Okay you want evidence for feathers on a oviraptor?
http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/2408587
Here is research done by western scientists. Actually read it this time
Also oviraptor has three other characteristics key to birds. Itbhas a very birdlike ribcage, hollow bones, and a beak.

(December 24, 2013 at 6:48 pm)Minimalist Wrote:

Quote:So you are trying to argue against something known through deduction by pointing to something we know through induction alone. That makes a lot of sense.

Waldork you fucking asshole, you have proven time after time that you don't know shit about anything except ancient mythology and that is about as useful as a pair of balls on a cow.

Kindly stick your fucking bible up your ass along with your head and your god.

Learn something..if that's possible...about archaeology and then get back to me.

Classy old-timer. I know enough to know that you do not argue against deductive truths by appealing to inductive reasoning. Please tell me you knew that gramps….please…..

(December 24, 2013 at 6:54 pm)Lemonvariable72 Wrote: Actually thank you Waldorf the platypus denotes the reptilian ancestry of mammals quite aptly. Unfortunately it takes more then feature to denote a transitional form. Hence there is only one Dinosaur fossils considered a transitional form between birds and dinosaurs (archaeopteryx). So the platypus actually denotes a command ancestry between mammals and reptiles in much the same way the feathered dinosaurs above denote a common ancestry between birds and dinosaurs.

Nope, you’re not allowed to arbitrarily cherry pick which evidence supports your paradigm and which does not. You are arguing that animals possessing features from two different animal groups are evidence of descent. Therefore, a mammal possessing bird features must be evidence for the descent of mammals from birds or vice versa. Secondly-as I already pointed out-the majority opinion within the scientific community is that archaeopteryx is not a feathered dinosaur but rather a bird. Archaeopteryx would not be evidence that birds descended from dinosaurs anyways because it’s emergence postdates the allege bird/dinosaur divergence in the fossil record. This is why many secular scientists question the dinosaur to bird hypothesis, it is an ad hoc hypothesis that is simply not supported by the preponderance of the evidence.

(December 25, 2013 at 6:26 am)WesOlsen Wrote: Last time I checked the bible was penned by a bunch of scribes commissioned by Jewish tribal elders, and a bunch of Jesus cheerleaders. I didn't realise god authored the whole thing.

Are you really this ignorant of Christian doctrine?

Quote: Either way, it's not objective history.

You know this how?

Quote: No, it's an early bird that is considered by most to be a transitional species between feathered dinosaurs and early birds.

Nope, it postdates the alleged divergence between birds and dinosaurs so it cannot be a transitional form for that divergence.

Quote:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shuvuuia_deserti - Here's some western scientists knocking around in Mongolia with a feathered dinosaur

I reference a peer-reviewed journal, you reference Wikipedia? Nice. Did you notice the terrible assumption? They believe it had feathers because they argue that an absence of alpha-keratin indicates the specimen had feathers. Of course there is no empirical evidence to suggest any such keratin could survive for millions of years so an absence of alpha-keratin proves nothing at all.

Quote:Waldorf, are we to take it that you value evidence despite your wildy inconsistent standards?

Yes I value evidence and no my standards are not inconsistent at all. If I were making an evidential claim such as dinosaurs having feathers I’d at least provide an appropriate level of evidence to support this claim.

Quote: A piece of religious propaganda (which most historians view with rational skepticism) constitutes direct evidence of authorship from god himself, for you.

Nice question-begging epithet. Where did I say anything like this?

Quote: Pen to paper (ink to parchment?) there are no known examples of any other written works coming in to being unless directly penned by human hands on to a suitable surface. If you've found some evidence to the contrary then by all means feel free to share it with us.

Again, this merely illuminates an overarching ignorance of Christian doctrine. God authored scripture by using physical human authors.

Quote: Can you just remind us all who was present at the tomb of Jesus when it was found empty, and whether or not a giant flying and talking cross came whizzing out of the tomb?

We’re never told how many people all were there, but we do know that Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, Salome, Joanna, and others were all there. As for the flying cross, I do not know what you are referring to.

Quote:Just as well you're not right then

..but I am.

Quote:If you can replicate natural conditions in a laboratory setting then it's not incorrect to posit that such a reaction could take place outside of the artifical lab setting.

BadWriterSparty says we do not know what the natural conditions were like 3.5 billion years ago but we can still prove RNA spontaneous generation could have taken place naturally back then so your proposal is not going to work.

Quote: Even if you can't replicate entirely the predicted natural conditions, you can show that a process can take place given certain conditions which means that they may be able to take place under other conditions as well.

Something taking place under certain conditions does not demonstrate it can take place under other conditions; that is a non-sequitur.

Quote: your god of the gaps theory, which can't be replicated, tested, measured or limited under any conditions, laboratory or otherwise.

Neither can the spontaneous generation of RNA 3.5 billion years in the past. You place your faith in man’s ability to perform induction; I place it in what we know to be deductively true through God’s revelation.

Quote: No comparison whatsoever, certainty in a number of given variables conforming to a certain pattern given the correct environment and sufficient time is not faith, it's a statistical likelihood, especially when we can accurately whittle the number of known ingredients down quite well.

How do you determine that it is a statistical likelihood? It absolutely is faith. How do you know what the conditions were at that time period? Has RNA ever been observed to spontaneously generate in Nature?

Quote: This in no way compares to faith in a deity which is based on completely insufficient evidence, no theoretical framework and no mathematics.

I do not believe in any such deity so that was a rather useless analogy.

Quote: If christians could even agree on any number of variables you could try making a start, but as it is you can't even reach your own consensus.

Again, that’s an irrelevant point. That’s like saying since all the children in the classroom disagree on the solution to “2+2=X” that believing “X=4” is irrational.

Quote:You know nothing about RNA.

How do you know what I know? Such arrogance.

Quote: There is more evidence for RNA forming under natural conditions, as stated above, than there is for an ill-defined deity creating matter where there was formerly no matter.

Demonstration needed.

Quote: Scientistis are constantly meeting their burden to progress and demonstrate. Christians on the other hand..........

According to whom? You?

Quote:We have evidence that a great number of processes take place in spite of god, not because of him, this at least cuts a magic god finger out of many equations if nothing else....

How do such processes take place without God? Do explain.

Quote:Urgh, we've already gone over this one, different senses can corroborate an experience, external agents can also corrorborate [sic] an experience.

And different books of the Bible collaborate other books of the Bible. We are talking about your senses as a whole, therefore any appeal to any sense is a circular argument.

Quote: If you want to transcend Solopsism [sic] entirely and posit that not even your own mind is certain, then this is all fine and dandy, but it completely whipes [sic] out anything you claim to be true, because the same rules would apply to your brain.

Nope, the existence of God is a necessary axiom within my conceptual scheme and if God exists then we can trust the reliability of our senses because He made both us and the Universe we live in.

Quote: In fact, given the content of your retorts, i'd [sic] say there is serious concern that your brain is indeed not functioning particularly well.

Do you often get destroyed in debates by people whose brains do not function “very well” or is this a first for you?

Quote:What?

Did I go too fast? Sometimes I go too fast.

Quote:Something that you severely lack

Are personal attacks all that you have left? That’s telling.

Quote:which scripture? They're all full of contradictions and ridiculous claims. Scripture was penned by humans.

All of original scripture.

Quote:Oh god not this one again. We can infer that a computer program is written because we are saturated with external evidence for such processes. We are familiar with microsoft, we may even know someone who programs computers personally (a real personal relationship).

Again, are you saying that if we did not know anything about programming, we did not know any programmers we’d be justified in believing that Windows 8 arose through purely unguided natural processes? Yes or no.

Quote: If we're going to liken computer code to human code then these are not reasonable comparisons.

You’re partially right; DNA is far more complex and sophisticated than binary codes. However, that only supports my argument.

Quote: DNA is not language because it does not follow a power law, it is cypher.

Even if this were true cyphers are still the products of intelligences so that was a poor example to use.

Quote: There is no reason to suspect a human was programmed because we cannot witness the programming process, replicate it, modify it etc.

I never witnessed the programming of Windows 8…

Quote: Comparing Visual basic or C++ with human design is like comparing a goldfish to a turd.

No, it’s more like comparing a sun dial to an atomic clock. DNA is so much more sophisticated than either of those programming languages are.

Quote:The presence (or lack of) of beta-Keratin helps when feathers are concerned.

I assume you meant lack of alpha-keratin.

Quote: Besides what's wrong with an artist drawing a picture? It's just like a human writing some words, in a desert, for the purpose of consolidating tribal power..........idiot.

Classy. So you are admitting that believing that dinosaurs had feathers is like believing in the Bible?

Quote:It's a more rational proposition, especially when married with techniques from other branches of science (radiometric dating etc), than filling gaps with a magic man in the sky. Collossal LOL.

Huh? So you’re saying its fine to be irrational as long as you’re not a Christian? That makes a lot of sense. Secondly, I never said anything about a magic man in the sky; I think you are getting your conversations confused.

Quote:Sorry I have to keep coming back to this one. You have no consistent standards of evidence. This is beyond humiliating.

This is what we call a bare assertion.

(December 25, 2013 at 10:10 am)là bạn điên Wrote: The bible has many authors, not one of them 'God'. So saying that the Bible proves the existence of God in the same way that the lord of the Rings proves the existence of Sauron is completely apt.

No, the Bible has many writers, it’s content has one single author.

Quote: Unless of course you can prove that 'God' wrote the bible.

He authored it’s content.

Quote: Oh and using the Bible as evidence that the Bible is true is just begging the Question.

I didn’t, I used it as evidence that God exists.

(December 25, 2013 at 11:31 am)BadWriterSparty Wrote: I was going to respond point by point, but I think Wes hit upon SW's refutations rather nicely.

I knew you’d do this.

Quote: Stat, if you hear the phrase "Laboratory-tested", do you immediately, every time jump to the conclusion that the results of said test are in some way unnatural?

Depends on what we are talking about.

Quote: You don't know with any amount of certainty that god authored the Bible because that is impossible to know without thinking that an invisible voice is telling you so; on the other hand, the evidence for human penmanship is not only likely, it is a knowable fact.

The inerrancy of scripture and its divine authorship is something we know deductively. Secondly, the Christian doctrine of inerrancy is not that the physical inked words were written by God, rather what the words actually say was.

Quote: Something you read in the bible and adhere to is a belief and not something you know to be true.

When someone who cannot lie and who knows everything tells you something it is knowledge, not belief.

Quote: The only evidence you point to for this rationality is a verse in your bible...and that's it.

Not at all, I also point to the fact that your espoused view of reality only makes sense if you also believe that God exists. This supports the fact that you really do know that He exists or else why would you adhere to such a hopelessly inconsistent view of reality? It’s like a mother who claims that her son is trustworthy, she knows he’d never steal anything but then she hides her credit cards from him. Your actions do not align with what you claim to know and believe.

Quote: In that case, you SHOULD believe us when we tell you that we in no way believe in your god; we have more than one source to uphold our position than your single, questionable, biblical source.

This is a non-sequitur, an infinite number of fallible sources will never refute one single infallible source.

(December 25, 2013 at 12:49 pm)Lemonvariable72 Wrote: Okay you want evidence for feathers on a oviraptor?

Yes!

Quote: Here is research done by western scientists. Actually read it this time

I did and I now suspect that you did not. The article presupposes that oviraptor had feathers and uses this presupposition to argue for possible uses of the pygostyle. The problem is that not all oviraptors had a pygostyle so this cannot be evidence that oviraptors had feathers. Secondly, flightless birds do not have pygostyles, so arguing that the oviraptors that did have pygostyles had to use them in the same fashion that birds do (for courtship) is fallacious.

Quote: Also oviraptor has three other characteristics key to birds. Itbhas a very birdlike ribcage, hollow bones, and a beak.

Again, the logic just does not follow. If having birdlike structures proves that an animal must have feathers or be an evolutionary direct ancestor of birds then turtles and squid must also have feathers and be ancestors that birds also descended from…..
I realize that you desperately want birds to have evolved from dinosaurs because it solves a lot of mysteries concerning the dinosaurs but cherry picking the evidence and begging the question is not going to establish anything.

(December 27, 2013 at 6:42 pm)Statler Waldorf Wrote: [quote='WesOlsen' pid='569817' dateline='1387967193']
Last time I checked the bible was penned by a bunch of scribes commissioned by Jewish tribal elders, and a bunch of Jesus cheerleaders. I didn't realise god authored the whole thing.

Quote:Are you really this ignorant of Christian doctrine?

Please elucidate. Last time I checked the authors of the new testement were writing things such as 'But these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name', John 20:31. This tends to suggest that what we have is a piece of religious propaganda, written by men, referring to god as an agent other than themselves. Modern historians do not commit to their favourite supernatural deity and then declare that everything they write isn't for the purpose of giving a balanced overview of a period or nation, but rather to glorify a supernatural deity. The best historians keep things nice and objective. The bible isn't an objective piece of historical enquiry, it has a seriously heavy agenda. We could argue that all communication is political and informed by bias, but the degree to which the new testement is self-confessed propaganda is to the extreme side of this spectrum.

Quote:You know this how?

Because as mentioned already, it was penned by humans and compares to other scriptures from other religions, in that it contains nothing particularly unique, predicts nothing accurately and occupies itself with tedious, epoch relative desert dealings.

Quote:Nope, it postdates the alleged divergence between birds and dinosaurs so it cannot be a transitional form for that divergence.

It really doesn't

Quote:I reference a peer-reviewed journal, you reference Wikipedia? Nice. Did you notice the terrible assumption? They believe it had feathers because they argue that an absence of alpha-keratin indicates the specimen had feathers. Of course there is no empirical evidence to suggest any such keratin could survive for millions of years so an absence of alpha-keratin proves nothing at all.

Yes i'm sure you went exploring your huge collection of scientific journals that you keep. I actually have a massive collection of 'the biomedical scientist' because I work in a scientific setting, with keratin. The wikipedia article, which references the relevant scientific journal (btw I take it that you just used a search engine to find your journal right?), states that decay products of beta-keratin were detected, this suggests that keratin can be detected for millions of years.

Quote:Yes I value evidence and no my standards are not inconsistent at all. If I were making an evidential claim such as dinosaurs having feathers I’d at least provide an appropriate level of evidence to support this claim.

The slowly accumulating collection of evidence for feathered dinosaurs, by all rights and accounts, outweighs the evidence for the divine origin of the bible. The objective evidence shows that the bible was penned by men, with no clear way of establishing whether they were acting under the orders of a supernatural deity. To believe such a fantastic claim is faith, and faith alone. Your standards of evidence go far beyond inconsistent my friend. You decided what you wanted to believe, then cherry picked whatever you could find to fit that, whereas most scientists would happily drop their certainties if we could find ourselves a human in the cambrian or a dinosaur in the iron-age.

Quote: A piece of religious propaganda (which most historians view with rational skepticism) constitutes direct evidence of authorship from god himself, for you.

Quote:Nice question-begging epithet. Where did I say anything like this?

You said it when you said that the bible is evidence for the existence of god, oh mercy like here for example:

Quote:Again, this merely illuminates an overarching ignorance of Christian doctrine. God authored scripture by using physical human authors.

(you know, the bit where you said god authored the scripture, that suggests to most people that you believe, with some unusual degree of certainty, that god sort of authored the scripture.)

Quote:We’re never told how many people all were there, but we do know that Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, Salome, Joanna, and others were all there. As for the flying cross, I do not know what you are referring to.

That's right, the myth snowballing of the resurrection story, with each author adding details as they get further and further away from the events described. This constitutes contradictions, because each account of the resurrection is wildly different. The different writers do not complement each other, adding in the extra characters whom the other forgot to mention, rather they directly contradict each other, with the latest account of the resurrection appearing in say that a giant cross rises from the tomb, shouts "i do" and flies off in to the sky. We don't know whether the tomb was already open when the unknown number of witnesses arrived, we don't know if there was already someone sitting outside the tomb, or whether there was a guard there, or whether anything was seen to come flying out of it (cross or otherwise) or not. The different accounts are clear in their descriptions (well, that depends on mindset).

Quote:Just as well you're not right then

Quote:..but I am.

You don't really have any place implying the arrogance of others here. You're a complete quack.

Quote:BadWriterSparty says we do not know what the natural conditions were like 3.5 billion years ago but we can still prove RNA spontaneous generation could have taken place naturally back then so your proposal is not going to work.

I might use the Waldorf technique for asserting the certainty of my knowledge here > Yes it will.

Quote:Something taking place under certain conditions does not demonstrate it can take place under other conditions; that is a non-sequitur.

You can't demonstrate that god did anything under any conditions, so we're all good.

Quote: your god of the gaps theory, which can't be replicated, tested, measured or limited under any conditions, laboratory or otherwise.

Quote: Neither can the spontaneous generation of RNA 3.5 billion years in the past. You place your faith in man’s ability to perform induction; I place it in what we know to be deductively true through God’s revelation.

I'm sure i've heard Muslims and hindus using this one before. You can't demonstrate that god made a revelation, so any assumption beyond that is null. Your standards of evidence, not mine.

Quote:How do you determine that it is a statistical likelihood? It absolutely is faith. How do you know what the conditions were at that time period? Has RNA ever been observed to spontaneously generate in Nature?

Has god ever been demonstrated to do anything in nature? I know what your answer will be, but the real answer is no, just in case you're struggling.

Quote:I do not believe in any such deity so that was a rather useless analogy.

Phew, for a minute I thought you were a christian who believed in the christian god. Glad we cleared that one up.

Quote:Again, that’s an irrelevant point. That’s like saying since all the children in the classroom disagree on the solution to “2+2=X” that believing “X=4” is irrational.

No it's not, it's like saying that an author wrote a 100% perfect (let's say, divinely perfect) maths text book and a number of maths teachers can't agree on how to decipher it, each claiming that the text book is perfect and clear, but each claiming that the other's interpretation is wrong, suggesting that the text book isn't so clear, but rather is open to interpretation, and so may not be the perfect text book after all. The children in the classroom just sit around enduring the fallout from the squabbling, with their wellbeing suffering as a consequence. They're all literally covered in piss and shit. Quite a fitting reflection of the real world under religious insutrction in many ways.

Quote: There is more evidence for RNA forming under natural conditions, as stated above, than there is for an ill-defined deity creating matter where there was formerly no matter.

Quote:Demonstration needed.

Quote:God authored scripture by using physical human authors.

Demonstration needed.

Quote: Scientistis are constantly meeting their burden to progress and demonstrate. Christians on the other hand..........

Quote:According to whom? You?

The real, tangible world.

Quote:We have evidence that a great number of processes take place in spite of god, not because of him, this at least cuts a magic god finger out of many equations if nothing else....

Quote: How do such processes take place without God? Do explain.

Oh but we have, the burden is on you to explain how all processes take place because of god, and establish the mechanism of effect.

Quote:And different books of the Bible collaborate other books of the Bible. We are talking about your senses as a whole, therefore any appeal to any sense is a circular argument.

Quote:Nope, the existence of God is a necessary axiom within my conceptual scheme and if God exists then we can trust the reliability of our senses because He made both us and the Universe we live in.

So using senses to confirm other senses is a circular argument, unless your Waldorf who knows that his senses are in tact because god made Walford (but not WesOlsen). You're like a cat on hot bricks mate, none of this makes any sense.

Quote:Do you often get destroyed in debates by people whose brains do not function “very well” or is this a first for you?

Demosntration needed.

Quote:which scripture? They're all full of contradictions and ridiculous claims. Scripture was penned by humans.

Quote:All of original scripture.

What's the cutoff point for original scripture? Why can't we include the vedas or native american gods?

Quote:Again, are you saying that if we did not know anything about programming, we did not know any programmers we’d be justified in believing that Windows 8 arose through purely unguided natural processes? Yes or no.

To force an answer from an unlikely unnatural secenario demonstrates nothing, save your huge capacity for bullet dodging. But to answer, if there were no computers on this planet because we hadn't created them yet, but found one on the moon (or one came crashing through the sky) I would believe that it was likely extra-terrestrial in origin.

Quote:You’re partially right; DNA is far more complex and sophisticated than binary codes. However, that only supports my argument.

Once you've established the mechanism of effect and showed the process unfolding in spite of a scientific solution, then tested and re-tested the hypothesis, can we come back to this point. Demonstration needed.

Quote: DNA is not language because it does not follow a power law, it is cypher.

Quote:Even if this were true cyphers are still the products of intelligences so that was a poor example to use.

It is true, because DNA does not follow a power law. DNA is also much less flexible than a true language, translations can't be made from English to DNA or back again quite so rigourously. Until you demonstrate that cycpher must result from intelligence then we can't go any further here. Demonstration needed.

Quote: There is no reason to suspect a human was programmed because we cannot witness the programming process, replicate it, modify it etc.

Quote:I never witnessed the programming of Windows 8…

I did, I've got a friend who works for Microsfot. I've written my own basic scripts in visual basic, Java, html. Source code is quite easy to get hold of for a great many programming languages. To assume that Windows 8 was written by a supernatural deity just because you didn't witness the programming stage would be amusing, and I wouldn't put it past you.

Quote: Comparing Visual basic or C++ with human design is like comparing a goldfish to a turd.

Quote:No, it’s more like comparing a sun dial to an atomic clock. DNA is so much more sophisticated than either of those programming languages are.

LOL. So are rings in a tree cypher as well? DNA isn't a language, it can't be fully translated in to C++ or back again, so in that respect, it's not as powerful as C++

Quote: Besides what's wrong with an artist drawing a picture? It's just like a human writing some words, in a desert, for the purpose of consolidating tribal power..........idiot.

Quote:Classy. So you are admitting that believing that dinosaurs had feathers is like believing in the Bible?

No i'm merely admitting that all written claims warrant a degree of scrutiny. The ongoing framework of scientific investigation, for me, has its own built in error-correction techniques, because scientists scruitinise each other all the time, that's what makes it work. Jesus cheerleaders, who are well trained in the art of scrutiny, and who can scrutinise until the cows come home, rarely seem to reach consensus, and they certainly don't progress anything. When we scruitinse bible claims and call upon other branches of historical study (Archeology, Geology, DNA studies etc) we quickly find that most of it doesn't survive the challenge. I was simply drawing a comparison between your standards of evidence in some circumstances with your standards of evidence in other circumstances, that is, you'll happily accept some pen on paper with little rational scrutiny so long as it fits your pre-determined world view, but as soon as pen on paper arises that challenges these claims you dismiss it outright. This is because you've already decided what you want to believe, and aren't interested in the ongoing search for truth at all.

Quote:Huh? So you’re saying its fine to be irrational as long as you’re not a Christian? That makes a lot of sense. Secondly, I never said anything about a magic man in the sky; I think you are getting your conversations confused.

Yeah perhaps you're right, I must be mistaken, I thought you'd declared a belief i..............................oh wait here it is:

Quote:God authored scripture by using physical human authors.

Quote:I didn’t, I used it as evidence that God exists.

The supernatural deity that you don't believe exists, but definitely exists and that you believe in. Yours is a troubled world indeed.

Quote:Sorry I have to keep coming back to this one. You have no consistent standards of evidence. This is beyond humiliating.

Quote:This is what we call a bare assertion.

Not in light of all the letters that you shit out of your keyboard and crap all over this forum.

(December 25, 2013 at 10:10 am)là bạn điên Wrote: The bible has many authors, not one of them 'God'. So saying that the Bible proves the existence of God in the same way that the lord of the Rings proves the existence of Sauron is completely apt.

Quote:No, the Bible has many writers, it’s content has one single author.

Quack quack. Demonstration needed.

Quote: Unless of course you can prove that 'God' wrote the bible.

Quote:He authored it’s content.

Demonstration needed....

Quote: Oh and using the Bible as evidence that the Bible is true is just begging the Question.

Quote:I didn’t, I used it as evidence that God exists.

Demonstration needed.................yawn

No stat the article I linked discusses the implication of a only found in birds previously. nice try, and archeopteryx has key dinosour features that birds lack. The key to transitional forms is spoting the features that lead to feature we see now. Actually I'll let darwin explain it, as he explains the transitional forms of the eye

Darwin Wrote:Sixth Edition -- 1872

Organs of extreme perfection and complication.

To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree. When it was first said that the sun stood still and the world turned round, the common sense of mankind declared the doctrine false; but the old saying of Vox populi, vox Dei, as every philosopher knows, cannot be trusted in science. Reason tells me, that if numerous gradations from a simple and imperfect eye to one complex and perfect can be shown to exist, each grade being useful to its possessor, as is certainly the case; if further, the eye ever varies and the variations be inherited, as is likewise certainly the case; and if such variations should be useful to any animal under changing conditions of life, then the difficulty of believing that a perfect and complex eye could be formed by natural selection, though insuperable by our imagination, should not be considered as subversive of the theory.

How a nerve comes to be sensitive to light, hardly concerns us more than how life itself originated; but I may remark that, as some of the lowest organisms in which nerves cannot be detected, are capable of perceiving light, it does not seem impossible that certain sensitive elements in their sarcode should become aggregated and developed into nerves, endowed with this special sensibility.

In searching for the gradations through which an organ in any species has been perfected, we ought to look exclusively to its lineal progenitors; but this is scarcely ever possible, and we are forced to look to other species and genera of the same group, that is to the collateral descendants from the same parent-form, in order to see what gradations are possible, and for the chance of some gradations having been transmitted in an unaltered or little altered condition. But the state of the same organ in distinct classes may incidentally throw light on the steps by which it has been perfected.






The simplest organ which can be called an eye consists of an optic nerve, surrounded by pigment-cells and covered by translucent skin, but without any lens or other refractive body. We may, however, according to M. Jourdain, descend even a step lower and find aggregates of pigment-cells, apparently serving as organs of vision, without any nerves, and resting merely on sarcodic tissue. Eyes of the above simple nature are not capable of distinct vision, and serve only to distinguish light from darkness. In certain star-fishes, small depressions in the layer of pigment which surrounds the nerve are filled, as described by the author just quoted, with transparent gelatinous matter, projecting with a convex surface, like the cornea in the higher animals. He suggests that this serves not to form an image, but only to concentrate the luminous rays and render their perception more easy. In this concentration of the rays we gain the first and by far the most important step towards the formation of a true, picture-forming eye; for we have only to place the naked extremity of the optic nerve, which in some of the lower animals lies deeply buried in the body, and in some near the surface, at the right distance from the concentrating apparatus, and an image will be formed on it.

In the great class of the Articulata, we may start from an optic nerve simply coated with pigment, the latter sometimes forming a sort of pupil, but destitute of lens or other optical contrivance. With insects it is now known that the numerous facets on the cornea of their great compound eyes form true lenses, and that the cones include curiously modified nervous filaments. But these organs in the Articulata are so much diversified that Muller formerly made three main classes with seven subdivisions, besides a fourth main class of aggregated simple eyes.





When we reflect on these facts, here given much too briefly, with respect to the wide, diversified, and graduated range of structure in the eyes of the lower animals; and when we bear in mind how small the number of all living forms must be in comparison with those which have become extinct, the difficulty ceases to be very great in believing that natural selection may have converted the simple apparatus of an optic nerve, coated with pigment and invested by transparent membrane, into an optical instrument as perfect as is possessed by any member of the Articulata class.

He who will go thus far, ought not to hesitate to go one step further, if he finds on finishing this volume that large bodies of facts, otherwise inexplicable, can be explained by the theory of modification through natural selection; he ought to admit that a structure even as perfect as an eagle's eye might thus be formed, although in this case he does not know the transitional states. It has been objected that in order to modify the eye and still preserve it as a perfect instrument, many changes would have to be effected simultaneously, which, it is assumed, could not be done through natural selection; but as I have attempted to show in my work on the variation of domestic animals, it is not necessary to suppose that the modifications were all simultaneous, if they were extremely slight and gradual. Different kinds of modification would, also, serve for the same general purpose: as Mr. Wallace has remarked, "If a lens has too short or too long a focus, it may be amended either by an alteration of curvature, or an alteration of density; if the curvature be irregular, and the rays do not converge to a point, then any increased regularity of curvature will be an improvement. So the contraction of the iris and the muscular movements of the eye are neither of them essential to vision, but only improvements which might have been added and perfected at any stage of the construction of the instrument." Within the highest division of the animal kingdom, namely, the Vertebrata, we can start from an eye so simple, that it consists, as in the lancelet, of a little sack of transparent skin, furnished with a nerve and lined with pigment, but destitute of any other apparatus. In fishes and reptiles, as Owen has remarked, "The range of gradation of dioptric structures is very great." It is a significant fact that even in man, according to the high authority of Virchow, the beautiful crystalline lens is formed in the embryo by an accumulation of epidermic cells, lying in a sack-like fold of the skin; and the vitreous body is formed from embryonic subcutaneous tissue. To arrive, however, at a just conclusion regarding the formation of the eye, with all its marvellous yet not absolutely perfect characters, it is indispensable that the reason should conquer the imagination; but I have felt the difficulty far to keenly to be surprised at others hesitating to extend the principle of natural selection to so startling a length.

It is scarcely possible to avoid comparing the eye with a telescope. We know that this instrument has been perfected by the long-continued efforts of the highest human intellects; and we naturally infer that the eye has been formed by a somewhat analogous process. But may not this inference be presumptuous? Have we any right to assume that the Creator works by intellectual powers like those of man? If we must compare the eye to an optical instrument, we ought in imagination to take a thick layer of transparent tissue, with spaces filled with fluid, and with a nerve sensitive to light beneath, and then suppose every part of this layer to be continually changing slowly in density, so as to separate into layers of different densities and thicknesses, placed at different distances from each other, and with the surfaces of each layer slowly changing in form.

Further we must suppose that there is a power, represented by natural selection or the survival of the fittest, always intently watching each slight alteration in the transparent layers; and carefully preserving each which, under varied circumstances, in any way or degree, tends to produce a distincter image. We must suppose each new state of the instrument to be multiplied by the million; each to be preserved until a better is produced, and then the old ones to be all destroyed. In living bodies, variation will cause the slight alteration, generation will multiply them almost infinitely, and natural selection will pick out with unerring skill each improvement.

Let this process go on for millions of years; and during each year on millions of individuals of many kinds; and may we not believe that a living optical instrument might thus be formed as superior to one of glass, as the works of the Creator are to those of man?

Modes of Transition.

If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down. But I can find out no such case. No doubt many organs exist of which we do not know the transitional grades, more especially if we look to much-isolated species, around which, according to the theory, there has been much extinction. Or again, if we take an organ common to all the members of a class, for in this latter case the organ must have been originally formed at a remote period, since which all the many members of the class have been developed; and in order to discover the early transitional grades through which the organ has passed, we should have to look to very ancient ancestral forms, long since become extinct

Also just to add on the same note Beaks occure in numerous different phyla and classes do to parallel evolution. The eye of the octopus. And not that is not a contradiction of what I said before about the platypus demonstrating descendant from a reptilian lineage as playpus's possess features now among vertebrates only found in reptiles (and their ancestors fish) such as venom.

(December 11, 2013 at 1:25 pm)BadWriterSparty Wrote: I've lately seen a rash of theists here, old and new alike, that when confronted with the question, "Do you have evidence for the existence of your god?" that proceed to quote biblical scripture as the source of their conviction. This is not a strange thing, as these particular theists called Christians more often than not perceive this text to be full of accounts that were directly-inspired by divine means, or tell the tale of historical events relating to their particular religious history. Taking such a stance is, in actuality, a non-answer to the question posed above.

The Bible is a book of divine claims, telling of a god (or gods, in some interpretations) that has yet to be proven to exist. Since evidence must be demonstrated to be true before it can be taken as fact, the Bible falls short in satisfying any demands of proof, as it can in no way be proven that the men who wrote were actually under any divine influence.

I know my request to theists to stop appealing to the Bible as evidence of a god (or gods) will fall on many deaf ears, but I feel this phenomenon has gotten a little out of hand as of late and really needed to be addressed. Thank you for taking a moment to read this, especially if you are a Christian member of this forum.

The real reply to the objective evidence question for anyone's religious views, including mine, is "There is no objective evidence, that's why it's called faith."

(December 28, 2013 at 3:14 pm)The_Thinking_Theist Wrote:

(December 11, 2013 at 1:25 pm)BadWriterSparty Wrote: I've lately seen a rash of theists here, old and new alike, that when confronted with the question, "Do you have evidence for the existence of your god?" that proceed to quote biblical scripture as the source of their conviction. This is not a strange thing, as these particular theists called Christians more often than not perceive this text to be full of accounts that were directly-inspired by divine means, or tell the tale of historical events relating to their particular religious history. Taking such a stance is, in actuality, a non-answer to the question posed above.

The Bible is a book of divine claims, telling of a god (or gods, in some interpretations) that has yet to be proven to exist. Since evidence must be demonstrated to be true before it can be taken as fact, the Bible falls short in satisfying any demands of proof, as it can in no way be proven that the men who wrote were actually under any divine influence.

I know my request to theists to stop appealing to the Bible as evidence of a god (or gods) will fall on many deaf ears, but I feel this phenomenon has gotten a little out of hand as of late and really needed to be addressed. Thank you for taking a moment to read this, especially if you are a Christian member of this forum.

The real reply to the objective evidence question for anyone's religious views, including mine, is "There is no objective evidence, that's why it's called faith."

Thank you for being honest. Perhaps you can convince Statler Waldorf of this.

What is the difference between faith and gullibility?

Why would you believe something in the total absence of evidence?

(December 29, 2013 at 12:57 am)là bạn điên Wrote: What is the difference between faith and gullibility?

Why would you believe something in the total absence of evidence?

Because the church has been in the business of manipulating people since its inception. They are very good at brainwashing

(December 29, 2013 at 12:57 am)là bạn điên Wrote: What is the difference between faith and gullibility?

Why would you believe something in the total absence of evidence?

Children believe their parents in all things as they grow up; after all, our brains are wired that way for survival purposes. With the exception of Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy, the kid grows up with accepting these notions and afterwards passes them on to his or her children.

(December 29, 2013 at 2:52 am)BadWriterSparty Wrote:

(December 29, 2013 at 12:57 am)là bạn điên Wrote: What is the difference between faith and gullibility?

Why would you believe something in the total absence of evidence?

Children believe their parents in all things as they grow up; after all, our brains are wired that way for survival purposes. With the exception of Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy, the kid grows up with accepting these notions and afterwards passes them on to his or her children.

So what made us (or our parents or parents parents) reject these notions?