Now I am not a scientist, but I do feel that I am a fairly intelligent individual and feel that logic thought is one of my strong points.

One of my biggest problems is that creationists and evolutionist alike seem to fall into the same trap of bashing the others ideas (most times using the other sides worst arguments i.e. CREATIONIST the second law of thermodynamics proves there is a god. EVOLUTIONIST Radiometric dating proves evolution) and sometimes getting down right personal at the other persons idea “some people attribute these to natural processes and others attribute them to magical sky fairy”, I feel that we are all to arrogant and have this childish need to argue a point that none of us are really equipped to argue, because lets be honest no one can say with 100% surety as to how we were a) created b) evolved, and most times reading between the lines this never seems like an argument to find the truth, it appears more like ” there is a God” “There is not”.

here is the thing, I have read every post here (the video was unavailable, so I could not view it) however this is not a discussion, this seems to be more of a childish game on who is write and who is wrong) I myself am interested in learning, however this seems very counter productive to finding out the truth, to working together, sharing ideas and making our own opinions based on that, and not bashing someone for his opinion.

Some seem to be here for the discussion, to learn more and to share ideas, but can we leave out the snide remarks that are there to boost our own egos?

Fascinating bit about the eye.

Yes, the list is tongue-in-cheek. Sometimes you just need to play a bit.

I might’ve responded sooner if the darned spam-filter hadn’t kept spiking me.

Even if the human eye isn’t the best eye in the world, we still have an eye that functions best for us. Of course, it’s an adaptation from our primate ancestors with some modifications that worked best with us.

But the fact remains that each species has body constructs best suited for it. No body design is “optimal”: what works good enough is all that is needed.

As for finally removing the appendix from the human body: all that has to happen is that a great many persons with susceptible appendices (one that would easily clog and get infected) get appendicitis and die before reproduction, thereby leaving the non-appendix humans to breed better. But since we have modern medicine, I got to live.

(Before someone get their thong in a bunch, I am only illustrating a point and in no way condone eugenics. Nor do I advocate a pogrom against appendix-carrying humans.)

Lastly, I wear corrective lenses. Although a separate issue from the light-sensitive pigmens, the fact that my eyes still work despite obvious imperfections (myopia and astigmatism) shows that as long as it works somewhat, it’s good enough for me.

And Paley’s Watchmaker remains an idiot. (I thought I’d let that bit of snark remain.)

Fair enough to hate liars. Lying is stupid. It makes you look like a liar. ;p

But hating ‘creationist liars’ is one thing. Hating someone that might argue certain points of ‘creation vs evolution’ is another thing. Arguing a point is not lying. I can see however that there is a large community of ‘creationist liars’, that is, they have an agenda. They seem to want to trick people into believing their point of view regardless of obvious scientific fact. Hating these sort of ‘creationists’ is fair enough.

I still find it strange that many people still want to bundle all these people together with other people that have a view point regarding creation. (whether you can argue it as right or wrong) The latter are not lying, they are just exploring other ideas. Whether they are right or wrong, calling all ‘creationists’ liars, is a bit unfair. This is the part I have difficulty with. So again I would ask if anyone has a definitive explanation as to what actually constitutes a ‘creationist’. If you argue that it is anyone that believes in creation, fine, but by doing so you need to differentiate between lying creationists with an agenda, and other sorts, like the ones that still support evolutionary theory for example. Sure they might just be wrong, but thats not the point, being wrong does not mean you are lying and have an evil agenda, it just means you are wrong. Hatred in science does not really help anyone. It just panders to the human ego.

I think you guys are arguing the same side of different issues.

I think the issue here is really in Richard H’s intitial list of “poorly ‘designed’ features” on the human body… which, in my opinion, was somewhat meant to be tongue-in-cheek, and not necessarily a jumping-off point for a serious debate on designed vs. evolved… that’s how I took it anyhow, and why I included “wisdom teeth” to the list… I was just extending the tongue-in-cheekiness to something I could really do without… just my opinion, anyhow…

I’m not sure you’re getting the big picture here.

The listing above contains this particular entry:
Richard H: “Shall we gather a list of stupid “designs” … 3. Backwards facing light-sensitive cells”

It is this claim that is being questioned. Back facing light-sensitive cells are not “backwards” (backwards in this context implies that a reversal results in an improvement, but here we have a case where a reversal results in worse vision, not better vision). The specifics directly involve the feature of color vision (if humans didn’t have color vision, the location of the pigments wouldn’t be such an issue). I wrote a very lengthy, detailed, and factually accurate (if not, simply correct me) explanation for why this is the case.

Connect the dots now, please. I didn’t bring up color vision as yet another random better feature the human eyes have over octopus eyes. Color vision and back facing pigments go together. I also never claimed that you did say something about trading eyes (and am therefore baffled why you would rebut this way), but the point to the trade scenario is precisely to bring up a realistic metric of “better”. Using this metric, human vision (with the color vision, improved by the specific chromatic abberation reducing back facing pigments) is better than octopus vision (with the forward facing pigments, and no color vision).

Therefore:

“Why would you give an Octoups better features than a Human unless you are an Octopoid designer?”

…makes no sense. Taking the specific feature of forward facing pigments in octopus vision, and adding that to human color vision, results in a visual design that is worse than both human and octopus vision.

Defending evolution is nowhere near as important as defending scientific thinking, so should a falsifiable claim come up (say, that back facing pigments are automatically inferior to forward facing pigments), and be falsified (by pointing out how back facing pigments can actually have positive contributions to better vision than forward facing pigments), you should just toss it out like a good scientist.

Well, clearly the Intelligent Designer(s) has a team of contractors working under him/her/it/them, each interpreting the draft plans differently for their projects.

Why doesn’t the human eye have the good bits of the Octopus eye?

Surely if it had been designed by the same person it would have the same construction and function? Whgy would you give an Octoups better features than a Human unless you are an Octopoid designer?

We have differences because our eyes evolved independantly, we can only inherit what our ancestors had, It’s a long way back since we had a common ancestor with an Octopus.

You seem to be misinterpreting something. When I say “kindly remove this from the imperfection list”, I’m referring specifically to the claim that our eye design is backwards because the pigments are at the back (and not, as it seems you’re taking it, that our eyes are perfect).

That having been said, however:

“An Octopus eye still has a better design, Wouldn’t the human eye be better with the same layout as the Octopus eye?”

I beg to differ. What makes the octopus eyes better than the human eyes? Is it the question begging “forwards” design? Lack of a blind spot? But aren’t you leaving out a tiny little detail in the comparison list–color vision (which octopuses lack)? Then again, octopuses can detect polarization (then again, so can we, though not nearly as well).

Given the opportunity to trade eyes with an octopus, I’ll select the human eye hands down. If you want to make me drool, you should perhaps put stomatopod vision on the table instead.

Why?

An Octopus eye still has a better design, Wouldn’t the human eye be better with the same layout as the Octopus eye?

In the part of our eye where we resolve the most details (a portion of our fovea called the foveola), the L and M cones (which are very similar in sensitivities) are stretched a great deal, and packed very close, giving a very high resolution (S cones and rods are simply absent in this area). The size of these cells, interestingly enough, corresponds roughly to the size required to make them waveguides for optical light around the peak frequencies these cones are sensitive to. This waveguide design channels the light towards the light sensitive portions of the cells, where there is plenty of pigment to pick it up.

Now, the way the pigment proteins (opsins) work is that they are sensitive to a broad range of frequencies, not a specific one. This allows us to not miss light of particular frequencies within the spectrum. Light at the peak frequency is simply more likely to trigger the opsins to cause stimulation, but light off of the peak can still trigger a cell. The L cones, in particular, are sensitive across the entire spectrum (L+M, indeed, is our overall light metric–our white/black process; note the conspicuous absence of S cones in this function).

One of the problems we have to deal with, with our basic eye layout, is that our eyes have a single convex lens. Light, then, is focused through this lens on our retinas. Light of different frequencies focuses differently based on the physics involved (bluer light bends more than redder light), which leads to the problem of chromatic abberation (that is, object details becoming fuzzy due to different focal points of different frequencies of light reflected from it). This is a major problem when we need to resolve a lot of detail about objects in the external world.

Our vision design handles this chromatic abberation issue in a number of ways. L and M’s sensitivities being close together helps (we use a difference metric–L-M–to see red, so L’s actual peak is only yellowish-green, and overall it’s pretty similar to M). L is also sensitive throughout the entire spectrum, dropping off more slowly in the higher wavelengths than M (which allows our L-M “opponent” function, measuring red/green, to be a “middle”/”end” metric for measuring colors). S’s only function is to help characterize short/long wavelengths.

This leads to a problem near our foveolas. L and M are used to resolve detail, and L’s pigment needs to be sensitive throughout the spectrum to maximize our color utility (to provide the “middle”/”end” metric for color measurements). Since L’s pigment is sensitive throughout the entire spectrum, focused bluer light will still trigger the same component (less likely, but this is a ramp off–it would have an effect similar to a blur filter). This hampers our ability to see sharp details in objects (especially white ones).

But that is where the waveguide design brings a huge advantage. Waveguides are sensitive to a small range of frequencies–beyond this, they won’t carry light down the tube. And, lo and behold, picking out particular frequencies is exactly what we need to do in order to remove this chromatic abberation effect in the critical part of our eyes where we need this detail. The way this works is that you take these highly packed cones in our foveola, shaped like waveguide, and put the pigments way at the back, where only the frequencies you’re interested in will tend to get carried. The bluer light simply hits the sides, and doesn’t get a chance to hit the light sensitive portions.

The moral of the story–in the area of our eyes where it counts the most, the pigments are in the correct place. So kindly remove this from your imperfect design list.

But the ID-bashing is now even infesting nice posts like the Nazi moon base stuff.

Huh? Not sure what you’re referring to… just got done reading through that thread and other than a couple of sarcastic references to Ben Stein (which have more to do with his ” scientists sent Jews to the gas chambers” idiocy than his ID beliefs), I really don’t see what you’re talking about.

It is still largely accepted in the biological and medical community that the appendix is vestigial and has no known function

I humbly acquiesce to your nitpick, and would thusly re-phrase my statement:

It is still largely accepted in the biological and medical community that the appendix is vestigial and has no known function…

That is probably more accurate to my point.

Who says pedantry is needless?

True dat. But the ID-bashing is now even infesting nice posts like the Nazi moon base stuff.

Also, the last (A) pathway should be “The evolved pathway is validated through homologous characters”, as we are discussing knowledge of the historical pathway here.

B) is a non sequitur. The way babies develop has nothing to do with how we evolved. It does prove that eyes *can* develop in this way, but does not prove that modern eyes *did* develop in this way from prehistoric photosensitive patches.

It is not a non sequitur.

If the theory predicts that there are evolutionary pathways, and it does, it is sufficient to show a possible pathway to test it. So as growth shows such a cellular pathway (modulo maternal hormones et cetera minor details) it is a validation through a test.

For such reasons (but mainly because of the similar and easy to understand A) pathway) creationists such as Behe started to criticize interlocking complexity of cellular components instead. As the cellular machinery is heritable along with the genome at fertilization, the B) pathway is different, which creationists take advantage of in their shell game of hiding the bleeding obvious.

B) is a non sequitur. The way babies develop has nothing to do with how we evolved. It does prove that eyes *can* develop in this way, but does not prove that modern eyes *did* develop in this way from prehistoric photosensitive patches.

Not a non sequitur. If the theory predicts that there are evolutionary pathways, and it does, it is sufficient to show a possible pathway to test it. So as growth shows such a cellular pathway (modulo maternal hormones et cetera) it is a validation through a test.

For such reasons (but mainly because of the similar and easy to understand A) pathway) creationists such as Behe started to criticize interlocking complexity of cellular components instead. As the cellular machinery is heritable along with the genome at fertilization, the B) pathway is different, which creationists take advantage of in their shell game of hiding the bleeding obvious.

A) doesn’t really show any development from one mollusk to another. I see (and I guarantee an ID person will see) different species with different eyes, rather than a progression from simple eyes to complex ones.

Not sure what you mean here.

The evolutionary pathway is validated through homologous characters from ancestral to derived forms, not through an unbroken lineage. This is quite the same way that the fossil record is validated, from overlapping or non-overlapping populations of the actual sparse record, not from a dense imaginary record.

The creationist objection is besides the point of that particular test validation, or phylogenetic trees what so ever. Trees as nested hierarchies aren’t just a straight branch.

Flight.

Ah, that’s ability was solved by insects, dinosaurs, mammals, and most famously, birds.

Don’t forget fish: freshwater hatchetfish can make powered flights to evade predators.

Creationists talk design, Evolutionists talk construction.

Evolution is defined as observable hereditary variation (of characters) over time, and it it is only in such observable mechanisms such as selection and evo-devo that one discuss functions.

Creationists however talk lies, as evidenced here.

It is still largely accepted in the biological and medical community that the appendix is completely vestigial and has no known purpose.

Possible nitpick: AFAIK biologists define vestigial as homologous characters with loss of (most of) original function, not as devoid of function, so “completely vestigial” should be meaningless or misleading. AFAIU such characters can retain some original function, retain non-primary functions, or been coopted for new function, while being (“completely”) vestigial.

And as terms like “completely vestigial” and “purpose” may suggest just-so adaptionism and non-evolutionary teleology, and additionally can be “coopted” by creationists, they aren’t as suitable as “function” IMHO.

J/P=?

for me it’s the latter two groups that I fear and loathe, yes. The fear because they seem to have the power to damage the education system so much, and the loathing because they are so eager to do just that.

I don’t think atheists are responible for giving creationism a bad reputation. That’s the work of the religious nutcases.

Should “moderately religious” people really allow these people to keep on doing what they do?

And if they DO allow the nutcases to represent them, isn’t that their own responsibility? I can’t imagine you could blame the atheists for that.

darnit, BA… must we continue to endure these spelling errors?

/weekly rant for spell check

It’s not actually true that the appendix does nothing. It acts as a safe haven for many beneficial intestinal bacteria.

I’m betting you pulled this off of wikipedia… which is fine. It shows you’re willing to do some research into an issue… but a closer look would reveal that this assertion is hotly disputed. This possibility has been proposed by some in the medical and bilogical communtiy, but as of yet there’s no direct evidence supporting this theory.

It is still largely accepted in the biological and medical community that the appendix is completely vestigial and has no known purpose. Perhaps we will find firm evidence supporting this claim, but to assert this supposition as fact is not really accurate.