Trilobite eyes (Introduction)

by David Turell , Saturday, March 23, 2013, 17:41 (4054 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: The extant horseshoe crab is probably a descendant of the extinct trilobite. Why should the trilobite eye have evolved significantly? Evolution doesn't mean endless improvement. If it did, by now you and I should be able to see pockmarks on Mars with the naked eye!-I know you are aware of punctuated equilibrium: sudden appearance of species and then no change, or stasis until now. Gould's observations cannot be ignored, which you seem to be doing. Darwin's gradualism is not correct according to the fossil record, which Darwin thought would eventually validate him. It hasn't.
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> TONY: Secondly, the Trilobite has no known precursors, yet demonstrates incredibly complex advanced biological functions. If evolution were true, this would be impossible.
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> dhw:It would certainly be impossible for the trilobite to have no precursors, since evolution argues that all organisms are descended from earlier organisms, going back to the first self-replicating molecules. One hypothetical explanation for the lack of fossils is that God created trilobites separately. Another is that no precursors have been found because trilobites died out 250 million years ago, and perhaps their precursors were not suited to fossilization. -Most of your statement is incorrect. There are no known precursors to trilobites. They came from something, I agree, but the pre-Cambrian Ediacarans and other sea worms have been found preserved, and in certain sandstones are plentiful, according to recent research. On the other hand the Cambrian is yielding more and more complex organisms, seemingly from nowhere. The jump or gap to the Cambrian, in current scientific work. is growing, not receding. Darwin's main worry is growing worse. The answer has to lie in Shapiro's work on epigenetics. --> DHW: The word "mutation" simply means change. Darwin linked it to randomness, but I think my post makes it clear that I'm suggesting a non-random, "intelligent" variety. If all forms of life are descended from earlier forms, they can only have done so through a process of innovation/genomic mutation, even if your God engineered the changes.-I applaud this observation. It is on the money!
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> TONY: Sure, mutation means change, but greater complexity requires an increase in the available information, which has never been demonstrated. In fact, what has been demonstrated is exactly the opposite, that mutations generally remove or destroy information from the genome.-I also applaud this comment. Mutations are not as helpful as heritable epigenetic changes, which are engineered by the organism in response to environmental challenges. -> 
> dhw: Your "generally" leaves room for exceptions that would drive evolution. Once upon a time, there was no such thing as an eye. We know that eyes now exist. Therefore once upon a time some organism somewhere underwent a change, whereby an eye (or Darwin's initial "light-sensitive nerve") came into existence. God may personally have inserted it into the first lucky organism, or the genome of the organism may have produced the change, but either way, it's a mutation. -Try my way,epigentic change, not chance mutation! We know that most mutations are not beneficial.-To understand this alternate viewpoint, one must divorce oneself from adoraton of Darwin. As an Englishman, perhaps you cannot. Darwin's insights were brilliant as were Wallace's for the time period in which they existed, 150+ years ago. But their theorizing was limited also by their limited knowledge compared to what we recognize today as the evolutionary path. It is an inventive bush. The information in DNA is enormously more complex than Watson and Crick imagined just 50 years ago. The complexity grows and grows, and the possibility of chance as the creator of this complexity diminishes day by day.-And the biological designs have been shown to be optimal. Read this carefully and be amazed at what evolution has designed:-http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/02/science/02angier.html?pagewanted=1&_r=0