Oolon Colluphid

Fair enough. What about them do you think could not have evolved -- for that is your claim, is it not?

DT

Keith

I'm defining it as the process involved in turning mouse-like creatures into bat-like creatures.

Keith

Keith

Not even close. My line of argument is not intended to be anti-TOE (even though I've taken a few gratuitous shots at it), what I'm really getting at is that if TOE is true, it is quite miraculous-- any way you look at it. So, evolutionary explanations for how life-forms change are really an appeal to miracles, whether this was intentional or not.

Keith

Starboy

Keith, TOE invokes no supernatural agents for its explanations. How is that miraculous?

Starboy

Godless Dave

Amazing, impressive, even awe-inspiring, but not miraculous.

Keith

It is like observing a monkey at a computer, typing gibberish and eventually typing the word "cat" and from this word, to then assume that the monkey is capable of spontaneously generating information. A more reasonable explanation is that the monkey isn't generating anything like information even if words sometimes appear as a result of the monkey's typing. Monkeys can form words by random key strokes and this is fully reasonable to expect.

Keith

nogods4me

OK, and that is the "random mutation" part. Do you find it miraculous that mutations could create a change in a feature? longer ears, or more sensitve ear drums?
Now take your typing monkey and add an editor that tosses out useless material. Could you then expect cogent sentences to be constructed?
Selection is the editor in this case, it strikes out useless or harmfull information, allowing the rest to be passed on and added to by future generations.
The problem you seem to have is the you see the "editor" as having a design, a plan, where none is evident.

Keith

Is it meaningful to describe or refer to processes, such as making longer ears, or editing, without also invoking purpose? Are you saying that in nature, processes "just happen" for no reason? How can the non-purposeful "editor" discern that which is, or will eventually be "useful" and which isn't?

Keith

Starboy

So, if I understand you correctly, your basic objection is that information cannot be created randomly. The example is a good one. If you look at all the data that the monkey typed and compared it with the fraction that was not gibberish, the non-gibberish fraction would be very small. In a closed system with a very small number of resources, it would be ridiculous to expect such a mechanism to produce much in the way of meaningful results. But if you had an open system with a comparatively HUGE amount of energy and time at your disposal, for example the output from the sun and four billion years then is it not ridiculous. You need to grasp the size of the environment in which all of this is taking place. You also need to consider that most of the attempts were failures. In other words the total amount of genetic information that did not lead to successful species dwarfs the amount that did. It is the monkey example all over again. Because you only choose to observe the information that is meaningful to you and ignore the outrageously huge pile of information that is not meaningful you cannot grasp the mechanism that is evolution. You need to get out more, less time on philosophy more time on science. A single mind is a puny thing compared to the universe.

Starboy

nogods4me

traits don't get selected because they "might " be useful later, they are selected for because they provide some usefullness NOW. and by usefullness I mean they cause, however slight, an increase in an organism's chance for reproductive success. in addition, many neutral traits which have no bearing on reproductive success may be carried forward as well.