B
Bill Sloman
Guest
On Friday, May 10, 2019 at 7:55:06 AM UTC+10, John Larkin wrote:
If there was a creator who designed the human eye, it clearly could have done better. The emotional position that finds the existence of a creator attractive interferes with a lot of reasoning - not that John Larkin would know much about that since his idea of reasoning isn't much more advanced than krw's.
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Bill Sloman, Sydney
On Thu, 9 May 2019 19:36:39 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:
On 09/05/19 19:14, John Larkin wrote:
On Thu, 9 May 2019 16:28:43 +0100, Martin Brown
'''newspam'''@nezumi.demon.co.uk> wrote:
On 09/05/2019 15:37, John Larkin wrote:
On Thu, 9 May 2019 09:07:01 +0100, Martin Brown
'''newspam'''@nezumi.demon.co.uk> wrote:
On 08/05/2019 17:53, John Larkin wrote:
[snip]
I wonder how that could evolve by random processes.
You start out with a spot that is light sensitive and gradually evolve
under competitive pressure. Every tiny incremental improvement makes
survival of the owner more likely (all other things being equal),
neutral things make no difference and defects tend to get you killed.
People seem to forget that incremental improvements stack up
exponentially so that 100 1% improvements gets you to 270%.
Why would incremental evolution go through a large number of
iterations to produce a "terrible design" human eye? Each step would
It isn't terrible but it is nothing like well designed. It is just about
good enough for the purpose of keeping a hominid omnivore alive.
Not every change is for the better either but the ones that are get to
survive and reproduce combining in different ways with each successive
generation. How hard is that to understand?
Humans have done it to domestic dogs and livestock pretty much since we
stopped being hunter gatherers. Playing god with the traits we
considered most desirable in them and selective breeding. The selection
pressure being what we consider useful/pretty rather than predation.
make it worse, and the final, immensely complex, result would be a
competitive disadvantage.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK482309/figure/retinal_degeneration.F18/
Oh wow! A pretty picture taken out of context. How interesting!
Why would a designer equip us with such a botched design having already
got it right in cephalopods? We have a blind spot where the nerve bundle
enters the eye. They do not. Ours is a considerably worse design.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cephalopod_eye
It is pretty much the difference between a bog standard cheap and nasty
webcam design and a thinned rear window astronomical CCD camera.
Why would variation and selection result in an extraordinally complex
and optically inferior eye, when squid had a better one already?
Oh, come on John: /think/ before you post! Speculate a little
The answer to that really isn't difficult.
The best answer is that our eyes aren't actually inferior, given what
we use them for. There's no other species on the planet that can
out-hunt a human with a gun and some insect repellant.
The "human eyes are badly designed" position is used as an argument
against an all-wise Creator. That's dumb, to let an emotional position
interfere with reasoning.
If there was a creator who designed the human eye, it clearly could have done better. The emotional position that finds the existence of a creator attractive interferes with a lot of reasoning - not that John Larkin would know much about that since his idea of reasoning isn't much more advanced than krw's.
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Bill Sloman, Sydney