(November 3, 2017 at 8:49 am)SteveII Wrote: There are several things wrong with that sentence, but let's stick to the one point. You would need a massive increase in complexity in the processing center to go from the binary light/no light to recognizing shapes and doing something about it that would be a survival benefit. What survival benefit preserved the increasingly complex (but useless) eye until the organism developed the vastly improved processing center?

You don't need a Cray computer to perform basic arithmetic functions, and you don't need a massively complex neural system to invoke a reflex action to a stimulus. No doubt you will now ask 'how could they evolve together'?
The answer is; they almost certainly didn't. It is highly likely the first hundred trillion of these creatures with their proto eyes and proto nervous systems did not have the two synchronized, not to the benefit of the creatures survival that is.

It's highly likely this primitive arrangement at first resulted in the creature freezing when light hit its proto eye and gained no evolutionary advantage. Now fast forward a ~million? years. A handful of UV photons hits the light sensitive patch and whatever passes for a muscular system goes 'kick' and the thing darts off to one side.
What happened to the recalcitrants, the first group? They were eaten!
Evolution in action.

(November 3, 2017 at 9:10 am)Mathilda Wrote: Richard Dawkins explains the process of how the eye evolved (and a visual representation of a fitness landscape I mentioned earlier)



Specific examples of how it actually happened with references:


Or are you going to claim the links don't work like last time Stevell so you continue to pretend that the steps aren't known?

If so then there is a wikipedia article for it

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_the_eye

Or if you want to laugh at a wikipedia article not being trustworthy, then why not use google scholar to look for a book on the subject?

https://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&l...ed&f=false

... which you can buy on amazon

Evolution's Witness: How eyes evolved

You may wonder how I found all these links. Well I use a web browser you see and there are things called search engines. If I type in a question or a particular subject into a little box in my web browser or go to the web page of the search engine, then the search engines will give me a whole load of relevant links. It's pretty amazing. I reckon it must be magic. I would suggest that you should try it some day but you are staying deliberately ignorant.

If you have trouble clicking on links because your sensori-motor coordination means that it is difficult for you to place a mouse cursor over a link and click then I am sure we can copy and paste some relevant text.

LOL. NONE of these answers my question: how does two or three functions that depend on each other for a survival benefit evolve through small incremental changes that are selected for a survival benefit? Your Youtube videos and links to Wikipedia only DESCRIBES stages that an eye might have gone through--not HOW is it possible to get from one stage to another. Even you must see that these are not the same thing and do not answer my question. Come on, according to your own link it has happened some 50-100 independent times! It should be easy to explain the mechanism. I'll paste it one last time for your ease in your reply:

Even if we presuppose an already vastly complicated cell to kick off the evolution of the eye, an eye makes absolutely no sense on its own. You need a mechanism to process the information and be able to do something about it to relate it to a survival benefit--or no increase in functionality will evolve. But wait, you don't need a light processing center to make decision if you don't have any light sensitive information to process. What came first, the ability to move, the ability to sense light or the processing center to ascertain some survival benefit from light and effect movement?  Seems like all three are needed for any survival benefit to occur. But wait, it's worse than that. For there to be an evolved increase in functionality in the eye (like to discern shapes), you would need a massively more complex processing unit for there to be any survival benefit---but what survival benefit led to the evolution of the processing unit without the complexity of the eye already present? How did that happen? For reference, this would be the "mechanism" sense of the definition of evolution which you said was fact.

(November 3, 2017 at 11:21 am)SteveII Wrote: Even if we presuppose an already vastly complicated cell to kick off the evolution of the eye, an eye makes absolutely no sense on its own. You need a mechanism to process the information and be able to do something about it to relate it to a survival benefit--or no increase in functionality will evolve.

See above.

I see we have reached the denial stage with Stevell. Whatever is said, respond with a "LOL!" and repeat his questions as if they were never answered.

How many more ways can we try to explain to Stevell that as with any complex system, a change to one part happens and then other parts of the system grow dependent upon that change. It really is a very simple concept.We see it happen all the time in any complex system, whether an organism, an evolutionary adaptation, a new species introduced to an ecosystem, new technology in an economy, a new regulation in a legal system. Stevell is being willfully ignorant.

(November 3, 2017 at 11:21 am)SteveII Wrote: LOL. NONE of these answers my question: how does two or three functions that depend on each other for a survival benefit evolve through small incremental changes that are selected for a survival benefit? Your Youtube videos and links to Wikipedia only DESCRIBES stages that an eye might have gone through--not HOW is it possible to get from one stage to another. Even you must see that these are not the same thing and do not answer my question. Come on, according to your own link it has happened some 50-100 independent times! It should be easy to explain the mechanism. I'll paste it one last time for your ease in your reply:

Even if we presuppose an already vastly complicated cell to kick off the evolution of the eye, an eye makes absolutely no sense on its own. You need a mechanism to process the information and be able to do something about it to relate it to a survival benefit--or no increase in functionality will evolve. But wait, you don't need a light processing center to make decision if you don't have any light sensitive information to process. What came first, the ability to move, the ability to sense light or the processing center to ascertain some survival benefit from light and effect movement?  Seems like all three are needed for any survival benefit to occur. But wait, it's worse than that. For there to be an evolved increase in functionality in the eye (like to discern shapes), you would need a massively more complex processing unit for there to be any survival benefit---but what survival benefit led to the evolution of the processing unit without the complexity of the eye already present? How did that happen? For reference, this would be the "mechanism" sense of the definition of evolution which you said was fact.

We have already answered all of this in detail but somehow you refuse to see it, purely because the facts conflict with your pre-held position.

I gave you the benefit of the doubt but youre just being purposely obtuse now.

(November 3, 2017 at 11:21 am)SteveII Wrote: LOL. NONE of these answers my question: how does two or three functions that depend on each other for a survival benefit evolve through small incremental changes that are selected for a survival benefit?

Your question is malformed..you've even been given an example that's fundamental to the development of eyes.  Those three things -don't- depend on each other to confer a survival benefit.  They've been conferring individual benefits since their emergence individually, long before the development of eyes which arose out of them...and continue to do so today.

These adaptations granted you sight, they grant trees the ability to photosynthesize, they grant bacteria motility. You inherited these things from creatures that didn;t (and still don't) use them for what you use them for. They don't have the full package that you have and yet the adaptations still confer benefits. There are creatures that have eyes, but no cns...cns, but no eyes. Nerves, but no eyes or cns. There are creatures that have no nerves, no eyes, and no cns...but use the same cellular structures that each of those things are built out of for entirely disparate ends to great advantage.

We've got to the stage where we can expect the same response from Stevell no matter what we say to him.

At this point I'm perfectly willing to agree with SteveII that he never evolved.

@Mathilda
Sure, but in a discussion of evolutionary development the question of how an interdependent system could have sprung forth fully formed is complete nonsense, and it doesn't take a biologist to realize that.  The answer is that it didn't..and we know that it didn't.  That's not an inference, it's an observation of fact. I don't care whether or not he can bring himself to believe it...that's irrelevant to his question being nonsensical. It's nonsense whether he believes the answer or not.

The stages of development are not only well represented in the fossil record......each stage is still present in living representatives, which would be difficult to explain if they provided no advantage until the lofty heights of steves fundamentally flawed eyeballs and ape-brain.

(November 3, 2017 at 11:53 am)Khemikal Wrote: The stages of development are not only well represented in the fossil record......each stage is still present in living representatives, which would be difficult to explain if they provided no advantage until the lofty heights of steves fundamentally flawed eyeballs and ape-brain.

I think this sentence needs repeating because it is so important.