No, it's in his genes.

Obviously there must be an evolutionary advantage to beards....

Yes and apparently the cave fish has more "vibration receptors" then surface fish.

According to this article the fish are actually born with eyes and then grow a flap of skin over it.

James Hutton Principles of Agriculture 1797

That would be 211 years ago. Pinning down the specific DNA sequence/s is the next step!

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(By the way, I hate it that so many papers in the areas of planetary science and geology are not easily avaiable to the dreaded "non-subscribers". It is like they are screaming at me: "YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH". Good, I feel better now.)

I know you are a person who takes his physics seriously, but isn't it said that most great discoveries aren't discovered with "Eureka!" but with, "Hmmm, that's funny." Big Don

In my case, it means I'm too lazy to shave!

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Any day you wake up on "the right side of the dirt" is a good day.

T. Anderson

I have that problem...shave maybe once every other week...but I only end up with the scraggly Shaggy-from-Scooby-Doo look.

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I'm like one of those idiot savants...well, except for the savant part.

Theory of Zombie Relativity:
1) Everyone Else is a Zombie relative to You
2) Whether or not it matters is related to the inverse square of the distance between their teeth and your brain
(Quoted from Demigrog)

This is not limited to blind people. Sighted people can do it just fine if they're sensitive to it. I have been able to do it when younger, though I haven't experimented with it lately. We called it a "third eye" (though I'm not sure that term hasn't been recoined for other purposes).

Is that a Fashion Statement Kapt.?

In my case, it means I'm too lazy to shave!

Shaving is an unnatural act - possibly punishable by God.*

I'm sighted, but amazingly even with my eyes closed I can still sense when I've walked face-first into a wall. Maybe I should call up Randi?

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I'm like one of those idiot savants...well, except for the savant part.

Theory of Zombie Relativity:
1) Everyone Else is a Zombie relative to You
2) Whether or not it matters is related to the inverse square of the distance between their teeth and your brain
(Quoted from Demigrog)

I shave (or at least trim) quarterly. On (or near) the equinoxes and solstices.

__________________
Any day you wake up on "the right side of the dirt" is a good day.

T. Anderson

Truly you are gifted.

A beautiful study was published in the January 8 issue of Current Biology
There is also a summary in Science News, but only available to subscribers.

A summary from Science Daily
This study is wonderful evidence of evolution, by showing random changes in separate populations lead to a similar adoption to a similar environment. It also is strong evidence against Intelligent Design, since one would have to explain why the Designer would use different genetic paths in different cave fish populations, to achieve the same result.

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At night the stars put on a show for free (Carole King)

I agree, and interesting reading too.

Thanks for the links Swift as this cleared up some standing questions I had as well.

Actually it isn't evidence of anything either way, and certainly isn't strong evidence against Intelligent Design. These fishes genomes became more specialized because of their environment. Your assumption is that any intelligent designer simply plopped life in all it's myriad forms into each and every nook and cranny on Earth and those lifeforms have no ability to adapt to different environments. That's a big assumption.

I could get some guppies and inbreed them generation after generation until they could play the banjo and whatever I end up with would not prove anything about intelligent design or evolution. All it would prove is that in a particular environment (my evil laboratory) these fish were subjected to a process that directed their genetic "fitness". In this case "fitness" would be that no mating could occur that was not a parent/child cross which would bring out tons of recessive genes, some good and probably most bad. I'm sure I'd find a few fry in a few broods that lacked eyes along with the ones with Mick Jagger lips and the ones with legs. So I'd toss out the ones that had eyes, breed the ones that didn't, and after a few generations of that nonsense I'd have a solid line that had no eyes.

Personally I think some of the ideas presented earlier were solid. A group of fish is trapped in a cave for whatever reason and when the chance to get free came along the ones with eyes "saw the light" and took off leaving their blind buddies behind to wonder why all the complaining about it being so dark stopped.

Think about it this way. What would the probability be of conducting the experiment I outlined above two or more times and hitting the exact set of genes resulting in no eyes growing in all sets? I'll bet I could get all the sets to develop babies that had no eyes, but it is unlikely that these experiments conducted separately would hit the same genes each time.

There are some people who believe that a god created the Earth and took off. So if that happened, and that god just happened to create life that used dna as a blueprint, nothing that occurred on Earth would disprove that god created everything.

You also assume that you are smarter than any intelligent creator because you assume that traits you judge as bad or unfit could not have been "by design". Perhaps the ability to adapt to any niche is more brilliant than dying as soon as the environment changes.

Ok, so everyone jump in and attack me now. Make your assumptions about my beliefs, be rude, say whatever... I've posted on another thread that there are evolution zealots who say nasty things and I need examples to prove a point to the person I was debating with over there. Fire away!

You got it.
You are operating under some assumptions and misconceptions of your own.
To really nail this one home, you would have to claim that the creation took place at the beginning of everything- the Big Bang and THEN the creator took off right after that.

The burden of proof is not on evolutionists to disprove a creator exists (That can't be done) but on the I.D. believer to prove that one does.
Evolution (As Stutefish corrected me on) removes the need for a creator- strongly suggesting that if one is neither found in evidence, observation nor a necessity, then it is probable one does not exist.
Can that be Proven? No.
We also cannot "prove" that we landed men on the Moon. We can however, study the evidence and draw our own conclusions.

Also, achieving the same sets would not be duplicating what happens in nature. Lastly, the process occurs over a very long time. Long enough that even with bad odds, there is still a high probability of the odds getting spot on over millenia.

I do agree, however, that adaptation and evolution is an amazing and mind boggling process.

Not nasty enough to prove my point.

But you didn't point out any... Did you? Ah, who cares. It isn't important.

Nope. I believe God created the Universe thirty seconds ago. I'm a Thirty Second Creationist and I believe the Universe has existed for exactly thirty seconds. Everything in the Universe has been created exactly as it is by God, thirty seconds ago.

Dear God, Creator of the Universe, Creator of all that was, is, and ever shall be, please reveal yourself to these few life forms on this jerkwater planet out in the sticks of the Milky Way because they don't believe you exist. Amen.

Now we wait...

Did you guys let God know about that or did he disappear when you arrived at your conclusion?

Why, did the wind and rain erase Neil's footprints?

I'm not sure I understand this. I'm saying that I could produce similar results myself, which would mean within what remains of my lifetime. I certainly do not believe it would take thousands of years for a small group of fish stuck in a cave to inbreed to the point where they had no eyes. If you said ten years, or around a hundred, I'd buy into that, but not thousands or millions of years.

Now here's the interesting question. Why did all these isolated groups of the same kind of fish head into caves and dial into eyelessness on their genome? Also, is it an assumption they have been in these caves for millions of years? Are there little eyeless mexican fish fossils somewhere? I'm not saying there aren't, I just want to know how they came up with millions of years. Is that according to some calculation that states that X amount of change occurs over T amount of time and these fish calculate out to millions of years according to an equation? Where is the empirical evidence in that?

I'm working on my nastie's

Yeah, I actually have a reason for that. But... I'll give one.
Assumption one: You assumed that swift assumed that a creator plopped us down without the means to adapt. That assumption doesn't even make sense.
Can we get a do-over?

Since evolution removed the need for a creator- we just sent out a memo.

No, but the sun did eat the flag.

That was my fault for not being clear.
The millenia I refer to is to demonstrate how even the unlikely odds can have a chance of appearing when given enough time.

If I play the Lottery, buy a ticket every week, the odds are very against me.
But if I buy Lotto tickets over the course of thousands of years, I am bound to win eventually.

I'm curious as to why you said "the same kind of fish headed into caves."
Where is your evidence for that claim?
If a whole bunch of fish got trapped in a cave- then all this time later we see one primary species that survived over all others- this does not mean that all the same kind of fish headed into the cave. It means that species survived over all others.