At the risk of stepping on a moderator's toes...

The link and perhaps a short, relevant passage from the article are sufficient. Reproducing the entire article is a violation of copyright and forum rule #4.

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Brett
Peters Creek, Alaska

that's an important point. What is neutral in one environment can be an advantage or disadvantage in another.

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'The eye can only see what the mind is prepared to accept'

Neverfly...

If you're nosing around Talk Origins, I recommend this article for a start.

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Brett
Peters Creek, Alaska

Thank you. Nosing may not be sufficient to describe it. More like snuffling.

This I can understand.

It's not an advantage or disadvantage, however, as time passes the mutation results in the eyes fading simply because they are useless. The mutation is not corrected.

But what are the odds of this random mutation happening to any and all creatures that are trapped in a cave and never see light?
They all seem to always end up blind or eyeless.
Time?

Nice article, coliver, but please explain how it supports your (ATM) ideas.

Wow, I thought there were some politics going on here. Now I know why everyone keeps trying to hide me. I just got this off of Talk Origins. And searched out the term Behe. I see now I just stepped into a major controversy.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/AS...talkorigin-20/

As Captain Swoop says, there can be positive advantages in that environment (less resources, another thing to get damaged). But even without that, my question is why wouldn't it happen? There will be mutations that will cause blindness, and in this case there isn't anything that enforces the requirement for vision. The only question is how long it takes and that depends on the reproduction rate of the species.

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I say there is an invisible elf in my backyard. How do you prove that I am wrong?

Disclaimer: Avatar is not an official NASA image and does not imply any specific interplanetary or interstellar capability.

The Leif Ericson Cruiser

Are you arguing for irreducible complexity? The issue with Behe is that the has some bad scientific arguments he trots out against evolution.

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I say there is an invisible elf in my backyard. How do you prove that I am wrong?

Disclaimer: Avatar is not an official NASA image and does not imply any specific interplanetary or interstellar capability.

The Leif Ericson Cruiser

Yeaaahh... I thought of that too.
By then I had already posted.

No, I dont even know what it means really I just didnt know there was so much going on related to my own observations. From what I read in the few clips of the books I saw at the link I posted, I would probably be more inclined to maybe Michael Denton?

Im going to get "Origin of Species" and "A Theory in Crisis" etc.. and see if I can learn something from both?

Peters, your back, Glad to see you I hope you know I am only joking and being sarcastic when I rail off at times? I can take the criticism, and I may stick my foot in my mouth at times, but Im just trying to look at the issue from all perspectives without bias and learn from knowledgeable people like yourself

Yeah, That was my mistake. I realized the article was the same a sthe link that after I had posted it.

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Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by ignorance or stupidity.
Isaac Asimov

I couldnt find a link so I just deleted it. It was from a Talkorigins discussion. My mistake, I suppose that would be priviledged information.

coliver, I asked you to explain how the article you linked provides support for your proposal that organisms intelligently direct their own mutation based on feedback from the environment. In response, all you can point to is a suggestion that bacteria may mutate more quickly than previously predicted. So what? The article itself suggests several reasons (clonal interference, for instance) why previous predictions may have severely under-estimated the mutation rate. Nowhere was it said that these findings necessitate the invention of another evolutionary mechanism beyond selection pressure and mutation. To put it simply, this article does little, if anything, to support your idea of intelligently directed mutation. You're really grasping at straws here.

Im just suggesting that when selective pressures are applied that a lot more activity is present resulting in a higher rate of ADVANTAGEOUS Mutations. Which suggests that input may be being evaluated as to whether or not switching genes on or off would be benificial. The end result would be More advantageous mutations.

http://www.physorg.com/news94740855.html

Mutation: changes to the base pair sequence of genetic material (either DNA or RNA).

Your article only discusses what information bacteria may exchange to influence what genes are turned on and off. Bacteria exchanging information to influence whether certain genes are expressed, ok. I could be wrong, but this has nothing to do with inducing changes in the genetic material itself. Nothing to do with mutation, in other words. Your habit of citing articles that lend no support for your claims is getting old.

If you're going to go buy and read Denton's "Evolution: A Theory in Crisis", you might want to keep these links handy:

TalkOrigin's critique
Another critique

Others have said this already, but please go take some time to educate yourself about evolution. You can't critique what you don't know. TalkOrigins, as suggested by captain swoop, is an excellent place to start.

Wait. Hold on. Haven't read this entire train-wreck, so correct me if I'm wrong.

You start a thread proclaiming Darwin was wrong. You handwaive through more than 400 posts, until you admit you haven't even read "Origin"?

Get thee to a library!

And please answer relevant questions posed to you. I have no desire to move this rambling yet again, but BABBling is not a place to have threads merely to escape the burden of challenge and response here at BAUT.

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"I have this theory that the Apollo missions were faked when NASA found out that general relativity was wrong because the Earth was expanding due to the Sun's iron core being influenced by magnetic waves from the electric universe after being perturbed by Planet X and thereby causing global warming. Where should I start a thread about this?" ~ ToSeek

"Those are the people that wonder how a thermos knows whether to keep something hot or keep something cold." ~ NeoWatcher

Input into a chemical system, not a cognitive process. Nothing takes the signal from the chemical receptor and makes a decision—the chemical triggers an immediate change in the function of the organism. Think of it like a light switch hard wired to a light bulb.

Well, this is a situation for Occam’s razor. On one hand there is a simple, easily modeled explanation for a behavior—chemical responses. On the other hand there is an undefined “intelligent” process for which there is no obvious mechanism or evidence. Easy choice, in this example.

It is one thing to mimic an intelligent looking response, another to actually be intelligent. An intelligent system would be distinguishable by non-linear responses—in an evolutionary context it would be statistically unexplainable mutations, particularly changes that seem to greatly reduce the fitness of a population in the short term in order to reach a longer term improvement in fitness. Even then you have to be careful to study the population as a whole—a sufficiently large population is going to have enough genetic diversity to have a few individuals that randomly follow a non-linear path to improvement. If the rest of the population dies off and leaves this lucky strain alive, and somebody were to come along and study it without knowing about the huge dead population, it is going to look like something intelligent guided the process.

Its kind of like Sherlock Holmes dazzling people with his deductions—amazing until he gives you the steps in his reasoning, then—how absurdly simple!

Of course, I at least agree with you that mutation and selection are probably not the only forces at work in evolution. I think in the long run we are going to be amazed at how large a role things like epigenetics play in evolution.

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