The Eye: Evolution versus Creationism

Sox2 writes "SciScoop is running a story about researchers in Germany who claim to have solved the "mystery" surrounding the evolution of the mamalian eye. The work, published in Science, goes some way to answering the issues raised in the "intelligent design" debate that has become the mainstay of creationist thinking."

Darwin got it right...

The article is essentially saying 'we found the smoking gun'; that light-sensitive cells originated within the brain, and migrated slowly outwards to form eyes. Ergo, the famous Darwin reasoning 'any form of eye is an evolutionary advantage, and therefore given even a truly-awful eye you would expect it to develop over time into something useful' is at least plausible. Evolution at work within a large-enough population.

I remember reading in 'PCW' back when I was at school (20 years or so ago :-) of a graphical demonstration (written in Mac Basic) of the evolution of an eye lens, using statistical population approximation to demonstrate that once even a slight advantage is gained, the population moves towards a better and better eye. It drew the lens on the screen as it was being calculated iteration by iteration - fascinating stuff. I ported it to my Atari XL/Turbo Basic - Macs were a little out of my price range :-)

Simon

Re:Darwin got it right...

To paraphrase: "In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king."

Let it begin

Since this story is just an invitation for a huge flamewar, I thought I'd ask a few follup questions:

What's your favorite Linux distribution? Why?

Does anyone you know still run Windows?

What religion are you?

Vi or emacs?

Mac users: all gay?

How do you feel about abortion?

Which U.S. presidential candidate do you support?

Was the war in Iraq justified?

Just some food for thought.

Re: Let it begin

> What religion are you?

> Vi or emacs?

Looks like you got an accidental line break in there.

Evolution vs. Creationism

What is this "Creationism" program? And will it run on Linux?

BTW, I am not sure that evolution is incompatible with the idea of "intelligent design" as long as one is careful about defining intelligent design....

Re:Evolution vs. Creationism

Strictly speaking, "Luddite" is reserved for people opposed to technology, not science. I believe the word you're looking for is "Republican". *ducks*

if we know 1 thing about evolution

It's that creationism arguments will evolve as well

History versus theory

While the evolution of the eye has never been that much of a theoretical puzzle--there have been lots of plausible theories--this discovery moves us a little away from the realm of theory and into the realm of historical detail.

What effect will it have on the creation/evolution debate? The same effect that all the other mounds of evidence in favor of evolution have so far had on the debate.

Why Talk Creationism?

"...answering the issues raised in the 'intelligent design' debate that has become the mainstay of creationist thinking.'"

[sarcasm]

Oh, well that's a relief. Because, you know, rational discourse is all creationists are really after. I'm sure this study will show them the error of their ways even though a century of development in geology, biology, and physics has failed to do so. Now if we can just find Jesus' skeleton, we'll be all set.

[/sarcasm]

Seriously, it's an interesting theory and appears (to my non-biologist's eyes, at least) to be good work, but I'm not sure why creationism got dragged into it. The argument that "if you find a watch on a beach, you assume someone made it" isn't going to go away. For the most part, people decide what they want to believe, then go looking for evidence. Not the other way around.

inside-out vs outside-in

Religion and science don't mix very well in my opinion. Beneath the typical flaming contests there lies a fundamental difference. I kind of look at it as the "outside-in" thinkers vs the "inside-out" thinkers. Religion is based on the Fact that God exists and that he/she is behind the way things happen. Non-religious thinkers (or those religious who keep religion out of their science) start with a meta science philosophy and build up their scientific knowledge based on observation, deduction and extrapolation. The meta science typically tells them not to predict things that can't be proven. The two philosophies are incompatible at the meta level. No matter how loud you scream, we will not settle the argument at the discussion level.

DISCLAIMER: this is just my $0.02

Re: inside-out vs outside-in

The actual difference is that creationists take their personal beliefs as axiomatic and work from there, whereas scientists use observables to winnow out which beliefs are true and which aren't.

Interesting article, but /. headline is a troll

The article is an interesting report about a new biological discovery which provides evidence of the evolution of the eye. However, creationism is not mentioned at all; looks to me as if the submitter is trying to start an argument for no reason.

-Stephen

Human Eye is Flawed

Creationists often point to the human eye as something so perfect that only a divine being could have planned it. However, the human eye is far from perfect. The detached retina model is a serious flaw which can oftentimes lead to total vision loss. Other animals, such as squid, have a significantly more advanced model completely impervious to these problems.

If the human eye is evidence of creationism then it can only be evidence of a flawed creator.

Richard Dawkins goes in depth in his book

Climbing Mount Improbable. He explains the eye, differences in eyes in different species (not only mammals) and shows that the evidence "out there" points us rather towards a no design or random design rather than a creationist view.

It's what made me go from agnostic to atheist. We just use the concept of God whenever we reach personal limits. Time and time again we use God to explain things and we're proven wrong. Me becoming an atheist came after seeing one too many arguments in favor of the God is a coping mecanism rather than truth.

Natural Selection

Ahh... natural selection at work...

The creationism website has been slashdotted.

That's all the proof *I* needed! Go Darwin!

Re:Arguing with a creationist

And don't you think that the same can be said the other way around as well? The point is that humans are opinionated creatures. Anyone telling someone 'You beliefs are wrong' is going to be met with a cold stare. Even the scientific community is no exception. Tell someone 'Einstein was wrong' and you would probably get beaten badly even before you say a word about evidence. This is how things are. It takes a lot of courage to accept something contrary to you belief. Think about it.

Re:Arguing with a creationist

Go look at what has happened to education in public schools in the past 10 years and get back to me.

I have nothing against organized religion.

I do have something against organized religion preaching in direct contradiction to accepted science, while providing no evidence to the contrary, other then "its in this book, so you cant teach the obvious, accepted science."

Mirror here

Here's the mirror [lafayette.edu]

tell the entire story of our evolution over time.

But there are those who insist that the Earth was created "with age" 6000 years ago, and that fossils, etc, are a diversionary trap for the unfaithful. The same arguments can be made about this work, or anything done with molecular fingerprinting. (or any other technique, for that matter.)

Wearing the right blinders, it will be obvious that your road is the only correct one, and that all else is distractions. There are those who will make the same assertion against scientists, claiming that there are "science blinders" that restrict their vision. While I won't disagree that there are scientists who wear blinders, I would argue that the basic premise of science is to remove the blinders. The facts will guide you, and a scientist is always supposed to be ready to modify or discard a theory if disproven by facts.

I spent a little time with google and "neocon" (and a few other terms, some independent of "neocon") this weekend, and came to an interesting conclusion: Neocon philosophy is *never* wrong. Any mistakes happen because the philosophy was not put into practice vigorously enough. In other words, they compromised too much, and if they'd been sufficiently uncompromising they would have succeeded. Rather a disturbing world view, IMHO. Of course, this is the result of an hour or so on the Web, and my view can be modified by facts.

Re:Intelligent design?

Nobody has a problem with intelligent design as a philosophy or religion.

The problem is that's it's faith, i.e. you just believe it with no basis in provable (or testable) fact. It's the same as believing the Bible, just a little more rational because there's nothing that proves it's not true.

The problem is when people try to masquerade it as science. "I don't understand how this can happen, ergo 'God' did it." is not science, it's faith.

Re:This won't change their minds...

I picked up a copy of Wired the other day. (First time in years.) It had an interesting cover story [wired.com] on the people and strategies behind "intelligent design".

Re:This won't change their minds...

And that's exactly why the whole creationism/evolution debate is pointless: You can never prove or disprove that one didn't precede the other. An argument can easily be made that God created all of it's creatures through evolution. To wit, that God created evolution.

It's kind of like science proving that God is not real. The effort is meant to fail because science cannot deal with God because it isn't designed to. On the other side, religion cannot, for the most part, deal with science because religion rests on a premise of faith which is by definition, unprovable belief.

When both sides are not even supposed to have common ground on which to argue, the creationist/evolutionist debate is a non-sequitur on both sides.

Re:Face It

This is the typical 'reasoning' that creationists use to justify their attacks on evolution. The problems comes in places like Delaware, where people actually believe this line of reasoning. It comes from a terrible lack of real science education in this country. You don't see this sort of nonsense in Europe or the more develped countries in Asia, where they have better education systems.

no, just the creationists

MC Hawkins says:

Fuck The Creationists

Trash Talk
Ah yeah, here we go again!
Damn! This is some funky shit that I be laying down on your ass.
This one goes out to all my homey's working in the field of
evolutionary science.
Check it!

Verse 1
Fuck the damn creationists, those bunch of dumb-ass bitches,
every time I think of them my trigger finger itches.
They want to have their bullshit, taught in public class,
Stephen J. Gould should put his foot right up their ass.
Noah and his ark, Adam and his Eve,
straight up fairy stories even children don't believe.
I'm not saying there's no god, that's not for me to say,
all I'm saying is the Earth was not made in a day.

Chorus
Fuck, fuck, fuck,
fuck the Creationists.

Trash Talk
Break it down.
Ah damn, this is a funky jam!
I'm about ready to kick this bitch back in.
Check it.

Verse 2
Fuck the damn creationists I say it with authority,
because kicking their punk asses be me paramount priority.
Them wack-ass bitches say, "evolution's just a theory",
they best step off, them brainless fools, I'll give them cause to fear me.
The cosmos is expanding every second, every day,
but their minds are shrinking as they close their eyes and pray.
They call their bullshit science like the word could give them cred,
if them bitches be scientists then cap me in the head.

Chorus

Trash Talk
Bass!
Bring that shit in!
Ah yeah, that's right, fuck them all motherfuckers.
Fucking punk ass creationists trying to set scientific thought back 400 years.
Fuck that!
If them superstitious motherfuckers want to have that kind of party,
I'm going to put my dick in the mashed potatoes.
Fucking creationists.
Fuck them.

Re:"concrete evidence"

Concrete and conclusive are different words. Scientists have long surmised (since Darwin himself, in fact) that the eye evolved from a very crude light-dark sensor by way of various kinds of primitive eye. Now we actually see common chemistry between an existing primitive light-dark sensor and the vertebrate eye. This provides concrete (ie real) evidence to support this view. It is not conclusive (the same chemistry could conceivably have evolved independently), but they don't say it is.