Incredible: Evolutionists Have Now Solved Eye Evolution

_{Cornelius Hunter

November 11, 2012

Intelligent Design}

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Evolutionists now understand how the eye evolved. While skeptics have been claiming something doesn’t come from nothing, evolutionists have been busy tracking down the details. As one paper explains, “the gap in understanding of the molecular evolution of eye components is all but closed.” That is amazing. For understanding eye evolution at the molecular level is the holy grail, or at least a holy grail. As we have discussed before, vision is profoundly complicated and it is not clear how it could spontaneously arise as evolutionists believe it did. And vague speculation, with cartoon illustrations, of light sensitive patches magically morphing into a series of increasingly sophisticated eyes do not help much. What is needed is a plausible explanation of how such evolution could occur, and an account of how the eye evolved at the molecular level certainly does the job. It is terrific news that evolutionists have now achieved this incredible accomplishment. Read more

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OT: God said: "Let birds fly above the earth...." (See: Genesis 1:20) To Birds, Storm Survival Is Only Natural, - November 12, 2012 "...powerful new satellite tracking studies of birds on the wing... reveal birds as the supreme masters of extreme weather management, able to skirt deftly around gale-force winds, correct course after being blown horribly astray, or even use a hurricane as a kind of slingshot to propel themselves forward at hyperspeed. ... Among a bird’s weather management skills is the power to detect the air pressure changes that signal a coming storm, and with enough advance notice to prepare for adversity. Scientists are not certain how this avian barometer works, yet the evidence of its existence is clear. ... ...once the storm had passed they took off, presumably heading back to where they wanted to be. “Birds have tremendous situational awareness...They know where they are and where they’re going, they’re able to fly back repeatedly, and they’ve shown an amazing ability to compensate for being pushed off track." http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/13/science/birds-have-natural-ability-to-survive-storms.html?_r=0bornagain77_{November 13, 2012
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OT: Joshua Foer: Feats of memory anyone can do - video http://www.ted.com/talks/joshua_foer_feats_of_memory_anyone_can_do.htmlbornagain77_{November 13, 2012
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BA:
Modern experimental science was rendered possible, Jaki has shown, as a result of the Christian philosophical atmosphere of the Middle Ages.
One author in commenting on the Christian theologian and philosopher Francisco Suarez calls him a tragic figure.
According to Hattab, Suarez was a 'tragic hero' in the Scientific Revolution. He was heroic for his tireless and brilliant efforts to save Scholastic physics, yet tragic for the fact that his solutions to the problem of the eduction of forms in the end led to the rise of the mechanical metaphysics of the 'new philosophers' of the seventeenth century.
Mung_{November 11, 2012
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Mung you may appreciate this commentary on Jaki's work that I just ran across: The Origin of Science Excerpt: Modern experimental science was rendered possible, Jaki has shown, as a result of the Christian philosophical atmosphere of the Middle Ages. Although a talent for science was certainly present in the ancient w orld (for example in the design and construction of the Egyptian pyramids), nevertheless the philosophical and psychological climate was hostile to a self-sustaining scientific process. Thus science suffered still-births in the cultures of ancient China, India, Egypt and Babylonia. It also failed to come to fruition among the Maya, Incas and Aztecs of the Americas. Even though ancient Greece came closer to achieving a continuous scientific enterprise than any other ancient culture, science was not born there either. Science did not come to birth among the medieval Muslim heirs to Aristotle. ....The psychological climate of such ancient cultures, with their belief that the universe was infinite and time an endless repetition of historical cycles, was often either hopelessness or complacency (hardly what is needed to spur and sustain scientific progress); and in either case there was a failure to arrive at a belief in the existence of God the Creator and of creation itself as therefore rational and intelligible. Thus their inability to produce a self-sustaining scientific enterprise. If science suffered only stillbirths in ancient cultures, how did it come to its unique viable birth (in Christian cultures)? The beginning of science as a fully fledged enterprise took place in relation to two important definitions of the Magisterium of the Church. The first was the definition at the Fourth Lateran Council in the year 1215, that the universe was created out of nothing at the beginning of time. The second magisterial statement was at the local level, enunciated by Bishop Stephen Tempier of Paris who, on March 7, 1277, condemned 219 Aristotelian propositions, so outlawing the deterministic and necessitarian views of creation. These statements of the teaching authority of the Church expressed an atmosphere in which faith in God had penetrated the medieval culture and given rise to philosophical consequences. The cosmos was seen as contingent in its existence and thus dependent on a divine choice which called it into being; the universe is also contingent in its nature and so God was free to create this particular form of world among an infinity of other possibilities. Thus the cosmos cannot be a necessary form of existence; and so it has to be approached by a posteriori investigation. The universe is also rational and so a coherent discourse can be made about it. Indeed the contingency and rationality of the cosmos are like two pillars supporting the Christian vision of the cosmos. http://www.columbia.edu/cu/augustine/a/science_origin.htmlbornagain77_{November 11, 2012
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I have seen far too many representations of unicorns to believe that they don't actually exist.Mung_{November 11, 2012
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A few assorted notes: Einstein was asked (by a philosopher): "Can physics demonstrate the existence of 'the now' in order to make the notion of 'now' into a scientifically valid term?" Einstein's answer was catagorical, he said: "The experience of 'the now' cannot be turned into an object of physical measurement, it can never be a part of physics." Quote taken from the last few minutes of this video: Stanley L. Jaki: "The Mind and Its Now" https://vimeo.com/10588094 This is an interesting statement for Einstein to make since 'the now of the mind' has, from experiments in quantum mechanics, undermined Einstein's General Relativity as the absolute frame of reference for reality: Quantum physics mimics spooky action into the past - April 23, 2012 Excerpt: The authors experimentally realized a "Gedankenexperiment" called "delayed-choice entanglement swapping", formulated by Asher Peres in the year 2000. Two pairs of entangled photons are produced, and one photon from each pair is sent to a party called Victor. Of the two remaining photons, one photon is sent to the party Alice and one is sent to the party Bob. Victor can now choose between two kinds of measurements. If he decides to measure his two photons in a way such that they are forced to be in an entangled state, then also Alice's and Bob's photon pair becomes entangled. If Victor chooses to measure his particles individually, Alice's and Bob's photon pair ends up in a separable state. Modern quantum optics technology allowed the team to delay Victor's choice and measurement with respect to the measurements which Alice and Bob perform on their photons. "We found that whether Alice's and Bob's photons are entangled and show quantum correlations or are separable and show classical correlations can be decided after they have been measured", explains Xiao-song Ma, lead author of the study. According to the famous words of Albert Einstein, the effects of quantum entanglement appear as "spooky action at a distance". The recent experiment has gone one remarkable step further. "Within a naïve classical world view, quantum mechanics can even mimic an influence of future actions on past events", says Anton Zeilinger. http://phys.org/news/2012-04-quantum-physics-mimics-spooky-action.html i.e. 'the now of the mind', contrary to what Einstein thought possible for experimental physics, takes precedence over past events. It would be better to phrase Einstein's answer to the philosopher this way: "It is impossible for the experience of 'the now' to be divorced from physical measurement, it will always be a part of physics." Notes: "Thus one decides the photon shall have come by one route or by both routes after it has already done its travel" John A. Wheeler Alain Aspect speaks on John Wheeler's Delayed Choice Experiment - video http://vimeo.com/38508798 Genesis, Quantum Physics and Reality Excerpt: Simply put, an experiment on Earth can be made in such a way that it determines if one photon comes along either on the right or the left side or if it comes (as a wave) along both sides of the gravitational lens (of the galaxy) at the same time. However, how could the photons have known billions of years ago that someday there would be an earth with inhabitants on it, making just this experiment? ,,, This is big trouble for the multi-universe theory and for the "hidden-variables" approach. http://www.asa3.org/ASA/PSCF/2000/PSCF3-00Zoeller-Greer.html.oribornagain77_{November 11, 2012
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Inference-to-the-best-explanation is a basic tool of science. To deny inference-to-the-best-explanation is to restrict ourselves to an unworkable empiricism. The problem is that not all inferences are created equal. To cite an example distinct from the evolution-design debate, there's an argument I find fascinating between two great 20th-century pragmatist philosophers, W. V. O. Quine and Wilfrid Sellars, about the existence of abstract entities. (Both of them were responding to Carnap's groundbreaking work in semantics, and Sellars was responding to Quine.) Quine argued that there's a only a difference of degree, not of kind, between positing physical objects and positing abstract entities. The posits, for Quine, are all on a par, and what we decide to posit depends on what is required for our sentences to be true. The sentences about the empirical world require that there be physical objects, and so physical objects are introduced into the ontology. But since the sentences of mathematics are true, then there must be abstract entities (i.e. sets) which make those sentences true. Hence he concluded that if one is a pragmatic instrumentalists about ontology, then one should accept abstract entities. Sellars, for his part, could not accept this. He pointed out that in empirical science, the posits are part of a sophisticated theory which explains the causal relationship between what is posited and what is observed. This is what makes the posits not only reasonable but also testable. There is nothing analogous to this in mathematics -- since, by definition, abstract entities don't have causal relationships with anything else. So whereas Quine, a pragmatic instrumentalist, could accept the reality of sets by treating all posits as being on the same level playing field, Sellars ended up being both much more a realist about non-observed concrete entities and much more of a nominalist about abstract entities. (Sellars also argued that in science, the observable/posited distinction is only methodological, not ontological -- what is posited by one generation of scientists can become observed by the next generation, as our technology becomes more and more sophisticated. Genes and atoms are both good examples of this happening. By contrast, nothing analogous to that can happen with abstract entities.) The lesson here is, not all posits (=inferences to the best explanation) are created equal, but we have to think very hard about the criteria we use for distinguishing between "good posits" (posits that advance inquiry) and "bad posits" (posits that don't advance inquiry).Kantian Naturalist_{November 11, 2012
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I don't ever question motives of people yntil I am confident but surely evolutionists are to be questioned here. Not just on this thread but elsewhere I see evolutionists desperately trying to show how a eye could evole. Truly it bugs them about this example of creationists as its soooo good about the unlikelyness of evolutionary biology to have done the deed. Some evolutionists are being , whats the word, about any good hypothesis about eye evolution. I have serious eye trouble and welcome all knowledge about the eye. The eye shows in fact a common design from a creator. In fact I think creationism could push forward healing of eyesight by bringing a better idea of the eye equation in figuring out why there are a few kingdoms of eye types. Something there I think.Robert Byers_{November 11, 2012
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I was just commenting on the use of inference. :) Some people seem to doubt it's efficacy.Mung_{November 11, 2012
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I didn't claim that we know anything about chimpanzee visual consciousness -- only that they have the same basic visual processing system that we have. Nicholas Humphrey put the point this way (here I'm paraphrasing from memory): a monkey does see red, but it is nothing at all like what we see when we see red.Kantian Naturalist_{November 11, 2012
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But how do we know what they see, other than by inference?Mung_{November 11, 2012
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Do chimps see in color? More explicitly, what are the causes of color vision. Do we find those causes in chimps?
Trichromatic vision is found in most primates, including chimps and humans. It's one of the traits that distinguish primates from other mammals, which are usually dichromatic or monochromatic. Color vision is the norm for non-mammalian vertebrates, though the color systems are not like the primate system. Many birds, reptiles, and even fish are quadrochromatic, and even pentachromatic systems are not unknown. I agree with Nagel that there are phenomenological facts -- e.g. facts about avian visual consciousness -- that are in principle inaccessible to us, even if we knew everything there is to know about the avian retina and visual cortex. (He makes the point about bat auditory consciousness.) That strikes me as a perfectly cogent critique of reductive materialism.Kantian Naturalist_{November 11, 2012
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No disrespect, to God, since He is ultimately responsible for both, but PREdetermining the course of an event, here and now, which was actually initiated billions of light years away, makes moving mountains by dint of one's faith, seem a little more ordinary, rather than extremely difficult to take on board, other than as emphatic hyperbole.Axel_{November 11, 2012
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"... it is too easy to forget how radical is the difference between the subjective and the objective, and to fall into the error of thinking about the mental in terms taken from our ideas of physical events and processes.” Nagel is being too kind, isn't he? They must be the kind of air-heads who think computers might take over the world. bornagain77, I remember reading long ago about a young female saint, Italian I believe, who could see perfectly, although technically totally blind. But of course, any scientific interest in such a miracle would be considered an intellectual gaffe of the first water in our benighted culture. I think she lived in the late 1700s or early 1800, possibly, though I don't remember her name. As regards the centrality of each individual Observer, bornagain, the confirmation of reality being necessarily Observer-based, seems to me to confirm something I proposed earlier, namely, that, in a real(!) sense, we all live in a little world of our own, each of which is being seamlessly coordinated at all but the quantum level. I noticed that Nagle used the term' personal' once - which, in that it is mentioned at all, is encouraging. If the 'bitter-enders' are ever to be acculturised and forced to let go of classical physics, in favour of quantum physics as the study of ultimate reality, AND ALL THE IMPLICATIONS OF QUANTUM PHYSICS, the role of the 'personal', the inter-subjective in physics must be hammered home mercilessly. Finally, if you have reconciled the classical and the quantum, bornagain, I believe it normally takes several years before such major break-throughs are acknowledged.Axel_{November 11, 2012
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Evolutionists Have Now Solved Eye Evolution Eye don't see how.Mung_{November 11, 2012
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the gap in understanding of the molecular evolution of eye components is all but closed, highlighting the bankruptcy of the argument that design is required to explain the origins of biological features
We don't say design is required. We say design is a better explanation than the one you yokels came up with, that's all. Yeast have something similar that does something else. Therefore, the eye. REALLY?Mung_{November 11, 2012
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I love Cornelius Hunter's remorseless irony, yet he really has no choice does he? In the face of such wall-to-wall madness, how could he know where to start? And would he not feel foolish, painstakingly pointing out each nugget of infantile folly on the part of the 'bitter-enders', still loyal to the Emperor and, blinking in the sunlight for a few seconds, loathe to leave the Darwinian jungle. I once left a seminary I had been very happy in, because, on the basis of their own words, I strongly doubted if the liberal theologian 'du jour' and the doyen of scripture scholars were actually Christians. And for the same reason, I felt obliged to turn down an invitation to study at a Jesuit college. It was much worse for me than for Cornelius, as I'd not long joined the seminary at entry level, so after I had briefly said my piece, it struck me as an impossible situation.Axel_{November 11, 2012
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Do chimps see in color? More explicitly, what are the causes of color vision. Do we find those causes in chimps?Mung_{November 11, 2012
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Second, they needed a better understanding of the evolutionary tree, telling them which species evolved from which. This provides the framework from which to derive the sequence of molecular changes that led to the eye.
Sadly, this is just a false premise. Why 'x' did not evolve an eye does not explain why 'y' did evolve an eye, and the history for the evolution if the eye is to be found within the lineage that actually has the eye. Take the human eye for example. Unless they are claiming that some genes that humans have for en eye came from horizontal gene transfer, all the necessary components must have arisen within the human lineage. All the evidence needed should be right there in the human genome.Mung_{November 11, 2012
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Evolution is a faith based belief - faith in their own interpretation of the facts and their own just so stories. Eyes? No problem! How many times do you need them and where? Just say the magic words "mutations and natural selection" and we can produce anything you want or need any time you need it.tjguy_{November 11, 2012
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a few related notes on the demarcation between objective and subjective: “No, I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.” (Max Planck, as cited in de Purucker, Gottfried. 1940. The Esoteric Tradition. California: Theosophical University Press, ch. 13). “Consciousness cannot be accounted for in physical terms. For consciousness is absolutely fundamental. It cannot be accounted for in terms of anything else.” (Schroedinger, Erwin. 1984. “General Scientific and Popular Papers,” in Collected Papers, Vol. 4. Vienna: Austrian Academy of Sciences. Friedr. Vieweg & Sohn, Braunschweig/Wiesbaden. p. 334.) "It will remain remarkable, in whatever way our future concepts may develop, that the very study of the external world led to the scientific conclusion that the content of the consciousness is the ultimate universal reality" - Eugene Wigner - (Remarks on the Mind-Body Question, Eugene Wigner, in Wheeler and Zurek, p.169) 1961 - received Nobel Prize in 1963 for 'Quantum Symmetries' Here is Wigner commenting on the key experiment that led Wigner to his Nobel Prize winning work on quantum symmetries,,, Eugene Wigner Excerpt: When I returned to Berlin, the excellent crystallographer Weissenberg asked me to study: why is it that in a crystal the atoms like to sit in a symmetry plane or symmetry axis. After a short time of thinking I understood:,,,, To express this basic experience in a more direct way: the world does not have a privileged center, there is no absolute rest, preferred direction, unique origin of calendar time, even left and right seem to be rather symmetric. The interference of electrons, photons, neutrons has indicated that the state of a particle can be described by a vector possessing a certain number of components. As the observer is replaced by another observer (working elsewhere, looking at a different direction, using another clock, perhaps being left-handed), the state of the very same particle is described by another vector, obtained from the previous vector by multiplying it with a matrix. This matrix transfers from one observer to another. http://www.reak.bme.hu/Wigner_Course/WignerBio/wb1.htm i.e. In the experiment the 'world' (i.e. the universe) does not have a ‘privileged center’. Yet strangely, the conscious observer does exhibit a 'privileged center'. This is since the 'matrix', which determines which vector will be used to describe the particle in the experiment, is 'observer-centric' in its origination! Thus explaining Wigner’s dramatic statement, “It was not possible to formulate the laws (of quantum theory) in a fully consistent way without reference to consciousness.” What does the term "measurement" mean in quantum mechanics? "Measurement" or "observation" in a quantum mechanics context are really just other ways of saying that the observer is interacting with the quantum system and measuring the result in toto. http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=597846 further notes: Centrality of Each Individual Observer In The Universe and Christ’s Very Credible Reconciliation Of General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics https://docs.google.com/document/d/17SDgYPHPcrl1XX39EXhaQzk7M0zmANKdYIetpZ-WB5Y/edit?hl=en_USbornagain77_{November 11, 2012
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Wow, amazing! Now just for that pesky little problem in science of actually empirically demonstrating what you claim to be true actually is true and then they can go ahead and barter against their future Nobel winnings (as Einstein did his future Nobel winnings with his ex-wife in their divorce).,, Personally I'm not as confident as they are in their claims since I have yet to see Darwinists produce even a single novel protein by purely material processes, much less a eye. But so much for that minor detail :) be that as it may ,,, Now, empirics aside, with this stunning victory under their belt and the prizes and fame that are sure to follow, I'm sure the hard problem of consciousness will soon fall under their relentless march forward in pursuit a excellence in science: Notes: Nagel Asks, Is the World Really Knowable? - Joshua Youngkin - October 26, 2012 Excerpt: science even at its best could never offer a complete picture of the world. That is, science as science will necessarily lack the vocabulary to capture and express the myriad private worlds of subjective, conscious experience. To take Nagel's famous example, science could tell you everything you want to know about bats except what it is like to be a bat, to "see" via echolocation. Similarly, brain scientists could in principle learn every objective fact about your brain and how it works yet they wouldn't by virtue of this knowledge know what sugar tastes like to you. In the final chapter of the book, Nagel sums the matter up this way: "In attempting to understand consciousness as a biological phenomenon, it is too easy to forget how radical is the difference between the subjective and the objective, and to fall into the error of thinking about the mental in terms taken from our ideas of physical events and processes." http://www.evolutionnews.org/2012/10/nagel_asks_is_t065761.html To that radical difference between objective and subjective, I offer this: Blind Woman Can See During Near Death Experience (NDE) - Pim von Lommel - video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/3994599/ Kenneth Ring and Sharon Cooper (1997) conducted a study of 31 blind people, many of who reported vision during their Near Death Experiences (NDEs). 21 of these people had had an NDE while the remaining 10 had had an out-of-body experience (OBE), but no NDE. It was found that in the NDE sample, about half had been blind from birth. (of note: This 'anomaly' is also found for deaf people who can hear sound during their Near Death Experiences(NDEs).) http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2320/is_1_64/ai_65076875/ Man born blind can see during Near Death Experience - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_m-T46xH34 Jerry Coyne, a Holy Warrior for Darwin - James Barham - April 20, 2012 Excerpt: Darwinists deny the objective existence of purpose, value, and meaning.,,,, (Yet) everyday human life as we experience it is saturated with purpose, value, and meaning. Therefore, to ordinary people -- as to most philosophers who have given the matter deep thought -- the reductionist claims of the Darwinists are absurd on their face. In fact, they are self-contradictory, and just plain silly. Every word that comes out of Jerry Coyne's mouth contradicts his official philosophy. Why? Because he presumably means something by what he says. Because he obviously values some things (Darwinism) and disvalues other things (religion). And because he manifestly has the purpose of convincing his readers that he is right and religious believers are wrong. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2012/04/jerry_coyne_a_h058811.htmlbornagain77_{November 11, 2012
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