Purposeful Design or Chanced Processes?

[theStudent]

Evidence of God is everywhere.
The Bible states that truth clearly, when it tells us, "The hearing ear and the seeing eye — Jehovah has made both of them."

The ear consists of three parts: the outer ear, the middle ear, and the inner ear.
The middle ear is a small chamber that begins with the eardrum and leads to the maze of passageways that constitute the inner ear.
Besides its function in connection with hearing, the inner ear also possesses organs having to do with balance and motion.
The use of two ears greatly helps a person to locate the source and direction of sounds.

The human ear detects sounds within the range of about 20 to 20,000 cycles per second.
The ears of many animals are sensitive to tones of higher pitch that are inaudible to the human ear. The range of sound energy perceived by the human ear is remarkable. The loudest sound that the ear can tolerate without danger is two million million times as powerful as the least perceptible sound. The human ear has the maximum sensitivity that it is practical to possess, for if the ears were any keener they would respond to the unceasing molecular motions of the air particles themselves.

The outer ear is precisely designed with a specially designed structure of curves, and an opening designed to catch and channel sound waves into the inner ear.

How the ear works


How the hearing works
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How your ear works - Inside the Human Body: Building Your Brain - BBC One
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The eye is a highly efficient, self-adjusting “camera� that transmits impulses to the brain, where the object focused on the eye’s retina is interpreted as sight.
The possession of two eyes, as in the human body, provides stereoscopic vision. Sight is probably the most important channel of communication to the mind.

How the Eye Works Animation - How Do We See Video - Nearsighted & Farsighted Human Eye Anatomy


Anatomy and Function of the Eye
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A Journey Through the Human Eye: How We See


Eye Animation
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If the male and the female reproductive organs evolved, how had life been proceeding before the complete formation of both?

An egg from a woman’s ovaries cannot produce life on its own. For this to happen, a sperm cell from the male reproductive system must combine with the nucleus of the egg.
What does the sperm do to make the egg develop?

Differently shaped cells begin to form - nerve cells, muscle cells, skin cells, and all the other types that make up the human body.
Science Digest

No one knows for sure, why certain cells aggregate to form a kidney while others join to form a liver, and so on.

Eventually, the human body reaches full growth, being made up of some 100,000,000,000,000 cells.
What causes the cells to stop dividing at just the right time and why?

How Sperm Meets Egg | Parents
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The Masterpiece of Nature, by Professor Graham Bell

Sex is the queen of problems in evolutionary biology. . . . It seems that some of the most fundamental questions in evolutionary biology have scarcely ever been asked . . . The largest and least ignorable and most obdurate of these questions is, why sex?

Imo, it is truly mind-boggling how one can say they have no evidence of God.

Do you agree these give evidence of design and purpose?
Is there any chance that these came about through the process described by evolution theorist?
Evidence for arguments required.

[DanieltheDragon]

[Replying to post 247 by DanieltheDragon]

That is my point in part, an assumption is made that because something looks complex that it must be "creative." This is an error on the part of the observer

I see, the way I read it I thought you were talking about some unconscious universal deistic concept. Clearly overthought that one

[TheBeardedDude]

[Replying to post 249 by DanieltheDragon]

I was replying to someone implying that

[Blastcat]

[Replying to post 248 by TheBeardedDude]

That is my point in part, an assumption is made that because something looks complex that it must be "creative." This is an error on the part of the observer

Even worse to think that it was "created" by a "creator" who "creates".

This creation and creator seems to be an anthropomorphic metaphor.
Poetry gone viral.

[stevevw]

[Replying to post 242 by stevevw]

Your hand and fingers have no individual specific job. Their purpose is defined by how YOU use them. Which means that adapting them for new functions is still natural selection. I can't think of any feature I have that serves only a singular purpose. My eyes don't only form images, they detect light and motion and I can even use them to determine where the wind is blowing from. Skin is for protection from bacteria and other single-celled organisms, but also protection from physical harm and it provides some structural support.

Back to hands, they didn't evolve in our tetrapod ancestor for walking or grasping or grabbing or holding. In ancient lobe-finned fish, they appear to have evolved sturdy bones for supporting their weight in shallow water. Over time, their descendants adapted the use of their newfound limbs to support more of their weight and slowly moved from aquatic to terrestrial habitats. As a consequence of this gradual transition onto land, the limbs gradually changed to accommodate the new adapted purposes.

So then you are saying that all learnt tasks are the product of natural selection. There is no nurture and nature. There is a difference between what is learned which may not always be vital for survival and what is naturally there. If the ability for typing was selected for survival then people would automatically know how to type for survival because the ability would be passed on to each generation. If they did not learn to type then that would be a disadvantage. The hand itself is a product of selection but the individual abilities it can do are not as someone may never learn typing but still survive. That's because they have what is vital the hands and fingers.

That is the idea of natural selection that a feature is mutated and selected for a benefit to allowing a creature to survive and reproduce. The feature that has been mutated is passed on to the next generation. The single feature of the hands and fingers are that they are a tool for survival as opposed to a wing or fin. The single feature for the eyes is they see as opposed to not seeing or sensing or using radar.

[DanieltheDragon]

[Replying to post 252 by stevevw]

I think your retroactively assigning a purpose here. Try not to think of mutation in terms of purpose. Rather try looking at them as advantage, disadvantage, and benign with respect to the ecosystem.

What you'll find is advantageous mutations quickly fill the ecosystem and disadvantageous one disappear while benign ones linger.

Take certain species of blind cave fish. they entered the ecosystem with seeing eyes. Seeing eyes take up more calories and nutrients to maintain giving blind fish an advantage. Over time there were no seeing fish. Now there is a new mutation fish with no eyes what do you think will happen to the blind fish?

[stevevw]

[Replying to post 243 by stevevw]



[center]


Wrong about the theory of evolution, just very wrong.[/center]

Becuase we are discovering how incredibly complex and designed life is natural selection has been given more and more capabilities to account for this.

Yes, biology is stunningly complex and varied.
The theory of evolution explains why and how.

But you are WRONG to assume "design" if your goal is to show that it exists.

So when scientists talk about DNA being like a computer code or the universe being like a complex computer program full of information that is not similar to human design.

It could be that natural selection is being assumed to be responsible for complexity in life.

WRONG

Science, including all the sciences that are supported by the theory of evolution, does NOT work by assumptions.

There are plenty of assumptions in evolution. Darwin himself assumed that in the future the fossil record should produce the missing fossils he could not find at the time he was formulating his theory. It was assumed that our DNA was full of junk and this was shown to be wrong. Even evolution theory and supporters admit assumptions.

Most of the detail between many of the claims made by evolution are assumptions because they have not been scientifically verified. As time goes by new discoveries expose those assumptions to be incorrect. Are you saying that the claims made by evolution have never been wrong? One of the major assumptions is that single-celled organisms evolved into multi-celled life and that natural selection was the driving force. This has not been scientifically verified and is assumed or speculated. In fact, a lot of evolution in the past is assumed because no one was there to see it directly and scientifically verify it. Here are more assumptions by evolution,

That Natural selection is able to evolve complex life.

The frailty of adaptive hypotheses for the origins of organismal complexity
Jacob (46) argues that “it is natural selection that gives direction to changes, orients chance, and slowly, progressively produces more complex structures, new organs, and new species.� The vast majority of biologists almost certainly agree with such statements. But where is the direct supportive evidence for the assumption that complexity is rooted in adaptive processes? No existing observations support such a claim,
http://www.pnas.org/content/104/suppl_1/8597.full

The middle way of evolution
[E]volutionary biologists often use models having assumptions known to be manifestly false or at best of uncertain validity in order to predict evolutionary outcomes.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3502201/

Does evolutionary theory need a rethink?
However, standard evolutionary theory (SET) largely retains the same assumptions as the original modern synthesis, which continues to channel how people think about evolution.
http://www.nature.com/news/does-evoluti ... nk-1.16080

From the following paper, we can see that a lot of assumption is used in papers written about evolution and they are constantly acknowledging this. So to say that evolution has no assumption is not correct.

Pattern pluralism and the Tree of Life hypothesis
Hierarchical structure can always be imposed on or extracted from such data sets by algorithms designed to do so, but at its base the universal TOL rests on an unproven assumption about pattern that, given what we know about process, is unlikely to be broadly true.
http://www.pnas.org/content/104/7/2043.full

The following paper is just an example of how evolution makes the claim based on assumption and then this is proven wrong with new discoveries. Thats becuase it is looking back on the past for which we were not there to witness so a lot has to be assumed.
The Success of Horses Suggests a Key Assumption About Evolution Could Be Wrong
http://www.sciencealert.com/the-success ... d-be-wrong

Afterall selection refines what is already existing.

WRONG

Selection means that organisms better suited to their environment will have better chances of surviving. The "refining" you are seeing is due to the fact that you believe in a designer. Designers "refine" their designs. But you have not demonstrated that there is a designer out there.

So do you agree that natural selection works with something (an animal) that is already in existence. If so it is refining what is already there. If evolution morphed an ape into a human then it is working with the ape that is already there, is this not the case.


Evolution doesn’t just pick good ideas out of thin air; it refines what already exists.
https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio ... _-_NYTimes

Evolution does not state that our body structures should change drastically. Rather, it builds on what already exists.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/daylightat ... t-it-isnt/

As the saying goes natural selection is good at accounting for the survival of the fittest but not the arrival of the fittest.

WRONG

The theory of evolution isn't about how life BEGAN. The theory of evolution is about how organisms that are ALREADY alive CHANGE over time.

We keep repeating this.. seemingly, to no avail.

Your stuck on thinking that the theory of evolution ( THE WORD MEANS CHANGE ) is the theory of GENESIS ( which means START )

You could not be more wrong about what the theory of evolution is.

I suggest learning about it from a reputable source.
You should START by looking elsewhere than the creationist propaganda about it.

I think you are assuming things here. Firstly all the sources I have used do not come from any religious sites. 2nd most come from mainstream scientific sites and are evidenced based sources such as scientifically peered reviewed.

Thirdly the arrival of the fittest is not how life came about in the first place from non-life. The arrival of the fittest simply means how did a creature that is fit enough to survive evolved its features in the first place? Natural selection is normally talking about refining existing features such as a change in colour, size, strength, speed or capacity as in brain power etc. Or a modification of an existing feature such as a fin to feet. But how did those features get there in the first place.

[stevevw]

[Replying to post 252 by stevevw]

I think your retroactively assigning a purpose here. Try not to think of mutation in terms of purpose. Rather try looking at them as advantage, disadvantage, and benign with respect to the ecosystem.

What you'll find is advantageous mutations quickly fill the ecosystem and disadvantageous one disappear while benign ones linger.

Take certain species of blind cave fish. they entered the ecosystem with seeing eyes. Seeing eyes take up more calories and nutrients to maintain giving blind fish an advantage. Over time there were no seeing fish. Now there is a new mutation fish with no eyes what do you think will happen to the blind fish?

But a mutation has nothing to do with how someone learns how to type because it is learned behaviour and will not be passed onto the next generation unless it is taught. I guess some can argue that learned behaviour can be evolutionary as with culture or cooperative communities but that is contentious. I have always understood evolution by natural selection and mutations is a change in alleles frequency and phenotypic traits and this requires a biological change more than a behavioural change.

That is different to a person learning to type as this is not biological and relevant to survival. You would have to go back to why hands and fingers were evolved in the first place to see how and why they were evolved such as fins evolved to feet for walking on land and not for playing tiddly winks.

[stevevw]

[Replying to post 252 by stevevw]

What you'll find is advantageous mutations quickly fill the ecosystem and disadvantageous one disappear while benign ones linger.

I thought mutations were mostly deleterious and beneficial ones are very rare. Most change is actually a loss of info or a change to existing info. In fact, even beneficial mutations when accumulated have a diminishing cost to fitness.

It is almost universally acknowledged that beneficial mutations are rare compared to deleterious mutations [1–10]. However, there is controversy regarding just how rare beneficial mutations actually are. It appears that beneficial mutations may be too rare to actually allow the accurate measurement of how rare they are [11].
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~gmontane/pdfs/mo ... s-2013.pdf

Diminishing Returns Epistasis Among Beneficial Mutations Decelerates Adaptation
These results provide the first evidence that patterns of epistasis may differ for within- and between-gene interactions during adaptation and that diminishing returns epistasis contributes to the consistent observation of decelerating fitness gains during adaptation.
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/332/6 ... 0.abstract

It is argued that, although most if not all mutations detected in mutation accumulation experiments are deleterious, the question of the rate of favourable mutations (and their effects) is still a matter for debate.
http://www.nature.com/hdy/journal/v84/n ... 7270a.html

Stability effects of mutations and protein evolvability. October 2009
Excerpt: The accepted paradigm that proteins can tolerate nearly any amino acid substitution has been replaced by the view that the deleterious effects of mutations, and especially their tendency to undermine the thermodynamic and kinetic stability of protein, is a major constraint on protein evolvability,
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19765975

For a protein to even make a small change in function it would take several mutations. To get those mutations all at once and working together would be near impossible and even if it did happen would take more time than evolution has to happen.

Multiple Overlapping Genetic Codes Profoundly Reduce the Probability of Beneficial Mutation
As the number of overlapping codes increases, the rate of potential beneficial mutation decreases exponentially, quickly approaching zero. Therefore the new evidence for ubiquitous overlapping codes in higher genomes strongly indicates that beneficial mutations should be extremely rare. This evidence combined with increasing evidence that biological systems are highly optimised and evidence that only relatively high-impact beneficial mutations can be effectively amplified by natural selection, lead us to conclude that mutations which are both selectable and unambiguously beneficial must be vanishingly rare. This conclusion raises serious questions. How might such vanishingly rare beneficial mutations ever be sufficient for genome building? How might genetic degeneration ever be averted, given the continuous accumulation of low impact deleterious mutations?
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~gmontane/pdfs/mo ... s-2013.pdf

Estimating the prevalence of protein sequences adopting functional enzyme folds:
Excerpt: The prevalence of low-level function in four such experiments indicates that roughly one in 10^64 signature-consistent sequences forms a working domain. Combined with the estimated prevalence of plausible hydropathic patterns (for any fold) and of relevant folds for particular functions, this implies the overall prevalence of sequences performing a specific function by any domain-sized fold may be as low as 1 in 10^77, adding to the body of evidence that functional folds require highly extraordinary sequences.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15321723

[DanieltheDragon]

[Replying to post 256 by stevevw]

I wasn't specifically talking about beneficial mutations. A mutation can persist throughout a species and have no real benefit or can even be consider negative like blindness for example. However when the environment changes benign or disadvantageous mutations suddenly become advantageous like the blind cave fish.

Regardless of how frequent beneficial mutations actually are once a beneficial mutation occurs within a species that helps them leverage the surrounding ecosystem it will eventually persist throughout the species.

[TheBeardedDude]

[Replying to post 252 by stevevw]

"So then you are saying that all learnt tasks are the product of natural selection."

In essence, yes. The fact that humans have greatly expanded on learning tasks, doesn't mean we are outside the realm of natural selection. Humans are part of nature.

"There is no nurture and nature."

I didn't say that nor did I imply it. I don't think the differences between the two are as stark as some suggest.

"There is a difference between what is learned which may not always be vital for survival and what is naturally there."

This is the reason I hate the words "natural" and "unnatural." Humans are still part of nature, so a learned behavior that is "not always...vital for survival" can still be natural.

"If the ability for typing was selected for survival then people would automatically know how to type for survival because the ability would be passed on to each generation."

What? Typing isn't a genetic trait, and I never said or implied it was. Adapting your fingers for typing is a LEARNED behavior that can be TAUGHT. You are mixing up what it means for something to be genetically inherited (your physical fingers) vs a learned behavior (typing).

"If they did not learn to type then that would be a disadvantage."

People who can't type today, are at a disadvantage.

"The hand itself is a product of selection but the individual abilities it can do are not as someone may never learn typing but still survive. That's because they have what is vital the hands and fingers. "

You make a common error in assuming that only things that directly apply to basic survivability are naturally selected for.

"That is the idea of natural selection that a feature is mutated and selected for a benefit to allowing a creature to survive and reproduce."

You assign reason and purpose that is beyond the scope of what natural selection actually means. This would be akin to saying that gravity's purpose is to pull things closer to the center of the Earth. You are anthropomorphizing a unconscious process.

The idea behind natural selection is that traits that improve an individual's chances at surviving and reproducing, will be passed onto to succeeding generations via the offspring. That does NOT mean that any given trait or behavior will forever be beneficial for survival. Look at polar bears for instance, they are well adapted for cold climates and hunting on snow and ice. But these adaptations would not confer a benefit to them in an ice-free world.

"The feature that has been mutated is passed on to the next generation."

No. Mutations aren't required for a trait to be passed down. De novo structures can be the result of mutation, but we aren't talking about that.

"The single feature of the hands and fingers are that they are a tool for survival as opposed to a wing or fin."

And like many tools, they can be adapted for multiple purposes. Ever used a claw hammer to also remove a nail? Or as a bottle opener?

" The single feature for the eyes is they see as opposed to not seeing or sensing or using radar."

You have a grossly oversimplified view of how structures work in biology.