affected by meiosis and genetic reassortment, but are (with a few exceptions) inherited entirely from the mother. In most cases, the lineage data preserved in the DNA will average out so that the trees appear the same, but not always. The controversy is over how to interpret these differences. For one thing, mitochondrial DNA is easier to replicate and sequence (there are hundreds of mitochondria per cell, compared to a single set of nuclear DNA). For another, mitochondrial genes are highly conserved, allowing comparison between even distantly related organisms. The controversy is that some researchers have claimed that the mitochondrial tree is merely a proxy for the nuclear tree because the nuclear genes are primarily responsible for the traits upon which natural selection acts. The argument is that while the mitochondrial data show a valid pattern of descent, that pattern can be slightly different than the true evolutionary pattern as preserved in the nuclear DNA. That would mean, then, that the many detailed, species-level phylogenies generated with mitochondrial data can't be definitive until verified with nuclear DNA. Those that work predominantly with mitochondrial data disagree. It's a controversy.

Now, let's go back to your rhetorical argument. Your claim is that I apparently either missed or filtered out other "controversies" within the literature that are somehow important to the very nature of evolution itself. The question that raises, though, is if you can't name any of those controversies from the literature, upon what are you basing the accusation that I'm somehow "filtering" the results? It's possible that I am, but if you can't find them and nobody else can find them, how does that advance your argument to anything beyond speculation?

At some point, you should probably put your money where your mouth is.

One scientist claiming a controversy while endorsing a friend's book doesn't itself create a controversy, though. Lest you've forgotten, Meyer himself took a whole chapter to explain why science should be redefined so that his controversy can be called "science."

Here we go again, the popularity of evolution is its best defense!

Is that what my defense is? I'm pretty sure it's not, because even that would oversell your argument. My defense is that book reviews aren't evidence of a scientific controversy. Even a thousand reviews, while not nothing, don't rise to the evidentiary power of one paper.

I just showed you Meyer's book and one (of the many) comments by academics on his book, that admit he is identifying a problem in evolution. I have previously showed you the Dissent from Darwin lists of over 1,000 scientists, professors and academics who dispute the efficacy of evolution.

Your book reviewer isn't admitting a problem. He is an author for the Discovery Institute himself. Instead of admitting a problem, he's advancing his own position.

So how can you claim I am not providing evidence? the evidence is easily found, in Meyer's book, in many other articles and books.

"How can you claim I haven't given you a nickel? The nickel's right there at the bottom of that well!"

Each time you've even alluded to anything specific that you might be willing to defend, you've failed to defend it. Your only argument seems to be that somebody, somewhere made an argument that you agree with, but you can't even articulate what it is specifically you agree with or why. Everyone here has tried in good faith to engage with what little you've provided, but yet your claim is that we're ignoring your evidence or, most recently, frightened of your raw intellectual power.

So there is evidence and plenty of it but if you live in a world where controversy does not exist, where no "real" scientists question Darwin, then of course you'll never see the evidence, you'll never comprehend it.

Yes. I'm clearly to be pitied.

[alexxcJRO]

No you did not, you reacted to that, not the same.
I did respond, I pointed out that a bunch of pictures does not a rebuttal make.

Firstly,
Q: Why lie and straw-man?
My post contains both words(my words, quotes from outside sources, links) and pictures.

Secondly,
Q: What wrong with a picture?
A picture can have much explanatory power. Sometime more then words.

Analogy:
A Simpleton: The Sun looks green in the day sky.
Me:Look at the picture.(I show him a picture of the sun looking yellow)
A Simpleton: Pictures does not a rebuttal make.
Me: Face Palm.

You are akin to “A Simpleton”.

Thirdly,
You said: “There is no continuity, only claims that the fossil record is evidence of evolution.
I have no reason whatsoever for example to believe that Anomalocaris or Trilobites actually had ancestors, or common ancestry.
Anomalocaris had a complicated compound eye, as complicated as any organism that lives today and there is no fossil evidence whatsoever that the structure "evolved". This is just one of many claims made by evolution advocates.”

1.I said: “The big or small discontinuity are only in the findings. It does not follow that this the reality.
Fossils are found as times goes by and discontinuities get smaller(ex: Kylinxia).
Positing a forever discontinuity argument and a forever moving the goal post argument is rather fallacious indeed.”

The findings are like a movie that has missing parts. The more findings there are the more the movies becomes more complete. The movie will never be complete. But the accuracy will increase more and more as time goes by.
Scientists know the main plot but don't know certain details.
The missing details don't make the whole plot to go away.

Posted this pic:

Showing the Kylinxia as a new find- a missing link closing bridging “the evolutionary gap from Anomalocaris to true arthropods and forms a key ‘missing link’ in the origin of arthropods,"

https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/2 ... ssing-link
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kylinxia
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2883-7

2. I posted some info on trilobites that shows trilobites having complicated eyes:

“Trilobites are one of the first animals in the fossil record to develop complex eyes (as opposed to the light-sensitive spots that passed as early eyes).
Trilobites had compound eyes, akin to those of today's insects and crustaceans. We know that because trilobites' lenses were made of calcite, so they often fossilized along with the rest of the trilobite's exoskeleton.
But underneath the lenses were sensory cells, which wired vision up to the brain. Those sensory cells, like other soft tissue, rarely fossilize. Thus, seeing how trilobites' eyes were wired into their brains has been impossible up to now.
The findings indicate that trilobites had apposition eyes. Apposition eyes are the most common form of eye, and are likely the ancestral form of the compound eye. Many of today's insects have both appositional eyes (more advanced, compound eyes) and ocelli (simple eyes that mainly sense light). But some arthropods, like spiders, make their entire eye out of ocelli.”
https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet ... -of-vision
https://www.livescience.com/trilobite-eyes

3. I put some pics up to show the similar morphology between Anomalocaris and Trilobites:



4. I put some pics to show an example of the evolution of the eye from Patch of Sensitive Cells to Eye Cup to Eye with Primitive lens to Complex Camera type Eye:


5. Some pictures showing evolution, phylogenetic trees and fossils.

I never said you did make any claims about Meyer's books. I suggested you take a look at a prior post, a response to Jose, where I quoted a Prof of Microbiology.

You said nothing, ignored the fact that this person and perhaps thousands of others, do not agree with the fanciful fairy story about the fossil record.

Sir I responded to what you wrote not what Meyer said or other proponent of argument from ignorance(=ID) said.
Don’t muddle the water with all kind of irrelevant things and focus.

“Be specific, what exactly does he say that you think is false, untrue, incorrect?”

That’s supposedly an opinion on a book.
The only conclusion I can take from that is that I have a piece of text that says someone named Dr. Donald L. Ewert gave an opinion on that other someone named Meyer who wrote a book with accessible information where he makes a case for ID.
No links to confirm this is what Dr. Donald L. Ewert actually said. Only a quote.
Please provide evidence to show Dr. Donald L. Ewert is a molecular biologist and said the above.
Waiting.

[brunumb]

Something to watch instead of read for a change of pace.
Scientist Reacts to "Fossil Record Debunked"

[Sherlock Holmes]

[Replying to Sherlock Holmes in post #279]
FYI, I will wait until you finish replying to the rest of my post before I post my reply.

Fair enough, thanks.