Independent Evolution of Eyes

"I was trying to make a point about any feature that is subject to strong selection pressure" What about the ability to replicate with heritable information being recorded and organized in a way that can be communicated to, and translated by, the progeny? That would seem to be quite a niche among the unorganized. Upright BiPed

Mr DATCG, It may seem that I was talking specifically about the eye, but I was trying to make a point about any feature that is subject to strong selection pressure. I could have been talking about hearing, or smell. I could have been talking about flight. Let me ask you a question. Assume that thick clouds had blocked most of the light from the Sun for the last 500 million years, but somehow plants were able to survive on a diet of solar neutrinos. What kind of eyes would animals have, and why? Nakashima

DATCG, Can you please tell me how the eye came about then? Because I would really like to know, and writing one explanation off as a magical mystery tour without suggesting an alternative doesn't strike me as very helpful. zeroseven

"The single fact that good vision helps you survive explains its rapid development, its diversity, and its conservation." Nakashima, this sentence is pure magical mystery tour. You have no clue what happened, you're making up stories, not on fact, but on fiction of "what may have happened" in the past. Yet another just-so story wrapped up in arrogant assertions based upon a belief system of unguided evolution. Darwinism, do to this type of propaganda can never be falsified. It would do science good to start holding Darwinian zealots to account instead of allowing them to get away with fictional story telling. You are left with a mystical inference of what transpired over millions of years ago, nothing more. I do not understand why someone like you with so much ability and knowledge continues to believe in such stories. The story you tell can easily be design stories. There is a reason for example that some cameras are cheap and not as powerful because their functions are only required for simple picture taking rolls. There are more complex cameras for different requirements and specifications such as speed or underwater. If I was being paid millions in government funds I'm sure I can come up with great "just-so" stories as well as any Darwinist. But in the end, they have shown nothing but a propensity for being good science fiction writers. DATCG

Mr Collin, Why do eyes evolve in a short time and then no eyes really evolve in 520 million years? I think a pretty good answer is that every animal had already developed the eyes it needed for the niche it was in. However, you can see interesting eye development happening afterwards, as species adapt to new niches. That was the point of the article Dr Hunter was quoting from, going from diurnal to nocturnal seems to have evolved rapidly in one species of New World monkey by changing the timing of parts of the developmental cascade. In this way only a small number of genetic changes can cause a large amount of morphological change. Nakashima

Mr Joseph, How can we test the premise that vision systems evolved starting from a population that never had one? One place to start would be to see that vision systems can evolve among populations that do have them! The article that Dr Hunter quotes from is very interesting in that regard. Nakashima

Why do eyes evolve in a short time and then no eyes really evolve in 520 million years?

Wouldn't the obvious answer be 'because they already evolved'? And there certainly was development of new ways to sense the physical makeup of the environment since then (e.g. echolocation in bats or dolphins). hrun0815

jerry, and to add to your point, why haven't we evolved eyes on our hands or at least photosensitive regions? Why not in the back of our heads? Why not in several places on the body? Why do eyes evolve in a short time and then no eyes really evolve in 520 million years? Collin

"'Not much evolution – compared to what?' Vision is so useful that selection pressure for good vision is very strong. The single fact that good vision helps you survive explains its rapid development, its diversity, and its conservation. As someone once said, “In the country of the blind, the photosensitive pigment spotted bilaterian is king!” OK, I admit it, that last statement was inane." No, I will give you credit for all that you said as inane. You do not have to limit yourself. Don't be so modest. If good vision helps you to survive, why the lack of new eyes since the Cambrian. Is not 520 million years enough time? I know, it all happened when the Pre Cambrian dog was around to eat the evidence. See how inane that was too. You are on a roll. jerry

In order for eyes/ vision systems to be off any use the organism must be able to process the information it receives via that system. Joseph

Nakashima-san, A proper critique of Sermonti would have been to provide actual scientific data that refutes what he says. Seeing there is a total absence of such data Bottaro did the best he could. That goes for the quote I provided- no data that refutes it. Go figure... Joseph

Nakashima said, "The single fact that good vision helps you survive explains [the eye's] rapid development, its diversity, and its conservation." I must disagree. the light bulb helps you have good vision and may help you survive, but that is only a part of the reason why we have seen its rapid development, its diversity, and its conservation. The missing ingredient is creative design. I would argue that the same is true of the eye. The fact of its usefulness does not explain its development. By the way, is it commonly agreed by biologists that eyes developed in several independent instances? Collin

Retroman: Those passages you cite don’t support your point. The bit about a “surprising number of eyes having evolved independently” just indicates that vision provides an obvious advantage. None of this is evidence against evolution.

No. Providing an obvious advantage does not imply it can or will be evolved in the first place.

None of this is evidence against evolution.

It's evidence of the gullibility, illogical, and uncritical thinking permeatiing evolutionary ideas. scordova

Mr Joseph, You are welcome but Andrea missed the boat on his attempt at a critique. I think his description of much of Sermonti's writing as lyrical mysticism was pretty apt. It certainly applied to that quote about sex being anti-evolution that you introduced me to several months ago. Nakashima

How can we test the premise that vision systems evolved starting from a population that never had one? Then add the caveat that the test must also demonstrate that an accumulation of genetic accidents was responsible... Joseph

Nakashima-san, You are welcome but Andrea missed the boat on his attempt at a critique. However he was very helpful in pointing out that evolutionists don't have a clue about the evolution of the vision system. Joseph

Mr Joseph, Thanks for the link to Bottaro's critique of Sermonti. Very helpful. Fossil evidence on eye evolution Nakashima

Mr Jerry, Nakashima added some inanity but that was it. The eye is another case of the dog ate the evidence since all the eyes were present in the Cambrian and nothing new has evolved since. While we may have no fossil evidence of the development of the eye during the Pre-Cambrian era, we certainly have molecular evidence, which is the basis of such sweeping statements as “the eye evolved only once”. I agree with Dr Myers that what has happened since is “significant tweaking”. Spiders get eight eyes instead of two. Mammals lost color vision, and some primates regained it. Some fish are bifocal. Insects can see UV (very useful out of the water, very useful with flowers, which are pretty recent). Significant tweaks such as these are more than “nothing new”, but you’ve warned us previously not to take your emphatic statements too seriously. The important thing to ask is “Not much evolution – compared to what?” Vision is so useful that selection pressure for good vision is very strong. The single fact that good vision helps you survive explains its rapid development, its diversity, and its conservation. As someone once said, “In the country of the blind, the photosensitive pigment spotted bilaterian is king!” OK, I admit it, that last statement was inane. Nakashima

A couple months ago our old friend Hazel made the following statement to my assertion that there was no evidence for the evolution of the eye: "Jerry writes, “The eye is another case of the dog ate the evidence since all the eyes were present in the Cambrian and nothing new has evolved since.” That is a bizarre statement. The eyes of modern creatures are vastly different than those of Cambrian creatures – how one can say that “nothing new has evolved since” is beyond me." Here is the link to my initial comment: https://uncommondesc.wpengine.com/intelligent-design/ic-all-the-way-down-the-grand-human-evolutionary-discontinuity-and-probabilistic-resources/#comment-341434 Then follow the conversation in comments 60, 62 and 63 at which time Hazel disappears. Nakashima added some inanity but that was it. The anti ID people are amazing. They have nothing and will not admit one iota of that. jerry

In regard to Retroman's comment: The most obvious "evidence against evolution" is the inability to offer a possible scenario that might create ANY component of even a "simple light-sensitive spot." See how Dawkins and Eugenie Scott fail miserably at it and "evolve' components out of thin air. It's quite revealing: http://whoisyourcreator.com/how_does_evolution_occur.html whoisyourcreator

This is a pretty cool video I found last week: Evolution Vs. The Miracle Of The Eye - Molecular Animation - video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4189562/evolution_vs_the_miracle_of_the_eye_molecular_animation/ Evolution vs The Eye - Miracle Or Mistake? - article http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0AYmaSrBPNEmGZGM4ejY3d3pfMThmd25mdjRocQ Though evolutionists pretend that such complex structures such as trilobite eyes popping into existence fully formed at the base of the Cambrian explosion is no big deal, the fact is that they can't even account to the origination of of just one novel functional protein by natural means: Evolution vs. Functional Proteins - Doug Axe - Video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4018222/evolution_vs_functional_proteins_where_did_the_information_come_from_doug_axe_stephen_meyer/ Even if they could account for the myriad of novel proteins required for the eye, they still cannot account for the specific hierarchical arrangement of those proteins into the eye: Cortical Inheritance: The Crushing Critique Against Genetic Reductionism - Arthur Jones - video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4187488/cortical_inheritance_dna_does_not_encode_for_body_plans_dr_arthur_jones/ Stephen Meyer - Functional Proteins And Information For Body Plans - video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4050681/stephen_meyer_functional_proteins_and_information_for_body_plans/ The problem all boils down to the question that Dr. Stephen Meyer likes to ask: Where Did The Information Come From? bornagain77

Those passages you cite don't support your point. The bit about a "surprising number of eyes having evolved independently" just indicates that vision provides an obvious advantage. None of this is evidence against evolution. Retroman

“Evidence”(?) for the evolution of the vision system Andrea Bottaro said the following over at the panda’s thumb:

Eyes are formed via long and complex developmental genetic networks/cascades, which we are only beginning to understand, and of which Pax6/eyeless (the gene in question, in mammals and Drosophila, respectively) merely constitutes one of the initial elements.

IOW the only evidence for the evolution of the vision system is that we have observed varying degrees of complexity in living organisms, from simple light sensitive spots on unicellular organisms to the vision system of more complex metazoans, and we “know” that the first population(s) of living organisms didn’t have either. Therefore the vision system “evolved”. Isn’t evolutionary “science” great! I say the above because if Dr Bottaro is correct then we really have no idea whether or not the vision system could have evolved from a population or populations that did not have one. Joseph