(August 30, 2012 at 2:00 pm)Undeceived Wrote: What's between a light-sensitive portion of flesh and a cornea, iris, pupil, lens, viterous humor, sclera, optic nerve and retina all working together? Give me an example of one of those parts functioning alone. If you change just one to a more primitive state, you must change them all. The slightest difference makes the organism blind. I'll put it this way: we have cornea 10.0, pupil 10.0, lens 10.0, sclera 10.0 and retina 10.0. Make just one of those 9.0 and all have to mutate into 9.0 sometime before the organism dies. The same goes for the dozens of parts I didn't mention. Don't reach into the far evolutionary past in an attempt to confuse your audience. Describe to me an eye one stage away.

The eye is the most well documented and well demonstrated organ in any stage of evolution in any creature alive or dead. Every stage of the eye still exists -to this very day- so stop barking up a fucking tree.

Quote:Life in the whole universe is better suited to reproduce using a low-atomic element with 4 valence electrons, like Carbon. It bonds better. Water is the perfect solvent for a body because it turns from solid to liquid to gas in the shortest range of temperatures. Ignoring the existence of earth, C and H2O are our best chance. Now bring earth into the equation. It matches the already ideal life form to perfection.

-Our- best chance is not equivalent to -lifes- best chance. Given the elements we have available to us here it's no wonder that life on this rock is carbon based. Elsewhere it may not be. Your argument here is the puddle and the hole.

Quote:You might be tempted to invoke another universe. But we're discussing fine-tuning within our universe, not in the imaginary billions of hypothetical universes.

Anthropic principle.

Quote:Our materials fitting with our scientific laws in the most efficient reproductive way.
age to the species? Maybe we should abolish all jobs like doctors and surgeons because their duties are clearly against the species...

What else would you expect our laws to be based upon..some other materials?

Quote:What does innovation have to do with truth? The question is whether seeking the truth of our existence helps our existence.

It may not, which handily answers the question "Why does religion exist at all?"

Quote:At the end of the day, the job should get done better. Every retained mutation (such as altruism) has to improve our species’ chance of survival or it would be extinct by now.

Negatron, any given mutation can persist so long as it is not directly deleterious. Case in point, creatures don't seem to evolve to handle obstacles placed before them, they seem to have already posessed the mutation that allows them to out-compete -when- said obstacle is placed in front of them.

Quote:Richard Dawkins came up with two reasons for apparently altruistic actions. One is the gene theory. If you have my genes (a family member), I will look after you.

A theory very well demonstrated with the example of precisely who gets the extra honeycombs in any given gaggle of monkeys.

Quote:The other is reciprocal. If I think you'll respond in kind, I will do something nice. But neither explains the two examples I gave. The old lady on the bus neither has my genes nor is likely to do anything nice back.

Behaviours, once formed, are often not limited to the environment in which they were nurtured.

Quote:The children in 3rd-world countries couldn't be farther from my genes, and I will probably never see them again. Even if I did, they could never fully repay me.

How much have you given them relative to your immediate family and friends?

Quote: Or how about C.S. Lewis' famous example. A man is drowning in a river. You jump in and save him OR feel tremendously guilty for not jumping in. But if you're a man you probably will. You risk your life to save his.

You may, or you may stand there like a dumbass waiting for emergency responders while he drowns. Happens all the time.

Quote: It doesn't matter if you believe he'll give you a hundred dollars for your efforts. Nothing can account for your total ignorance of the point of your life--survival.

Wait...wait...you're going to jump in the water to save a drowning man if you can't swim? Doubt it.

Quote: If you think we gauge moral actions on survival alone, the evidence suggests otherwise.

Except that it doesn't.

Quote:Our conscious is with us all the time.

Quite the handy survival tool, "conscience"

Quote:Murdering anybody will stay in our mind for years, even if it ends up helping our survival.

No, it will stay in yours, others today and throughout history seem to have had no such trouble

Quote: Adultery produces guilt, even when a child comes out of it.

Except when it doesn't, as evidenced by the vast dearth of serial adulterers.....

Quote:Guilt makes no distinctions in favor of survival. A moral misfire would imply that morality is faulted at its root, in the guilt area. Examine your thoughts, not your actions. You consider it more decent to be like Mother Teresa than Charlie Sheen, am I correct?

You're incorrect. I think Charlie Sheen is a fantastic human being..Mother Theresa...not so much.

Quote: That is your conscience talking.

See the above.

Quote:Your conscience (morality) respects altruism and despises selfishness. If you acted on it more, you would be 'misfiring' all the time.

Except that it doesn't, and it isn't, but nice try.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/librar...11_01.html

Quote:In fact, eyes corresponding to every stage in this sequence have been found in existing living species. The existence of this range of less complex light-sensitive structures supports scientists' hypotheses about how complex eyes like ours could evolve. The first animals with anything resembling an eye lived about 550 million years ago. And, according to one scientist's calculations, only 364,000 years would have been needed for a camera-like eye to evolve from a light-sensitive patch.

Do you creationist shitstains understand English? These creatures exist NOW.

Now, go running to hide in your fucking bible like the assholes you are.

(August 30, 2012 at 2:15 pm)Rhythm Wrote: The eye is the most well documented and well demonstrated organ in any stage of evolution in any creature alive or dead. Every stage of the eye still exists -to this very day.

So give me an example of an eye one stage away from a human's. One stage away. Or two or three. Actually, I'll take any two complex eyes in fauna if they're close enough.

Look directly above your post, or..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_the_eye
or
http://www.scientificamerican.com/articl...of-the-eye
or..oh fuck this... here:
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=evolution+of+the+eye

This irreducible complexity bullshit annoys me to no end. Perhaps the proponents ignorance of the subject is so irreducibly complex that this itself is proof of something.

(August 30, 2012 at 3:36 pm)Rhythm Wrote: Look directly above your post, or..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_the_eye
or
http://www.scientificamerican.com/articl...of-the-eye
or..oh fuck this... here:
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=evolution+of+the+eye

Please... an example. None of your sites show two eyes a stage apart. Nor do they explain how a human eye can function with one piece under-developed. Or, for that matter, how every stage from the earliest Cambrian eyes to the human's is able to function just a little better than the one before. Neither is the apparent irreducible complexity of a simple eyespot addressed. If you can't find an example, explain the concept.

Sure, np. What are your criteria for "a stage apart"? What should be missing (or what should we be missing..our eyes may have gone downhill)? There's nothing irreducibly complex about an eye-spot either btw. "Every stage" of an eyes function does not function better than the last. Some eyes which would seem -to us- to be less complicated than our own are worlds better for the task at hand than ours would be.

(I ask so that you can't then turn around and ask for an intermediary between our eyes and the intemediary add infinitum -which is obviously where this is headed...since so many fucking examples were given in every link I just gave you.)

The concept itself is blisteringly simple. Any light sensitive apparatus immediately grants the bearer some "sense" of it's external surroundings. Even plants exhibit this peculiar trait, despite having no central nervous system to have "senses" at all. Any awareness (even if only mechanical) of external environment is likely to lead to increased survival rates which we would expect to see (and in fact do see) represented in both the fossil record and currently existing species. Taking this further, curvature of the surface around the photosensitive apparatus grants increased directional awareness. Notice the the apparatus itself need not change, merely the curvature of the "mount" if you will. Again, this is what we expect and what we see. I can continue with this if you like but I'm already feeling like I'm wasting my time...as all of this was already addressed in the links.

(August 30, 2012 at 4:14 pm)Rhythm Wrote: Sure, np. What are your criteria for "two stages" apart? What should be missing (or what should we be missing..our eyes may have gone downhill)? There's nothing irreducibly complex about an eye-spot either. "Every stage" of an eyes function does not function better than the last. Some eyes which would seem -to us- to be less complicated than our own are worlds better for the task at hand than ours would be.

(I ask so that you can't then turn around and ask for an intermediary between our eyes and the intemediary add infinitum -which is obviously where this is headed...since so many fucking examples were given in every link I just gave you.)

Here's a picture of the main parts of an eye: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-VkKryzGZM1c/UB...+eye+1.jpg
The prior stage should have a change in only one of the parts, and the eye should still function. If more than one part changes, we have an evolutionary leap and the probability shrinks by thousandths. There should be points along the path where vital parts such as the retina, lens and iris can safely mutate and leave the eye still operative, lessening the quality by just a fraction.

(August 30, 2012 at 4:27 pm)Undeceived Wrote: Here's a picture of the main parts of an eye: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-VkKryzGZM1c/UB...+eye+1.jpg
The prior stage should have a change in only one of the parts, and the eye should still function. If more than one part changes, we have an evolutionary leap and the probability shrinks by thousandths. There should be points along the path where vital parts such as the retina, lens and iris can safely mutate and leave the eye still operative, lessening the quality by just a fraction.

If you're this curious, why don't you go educate yourself about evolutionary biology? If you buy the argument at a genetic level--which is really "where" the evolution occurs--then issues like "the irreducible complexity of the eye" shouldn't bother you, since the development of the eye is genetic.

Does that make sense?

It's to be presumed that we humans are the pinnacle of all of the god-character's creations; "the paragon of animals". So why are there apprently 'lesser' creatures with far more efficient eyes than ours? We didn't coin the phrase "eagle-eyed" just for the shits and giggles, for example. By comparison with many examples of vision in other species, our own eyes are the equivalent of the tatty old leftovers from god's "scraps 'n' spares" bin. They break down extremely quickly compared to the lifetime of thir owner; they are vulnerable to a whole range of degenerative diseases not to mention parasites; the range of the electromagnetic spectrum they can perceive is embarrassingly limited; they function very, almost catastrophically, poorly at night and under similar low-light conditions; they are essentially wired backwards in the chassis of the head... the list goes on and on.

If only we'd kept the receipt.

You mean the main parts of a particular kind of eye, the camera eye...lol (an eye which was used as an example in one of the links I sent you, describing the convergent evolution of vertebrate and [some]cephalopod eyes). Curiously there is one significant difference between these similar types of eyes, with the cephalopod eye coming out ahead of our own, and both function. There is even a nice little tidbit of info on why this is the case

"This difference may be accounted for by the origins of eyes; in cephalopods they develop as an invagination of the head surface whereas in vertebrates they originate as an extension of the brain."

Boy, sounds like science is fucking mystified....

Now, take that camera eye, remove the cornea/lens combo, and you have whats known as a pinhole camera. You can step this back further into a pigment cup by simply flattening the curvature around the photoreceptive cells. Of course you can go a step further and just have those cells sitting on a suface that is in no way curved around them...and you have an eye-spot. All four of these eyes (our camera, the pinhole camera, the pigment cup, and the eye-spot) function, and each one is represented in creatures both alive and extinct. This is a very very roughshod run over the development of the eye, but it serves it purpose in describing just how ignorant the "irreducibly complex" line of bullshit is. There are other types of eyes, and you can read all about them......

In the links I already sent you.
(it might also help to mention that the eyes I referred to are all found in cephalopods....not just a willy nilly selection of eyes from creatures taken at random- I love those fuckin things..smart too)