I received an email asking about eye evolution.
hi dear myers, im a turkish student. i study EEE but i have a deep profound curiousity towards evolution. i know that you mastered in evo devo. even though i didnt read any of your books since i live in turkey and could not find them.. i wrote an article in my own way concerning evolution and tried to express my feelings. im learning english by myself, i didnt want to use translator so you can see my sincerity and effort. to be honest i just wanted to express my feelings and get some advices and opinions from you, im just confused..
Here is the article i have written:
That’s perfectly acceptable English, so he shouldn’t be shy. However, as you’ll quickly see, he seems to think “article” is a synonym for “paragraph”. It’s not much of an article. I agree, he’s confused.
One thing about evolutionary biology that concerns me and feels unable to perceive is cells and organisms acting like as though they know what to do when constructing an organ.
That’s a common and fundamental misconception, the reading of intent and purpose into a series of events. Cells don’t “know” what they are doing — their genes are responding in a mechanical way to the environment. So error #1: trying to impose teleology on the system.
although it happens through blindwatchmaker situation, i still cannot grasp. for instance, an eye is a complex system and it feels like even though some may say it is a trial and error state throughout the evolutionary process it seems it happened with permission of a creator..
“Complexity”…that always comes up, and it’s irrelevant. Chance processes can easily produce complexity, and trial and error is an effective (if wasteful) way to build an eye. Natural selection and drift don’t need permission. They happen whether you like it or not.
it is still unclear to me a system like an eye whether it can build itself in such a short amount of time. cells behave as if they know which part they contribute whenever building an immense and flawless eye.
What is a “short amount of time”? Developmentally, an eye assembles itself in hours, days, weeks, or months, depending on the species, using nothing but physics and chemistry, and no one has seen the finger of a deity coming down to nudge cells into place. Again, it’s not about the cells “knowing”.
Oh, wait, he means such a short amount of time on an evolutionary scale? Silly. I’ve seen a zebrafish eye assemble in less than 24 hours, so I’m not that impressed with an eye organizing over hundreds of thousands of generation. It’s pretty cool, don’t get me wrong, and there’s much to learn about the process taking place from the pre-Cambrian to 400 thousand years ago, but it’s not an intimidatingly difficult thing to accomplish. It’s well within the power of evolution, and we have examples of the intermediate steps.
some may say there are genes such as HOX which responsible for the case i mentioned, its still unclear to me ,since i approach the problems as a philosophical problem..by saying “approaching as a philo problem” i meant digging deeper the origins of it..
i hope i could transfered my inquiries…
Oh god. Everyone babbles about Hox genes even if they know nothing about them — this is a shortcut the writer is using to pretend to knowing something about molecular genetics. He doesn’t. You know, you could at least say Pax genes instead of Hox, since Pax is more directly relevant to eye development. Hox genes are patterning genes that define segment identity along the body (or limb) axis, while Pax genes are involved in tissue differentiation and organogenesis.
It’s especially bad to trot out the sciencey word “Hox” just before telling me you approach eye evolution as a “philosopphical problem.” I don’t care about your philosophy, I want to know about the material process, with evidence. Philosophy in this case is simply his efforts to make post-hoc rationalizations for his preconceptions — he’s giving philosophy a bad name.
Religious people think that the human eye just appeared suddenly in humans. Absolutely no concept that (a) eyes have developed independently a number of times in differennt lines (b) we can trace the evolution of the human eye all the way back to sensory light cells in early organisms (c) the human eye is not beautifully designed – the arrangement of optic nerves presents problems, and there are dozens of organism who have much better eyes than humans.
Anyone who studies Eastern Equine Encephalitis needs a deeper background in evolutionary biology.
He’s just a creationist pretending to be interested in the flaws of evolutionary explanations. The obvious giveaway is here:
“it seems it happened with permission of a creator” So the human eye is too complex, but his pretend creator isn’t? Creationists never think through their conclusions to see what the natural world consequences would be if their starting and ending point was true (they always start at the end, and work backwards to “prove” their conclusion, unlike science). The human eye is not the best eye in the animal kingdom, their alleged “creator” is an incompetent boob. For example eagles have built in magnification to see small details at large distances, peacock mantis shrimp have over a dozen different types of light receptors while most humans are stuck with three (some even less, and a few women have 4). Even the octopus has a better eye that humans, with the blood vessels located behind the retina, and no blind spot.
“It feels like even though some may say it is a trial and error state throughout the evolutionary process [for eye development]”
So science is, or should be, totally based on feels, and not compelling evidence or critical reasoning, to give religion a chance?
“some may say” is another attempt to marginalize biology. No competent biologist doubts evolutionary processes. That “some may say” only applies to the willfully ignorant who routinely say stupid things. “Some may say” that outer space aliens are visiting earth to create crop circles, and obviously no human could ever make such things. /S
“Supernatural Explanations” are oxymorons. Like the example here, they claim to explain knowns with unknowns, and attempt to shut down all investigation using rational thinking like science. And of course, historically they tried to “explain” unknowns using even greater unknowns. e.g., Disease is caused by demons, lightening a god’s sword, volcanoes are caused by sin, etc.
Prediction, nothing you say will sway his belief system. Starting out polite is common, and then they get angry when you point out the flaws in their thinking, and they carefully avoid reading any relevant literature on the topic that they pretend interest in so that they can continue to believe their absurdities.
And nomdeplume@! ninja’d me, they must be a really faster typer since even my clock says that I am posting ahead in time. So they have either mastered faster that light travel or else we are in different time zones. The former “feels” right, of course.
“flawless eye” – My glasses disagree.
@3 Yea, he is clearly just a creationist doing an open-minded shtick.
I am speaking from a wormhole linking Australia and PZs house…
“Flawless eye”–yeah. My cataract surgeries (both eyes), and my distance and reading glasses (hurrah! finally, new ones!) put paid to that notion. Also, two hip replacements (due to congenital hip displacia), upcoming knee replacement, and lots of upcoming dental work, etc etc. Humans, esp aging ones, ain’t anywhere near the crown of creation. At all. Actually, my money’s on the corvids.
Cicero: “There is nothing so absurd that it has not been said by some philosopher.”
Ignore the philosophers
The counter-argument to his “God of the Gaps” is: Do iron filings and flowers of sulphur know how to assemble themselves into ferrous sulphide?
I suspect this guy may be a follower or associate of Adnan Okhtar/Harun Yahya. Or at least a Muslim following a similar tradition of Islamist obscurantism.
I posted a fair bit of info on Harun Yahya (who has multiple aliases) but this website discarded it, so I give up.
Good point I like: If eyes can form quickly without gods in devo, why should it be a problem for them to evo?
Definitely onboard with mocking the notion of “flawless” eyes.
1) I also wear glasses. I’m nearsighted with a slight bit of astigmatism. I don’t need bifocals yet, but I’ll likely get there eventually. On top of that, I’ve got blue eyes and light sensitivity as one of my autistic sensory issues, for a double whammy of having a hard time in bright sunlight. So I’ve got a pair of sunglasses, too.
2) Blind spots where all the veins on the inside bunch up go through the retina: If the eye were intelligently designed, it’d make more sense to have those behind the retina, where they aren’t blocking the rods and cones. Imagine a digital camera where you had wires on the inside, blocking perfectly good space that could have been used for more light sensors.
3) Even further than that, I as I understand it, land animals generally have worse vision because we’ve jury-rigged fish eyes to operate in air instead of water: Water on the inside of the eye and air on the outside adds refraction or something that needs to be compensated for.
If God designed eyes why did they design them better in cephalopods?
Anyway, does this God offer a warranty on their work? I would like to file a claim
dangerousbeans @ 12 beat me to the cephalopod eyes.
Regarding warranty, if your body wears out faster than for a right whale or a greenland shark, you should get a new one.
We have scarring instead of growing new limbs like some amphibians, but I think we should get to choose.
When you meet Zod, you will have a lot of valid complaints.
It’s unclear to me whether this guy is talking about eye evolution or eye development or if he conflates the two. But in the former case, you should refer him to a) the part of the Origin where Darwin talks about this and b) Nilsson D., Pelger S. A pessimistic estimate of the time required for an eye to evolve. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, Series B 1994; 256:53-58.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/15190002_A_Pessimistic_Estimate_of_the_Time_Required_for_an_Eye_to_Evolve