Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

New Book (Doesn’t) Explain How Eyes Evolved; The Bible Versus Evolution; Evolutionists Say “We See”

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Ivan Schwab’s new book on the evolution of vision systems is a vivid reminder of our blindness. Recently we reviewed how minor changes such as viruses mutating and allele frequency dynamics are, according to evolutionists, proof texts of evolution. Now in Schwab’s new book we have an example of how comparisons of various designs, again according to evolutionists, show howevolution occurred. Like the ancient myths, it is difficult to believe that anyone actually believes these things.  Read more

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But if you apply that same type of "source of variation" to the camera analogy, it would be like bumping it or smashing it. Is this the method you use when you want to upgrade your camera? As always, I'm not saying it's impossible, just very unlikely. It actually might improve things on a Sony... Also, who is claiming that the source of the design we see in biological machinery was imparted in the last few hundred years? You're confusing the claims of evolution with those of ID. It is precisely the type of variation we've seen accumulate in the last few hundred years that shows that design is necessary.John D
December 23, 2011
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Do any of us think that digital camera evolved from film camera or glass plates.
Of course cameras have evolved. They have changed incrementally. What you are asserting is that the source of variation is "intelligent." Considering that we know humans to be the source of variation, that's a trivial statement. But the source of variation in living things has been exhaustively investigated for well over a hundred years and it does not involve foresight of knowledge of what's needed.Petrushka
December 22, 2011
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Give the man a break. His is a difficult, nay impossible, task.. Of course it is nay impossible , because it is impossible. Do any of us think that digital camera evolved from film camera or glass plates. They were all designed, for a purpose. I an assuming you don't mean ID , as 'evolving'. Patterns of Creation explains how eyes and other parts were created for their purpose.It is an assumption that that eyes 'evolved, the only evidence of that is the scientists theory, has to be supported. So the evidence is the theory. Not very scientific. And is circular thinking. Any similarities on animals , comes from the Patterns of Creation. found here: http://patternsofcreation.weebly.com/MrDunsapy
December 22, 2011
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Give the man a break. His is a difficult, nay impossible, task. We as humans have not yet evolved the imaginative capacity to explain how a cause (mutation) that has always been known to have a particular effect (the breakdown of genetic information) is actually doing the opposite (building new genetic information so that an eye can arise from chaos and gaze upon the uncreated world). He might as well try to explain how the sun, by pulling the earth ever closer into its fiery embrace, is causing a gradual, ongoing cooling of the planet. Even if you can pull a calculation out of your butt showing how it is statistically possible that just the right variables could come into play so that the heat from the sun does indeed cool the earth while burning all else, you're still going to sound like a lunatic.APM
December 20, 2011
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I've read some reviews about the book, only three so far on Amazon but others on various science blogs, and all positive. More of a narrative and a chronology than an explanation of how eyes evolved, however, and thus not living up to the books title. And this, based on my perusal via Amazon's LOOK INSIDE! The Amazon review by V. deLuise was well written but somewhat disingenuous, as it potreyed the book as an all-encompassing explanation of eye evolution. One quote:
This book, much as Richard Dawkins' seminal work "The Blind Watchmaker," is implicitly a paean to and defense of the concept which Darwin championed, that over an impossible-to-comprehend period of time measured in the billions of years and often by only subtle mutations and changes responding to natural selection, nature actually could, and did, design, refine and re-design the eye as a response to predation, biochemistry, environment, natural catastrophes and extinctions.
In actuality, neither tome comes close to an explanation of how natural selection could work incrementally to increase the eye's complexity [by percentage points, to quote Dawkins]. Nor did Dan-Erik Nilsson's 1994 paper which focussed primarily on a progressive invagination of what was to become a retina do more than portrey eye evolution in a fairy-tale modality. Further, the so-called "conservative estimate" of eyes evolving in separate lineages over relatively short times was not supported in the paper by factual data; just speculation. Most disturbing to me regarding the insistence upon natural causation rather than design is the adherence to the 'inverted retina' argument, refuted many times over, and yet still trotted out. Nor are counter arguments to muller cells as fiber optic photon guides ever addressed by the evo defenders, save for statements attributing them to nature's response to a rectifying an evolutionary design mistake. Yes, eyes are complex, diverse, and entail variations to accomodate environmental and need-be factors of diverse phyla. But 'selective pressures' alone to account for their diversities is and will remain a failed hypothesis.leebowman
December 19, 2011
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