274 thoughts on “The true origin of eyes according to intelligent design”
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The Skeptical Zone
"I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you may be mistaken."
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Did you read the paper? It sets forth how to design an eye.
An Apple computer is necessary, for writing how simple it is for an eye to evolve, and for adding pretty graphics.*
*Ok, ok, true , you don’t have to use an Apple. I am sure they could have said how easy an eye is to evolve without any nice graphics, and John Harshman and Rumraket would still be quite impressed. But still, having a picture of the eye parts, doesn’t that make it that much better?
Maybe Nilsson-Pelger weren’t really intelligent. Maybe their model for eye evolution was derived from blindly grabbing eye parts from a bag.
But how did the bag come to be?
I know it’s been asked many times before, and not always rhetorically. Why does anyone give Mung’s asshat trolling the time of day?
LoL. Adapa, Glen, keiths. The unholy triumvirate. Poor OMagain. A mere pretender.
If we didn’t have clowns, who would amuse us?
Without the Mung bunch, all we’d do is sit around telling each other things we already know anyway, or asking questions of the few experts here whose answers would be over our heads. We NEED Mung.
Sight was created by God along with all senses.
Its so unlikely it could evolve. It must be evolving in connection with the memorty.
Such a intimate cconnection makes evolution unlikely.
I do think eyes developing is in the system. I believe the tuatara (sp) has a “eye” on the top of its head and this surely was not from Gods original creation.
Are “scientists’ healing eyesight these days. whats the hold up?
Is it so complex they can’t figure it out or so complex they can’t fix it or jerryrig something?!
If chance evolution could create sight then why not tailless primates?
newton,
The design hypothesis escapes the probability problem. A software upgrade is 100% probable with a designer. It is almost 100% improbable when copying the software and fixing coping errors when they improve performance.
colewd,
Christ, Bill. You can’t possibly be this dense.
As newton already asked you, and as two of us repeated:
Why, because you believe in it?
Huh, yeah. A man-made machine that cannot reproduce itself, using human designed language that was never designed to evolve independently as genes in organisms do, and that does not naturally fit a derivative tree pattern in relation to other computers, almost certainly is updated by a “designer.” At least by a program that adapts its configurations, anyway, which already blurs things, but is still hardly the same as organic evolution.
Yes, because it’s almost nothing like an actual evolvable organism.
Try to think for once about your disanalogous “analogies,” and maybe you’ll be able to convince someone above the level of UD’s “intellection.” Or do you really think something this dumb fools anyone other than the creationists here?
Glen Davidson
Mung,
An argument about what? What are you talking about? The purpose of this thread is quite clear. If I’m making any argument at all it’s that Intelligent Design has nothing to say regarding the origin of the eye and every time you or phoodoo post you support that argument.
And so far the evidence is clear. Your input has been to take a paper that does not support ID at all and claim it supports ID. Phoodoo’s input has been to continue to talk about evolution and how much he does not believe the eye evolved and something about pretty pictures.
So basically as expected. You don’t want to talk about ID and how the eye was designed, you want to talk about evolution and how the eye did not and could not have evolved.
Even on a thread dedicated to ID and the eye you just want to talk about evolution and provide references to papers that do not mention “Intelligent Design” or support it at any level.
It’s almost as if you have nothing and know it!
Robert,
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/514081/can-artificial-retinas-restore-natural-sight/
It’s already happening. There is no hold up. And the “eyes” that are being created have little in common with our current eyes. But I await the likes of phoodoo to jump on that and say “that’s how eyes are designed”.
Sad really.
Mung,
So having a plausible path to something is significant? Hmm, how strange. But anyway.
So is your claim that Intelligent Design says the eye was designed by humans?
Or is your claim that the eye evolved? As that paper does not “design” an eye as I would expect to see from an Intelligent Design perspective. When we design something we don’t design multiple intermediary stages and build each one in turn. We build the final design. When we build a skyscraper do we build a mud-hut first and tear it down?
Unless, of course, evolution is a tool that can be used by Intelligent Designers to do stuff? Is that your claim? In which case you are just another T.E. and have nothing worthwhile to say regarding the topic of the OP.
So, in summary, the origin of the eye according to Intelligent Design was:
It was designed
vjtorley,
In other words, the eye was designed is not something that needs to be supported, it just is. And look at how clever it is!
colewd,
In other words, the eye was designed is not something that needs to be supported, it just is. And look at how clever it is!
And then colewd goes on to talk about how the ultimate origin of matter is unknowable.
Mung,
Seems they just can’t help steal those concepts from the side they claim is wrong! Is Mung now an “Intelligent Evolution” supporter? What is that anyway?
So on a thread asking for the Intelligent Design explanation the best that Mung can come up with is an “Intelligent Evolution” claim.
Why is it impossible for ID supporters to talk about ID without using the world “evolution”? Given how wrong they think evolution is why do they keep mentioning it?
We get that they think it’s incorrect, so why are they so obsessed with it?
When someone asks me to explain something regarding evolution I don’t start off by telling them how impossible it was that Intelligent Design could have done it. It is irrelevant, it simply does not come up. And yet they never seem to manage the same.
Mung,
Here, let me help you out:
If you want me to “believe in Intelligent Design” I need at least some set of arguments to which I can rationally give my assent. “The eye was intelligently designed” isn’t one of them.
And let me point out once again the absurdity of you asking to be convinced that the eye evolved on a thread solely dedicated to the Intelligent Design explanation for the origin of the eye.
Why strange? It seems to be the standard in biology https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nwew5gHoh3E
To counter that presentation by Dawkins, should one do anything more than come up with an alternative plausible story?
Mung,
So it’s more like straight flushes in poker, you’re saying?
Of course not. Our universal design intuition tells us that Designer has an inordinate fondness for optometrists.
colewd,
Probabilistic problems you (and anyone else) are incapable of enumerating. The word ‘probabilistic’ is just noise in that sentence, I feel. “the current thinking is a dead end because of the problems.” “What problems?” “The Problems”.
You take your dog to the optometrist?
phoodoo,
So, nothing to say regarding how ID explains the eye? But plenty to say on alternative explanations or attempting to poke fun at people.
Baby Jebus is proud I’m sure phoodoo.
OMagain,
Your entire shtick here boils down to, “Sure, maybe our idea makes no sense at all, so, you got a better one? Intelligence? Pfffft!”
Hi Tom English,
Hey, I wear glasses myself when I’m reading – not that I have to visit an optometrist to purchase them, since you can easily get a pair at one of Japan’s ubiquitous dollar stores (or 100-yen stores, as they’re called over here).
But if you don’t like the design of the human eye, then I’m going to pose Huxley’s question to you: “What is your alternative?”
*Jumps in unashamedly*
I’ll take any type of sightedness rather than being blind.
posted in the wrong thread:
vjtorley,
If you honestly believe that eyes were designed then how do you explain the fact that something like 65% of people need glasses to adjust their vision? Could your designer not have made eyes that regrow, like teeth? Or eyes that adjusted themselves over time?
I mean, you’ve already linked to articles about how clever the design of eyes are, could your designer not have gone a little further and actually make them work properly for life?
It’s almost as if eyes start to fail late in life, after reproduction ability ends. Does your designer have something against old people?
OMagain,
You write:
Why don’t we ask a different question? Instead of arguing about whether the eye was intelligently designed, let’s first address the question: does the available scientific evidence support the conclusion that the eye originated via an incremental process? Yes or no?
Of course, an incremental process may itself have been designed. But I think we can all agree that (i) engineering a (non-incremental) mutation [i.e. a saltation] is a very different kind of act of design to (ii) setting up a process whereby the eye could have evolved naturally. Thoughts?
For my part, I have no strong feelings either way. It may be that there are certain features of the eye that are locked in place, because of the sequence of events that took place in the evolution of animal phyla (and especially chordates). So even if there is a “better” design for the human eye somewhere out there in the space of possibilities, it may be unattainable from an evolutionary standpoint. Should that turn out to be the case, it would certainly be at odds with design in sense (i), since a Designer who can orchestrate saltations would be perfectly free to traverse the space of possibilities as He wished, and transform an organism’s eye from structure A to structure B in a single generation. However, it would still leave us with intelligent design in sense (ii). What do readers think?
vjtorley,
Are you going to simply ignore the fact then that you’ve no Intelligent Design based explanation for the origin of eyes? Presumably you will continue to believe they were indeed Intelligently Designed, but why?
vjtorley,
You’re touching on the embryology of the eye. It has to develop from the zygote as does everything else that constitutes a multicellular organism. That’s a whole other realm of biology unaddressed by “Intelligent Design”.
Eyes, eyes, eyes.
I wish Darwin was more of a troll and anticipated creationists would obsessively pick up on anything he said.
Had he added a footnote on the convergent evolution of buttcracks or something like that, we’d have tons of IDiot books going on about the wonderful design of buttcracks, and how purposefully located the asshole is.
vjtorley,
It doesn’t require salutations, it simply requires teleology. If we can surmise that there is no practical way we can believe that all the parts needed for any eye could come about by unguided mutations, each and every one conferring some small advantage from the previous version, then we have already dismissed with Darwin. Once we have kicked unguided to the curb, the only alternatives are a plan.
Erik of course claims that you can have a plan, and the fruition of that plan, without a designer of that plan, but he can give zero arguments as to why or how.
Nope! You need your own plan. You actually need to come up with some kind of alternative.
vjtorley,
Yes. There is a wide range of extant eyes.
The evolution of animal phyla? Don’t you mean the design thereof?
What part does/did Intelligent Design play in biology? Why do you think that Intelligent Design is even real?
vjtorley,
One of the problems I see with the whole concept of evolution is the issue of cellular variation and how much is possible from any given point. We know that single mutations to the wrong gene in embryo development can be fatal. We also know there are lots of mutations occurring all the time but the incredibly efficient DNA repair mechanisms fix these mutations.
The mechanism that allows cells to survive is fighting variation which is the engine of evolution. Is it possible this whole idea is fatally flawed? Measured genetic variation within species is very small.
phoodoo,
So your answer to the question of how Intelligent Design explains the origin of the eye is that “it was planned”.
Now I think about it, I’ve never seen you and Joe G in the same place at the same time…..
By “non-incremental mutation” you mean a single mutation able to produce, for example, an entire eye?
phoodoo,
And you don’t see the irony in your inability to give zero arguments as to why or how either? I guess that’s to be expected.
Presumably your answer is no. We have identified an incremental process that has the possibility of providing an explanation. Evolution. You are yet to detail any alternative.
OMagain,
Because there is a universe we can not only observe but mathematically model.
colewd,
All of them? Or just some of them? How many mutations do you have? How many mutations are expected on average per generation?
colewd,
And what universe does the Intelligent Designer live in that created the observable universe? Is that Intelligent Design universe mathematically modellable?
Intelligence IS the alternative. It has just as much explanatory power as Darwin, with the added benefit that it actually makes sense.
OMagain,
The repair mechanisms have an accuracy of 10 ^9 which would allow a mutation per 3 cell divisions but it is being run continually so that predicts very few mutations per generation. It appears that most variation is from recombination (a known cellular process) as the measured variation from two selected humans is .1%.
OMagain,
Why are you assuming that the designer presides in any universe?
Good question, what can we know about the designer without making an assumption?
Bingo. Is it our fault that they lack imagination? They can certainly be imaginative when they want to. So it must be something else.
phoodoo,
This reminds me of the story of two friends looking at a large bear. One friend says to the other I am afraid I cannot out run the bear. The other friend says, all I need to do is out run you.
In the game of inference, the design argument only needs to be better then the blind unguided story which is a fairly low bar.
Good point. And amusing how we’ve gone from the origin of eyes according to ID to the origin of the universe and the designers role in that.
Colewd, if you don’t have any actual evidence that the eye was designed there’s no shame in saying so. No need for these distractions.
Give me an eagle eye.
Why didin’t the designer do so, since it surely would have to be smart enough to do so. Except that it failed to do intelligent things all of the time. Any explanation for that? No, a good one.
Glen Davidson
Nilsson-Pelger obviously had a plan for their eye. They knew where they wanted to get to. They had a goal. Foresight. They proved how easy it is to make any eye by design.
Humans have intelligence and use on physical mechanisms to implement their designs.