origin of light-sensitivity (The atheist delusion)

by dhw, Tuesday, January 29, 2008, 07:58 (6142 days ago) @ George Jelliss

I shan't pretend that I can enter into a discussion on biochemistry with you, but I am struggling to follow some of the reasoning. - Firstly, the 'carrot' website said nothing about the origin of light sensitivity. "The aldehyde retinal is a light sensitive compound with an important role in vision. Retinal is the prosthetic group of the protein rhodopsin; absorption of a photon of light by retinal triggers a neural impulse." This was the only reference I found to vision. - I stand by my first statement that natural selection does not explain physical change and does not explain the mechanism that enables such changes to take place. Natural selection is only part of the process of evolution and explains why changes are perpetuated. - With regard to my second statement, I am not denying that what in your first posting you called "a slight change" took place. But the fact that modern science can now tell us what it was that changed does not provide us with an explanation of why that change was able to take place. - If all biochemists agreed that chance was bound to create the mechanism which brought about changes leading to hitherto unheard-of concepts like sight, taste, sex, consciousness etc., I would gladly throw my doubts out of the window and join you in your atheism. Interestingly, the website dealing with the origin of light sensitivity to which you kindly drew my attention was written by a cell biologist, Professor Kenneth Miller. He concludes: "The living world is filled with examples of many other organs and structures that clearly have their roots in the opportunistic modification of a preexisting structure rather than the clean elegance of design. This does not, however, despite the fears of "intelligent design" advocates, amount to evidence against the existence of a Deity. Properly understood, as Darwin himself pointed out, it only deepens our respect for the power and subtlety of the Creator's remarkable ways." - I am not a chemist, I am not a biologist, I am not a theist, and I am not an atheist, so I'd rather you fought it out with Professor Miller than with me.