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What abou this?

Gordi

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This aint a challenge by the way.  I'm just interested in knowing if this article is nonsense or if it makes any good points?

 

The Eyes Have It

The trilobite is a creature that has long been extinct, but gives marvellous testimony to the creative power of God, and demonstrates the foolishness of belief in evolution.

According to the World Book Encyclopedia, the trilobite was a prehistoric sea animal that lived between 600 million and 225 million years ago in all parts of the world. Trilobites were covered by a shell, and most of the species were under 10 cm long. Two grooves divided the animal's shell lengthwise into three lobes (sections). The name trilobite means three lobes.

The eyes of the trilobite were the most remarkable feature about these animals. Scientists have been able to study the optics of the trilobite eyes. The lenses of our eyes are composed of living, organic tissues, so they rapidly decompose after death. The lenses of the trilobite eyes, however, were composed of inorganic, crystalline calcium carbonate, or calcite. Thus, the lenses of the trilobite eyes were still intact in the fossil remains recovered by the palaeontologists.

Each one of our eyes has only a single lens. In order to see under water without distortion, however, you must have a double lens in each eye, and that is precisely what the trilobite had. The most incredible thing about the trilobite eye is the fact that it produced perfect, undistorted vision. The trilobites had "solved" all the laws and principles of optics, and had perfectly constructed crystalline lenses so that there was no distortion at all. The scientists studying these eyes proclaimed, "Such a vision system has all the evidence of being constructed by an exceedingly brilliant designer."

An article in Science (1993) Volume 261 states:

Researchers are trying to unravel the amazing complexity of how visual signals are processed in eyes. Rockerfeller University physicist Joseph Atick points out that visual information pours into the eye at about 100 megabytes every second. 'Even computers of today's power couldn't handle it', he says. This torrent of data needs to be dramatically compressed to flow along the optic nerve, yet retain enough information to enable the brain to reconstruct an accurate representation of what is seen.

Another baffling feat is the way in which the visual system somehow eliminates 'noise'. Since every step in transmitting the visual signal involves only a few molecules, the random jostling of these molecules produces a 'storm' of noise, which has to be processed out.

In their early progress, the researchers have continually confirmed their working assumption - that all eyes, whether insect or vertebrate, do the best job possible - 'just the way an astute instrument designer would have made them'.

Charles Darwin was well aware of the intricacy and perfection of the eye. In his book "The Origin of the Species", he admitted:

"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 confess, absurd in the highest degree."

In a private letter, he wrote, "the thought of the eye made me cold all over." (Letter to Asa Gray, April 3, 1860). Darwin knew that the eye could not have been the product of an accident.

It is illogical in the extreme to suppose that such a marvel of engineering as the eye could either occur gradually, or by chance. Each component of the device is integral to the whole. That is to say, all parts must either be present and working, or the organ is a useless appendage.

trilobite.jpg
 

Arikay

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Um, well, considering they Missquote Darwin:

http://aquaticape.topcities.com/darwin.html

The entire quote being:
"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."

I wouldnt trust anything else they are saying. After all, they are puposly missquoting someone for their own agenda, I wouldnt really trust anyone (including an evolutionist article) if they missquote others to serve their own purpose.

:)
 
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Gordi

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Today at 11:45 PM Arikay said this in Post #2

I wouldnt trust anything else they are saying. After all, they are puposly missquoting someone for their own agenda, I wouldnt really trust anyone (including an evolutionist article) if they missquote others to serve their own purpose.

:)


Nice one Arikay.  But what about the points they make on the trilobite?  Anything interesting or all false.
 
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Pete Harcoff

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Today at 06:32 PM Gordi said this in Post #1

Each one of our eyes has only a single lens. In order to see under water without distortion, however, you must have a double lens in each eye, and that is precisely what the trilobite had. The most incredible thing about the trilobite eye is the fact that it produced perfect, undistorted vision. The trilobites had "solved" all the laws and principles of optics, and had perfectly constructed crystalline lenses so that there was no distortion at all. The scientists studying these eyes proclaimed, "Such a vision system has all the evidence of being constructed by an exceedingly brilliant designer."

Well, sure they appear designed. Designed by natural selection. The particular trilobites with superior vision were favored versus those without. Why do people continually ignore this simple concept?
 
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Gordi

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Today at 11:48 PM Pete Harcoff said this in Post #4



Well, sure they appear designed. Designed by natural selection. The particular trilobites with superior vision were favored versus those without. Why do people continually ignore this simple concept?


Yeah but didn't they mean that it didn't evolve because it was already perfeclt created?  Please explain as best you can, in laymans terms, cause if you start getting scientific you'll lose me:)
 
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Arikay

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Well, they seem to make quite a few assumptions and then decide without evidence that the assumptions fit their view.

As far as trilobyte eyes, I found this to be very interesting:

http://www.aloha.net/~smgon/eyes.htm

It seems that there are trilobytes that slowly lost their eyes as they lived in deep waters where light did not really penetrate. and so eyes were no longer important.




Today at 03:48 PM Gordi said this in Post #3




Nice one Arikay.  But what about the points they make on the trilobite?  Anything interesting or all false.
 
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Pete Harcoff

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Today at 06:52 PM Gordi said this in Post #5

Yeah but didn't they mean that it didn't evolve because it was already perfeclt created?  Please explain as best you can, in laymans terms, cause if you start getting scientific you'll lose me:)

Basically, the author of the article is ignoring the process of natural selection. Natural selection is a trail-and-error process, whereby random mutations that convey a survival advantage to an organism are favored. In effect, we only see the result of "good design", because all the "poor designs" are dead. Hence, a lot of things in nature look like they've been designed with purpose. Well, they have; the purpose of survival. But this doesn't mean you need some intelligent being to create them.

However, there are still poor designs evident in nature, simply because as long as they work "good enough", that's all that is needed. Human eyes, for example, possess a "blind spot" because of the wiring of the optic nerve. The human eye could be better designed to eliminate such a flaw, but since there's no real survival disadvantage to having a blind spot, we have them.
 
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Osiris

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According to the World Book Encyclopedia, the trilobite was a prehistoric sea animal that lived between 600 million and 225 million years ago in all parts of the world.

The trilobite couldn't have been created by the designer, God only created things 6000 years ago.
 
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Arikay

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Im not sure about books but some info.
Taken from, http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution

Natural selection

Darwinism, and its descendant theories, state that biological evolution results through natural selection. Since natural selection is so important to Darwinism and modern theories of evolution, a very short summary of its main points follows:

* Organisms have children which inherit genes from their parents. This genes code for different characteristics in a person. Genetically, a child has 50% the DNA of each parent. Depending on how the genotypes are inherited though, the phenotypes may be manifested in different ways. The genotype is the basic code of the gene, and the phenotype is what is expressed in the individual. Two brown-eyed parents may be heterozygous for the eye color allele and end up having a child with the blue eyed phenotype. In plain English, kids are like mom and dad, though the mechanisms through which this occurs can get very complicated.
* Organisms have differing reproductive (sexual) success based on their traits in a given environment. In plain English, animals (or plants) that are good at what they do are more likely to survive and have kids.
* Therefore, over time, the types of organisms that have traits better adapted to their environment will tend to become the dominant ones in an environment, while organisms poorly adapted to their environment will become extinct.

Natural selection also provides for a mechanism by which life can sustain itself over time. Since, in the long run, environments always change, if successive generations did not develop adaptations which allowed them to survive and reproduce, species would simply die out as their biological niches die out. Therefore, life is allowed to persist over great spans of time, in the form of evolving species. The central role of natural selection in evolutionary theory has created a strong connection between that field and the study of ecology.


Wiki also has more info about Natural Selection here: http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_selection

Hope, some of this helps. :)



Today at 03:54 PM Gordi said this in Post #6

Could someone also recommend me a sensible book on natural selection?  So if I choose to read up on it I won't be reading tripe.

Thanks
 
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WinAce

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There were several different types of Trilobite eyes and much variation between them. Also, the later ones had eyes distinctly different from the earlier ones. Read this for a rundown and some nice pics.
 
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SplitRock

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Today at 05:32 PM Gordi said this in Post #1

It is illogical in the extreme to suppose that such a marvel of engineering as the eye could either occur gradually, or by chance. Each component of the device is integral to the whole. That is to say, all parts must either be present and working, or the organ is a useless appendage. 





My first response to this question is that no scientist believes that the human eye occured by chance.  It evolved by natural selection which is the opposite of chance.

Second, it is true that any visual organ that evolves must be fully functional.  However, during the evolution of the human eye, that function was not always the same.  Most likely the origins of the human eye began with a group of photoreceptors that did nothing more than detect light.  The next step may have been something like the eyespots in euglena and planaria (flatworms) that can detect the direction of light. Different vertebrate eyes can focus light to varying degrees.  For example, the eyes of frogs are mainly useful for detecting movement, rather than focusing to produce a crisp image like human eyes.  There is evidence now that different visual organs have similar genes and photoreceptors in common.  The details of the evolution of the human eye are complex, and represents an active area of scientific study.

The irreducible complexity argument isn't a very good one, because it assumes that the parts and their functions (as well as the function of the eye itself) have not changed over the course of evolution. 

*I used the human eye as an example here, but the same can be said for trilobite eyes*
 
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lucaspa

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Today at 06:54 PM Gordi said this in Post #6

Could someone also recommend me a sensible book on natural selection?  So if I choose to read up on it I won't be reading tripe.

Thanks

Gordi, try Darwin's Dangerous Idea by Daniel Dennett. He does the best at explaining how Darwinian selection is an algorithm to get design.  Evolutionary Biology  by Douglas Futuyma will give the equations involved.

The environment sets design problems for organisms.  Natural selection produces designs as solutions to those problems.

Humans use natural selection to design for them when the problems are too tough for them to come up with designs for..

The February Scientific American has an article showing how natural selection is so good at designing that it produces designs that are patentable!
 
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