The Problem with Christians

[Esquilax]

So we are agreed that the development of the eye is dependent upon mutations of the DNA. When we look at the complexities of such mutations and the chances that they would end up producing thousands of precise proteins, the numbers are just too outlandish to be taken seriously. Bear in mind that the body makes over 100,000 different proteins, each of which requires complex code to produce it. Even if the mutations required to create these DNA sequences are slow and gradual, it doesn't change the odds against ending up with a usable protein.

Except that the unusable ones aren't generally viable life forms, are they? You are looking at only the successes, over countless attempts made over millions of years, ignoring the mountains of failures both seen and unseen, and then pretending that there are only successes. There aren't: when you don't artificially limit the odds for no reason, what you'll find is that there are more than enough failed attempts to justify what successes there are, even if I buy into your idea here, which I don't. You're wrong, even if what you're describing is correct.

Yes I understand this, but you are missing the point. Lets say it takes hundreds of specialized proteins to construct the anterior chamber of the eye. What good is this if you don't have the fluid to fill it? Your model says "it doesn't matter, the chamber can sit there for a few million years until the DNA mutates enough to produce the 676 proteins required to make the aqueous humor." And so it goes on and on until all of the necessary parts of the eye have finally formed. Again, I would say that the odds of this happening are impossibly low.

No, that's not my model, not in its entirety. My model also allows for each individual component to perform its own, isolated function for the organism prior to becoming the eye, or for sequential, less complex eyes to build up to the current form. You're still acting as though there's only one way for an eye to be, the current way, and that each individual component would have to evolve in like parts on a model kit, but that's not the case. That's not even close to what evolution describes, even within Darwin's time.

What's particularly strange is that you'll ask this question at all, given that the link I gave, which you claimed to have read, contains the answer within the first screen: light sensitive cells evolve a depression, which confers limited directional light-sensing to the organism. If that depression cups around and is filled with simple water, then you've got a pinhole camera, but more importantly, you've got the anterior chamber of the eye and a rudimentary fluid to fill it, and from there it's a simple mutation to allow for the generation of a specialized fluid, rather than just water.

There's literally a diagram explaining that in the link you've "read," but you're still asking that question?

I missed this post but I have gone back and read it now. I don't think you debunked it. If Hemoglobin was derived from an earlier, simpler compound, you would still have to change the DNA coding to change the amino acid sequences and this would require mutations of the DNA code.  

... We already know that DNA mutates. What's the issue here?

Hopefully neither. Natural selection still relies on changes to the genetic code via mutations;

"Natural selection is the differential survival and reproduction of individuals due to differences in phenotype.[1] It is a key mechanism of evolution, the change in heritable traits of a population over time.[2] The term "natural selection" was popularised by Charles Darwin who compared it with artificial selection, now usually referred to as selective breeding.

Variation exists within all populations of organisms. This occurs partly because random mutations arise in the genome of an individual organism, and these mutations can be passed to offspring. Throughout the individuals’ lives, their genomes interact with their environments to cause variations in traits. (The environment of a genome includes the molecular biology in the cell, other cells, other individuals, populations, species, as well as the abiotic environment.) Individuals with certain variants of the trait may survive and reproduce more than individuals with other, less successful, variants. Therefore, the population evolves." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_selection  Emphasis mine.

Which still suggests nothing like what you're claiming here. Yes, the mutations are random, but they're strained through the process of natural selection: every mutation is going to give some result, there's no means by which nothing will happen. Either the result is fatal, in which case you won't be seeing that organism around, or it isn't, in which case you will. The odds are irrelevant because you're not looking at a fully random process, you're looking at a randomized input through a filter, which spits out only successful (for a given value of success) results. You are then looking at those successful results and pondering why there's only successful results, while ignoring the filter that all of them went through before you even get to look at them.

I've said this before, but I guess it bears repeating: when you're looking at events that have already happened, the odds are irrelevant. If an improbable event happens to be the outcome of a thing- and improbable events do happen, especially considering the vast pool of attempts being made in the case of evolution- then that is still the outcome, regardless of the probability you assign to it. If I flip a coin and want to know what side it landed on, the way to do that is to examine the evidence of the coin toss. I don't ignore the coin and dismiss the possibility that it landed on its edge simply because that's a less probable outcome than heads or tails.

That's what you're doing here, only in this case, it's actually worse: you're not just ignoring the coin, you're also ignoring a veritable mountain of cross-confirmatory evidence, discovered over more than a century, that is testable, provides predictions that routinely bear out as true, and happens live. You're seeing the coin on its edge, having that coin tested in numerous ways, for years, and every test shows that yes, the coin is on its edge... and then you're asserting that it landed on heads, because the edge is improbable.

Incidentally, did you ever even think about the probability of there being an intelligent designer? Like, how did you derive the probability of that? You would have had to have done so, to say that the probability of life evolving is lower than it, so... How does that go? Because as far as I can see, there's no way you could derive that... and did the intelligent designer evolve? Did it arise naturally, or did it have a creator? Or is it neither, Mister Christian? Is it just your god, eternal and always extant?

... Did you consider the probability of a being like that existing? Or is it only evolution that gets to be interrogated like this?

Sure. The evidence of design.

... Which is...? It hasn't escaped anyone's notice that you haven't presented any yet, dude. When you were asked, all you did was attempt to show that evolution is improbable again, which... is not evidence for design. Evidence against a second position is not evidence for the first position. Surely you know that by now.

I didn't say that evidence of design was because evolution was unlikely, I said that it was mathematically impossible. So if we see incredibly complex, integrated systems that could not have evolved, there is only one other alternative - there is design, and if there is design then there must be a designer.

How the hell did you determine that there were only two options?

... Oh my. I seem to have hit upon the central fallacy that the rest of your threadbare position hangs on. And also? When you presented your math, evolution still had a positive probability there. Things with positive probabilities are not impossible, mathematically or otherwise; you're vastly overstating your case.