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A spanner in the intelligent design argument?
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I was browsing through the science and technology news (as usual) and I came across this article:
Researchers discover the dawn of animal vision
The findings are published in this week’s issue of the scientific journal PLoS ONE. The scientists studied the aquatic animal Hydra, a member of Cnidaria, which are animals that have existed for hundreds of millions of years. The authors are the first scientists to look at light-receptive genes in cnidarians, an ancient class of animals that includes corals, jellyfish, and sea anemones.
[...]
“We now have a time frame for the evolution of animal light sensitivity. We know its precursors existed roughly 600 million years ago,” said Plachetzki.
[...]
Oakley said that anti-evolutionists often argue that mutations, which are essential for evolution, can only eliminate traits and cannot produce new features. He goes on to say, “Our paper shows that such claims are simply wrong. We show very clearly that specific mutational changes in a particular duplicated gene (opsin) allowed the new genes to interact with different proteins in new ways. Today, these different interactions underlie the genetic machinery of vision, which is different in various animal groups.”
Please visit the link provided for the complete story.
I don't really want to comment on this myself, but I'd like to hear what others have to say.
Researchers discover the dawn of animal vision
The findings are published in this week’s issue of the scientific journal PLoS ONE. The scientists studied the aquatic animal Hydra, a member of Cnidaria, which are animals that have existed for hundreds of millions of years. The authors are the first scientists to look at light-receptive genes in cnidarians, an ancient class of animals that includes corals, jellyfish, and sea anemones.
[...]
“We now have a time frame for the evolution of animal light sensitivity. We know its precursors existed roughly 600 million years ago,” said Plachetzki.
[...]
Oakley said that anti-evolutionists often argue that mutations, which are essential for evolution, can only eliminate traits and cannot produce new features. He goes on to say, “Our paper shows that such claims are simply wrong. We show very clearly that specific mutational changes in a particular duplicated gene (opsin) allowed the new genes to interact with different proteins in new ways. Today, these different interactions underlie the genetic machinery of vision, which is different in various animal groups.”
Please visit the link provided for the complete story.
I don't really want to comment on this myself, but I'd like to hear what others have to say.
I've always kind of wondered how a bunch of individual cells decided to get together, split up the work to be done, and make a hydra, which is pretty
complex considering how small it is. That's a pretty big jump.
reply to post by Beachcoma
Good find. Though most scientists favor evolution as the method of change, I don't think it's clear what drives it.
The tendency is to picture giraffes growing longer necks due to their ancestors reaching for high leaves. But that's Lamarckism and is considered to be incorrect. (The notion that organisms can pass on traits acquired in their lifetime to subsequent generations).
It doesn't seem to be random point mutation, which is quite often fatal (it encodes for the wrong protein and the system breaks down).
Fascinating.
Good find. Though most scientists favor evolution as the method of change, I don't think it's clear what drives it.
The tendency is to picture giraffes growing longer necks due to their ancestors reaching for high leaves. But that's Lamarckism and is considered to be incorrect. (The notion that organisms can pass on traits acquired in their lifetime to subsequent generations).
It doesn't seem to be random point mutation, which is quite often fatal (it encodes for the wrong protein and the system breaks down).
Fascinating.
Originally posted by Badge01
The tendency is to picture giraffes growing longer necks due to their ancestors reaching for high leaves. But that's Lamarckism and is considered to be incorrect. (The notion that organisms can pass on traits acquired in their lifetime to subsequent generations)
It's the opposite. A mutation that makes a giraffe's neck longer allows the giraffe to reach higher leaves, the giraffe is better fed so it passes on it's genes more successfully than the other giraffe's. The baby giraffe's have longer neck's, etc etc
I think we've already had a juggernaut (Dover) and a JCB (Abbie/ERV), so a spanner will be useful to work on the remnants, heh.
TBH, there's not much that can really argue against ID as a concept. It is magic after all, certainly not science. We can show particular arguments to be specious, but there's always gaps to be stuffed with magic.
TBH, there's not much that can really argue against ID as a concept. It is magic after all, certainly not science. We can show particular arguments to be specious, but there's always gaps to be stuffed with magic.
Why wouldn't an intelligent designer "tweak" or "upgrade"?
Not all creationist thought is along the lines of a one time creation and left to it's own devices. It would be an ongoing process, wouldn't it?
Not all creationist thought is along the lines of a one time creation and left to it's own devices. It would be an ongoing process, wouldn't it?
Then why isn't it tweaking out appendixes, wisdom teeth that need extraction, male nipples and creatures eating each other alive?
The argument that there is a designer that plays only within the rules of nature makes the designer redundant.
It doesn't matter how many gaps science manages to fill, ID and creationism fans will always find somewhere else to stuff the god of the gaps into.
But as for me, I think that's a great discovery. Our understanding of how we got here grows by leaps and bounds and I find the entire thing to be thrilling and awe-inspiring.
The argument that there is a designer that plays only within the rules of nature makes the designer redundant.
It doesn't matter how many gaps science manages to fill, ID and creationism fans will always find somewhere else to stuff the god of the gaps into.
But as for me, I think that's a great discovery. Our understanding of how we got here grows by leaps and bounds and I find the entire thing to be thrilling and awe-inspiring.
somewhere on the web, during an unusual 3AM romp,
i seen a item about a fish creature
that lives in mangrove swampy water,
and the fish creature lives close to half the year out of the water
and nestles among the mangrove roots...
now that, imho, is proof of a species that is 'transitioning'
something the creationists say is impossible
evolution is producing creatures in 'transition' all over the place,
it's just that we lump them into an 'oddities' category
i seen a item about a fish creature
that lives in mangrove swampy water,
and the fish creature lives close to half the year out of the water
and nestles among the mangrove roots...
now that, imho, is proof of a species that is 'transitioning'
something the creationists say is impossible
evolution is producing creatures in 'transition' all over the place,
it's just that we lump them into an 'oddities' category
There are no transitional species.
Everything is evolving, all the time. It's just that we don't experience time on the geologic scale -- and that's where evolution happens.
Even WE are "transitional species." We are still evolving, and we will do so until we become extinct and something else takes our place.
Everything is evolving, all the time. It's just that we don't experience time on the geologic scale -- and that's where evolution happens.
Even WE are "transitional species." We are still evolving, and we will do so until we become extinct and something else takes our place.
Bumping this up with the latest news on the evolutionary development of the eye:
Fresh fossil evidence of eye forerunner uncovered
Please visit the link provided for the complete story.
Ancient armoured fish fossils from
Australia present some of the first definite fossil evidence of a forerunner to the human eye, a scientist from The Australian National University
says. Fresh fossil evidence of eye forerunner uncovered
Please visit the link provided for the complete story.
Dr Gavin Young from the Department of Earth and Marine Sciences at ANU has analysed fossilised remains of 400-million-year-old Devonian placoderms – jawed ancestors of modern fish whose bodies were protected by thick bony armour. His findings are published in the latest edition of Biology Letters, a journal of the Royal Society, London.
[...]
“Part of the trouble in tracing the evolution of the eye is that soft tissues don’t tend to fossilise. But the eye cavities in the braincase of these 400 million-year-old fossil fish were lined with a delicate layer of very thin bone. All the details of the nerve canals and muscle insertions inside the eye socket are preserved – the first definite fossil evidence demonstrating an intermediate stage in the evolution of our most complex sensory organ.
Please visit the link provided for the complete story.
Bolded emphasis mine. Transitional species?
today i saw 2 transitional species...
one woke me up with a lick on the face, his name is max and he's a dog
the other was looking back at me in the mirror
MM, you're wrong. EVERY species is a transitional form.
one woke me up with a lick on the face, his name is max and he's a dog
the other was looking back at me in the mirror
MM, you're wrong. EVERY species is a transitional form.
Originally posted by Prote
Why wouldn't an intelligent designer "tweak" or "upgrade"?
Not all creationist thought is along the lines of a one time creation and left to it's own devices. It would be an ongoing process, wouldn't it?
Why would a creator just tweak some, and not all? When an awe inspireing beeing such as this ID tweak a species, why not all at once?
Are you telling me that the ID only test it out on some species in one part of the world and leave other species as is?
Originally posted by tep200377
Originally posted by Prote
Why wouldn't an intelligent designer "tweak" or "upgrade"?
Not all creationist thought is along the lines of a one time creation and left to it's own devices. It would be an ongoing process, wouldn't it?
Why would a creator just tweak some, and not all? When an awe inspireing beeing such as this ID tweak a species, why not all at once?
Are you telling me that the ID only test it out on some species in one part of the world and leave other species as is?
Why is it every year computers get faster and contain more storage space? Why can't man (an intelligent designer) just create the fastest computer now so I don't need to keep buying a new one every few years? Why not just design the fastest airplane and the most fuel efficient car right now too instead of evolving in small steps over time? If you look at anything that's designed, it starts off simple and gets more complex over time.
On the other hand, if random genetic mutations keep happening and life is constantly changing, which is why some here were saying there's no transitional forms because everything is transitional, then why are there living things that show zero change over 100's of millions of years? It's hard to imagine that 400 million years of billions of random genetic mutations haven't altered something like a starfish in all that time, nor created billions of mutated and deformed versions in the process.
You see, it's easy to take both sides of the argument, because life in general doesn't make a lot of sense. As far as I and others can see, the mechanism for evolution is not really known.
reply to post by Elhardt
evolution is not the continuing improvement of a species so it becomes better and more advanced, evolution is an adaption to an environment a starfish does not need to change its environment is largely the same, everything alive today is the pinnacle of evolution if it lives then its perfect, when the environment changes like it did for the dodo then the effects are dramatic, there are no dodo genes to pass on but whatever the dodo ate certainly has the opportunity to pass on more genetic information.
evolution is not the continuing improvement of a species so it becomes better and more advanced, evolution is an adaption to an environment a starfish does not need to change its environment is largely the same, everything alive today is the pinnacle of evolution if it lives then its perfect, when the environment changes like it did for the dodo then the effects are dramatic, there are no dodo genes to pass on but whatever the dodo ate certainly has the opportunity to pass on more genetic information.