Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

Vox offers three “unexplainable” mysteries of life on Earth

Share
Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
Flipboard
Print
Email

In three podcasts at Vox:

How did life start on Earth? What was the series of events that led to birds, bugs, amoebas, you, and me?

That’s the subject of Origins, a three-episode series from Unexplainable — Vox’s podcast that explores big mysteries, unanswered questions, and all the things we learn by diving into the unknown. – Brian Resnick (March 1, 2023)

The three mysteries they offer are:

  1. Where did Earth’s water come from?
  2. How did life start in that water?
  3. What is life anyway?

About that last: Science writer Carl Zimmer offers “The problem is, for each definition of life, scientists can think of a confounding exception. Take, for instance, NASA’s definition of life: “Life is a self-sustaining chemical system capable of Darwinian evolution.” But that definition would exclude viruses, which are not “self-sustaining” and can only survive and replicate by infiltrating a host.”

Comments
Bornagain77: Since unguided material processes have never demonstrated the capacity to create immaterial information in the first place, then claiming unguided material processes ‘recreated’ immaterial information that was lost is only to exponentially exasperate what has yet to be explained via unguided material processes. I think it has been demonstrated that unguided, natural processes in combination with cumulative selection CAN do what is claimed they can do. you have the gall to claim others are being unscientific? You certainly seem to be very selective in what you consider to be true, remembering that you, yourself, don't have the academic background to even understand some of the basic mathematics involved. Taking things on faith is not being scientific. falsify ID I think that's already been accomplished.JVL
March 14, 2023
March
03
Mar
14
14
2023
09:18 AM
9
09
18
AM
PDT
Relatd: Information can be recreated? How? They wrote it down somewhere? If a combination of random variation and cumulative selection invented wings once it can do it again. Resorting to something you don’t believe in doesn’t solve any problems. Which is why I didn't do that. Do you accept that dinosaurs were killed off by some large object that only selected them and left every other creature alive? No, the asteroid that helped kill off the dinosaurs got rid of a lot of other species as well. Your view of what unguided evolutionary theory actually says is naive and very mistaken.JVL
March 14, 2023
March
03
Mar
14
14
2023
09:12 AM
9
09
12
AM
PDT
JVL: “Information” can be recreated." Since unguided material processes have never demonstrated the capacity to create immaterial information in the first place, then claiming unguided material processes 'recreated' immaterial information that was lost is only to exponentially exasperate what has yet to be explained via unguided material processes. And JVL, you have the gall to claim others are being unscientific? :) LOL Tell you what JVL, before you call others unscientific, show yourself to be 'scientific, falsify ID, and collect yourself a cool 10 million dollars in the process.
Artificial Intelligence + Origin of Life Prize, $10 Million USD Where did life and the genetic code come from? Can the answer build superior AI? The #1 mystery in science now has a $10 million prize. ,,, Where did the information come from? An answer will trigger a quantum leap in Artificial Intelligence. This may be as big as the transistor or the discovery of DNA itself. A new $10 million prize seeks a definitive answer.,,, Excerpt: What You Must Do to Win The Prize You must arrange for a digital communication system to emerge or self-evolve without "cheating." The diagram below describes the system. Without explicitly designing the system, your experiment must generate an encoder that sends digital code to a decoder. Your system needs to transmit at least five bits of information. (In other words it has to be able to represent 32 states. The genetic code supports 64.) You have to be able to draw an encoding and decoding table and determine whether or not the data has been transmitted successfully. So, for example, an RNA based origin of life experiment will be considered successful if it contains an encoder, message and decoder as described above. To our knowledge, this has never been done. https://www.herox.com/evolution2.0
bornagain77
March 14, 2023
March
03
Mar
14
14
2023
08:59 AM
8
08
59
AM
PDT
JVL at 92, Evolution has no goals and no brain. Or you can accept the fantasy Richard Dawkins has regarding "climbing Mount Improbable." Information can be recreated? How? They wrote it down somewhere? You don't believe in a Designer, do you? Resorting to something you don't believe in doesn't solve any problems. Do you accept that dinosaurs were killed off by some large object that only selected them and left every other creature alive?relatd
March 14, 2023
March
03
Mar
14
14
2023
08:59 AM
8
08
59
AM
PDT
Bornagain77: do you realize that the term ‘convergent evolution’, as it it is used by Darwinists, is actually an oxymoron that, in reality, means ‘a miracle must have happened over and over again’? No, that's not what it means. It means that life has created the same phenotypic variation multiple times in multiple places. YOU think that those incidents are miracles done by some undetected designer for some undefined reason. By the way, posting links to unguided evolution denying website and people is not being 'scientific'; it's just showing your confirmation bias. IF you want to consider ALL the data, as a good scientists would, you would link to all the thousands of articles elucidating examples of convergent evolution as well.JVL
March 14, 2023
March
03
Mar
14
14
2023
08:57 AM
8
08
57
AM
PDT
Origenes: My alternative hypothesis is that “five billion species” is part of the Darwinian fantasy. So . . . there haven't been that many? The whole concept is a non-starter: random mutations are stumbling through vast search spaces struggling to find even one single new protein fold Ah, no, that's not correct. Take a viable life form. It's going to create offspring that are not identical to the parent. There will be some variations. Some of the variations die off quickly, some don't. The ones that survive and make more variations pass on (some of) their genomes to their offspring. There is no 'stumbling through vast search spaces'. They're just small steps pushing outward from a starting point. In Darwinian fantasyland, natural elimination culled over 99% of all species, which must necessarily imply a huge loss of biological information. "Information" can be recreated. AND, your alternative is that some designer killed off all the extinct species for some reason. Unless you are denying all those extinct species existed. You do believe in dinosaurs and trilobites and so forth don't you?JVL
March 14, 2023
March
03
Mar
14
14
2023
08:52 AM
8
08
52
AM
PDT
Ba77, Evolution promoters have only two options: 1) Out of chaos, order. 2) Out of order, order. For some reason, they keep picking number 1.relatd
March 14, 2023
March
03
Mar
14
14
2023
08:45 AM
8
08
45
AM
PDT
JVL: "Remember that it appears that some traits have arisen independently at different times and places. That means that even if a trait or characteristic ‘died out’ in one region it could come back elsewhere." JVL, do you realize that the term 'convergent evolution', as it it is used by Darwinists, is actually an oxymoron that, in reality, means 'a miracle must have happened over and over again'?
Claims about convergent evolution are absurd _ Feb. 2017 1. C4 photosynthesis. According to 'science' it has evolved 60 times independently. Scientists have not succeeded in building an autonomous photosynthesis system. But evolution has done this for 60 times! Seems to be easy! 2. Eye 35 times. Think about the complex mechanism and signaling pathways that are connected with brain. And according to 'science' humans and squids evolved same eyes using same genes. What a coincidence! 3. Giving birth, 150 times. Piece of cake for evolution. Very convincing. 4. Carnivorous plants. Nitrogen-deficient plants have in at least 7 distinct times become carnivorous. 5. Hearing. 30 times. Bats and dolphins separately evolved same sonar gene. What a surprise! (Do they really think that one gene is sufficient for developing a sonar ability?) 6. Bioluminescence is quite a mystery for science. According to darwinists it has independently evolved even 27 times! 7. Magnetite for orientation, magnetically charged particles of magnetite for directional sensing have been found in unrelated species of salmon, rainbow trout, some butterflies and birds. 8. Electric organ in some fishes. 6 times. Independently from each other. Sure. 9. Parthenogenesis. Some lizards, insects, fishes and rodents are able to reproduce asexually, without males. Etc.. etc.. etc.. http://sciencerefutesevolution.blogspot.fi/2017/02/claims-about-convergent-evolution-are.html The Real Problem With Convergence - Cornelius Hunter - May 25, 2017 Excerpt: 21st century evolutionists are still befuddled by convergence, which is rampant in biology, and how it could occur. This certainly is a problem for the theory.,,, a fundamental evidence and prediction of evolution is falsified. The species do not fall into the expected evolutionary pattern. The failure of fundamental predictions — and this is a hard failure — is fatal for scientific theories. It leaves evolution not as a scientific theory but as an ad hoc exercise in storytelling. https://www.evolutionnews.org/2017/05/the-real-problem-with-convergence/ Extinct Four-Eyed Monitor Lizard Busts Myth of a Congruent Nested Hierarchy - Günter Bechly - April 23, 2018 Excerpt: One of the most essential doctrines of Darwinian evolution, apart from universal common descent with modification, is the notion that complex similarities indicate homology are ordered in a congruent nested pattern that facilitates the hierarchical classification of life. When this pattern is disrupted by incongruent evidence, such conflicting evidence is readily explained away as homoplasies with ad hoc explanations like underlying apomorphies (parallelisms), secondary reductions, evolutionary convergences, long branch attraction, and incomplete lineage sorting. When I studied in the 1980s at the University of Tübingen, where the founder of phylogenetic systematics, Professor Willi Hennig, was teaching a first generation of cladists, we still all thought that such homoplasies are the exceptions to the rule, usually restricted to simple or poorly known characters. Since then the situation has profoundly changed. Homoplasy is now recognized as a ubiquitous phenomenon (e.g., eyes evolved 45 times independently, and bioluminiscence 27 times; hundreds of more examples can be found at Cambridge University’s “Map of Life” website). https://evolutionnews.org/2018/04/extinct-four-eyed-monitor-lizard-busts-myth-of-a-congruent-nested-hierarchy/ “The reason evolutionary biologists believe in "40 known independent eye evolutions" isn't because they've reconstructed those evolutionary pathways, but because eyes don't assume a treelike pattern on the famous Darwinian "tree of life." Darwinists are accordingly forced, again and again, to invoke convergent "independent" evolution of eyes to explain why eyes are distributed in such a non-tree-like fashion. This is hardly evidence against ID. In fact the appearance of eyes within widely disparate groups speaks eloquently of common design. Eyes are a problem, all right -- for Darwinism.” http://www.evolutionnews.org/2014/03/its_a_shame_rea083441.html Tiny sea creatures upend notion of how animals' nervous systems evolved - 13 December 2017 Excerpt: "This puts a stake in the heart of the idea of an ancestor with a central nerve cord,” says Greg Wray, an evolutionary developmental biologist at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. “That opens up a lot of questions we don’t have answers to — like, if central nerve cords evolved independently in different lineages, why do they have so many similarities?" https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-017-08325-y Bernard d'Abrera on Butterfly Mimicry and the Faith of the Evolutionist - October 5, 2011 Excerpt:  renowned butterfly scholar and photographer Bernard d'Abrera considers the mystery of mimicry.,,, For it to happen in a single species once through chance, is mathematically highly improbable. But when it occurs so often, in so many species, and we are expected to apply mathematical probability yet again, then either mathematics is a useless tool, or we are being criminally blind.,,, Evolutionism (with its two eldest daughters, phylogenetics and cladistics) is the only systematic synthesis in the history of the universe that proposes an Effect without a Final Cause. It is a great fraud, and cannot be taken seriously because it outrageously attempts to defend the philosophically indefensible. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2011/10/in_this_excerpt_from_the051571.html
bornagain77
March 14, 2023
March
03
Mar
14
14
2023
08:39 AM
8
08
39
AM
PDT
JVL @87
Wiki: More than 99% of all species that ever lived on Earth, amounting to over five billion species, are estimated to have died out.
Ori: Less than 1% of the viable species, that random mutations happen to stumble upon, escape destruction by natural elimination.
JVL: And your alternative hypothesis is that some designer chose to eliminate all those species.
My alternative hypothesis is that “five billion species” is part of the Darwinian fantasy.
JVL: Unguided evolution IS wasteful, no denying that.
The whole concept is a non-starter: random mutations are stumbling through vast search spaces struggling to find even one single new protein fold, and next, to make matters even worse, natural elimination kills it off in most cases.
JVL: However, the notion that information is forever lost is fallacious.
Of course, it is not “fallacious.” In Darwinian fantasyland, natural elimination culled over 99% of all species, which must necessarily imply a huge loss of biological information.Origenes
March 14, 2023
March
03
Mar
14
14
2023
08:33 AM
8
08
33
AM
PDT
Martin_r: THIS GENE SILENCING (via epigenetics) WILL HAPPEN ONLY IN CAVE, because there is no light. No light-condition will trigger gene silencing. ANYTIME. AS WE CAN SEE IT IN MANY CAVE SPECIES. Main point: This had nothing to do with Darwin, random mutations or Natural selection. That is why you people invented that term “Phenotypic plasticity”. It is a Darwinian trick how to not use the word Design. Darwinists have been misinterpreting reality for 150 years. So . . . you think epigenetics are part of design? (I'm not saying that only epigenetics leads to loss of sight in dark conditions; I'm just trying to figure out why epigenetics are not considered part of the unguided processes.)JVL
March 14, 2023
March
03
Mar
14
14
2023
08:04 AM
8
08
04
AM
PDT
Origenes: Less than 1% of the viable species, that random mutations happen to stumble upon, escape destruction by natural elimination. And your alternative hypothesis is that some designer chose to eliminate all those species. Because? Why were they created in the first place? Unguided evolution IS wasteful, no denying that. However, the notion that information is forever lost is fallacious. Remember that it appears that some traits have arisen independently at different times and places. That means that even if a trait or characteristic 'died out' in one region it could come back elsewhere.JVL
March 14, 2023
March
03
Mar
14
14
2023
07:59 AM
7
07
59
AM
PDT
new variation arising within an existing population that raises fitness in an existing niche.
This will destroy the niche if the variation is significant. Otherwise, this means nothing new can happen unless the ecology is protected. This implies all variation must lead to trivial results. It’s what we see. Question: is the extinction numbers used based on any hard evidence. I read the Wikipedia article and it seemed to be mostly assertions.jerry
March 14, 2023
March
03
Mar
14
14
2023
06:56 AM
6
06
56
AM
PDT
Bornagain @84
Wiki: More than 99% of all species that ever lived on Earth, amounting to over five billion species, are estimated to have died out.
Darwin wants his followers to focus on the less than 1% that natural elimination does not destroy, and calls that "natural selection" or "natural preservation." This takes "looking at the positive side of things" to an absurd extreme. Honesty should have compelled Darwin to acknowledge that natural elimination only hampers evolution. Obviously, it does not help to eliminate more than 99% of the valuable biological information that random mutations manage to come up with. Especially if we consider the fact that for random mutations to find even one single new protein fold is close to a sheer impossibility.Origenes
March 14, 2023
March
03
Mar
14
14
2023
05:53 AM
5
05
53
AM
PDT
Origenes, I hold that 'natural elimination' is a more fitting term than even 'natural preservation' is, which Charles Darwin himself conceded was a better tern than 'natural selection' is:
"Talking of “Natural Selection”, if I had to commence de novo, I would have used "natural preservation";" - Charles Darwin - 1860 https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-2931.xml Natural Selection: The Evolution of a Mirage Neil Thomas - March 7, 2023 Excerpt: For Darwin the powers of natural selection transcended human intelligence to such a degree that he came exceedingly close to imputing to it the capacity for intelligent design. It was only belatedly that he succumbed to colleagues’ numerous objections, conceding in a letter to Charles Lyell, "Talking of “Natural Selection,” if I had to commence de novo, I would have used natural preservation."14 This was an emendation with enormous consequences. One can understand why Darwin was minded to hold out as long as possible and why he eventually capitulated only under protest. For the letter to Lyell involved a truly fatal concession which, had it been analyzed dispassionately at the time, could (and arguably should) have halted the onward march of Darwinism there and then in the Fall of 1860. As a host of recent studies make clear, the term to which Darwin eventually acquiesced, natural preservation, can by definition only be passive rather than actively productive in the formation of new body parts (let alone whole new species). The Darwinian theory of an advance from organic simplicity to complexity — from microbes to man — must inevitably fall after such a major semantic retreat. Wanted: A Theory of the Generative As Steve Laufmann and Howard Glicksman and others have recently pointed out, neo-Darwinism simply has no theory of the generative and therefore no innovative capacity: nothing in Darwin’s theory can account for nontrivial innovations15and Darwin’s rowing back on that point was fatal to any macromutational claims. As Professor Nick Lane has recently explained, "It is generally assumed that once simple life has emerged, it gradually evolves into more complex forms, given the right conditions. But that’s not what happens on Earth (…) If simple cells had evolved slowly into more complex ones over billions of years, all kinds of intermediate forms would have existed and some still should. But there are none (…) This means that there is no inevitable trajectory from simple to complex life. Never-ending natural selection, operating on infinite populations of bacteria over millions of years, may never give rise to complexity. Bacteria simply do not have the right architecture."16 So how did speciation occur then? Competent scientists are thrown back on the placeholder terms “fate” or “chance,” such being all too plainly a cover for complete ignorance.17 Fodor and Piatelli-Palmarini are more refreshingly candid: “So if Darwin got it wrong, what do you guys think is the mechanism of evolution?” Short answer: we don’t know what the mechanism of evolution is. Nor did Darwin and nor (as far as we can tell) does anybody else.18 The bottom line today appears to be that "Speciation still remains one of the biggest mysteries in evolutionary biology and the unexamined view of natural selection leading to large-scale innovations is not true."19 https://evolutionnews.org/2023/03/natural-selection-the-evolution-of-a-mirage/
bornagain77
March 14, 2023
March
03
Mar
14
14
2023
05:10 AM
5
05
10
AM
PDT
Alan Fox @79
“Perfectly viable”?
Capable of living. A coherent organism capable of homeostasis and other miracles.
Ori: Perhaps a more fitting name would be “natural elimination”, because all it does is kill off perfectly viable organisms on a whim.
AF: Nope. An empty niche is a golden opportunity for a species that finds itself there.
Not if it kills you, which seems to be the rule:
Wiki: More than 99% of all species that ever lived on Earth, amounting to over five billion species, are estimated to have died out.
Less than 1% of the viable species, that random mutations happen to stumble upon, escape destruction by natural elimination. Natural elimination is in the business of destroying biological information. So, the problem for random mutations to find functional information is made even more difficult by the destructive actions of natural elimination.Origenes
March 14, 2023
March
03
Mar
14
14
2023
04:17 AM
4
04
17
AM
PDT
Here's a paper on how phenotypic plasticity results in sex ratio changes in reptiles. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fphys.2020.00035/fullAlan Fox
March 14, 2023
March
03
Mar
14
14
2023
12:59 AM
12
12
59
AM
PDT
There's a helpful Wikipedia article entitled Phenotypic Plasticity here. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenotypic_plasticityAlan Fox
March 14, 2023
March
03
Mar
14
14
2023
12:54 AM
12
12
54
AM
PDT
“Phenotypic plasticity”. It is a Darwinian trick how to not use the word Design.
You are confusing the opportunity of existing variation within a population's gene pool to exploit a niche change with new variation arising within an existing population that raises fitness in an existing niche.Alan Fox
March 13, 2023
March
03
Mar
13
13
2023
11:33 PM
11
11
33
PM
PDT
Perhaps a more fitting name would be “natural elimination”, because all it does is kill off perfectly viable organisms on a whim.
Nope. An empty niche is a golden opportunity for a species that finds itself there. "Perfectly viable"? :)Alan Fox
March 13, 2023
March
03
Mar
13
13
2023
11:28 PM
11
11
28
PM
PDT
Sandy @75
Unfortunatelly for darwinists ,information doesn’t appear by chance. All discussions about mutations are nonsensical because randomness doesnt create information and doesn’t improve the already existing information.
And the problem is enlarged by natural selection. In the unlikely scenario that random mutations do stumble upon a new solution, natural selection lies in wait to kill the miracle off.
Wiki: More than 99% of all species that ever lived on Earth, amounting to over five billion species, are estimated to have died out.
Perhaps a more fitting name would be “natural elimination”, because all it does is kill off perfectly viable organisms on a whim. It is in the business of destroying information. So, the problem for random mutations to find functional information is made even more difficult by the destructive actions of natural selection.Origenes
March 13, 2023
March
03
Mar
13
13
2023
06:43 PM
6
06
43
PM
PDT
JVL, Alan Fox
The mutations happen with and without light, on and below the surface. But the mutations which pass on an advantage are judged by the particular environmental niche they exist in.
FINALLY YOU GOT IT. THAT'S A PROGRESS. Now back to the problem. The problem with cave fish and other blind cave species is, that THEY HAVEN'T LOST THEIR EYES because of DNA mutations. Also, they have lost color / pigmentation for the same reason -- to save energy. In first case, eyes genes were silenced. In second case most probably happened the same (pigmentation genes have been silenced) And we are back to my main concern -- how you Darwinists misinterpret the reality. THIS GENE SILENCING (via epigenetics) WILL HAPPEN ONLY IN CAVE, because there is no light. No light-condition will trigger gene silencing. ANYTIME. AS WE CAN SEE IT IN MANY CAVE SPECIES. Main point: This had nothing to do with Darwin, random mutations or Natural selection. That is why you people invented that term "Phenotypic plasticity". It is a Darwinian trick how to not use the word Design. Darwinists have been misinterpreting reality for 150 years. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/blind-cave-fish-may-trade-color-for-energy/martin_r
March 13, 2023
March
03
Mar
13
13
2023
03:28 PM
3
03
28
PM
PDT
TLH at 74, Remember, anything but God. NASA keeps talking about life just appearing on other planets. So whenever they find water or some gas, it automatically indicates life. Until they actually find something alive out there, they have no evidence. I suspect they also think inorganic chemicals can become alive under the right - but unknown - circumstances.relatd
March 13, 2023
March
03
Mar
13
13
2023
01:15 PM
1
01
15
PM
PDT
:) Unfortunatelly for darwinists ,information doesn't appear by chance. All discussions about mutations are nonsensical because randomness doesnt create information and doesn't improve the already existing information.Sandy
March 13, 2023
March
03
Mar
13
13
2023
01:08 PM
1
01
08
PM
PDT
Speaking of a Creationist home schooling mother of nine with a high school education, I enjoy seeing the well cosseted pompously credentialed ScD PhD BMOC and BGOC Scientists at NASA make fools of themselves. And fools is what they made of themselves with their defintion of life:. “Life is a self-sustaining chemical system capable of Darwinian evolution.” By NASA's definition, I'm not alive. And neither are my kids or hubby. Or the dog. Or the tomato plants in our garden. Here's why: 1) Any living thing, when looked at as chemical system, is not self sustaining. The reason is the Law of Dissipation of Energy. (also called the 2nd law of thermodynamics) Living things need external sources of free energy, such as food and oxygen for animals, and sunlight and CO2 for plants.. 2) Darwinian Evolution is a distressed theory that struggles to explain how me my kids or our tomato plant got here. I mean, even among Evolutionary Naturalists, Lamarkian Evolution currnetly offers superior explanatory power and is ascendant while Darwinian Evolution declines. Can they really be ignorant of Physical Chemistry 101? And can they really not know the current status of their own Theory of Evolution? Your Tax dollars at work. At least if you beleive our NASA Scientist Public Servants who work from home are actually working from home.TAMMIE LEE HAYNES
March 13, 2023
March
03
Mar
13
13
2023
12:16 PM
12
12
16
PM
PDT
(PS – yes this is basically just a longer statement of what Alan Fox already said just above.)
My wife says I'm hopeless at explaining things so it can't do any harm. ;)Alan Fox
March 13, 2023
March
03
Mar
13
13
2023
11:22 AM
11
11
22
AM
PDT
Martin_r: It is true that mutations are random (with respect to fitness) and can occur anytime. As Alan Fox pointed out, the ones that occur in germ-line cells get passed onto the offspring. Some of those mutations are very bad and the offspring does not survive. Some are neutral and have no observable effects. Some are beneficial in that they give the offspring some advantage over others without that mutation. BUT 'advantage' depends on the environment which 'selects' individuals who are better able to exploit the environmental niche they live in. So . . . Take some fish, put some of them in a lovely stream in a forest, put some in a lightless cave but make sure both populations have enough food. Leave them there for a long time, i.e. many generations. No guarantees (because mutations don't happen on demand) but let's suppose both populations have a mutation introduced through one individual in each population which degrades visual acuity. In the forest stream that fish would find it much harder to 'compete': find food and mates. The fish in the lightless cave would be just as able as its compatriots. The fish in the forest has less of a chance to procreate than the fish in the cave So the mutations which degrades vision has a much better chance of being passed on and 'fixed' in the cave population. That's how things work without design. The environment helps determine which varieties are better able to pass on their genes. (There are other selection pressures along with genetic drift but I'm just focusing on the natural selection acting on random mutations part.) The mutations happen with and without light, on and below the surface. But the mutations which pass on an advantage are judged by the particular environmental niche they exist in. You are wrong to say that the blindness mutations only occur underground but it's only underground that they have a better chance of being passed on and becoming common in the population. These concepts are really simple and easy to understand. And I KNOW they have been explained many, many, many, many times at Uncommon Descent. (PS - yes this is basically just a longer statement of what Alan Fox already said just above.)JVL
March 13, 2023
March
03
Mar
13
13
2023
10:52 AM
10
10
52
AM
PDT
Ah, I see I overlooked Martin-r's error. Mutations happen everywhere. Mutations proliferate if the niche finds them beneficial. Mutations are eliminated if the niche finds them deleterious.Alan Fox
March 13, 2023
March
03
Mar
13
13
2023
06:41 AM
6
06
41
AM
PDT
So you have to explain (if you don’t agree with the design theory), why the blindness mutations always occur only in caves and never on surface.
Seriously? Eyes are organs for detecting light. There is an energy cost in growing them and a survival benefit in having them which outstrips the cost where there is light. Where a population of organisms becomes isolated in an environmental niche without light, the growing of eyes becomes a cost without benefit. If individuals incur mutations that limit the growth of eyes in the lightless environment, that grants a marginal advantage in differential survival and reproduction. Such processes are widely observed in cave-dwelling fauna.Alan Fox
March 13, 2023
March
03
Mar
13
13
2023
06:36 AM
6
06
36
AM
PDT
Origenes @61
Pre-programmed response to the environment. This has nothing to do with random mutations. Clearly.
it has nothing to with random mutations, neither it has with natural selection -- that was main point. Because these people, it is like "natural selection" all the time ... Natural selection is a Darwinian conjecture -- a misinterpretation of reality, and it is sad to see how many ID/creationists still accepting this misinterpretation of reality by using and accepting these Darwinian terms, despite it is clear that it has nothing to do with reality ...martin_r
March 13, 2023
March
03
Mar
13
13
2023
06:34 AM
6
06
34
AM
PDT
Alan Fox
Don’t overlook the soma/germ line distinction. Only heritable variation in the germ-line (strictly speaking, the phenotypic expression of the germ-line, an individual in a breeding population) is available for selection to act on. And selection works with rearrangements of existing variation that happen at meiosis, as well as on novel mutations.
it is always selection .... selection .... selection .... You people will never get it... YOU HAVE TO HAVE THOSE MUTATIONS FIRST ... TO SELECT FROM ... That is what I talked about ... And, your theory claim, that those mutations can occur anytime ... DOESN'T MATTER IF THERE IS LIGHT OR NO LIGHT CONDITION ... because copying errors occur independently of light conditions ... I hope we agree on that ... So you have to explain (if you don't agree with the design theory), why the blindness mutations always occur only in caves and never on surface. Do you get it Alan Fox ?martin_r
March 13, 2023
March
03
Mar
13
13
2023
03:45 AM
3
03
45
AM
PDT
1 3 4 5 6 7 8

Leave a Reply