Trilobite eyes (Introduction)

by dhw, Monday, March 25, 2013, 15:25 (4262 days ago) @ David Turell

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!-DAVID: 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.-What on earth has my above reply to Tony got to do with gradualism? Over and over again I have rejected gradualism and random mutations, and have stressed that my "intelligent genome" hypothesis (to which you have agreed, with the proviso that God invented it) provides an explanation for the sudden appearance of new organs and organisms.
 
TONY: Secondly, the Trilobite has no known precursors, yet demonstrates incredibly complex advanced biological functions. If evolution were true, this would be impossible.-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.
 
DAVID: 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. [...]The answer has to lie in Shapiro's work on epigenetics.
 
My comment was in response to Tony's "if evolution were true...". If you agree that they came from something, it is true that they evolved. I have offered two hypothetical explanations for the lack of fossils. What is "incorrect"? My own answer to how they evolved would be through "the intelligent genome", as above. Epigenetics is part of the mechanism.-dhw: 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.
 
DAVID: Try my way,epigentic change, not chance mutation! We know that most mutations are not beneficial.-Why do you keep harping on about chance mutation when over and over again I have rejected chance in favour of "the intelligent genome", which ... let me repeat ... you have accepted with the proviso that God invented it. Mutation just means change, as I have emphasized in my posts to Tony. It needs "chance" or "random" in front of it to mean chance or random!-DAVID: To understand this alternate viewpoint, one must divorce oneself from adoraton of Darwin. As an Englishman, perhaps you cannot. [...] The complexity grows and grows, and the possibility of chance as the creator of this complexity diminishes day by day.-An essential point of the whole thread on "Intelligence" is the concept of the "intelligent genome", which you have accepted with the proviso...etc. It does away with chance. By rejecting random mutations and gradualism I have divorced myself from adoration of Darwin. But over and over again I have stressed that I accept his theories of common descent, mutation in a different sense from his (i.e. not random) and natural selection.