The Missing Link and the Irreducible Complexity of the Eye

[Rhondazvous]

I was born in Washington D.C. and practically grew up in the Museum of Man and Natural History. Yet I never learned that the so called “missing link” was found in 1924. I speak of Australopithecus africanus, aka Southern Ape Man. This is said to be a direct ancestor of modern man. So why do we speak of the missing link as if it’s still missing?

Although Darwin expressed perplexity over the eye, scientists have since fully documented the evolution of the eye. Yet we allow theists to wave the eye before us as the bane of evolution.

Could it be because the textbooks in public schools are written in Texas, the buckle of the Bible belt, that cesspool of undigested lies, that our children remain ignorant of the advances of science?

[downbeatplumb]

I was born in Washington D.C. and practically grew up in the Museum of Man and Natural History. Yet I never learned that the so called “missing link” was found in 1924. I speak of Australopithecus africanus, aka Southern Ape Man.  This is said to be a direct ancestor of modern man. So why do we speak of the missing link as if it’s still missing?

Although Darwin expressed perplexity over the eye, scientists have since fully documented the evolution of the eye. Yet we allow theists to wave the eye before us as the bane of evolution.

Could it be because the textbooks in public schools are written in Texas, the buckle of the Bible belt, that cesspool of undigested lies, that our children remain ignorant of the advances of science?

Because you find a missing link and suddenly you've made two more either side of it. So the more missing links we find the more they come up with.

[Alex K]

Missing link is a nonsense concept, long abandoned by serious scholars. It's like asking who is the missing link between you and your neighbor. There's not one person.

[vorlon13]

even a poorly performing eye organ is better (from a survival aspect) than not having one at all

[Cyberman]

Although Darwin expressed perplexity over the eye, scientists have since fully documented the evolution of the eye.

Actually, he didn't. What he was doing with his famous "absurd in the highest possible degree" passage was pointing out that such things seem counter-intuitive on the surface. He goes on to say:

"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."

Don't fall down the creatards' quotemine.

[GUBU]

I was born in Washington D.C. and practically grew up in the Museum of Man and Natural History. Yet I never learned that the so called “missing link” was found in 1924. I speak of Australopithecus africanus, aka Southern Ape Man.  This is said to be a direct ancestor of modern man. So why do we speak of the missing link as if it’s still missing?

Although Darwin expressed perplexity over the eye, scientists have since fully documented the evolution of the eye. Yet we allow theists to wave the eye before us as the bane of evolution.

Could it be because the textbooks in public schools are written in Texas, the buckle of the Bible belt, that cesspool of undigested lies, that our children remain ignorant of the advances of science?

In answer to your first question, it's because every time an evolutionary intermediary (humanity today is actually one too, unless we die out without evolutionary heirs) is found, up pops a creatard to bleat "oh, look there's a gap. Checkmate atheists!"

In response to your second question, I'm not an expert on US pedagogical literature, but if it's anything like what I've heard and read about US history textbooks, it's probably even worse than that.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I was born in Washington D.C. and practically grew up in the Museum of Man and Natural History. Yet I never learned that the so called “missing link” was found in 1924. I speak of Australopithecus africanus, aka Southern Ape Man.  This is said to be a direct ancestor of modern man. So why do we speak of the missing link as if it’s still missing?

Although Darwin expressed perplexity over the eye, scientists have since fully documented the evolution of the eye. Yet we allow theists to wave the eye before us as the bane of evolution.

Could it be because the textbooks in public schools are written in Texas, the buckle of the Bible belt, that cesspool of undigested lies, that our children remain ignorant of the advances of science?

Now that we have print-on-demand Tejas has lost it's death grip on school books. Whole chapters can be added or deleted and so on right down to single words.

[brewer]

I was born in Washington D.C. and practically grew up in the Museum of Man and Natural History. Yet I never learned that the so called “missing link” was found in 1924. I speak of Australopithecus africanus, aka Southern Ape Man.  This is said to be a direct ancestor of modern man. So why do we speak of the missing link as if it’s still missing?

Although Darwin expressed perplexity over the eye, scientists have since fully documented the evolution of the eye. Yet we allow theists to wave the eye before us as the bane of evolution.

Could it be because the textbooks in public schools are written in Texas, the buckle of the Bible belt, that cesspool of undigested lies, that our children remain ignorant of the advances of science?

If they would have actually popped them out and swung em by the nerve, I'd have gotten out sooner.

[Rhondazvous]

Although Darwin expressed perplexity over the eye, scientists have since fully documented the evolution of the eye.

Actually, he didn't. What he was doing with his famous "absurd in the highest possible degree" passage was pointing out that such things seem counter-intuitive on the surface. He goes on to say:

"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."

Don't fall down the creatards' quotemine.

From where did you get this quote? I'd like to use it, but not without a source.

[Cyberman]

My bad; I really should have cited a source. I got it from here: https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Notable_Ch...of_Species

However this might be a better source: http://darwin-online.org.uk/Variorum/186...-1861.html