RE: The Missing Link and the Irreducible Complexity of the Eye
May 11, 2017 at 3:28 pm
(This post was last modified: May 11, 2017 at 3:34 pm by John V.)
(May 8, 2017 at 6:15 pm)Rhondazvous Wrote: Organisms survive in their environment because they have what is necessary to do so. In an environment where there is not a lot of light, having eyes can actually be detrimental becase they use up metabolic resources the body could put to better use developing other senses needed in that environment.
If an organism can find food, reproduce and avoid predators with nothing more than light sensitive cells, it will survive, and eyes will not evolve unless the environment changes.
OK - organisms were apparently eating and reproducing before light sensitive cells, so what changed to make eyes evolve?
(May 8, 2017 at 9:42 pm)Thumpalumpacus Wrote: Consider: Most animals having a neurosystem have nerves at the skin for heat detection. The odds are that that photosensitive cell would be linked to a nerve at one point or another. And given the complexity of even nonhuman brains, and their plasticity, I don't see that a scaffold has not already been built.
This is the typical type of response to irreducible complexity, and it's not very satisfying. The tell is "given." Basically, given an organism that already has all but one piece of the system, adding one piece is plausible.
Even so, in this case, you haven't solved the problem. A photosensitive cell feeding information to a brain that's interpreting the input as heat is getting faulty information, and the organism is at a disadvantage relative to its peers.
