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I haven't read all the threads, so I apologise if this is repeating what others have said. What struck me most about the download file is that it makes the same mistake as religions make, of assuming that the only alternative to design is chance, eg how could an organ as complex as the eye come about by chance? If you read the whole of Richard Dawkins "The God Delusion" he mentions numerous times that chance is equally unrealistic, and equally unbelievable. But as he clearly states, the actual mechanism is Natural Selection. In the case of the eye, the earliest example may have been a mere indentation in the exterior of an organism, which enabled the most rudimentary detection of light and shade. This could have been enough to avoid a predator, which means that that individual's genes survive to breed. Through myriad accidental improvements, which are then favoured through natural selection, you end up with the human eye as it is today. And the giveaway is that our eyes are imperfect and show loads of evidence of their humble origins - no-one seeking to design the perfect eye would come up with what we have.
Natural Selection, Evolution, whatever you want to call it, is more or less irrefutable. It is based on vast amounts of evidence, increasing all the time, and the clincher is that there has never been any new evidence which has not fitted the "theory".
If you want to learn more, try Richard Dawkins' own "The Selfish Gene". It is an absolute eye-opener: pretty much the comprehensive guide to the origins of Life on Earth, and well worth the effort required to understand it.
"Design" is a totally redundant hypothesis.

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Thank you for this. It is a new thread, and it gets to the very heart of the discussion. Dawkins has summed it up far better than I can (p. 137): "Once the vital ingredient ... some kind of genetic molecule ... is in place, true Darwinian natural selection can follow, and complex life emerges as the eventual consequence. But the spontaneous arising by chance of the first hereditary molecule strikes many as improbable. Maybe it is ... very very improbable, and I shall dwell on this, for it is central to this section of the book." It is also central to my own doubts. - Dawkins uses the "anthropic principle" and statistics to reduce this degree of improbability to a level that he himself finds acceptable. If you also accept it, I can't argue, but that belief has nothing to do with natural selection. I agree with you totally about evolution, and have tried to make it clear in my text that I also regard evolution as a proven fact. My problem lies in the nature of Dawkins' "first hereditary molecule", and in my sections on evolution I have tried (obviously unsuccessfully) to explain why this is not as simple as Dawkins makes it out to be. The thing has to come alive first and then, when it reproduces itself, it has to be capable of all the changes and adaptations that drive evolution. What you call "the most rudimentary detection of light and shade" is an astonishing development. You talk of "myriad accidental improvements" (presumably the mutations that bring about these rudimentary new organs), but accidents are chance events, and once more the implication is that chance can bring about miracles. "Rudimentary" again makes it sound all too simple. Sensitivity to light is a huge advance from total inanimateness. If you tell me that chance could create something that came to life, I might believe it. If you tell me that chance created something that came to life and also reproduced itself, I begin to have my doubts. But if you tell me that chance created something that simultaneously came to life, reproduced itself, and was capable of an infinite variety of changes and adaptations, I flounder. This is why I argue that atheism depends on an initial act of faith ... in the ability of chance to produce this extraordinary "molecule". Natural selection follows ... no problem! But it is Chapter 2, not Chapter 1. - The difficulty that I then come up against is: if I don't believe chance could create such a complex mechanism (not the eye, but the mechanism that gave rise to the eye), I have to consider all the alternatives. And that leads to design. These speculations will be of no interest to anyone who has decided that chance was the prime mover, but I have not, and presumably other agnostics haven't either. The theory of design is also fraught with problems: for instance, you argue that no-one seeking to design the perfect eye would come up with what we have ... but that presupposes the absolute perfection of the designer. I find the whole concept of a perfect, all-powerful, all-knowing God as difficult to believe as that of creative chance. Not believing one thing does not mean believing the opposite. - I do hope this thread will attract more comments, as it is so fundamental. Thank you again for starting it.

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This could have been enough to avoid a predator, which means that that individual's genes survive to breed. Through myriad accidental improvements, which are then favoured through natural selection, you end up with the human eye as it is today. - The trouble with Dawk the Dork's account of how stuff like eyes come about is that it's riddled with teleological (design) language; hence the speculation that rudimentary eyes 'evolved' because they helped prey avoid predators, that over time this rudimentary eye was 'improved' by being 'favoured' by natural selection. The only was to avoid design sneaking in the back door like this (and the way in which the theory of evolution by natural selection in fact avoids being ambushed in this way) is by understanding the process as a negative one. The incremental changes that led to eyes didn't survive because they each advantaged their bearers in the struggle for survival and reproduction in a given environment, but because none of them disadvantaged their bearers in that struggle. - Natural Selection, Evolution, whatever you want to call it, is more or less irrefutable. It is based on vast amounts of evidence, increasing all the time, and the clincher is that there has never been any new evidence which has not fitted the "theory". - This would make the theory of evolution by natural selection a non-scientific or 'bogus' theory. Two of the distinguishing marks of a scientific theory properly so-called is that it is capable of falsified (that is, that we can specify a set of observations that would falsify the theory if they ever were made) and that it generates anomalous results which stimulate further theory-development and experimental research programmes to explain. If the theory of evolution by natural selection were more or less irrefutable, and/or it doesn't generate anomalous results (that is, evidence which doesn't 'fit' or it can't explain), then it would be a scientifically bogus and sterile theory.

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I hope readers will read this comment in conjunction with your entry under "Agnostic! Are you sure?" I stand rebuked for my own comment that I regard evolution as a proven fact, and am guilty of the same dogmatism of which I sometimes accuse others. I have a very strong belief that the theory is correct. That's more like it. Although you don't care either way about religion, the distinctions you draw are vital to the argument, because all our terms carry associations that can be misleading. Perhaps you could write (have written?) a thesis for us: A Philological Approach to Epistemology and Ontology. Thank you very much for bringing this new dimension to the forum.

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Miracles? - ----- "the implication is that chance can bring about miracles." Here and elsewhere you have used the word miracle, perhaps in what has become a common and unsatisfactory way, causing confusion, to mean something like 'wonderful' or 'extraordinary'. More precise, and I would suggest far more useful, definitions of 'miracle' are along the lines of "something which is contrary to (the laws of) nature, brought about by supernatural or divine intervention in the way nature works' ----- as for example in the claims of miracles performed by Jesus which are one of the key indicators for believers that he was divine, a supernatural manifestation in our natural world not least if he 'rose from the dead'. I suspect (and hope!) this is not the way you intend the word to be used, in which case I humbly request that you stop using it! - When people say the birth of their child is a miracle, most (not all) are not saying this most natural of events is supernatural and contrary to nature, they are saying something like 'isn't nature wonderful'? - The origins of life (rather than its subsequent evolution) may well be considered wonderful, by some it is considered supernatural ---- but hardly by most people who want to describe themselves as agnostics, I suggest. - clayto

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Two dictionary definitions of "miracle": 1) an event that appears to be contrary to the laws of nature and is regarded as an act of God; 2) an event or action that is totally amazing, extraordinary or unexpected. - Let me confirm in the strongest possible terms that your suspicion and hope are correct - I meant the second of these. But you are right, my use of the word is open to misinterpetation. When I do the next rewrite, I will try to find another way of putting it (unless the context makes it clear that I am using the second definition). Thank you for making your request so humbly!

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Kylie 2002 has stumbled into the same trap that is used by most defenders of pure Neo-Darwinism. The human eye is 'imperfect' and no "God" would have created it the way it looks. What is being discussed is the human retina which is put in backwards, the vessels and the nerves on the surface facing the pupil and the receptor cells in back. Artistically I agree, it looks wrong. One would think the retina should have the receptors in front and the vessels and nerves in back, like in the octopus eye. But perfect artistic design may not be the best functional design. The receptors require a high level of energy and nutrients, and it has been shown that the backwards arrangement provides that need. Yes, our eyes have a blind spot where the optic nerves come to the surface. Have you ever seen it? Of course not. We don't see the vessels either, but their shadows can be seen with trick lighting (which I don't want to spend the time describing, but I've seen mine.) So what!! Optimal functional design is alot more reasonable than perfect artistic design. Dawkins is a scientifically poorly educated author and it shows in all his work.

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The point about the structure of the eye being different in different species is not that one structure is functionally better than another, it is that it provides evidence for evolution by natural selection acting upon variations. Given particular variations natural selection acts over time to improve the functionality of anything that proves useful, that is to "optimise" it within the constraints already acquired. No doubt the eye of the squid works well for the environments in which it lives. - It does seem reasonable to me to argue that the architecture of the squid eye is more "logical" from the point of view of a conscious designer. (Incidentally I think the argument is due to Kenneth Miller rather than Richard Dawkins.) One can speculate that if the human eye had begun with the squid architecture it could well have evolved to be more optimal than the version we now have. It would still be different from the squid eye because it would have evolved to meet the requirements of a land mammal. - In writing the above I have become more conscious of how difficult it is to write about evolution without using terminology that implies design and intention and purpose and so on behind the natural processes.

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George Jelliss states: " The point about the structure of the eye being different in different species is not that one structure is functionally better than another, it is that it provides evidence for evolution by natural selection acting upon variations. Given particular variations natural selection acts over time to improve the functionality of anything that proves useful, that is to "optimise" it within the constraints already acquired. No doubt the eye of the squid works well for the environments in which it lives." I agree. 
 
He further states: "One can speculate that if the human eye had begun with the squid architecture it could well have evolved to be more optimal than the version we now have. It would still be different from the squid eye because it would have evolved to meet the requirements of a land mammal." Here Jelliss misses the point of the term "convergence" as used by Simon Conway Morris in his book, "Life's Solution, "Inevitable Humans in a Lonely Universe, 2003". Morris' point is that most animals start in evolution with very similar DNA and then diverge to differing solutions as dictated by requirements of their environment, just as Jellis stated. There is no way the human eye could have developed from a squid architecture under this concept. I believe there are actually five or six diffrent types of eyes in nature. The point of my previous reply was that simply looking at structure cannot ever tell us that its type of design can preclude a diety or for that matter include one. The living structure can best be analyzed by determining if it satisfies optimal function for its environment, not how pretty it is.
 
 Jelliss final statement: "In writing the above I have become more conscious of how difficult it is to write about evolution without using terminology that implies design and intention and purpose and so on behind the natural processes." I agree completely. Biologic machines sure look designed and purposeful. Elsewhere in this website I have given a reference to a future planned meeting of Darwin scientists, many leading lights in the Neo-Darwin movement, who are questioning the role of natural selection as a prime mover. I think we all need to follow that closely. There are substantial changes in thinking and theory coming.

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Elsewhere in this website I have given a reference to a future planned meeting of Darwin scientists, many leading lights in the Neo-Darwin movement, who are questioning the role of natural selection as a prime mover. - I'd question that too. The theory of evolution by natural selection is just that: a theory of evolution, not of origins; it seeks to explain how life evolves, not how it originated. Speculation as to how organic matter arose from inorganic matter simply irrelevant to the worth of that theory. - I recently read an interesting interview with the palaeontologist Andrew Knoll, a professor of biology at Harvard, which you will find here. Two points are of particular note. - First: the definition of life as 'a system that's capable of Darwinian evolution'. This is interesting because, if one assumes this definition, it clearly makes the question of how life originated logically distinct from the Darwinian theory of evolution. - Second: the authoritative admission that we don't really know how life originated; which is as good a reason as any to remain agnostic in relation to that question.

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"I recently read an interesting interview with the palaeontologist Andrew Knoll, a professor of biology at Harvard, which you will find here. {Knoll offers} a definition of life as 'a system that's capable of Darwinian evolution'. This is interesting because, if one assumes this definition, it clearly makes the question of how life originated logically distinct from the Darwinian theory of evolution." - I appreciate whitecraw giving us this website. Knoll makes it sound very easy for life to appear in nature. It certainly appears quickly when the conditions are right. At the end of the interview he infers that we may never figure out how life started. The disconnect in the interview is that he gives simple replies and leaves out very important information. The Urey-Miller experiment amino acids and amino acids from the universe found in meteorities are 70 in number (in 2004, in my last review of this), and only eight of the 20 essential amino acids necessary in life were in this 70. Further, natural processes make amino acids and nucleic acids (for DNA/RNA) 50-50% right and left handed. Amino acids in life are all left handed and nucleic acids are all right handed. The start of life was something very unique and strange. - Life started 3.6 billion years ago with single-celled organisms, presumably some type of bacteria. Bacteria have been extremely successful. They are still here in many forms, ie. the extremeophiles, and make up the biggest biomass on Earth. Bacteria contain DNA/RNA for inheritence and to manage evolution as Knoll inferentially points out. If one considers the process of chance mutation and natural selection (Darwinism) as the driving force of evolution, and presumes that advances occur in evolution to improve survivability, why did evolution bother to advance to multicellular sexually reproductive,complex organisms like us, given the success of bacteria? It doesn't make sense to me. So what drives evolution if anything?

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'If one considers the process of chance mutation and natural selection (Darwinism) as the driving force of evolution, and presumes that advances occur in evolution to improve survivability, why did evolution bother to advance to multicellular sexually reproductive, complex organisms like us, given the success of bacteria? It doesn't make sense to me. So what drives evolution if anything?' - 1. Why should we presume that 'advances occur in evolution to improve survivability'? Evolution is a purely natural process; it proceeds to no purpose. Mutations occur (mainly as a result of something going wrong when a cell copies its DNA in preparation for cell division) which cause abnormal physical characteristics in the bearer. If this abnormality disadvantages the bearer in the competition to survive and reproduce, it will fail to thrive and tend to disappear from the population. If it advantages the bearer, the abnormality will tend to thrive and (depending on the extent to which non-bearers are relatively disadvantaged by its appearance) will come to predominate in the population. The 'survivability' of a mutation is not the 'end' or 'purpose' of that mutation; mutations occur to no end or purpose, but only as a result of chemical mishaps. 'Survivability' is rather a function of how well or badly the bearer of that mutation subsequently fares in the environment in which it must survive and reproduce. - 2. Evolution doesn't 'advance' anything. Complex multicellular sexually reproductive organisms are neither an advance nor a setback compared to unicellular organisms (since there is no 'goal' that life evolves towards; it simply evolves or changes because of its inherent instability). Such organisms are the outcomes long series of chemical accidents, the physical changes resulting from which haven't died out of the populations in which they occur. - 3. If anything drives evolution, it is the instability of the chemistry involved in replication.

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why did evolution bother to advance to multicellular sexually reproductive, complex organisms like us, given the success of bacteria? - I think the answer is, because it could. The way natural selection works means that it tends to move towards greater complexity. This is because more complex systems cannot develop until simpler systems have first evolved. Of course there are cases where evolution involves simplification, as when cave-dwellers lose the power of sight, but complexity has to be preceded by simpler forms. - I would also venture to suggest that more complex systems are likely to be able to adapt in a wider range of ways, though not necessarily more quickly, to a wider range of environmental changes. Also general-purpose systems, like brains or hands, provide for more versatile adaptability than specialised developments like eagle eyes or mammoth tusks or cheetah speed.

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"1. Why should we presume that 'advances occur in evolution to improve survivability'? Evolution is a purely natural process; it proceeds to no purpose. 
 2. Evolution doesn't 'advance' anything. Complex multicellular sexually reproductive organisms are neither an advance nor a setback compared to unicellular organisms (since there is no 'goal' that life evolves towards; it simply evolves or changes because of its inherent instability).
3. If anything drives evolution, it is the instability of the chemistry involved in replication."
Evolution is defined "as a process of change in a certain direction." using my Webster's. What we are debating is not whether evolution exists, because we can see that it happened, but the process it uses. whitecraw has made a declarative statement that the process is purposeless. That is his form of faith in the way evolution proceeds. Science is unearthing a very coding complex mechanism, layer upon layer in the DNA/RNA system: chance mutation, gene transfer, transcription defects, convergence, and the Baldwin Effect (see David Reznick and his guppies)in which organisms may be able to direct their genes to some degree, all play a role. - My philosophic point remains the same. Evolution proceeded in one direction to the very complex. It could have stopped in that direction at any point, but kept on going until it got to us sentient beings. One must read Simon Conway Morris: "Life's Solution: Inevitable Humans in a Lonely Universe". All of us playing ping pong with our own prejudices will not advance a discussion which should be enlightening.

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'Evolution is defined "as a process of change in a certain direction." using my Webster's.' - On the definition of 'evolution', and the inexecrable shortcomings of popular 'dictionary' definitions (including Webster's), see this short article by Laurence Moran. - 'What we are debating is not whether evolution exists, because we can see that it happened, but the process it uses. whitecraw has made a declarative statement that the process is purposeless.' - That's right. I'm trying to clarify the theory of evolution by natural seletion, to clear up misconceptions of that theory resulting from careless language use and the dumbing down of that theory by popular media (including dictionaries). The whole point of that theory is to explain non-teleologically how life evolves; that is, to explain this without reference to 'ends' or 'purposes' or any such 'final cause', in accordance with the constitutive principle of methodological naturalism (one of the principles that constitutes modern scientific practice). Which is why I made the declarative statement that (at least, according to the theory of evolution by natural selection) the process is purposeless. - 'My philosophic point remains the same. Evolution proceeded in one direction to the very complex. It could have stopped in that direction at any point, but kept on going until it got to us sentient beings.' - Evolution does not proceed in any one direction. As change in the properties of populations of organisms that transcend the lifetime of a single individual, evolution is operative everywhere and in all directions. The theory does not preclude the appearance of mutations that result in the simplification of a physical complexity which do not disadvantage ... or positively advantage ... the bearers of those mutations in the competition to survive and reproduce. And evolutionary directions do stop: dramatically, in the case of dinosaurs, where whole species of complex creatures disappeared from the population due to their inability to thrive following some catastrophic environmental change, unlike much simpler life-forms which survived; more subtly in the case of creatures like sharks, where increasing complexity has been naturally selected against for millions of years. There is nothing in the theory that would preclude the evolutionary possibility of, as a consequence of catastrophic environmental change, all complex life-forms being naturally deselected and only the simplest organisms being naturally selected. - Evolution doesn't stop, and it certainly doesn't stop with us. And it isn't necessarily progressive.

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I appreciate the reference to the article by Laurence Moran. Apparently it was written before it was demonstrated that the peppered moth color change studies were fraudulent, but he gives good definitions. The act of giving a reference also makes an example of how I wish this website should operate. I've given a reference to Simon Conway Morris, perhaps the leading paleobiologist in the world. His book gives a different point of view about the process of evolution as conducted through or by DNA/RNA coding. As Moran points out evolution is conducted by DNA/RNA. The reason I emphasize RNA so much is, that it is not 'junk DNA', as just ten years ago that term was used to describe it. 
 "The whole point of that theory is to explain non-teleologically how life evolves; that is, to explain this without reference to 'ends' or 'purposes' or any such 'final cause', in accordance with the constitutive principle of methodological naturalism (one of the principles that constitutes modern scientific practice). Which is why I made the declarative statement that (at least, according to the theory of evolution by natural selection) the process is purposeless". The point I have tried to make clear is that some of the mechanisms of change and evolution do not occur entirely passively which is the way the theory of natural selection reads. There are active processes within DNA/RNA that speed up the changes and then natural selection can act in its passive fashion to weed out inadequate organisms.
 
'My philosophic point remains the same. Evolution proceeded in one direction to the very complex. It could have stopped in that direction at any point, but kept on going until it got to us sentient beings.'[/i] 
 
" Evolution does not proceed in any one direction. As change in the properties of populations of organisms that transcend the lifetime of a single individual, evolution is operative everywhere and in all directions. The theory does not preclude the appearance of mutations that result in the simplification of a physical complexity which do not disadvantage ... or positively advantage ... the bearers of those mutations in the competition to survive and reproduce. And evolutionary directions do stop: dramatically, in the case of dinosaurs, where whole species of complex creatures disappeared from the population due to their inability to thrive following some catastrophic environmental change, unlike much simpler life-forms which survived; more subtly in the case of creatures like sharks, where increasing complexity has been naturally selected against for millions of years. There is nothing in the theory that would preclude the evolutionary possibility of, as a consequence of catastrophic environmental change, all complex life-forms being naturally deselected and only the simplest organisms being naturally selected". 
 
 "Evolution doesn't stop, and it certainly doesn't stop with us. And it isn't necessarily progressive". My point is that it generally has been progressive, and it need not have been as you have just pointed out in the previous paragraph.

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David Turell writes: "Apparently it was written before it was demonstrated that the peppered moth color change studies were fraudulent," - But my understanding is that the latest research by Majerus confirms Kettlewell's original findings. The claims of fraud are from creationist propagandists. - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peppered_moth
"although various errors and oversights have been found in early experiments on peppered moth evolution, subsequent experiments and observations have confirmed the phenomenon and its initial explanation"

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"My understanding is that the latest research by Majerus confirms Kettlewell's original findings. The claims of fraud are from creationist propagandists.
 
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peppered_moth
 "although various errors and oversights have been found in early experiments on peppered moth evolution, subsequent experiments and observations have confirmed the phenomenon and its initial explanation" - Thanks for the correction. I had read about the earlier improper experimentation but, improperly on my own, I had not followed up to find the new research. Excellent reference, well documented.

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David Turell takes my statement: "In writing the above I have become more conscious of how difficult it is to write about evolution without using terminology that implies design and intention and purpose and so on behind the natural processes." and follows it with: "I agree completely. Biologic machines sure look designed and purposeful." But this was not what I meant at all, as I'm sure he knows. - All I am saying is that it is difficult to avoid anthropomorphism in describing nature. It is difficult to find language that is purely objective. We haven't yet developed the appropriate vocabulary, at least for communicating the ideas in a manner understandable to the general populace. Perhaps biologists have done so in their technical journals.

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'All I am saying is that it is difficult to avoid anthropomorphism in describing nature. It is difficult to find language that is purely objective. We haven't yet developed the appropriate vocabulary, at least for communicating the ideas in a manner understandable to the general populace. Perhaps biologists have done so in their technical journals.' - This is a very important point George raises about the 'bewitchment of language'; that is, about how the way in which we talk, the grammar and phrasing of our conversations, directly affects our conclusions and can lead us astray in our thinking. - The thing about the way natural language has evolved is that structurally it is such that any talk of activity implies agency; something that either acts on or is acted upon by something else. Thus it is very difficult (if not impossible) to speak of something like natural selection without imputing to it some sort of intentionality or purposiveness behind it. But it does not follow from the fact that we cannot or cannot easily talk of these processes in natural language, without making implicit connotative reference to some agency which drives those processes, that there is such an agency. - The whole thrust of the theory of evolution by natural selection is the idea that no agency drives the process; that evolution is a purely natural process, notwithstanding the aforementioned problematical nature of words like 'selection'. Natural language certainly doesn't help us in this respect. - Nor do those popular TV programmes that couch their explanations of physical traits in teleological terms, David Attenborough being a prime culprit. Galapagos tortoises did not evolve concave lower shells 'so that' they could mate more easily (teleological explanation). Concave lower shells appeared as a result of a long series of accidental mutations at a biochemical level, which tended to survive, be reproduced and come to predominate in the population because the bearers of those mutations could mate more easily than non-mutant males (causal explanation). - We just need to mind our language.

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