The human eye is not irreducibly complex!
First go here.If you looked at the comments section at all, you will notice that the to-ing and fro-ing quickly descended into chaos so endemic to many evolutionist vs. creationist debates. Sigh.
I myself was particularly intrigued by the video. On hindsight, the concept seems so stunningly simple that I wish I had thought of it. I applaud Dr. Nilsson for his brilliance.
For those of you who are puzzled by the big fuss, I will provide some background. For creationists, and now their thinly-veiled "intelligunt desine" (thanks to Jiahao for pointing this out to me) reincarnates, one of their key arguments against the plausibility of evolution has always been the existence of some irreducibly complex structures in nature. The human eye is an oft-cited example. A popular analogy among evolution-bashers is to liken evolution to putting a bunch of gears and screws and springs into a bottle, then shaking it until you get a functional pocket watch. They claim that there is absolutely no way that a random process would be able to produce a structure whose parts are finely tuned to tick-tock perfectly together. I agree whole-heartedly with that sentiment--if the process involved were indeed random. Evolution is, unfortunately, not random.
What is popularly known as "Evolution Theory" is, in fact, a combination of two things. First is the fact of evolution. It happened; it is happening; and it will continue to happen no matter how many Bibles you throw at it. The mountain of evidence for evolution is staggering in terms of the fossil record. The "missing links" that we do not have today we will find tomorrow. The recent discovery of the tetrapod being a case in point. I was having a lively discussion with a close friend (who was, unfortunately, a staunch advocate of Genesis) right before the discovery of the tetrapod missing link. I had asserted that whatever evidence we lack will eventually be found, and was pleasantly surprised (I might even have been ecstatic) few days later when my prophecy was fulfilled (I know that Stephen Jay Gould, one of my most admired writers, would have given two arms and a leg to see the fossil himself. Alas, he was surrendered to the earth in 2002).
The second part of what is known as "Evolution Theory" is, wait for it, the theory of evolution. The part of evolution in doubt is the exact mechanisms by which it proceeds. This is what the scientific community debates about. We know natural selection is a fact, but we have not worked out all the kinks and the details. The theory presented in the video is yet another nail in the creationist coffin. Though, like the undead so popular in B-grade horror movies, I very much doubt they will oblige to stay buried. Natural selection is what makes evolution "unrandom". Environmental pressures work to push genetic drift or mutation (which is random) in very specific directions. To produce all the wonders of our rapidly-going-down-the-drain Earth, all you need now is time. Of which there has been plenty, unless you are one of those who believe that the Universe is only 6000 years old. The Earth is commonly accepted by the scientific community to be about 4.5 billion years old. This, my friend, is a very very very very long time.
The point I am trying to make, after much words, is that a person who places any value on Truth at all will have to factor the fact of evolution into their belief system. In the words of Cardinal Paul Poupard, religion risks turning into "fundamentalism" if it ignores scientific findings.
posted by Au Yong, Haw Yee @ 10:50 PM
1 Comments:
Actually reading your article makes me rethink the whole idea of 'randomness'. It is really possible for anything to be random at all? I'm starting to think not.
Human evolution has always been known to be a theory in crisis within the scientific community itself, largely due to lacking evidence. You do say that whatever evidence we lack we will find- as much as a proponent for evolution, I am disturbed about that. From a logical perspective, imagine if crimes were persecuted on that basis. I think the debate occurs because of a lack of agreement on the types of evidence that we would find or should find and there are worrying reports of selective acceptance of various findings and also the selective dismissal of those that do not fit the current theory. I too am confident that someday science will provide the answers, but perhaps not exactly the evidence we'd all expect or like to see.
Just a side point, I'm always amazed at the ppl who ask for Intelligent Design to be taught in the classrooms. I wonder how religion can take ID being taught as an alternative theory to their children- that being the very nature of theories being that it is not necessarily true. I think ID should be left to the religious institutions, not schools.
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