Tuesday, November 28, 2023

Why Richard Dawkins Is An Underbright Lying Twat


For some unknown reason, YouTube burped this excerpt of a greater debate featuring famous atheist Richard Dawkins, and some polite creationist (I frankly couldn't care less about the latter's identity or bona fides; he's an irrelevant variable) onto my feed.

You can watch this entire segment if you like, or even the entire program (it's on YouTube) and nonetheless be stupider for the time wasted.

Dawkins, and by extension Darwin, and all the lazy idiots of similar ilk always default to a knee-jerk lie, rather than address the actual question in this segment.

His idea that there's a "ramp of improvement", like Darwin's half-assed and ignorant suppositions in the mid-19th century, rest on wholesale ignorance of the physiology of vision. Darwin had an excuse: the science hadn't been performed then. Dawkins, however, is simply intellectually lazy, and deliberately mendacious, because by now, the mechanisms enabling sight, particularly human sight, are far better known and such research widely propagated. 

The problem enters in when, rather than addressing the ponderous hole that physiologic truth has blown through his atheistic codswallop, he lazily chooses to simply lie his way around the Great Wall Of Reality into which he's just been run headfirst, at speed.

To wit:

One cannot have "only a quarter of an eye, only a hundredth of an eye, or half an eye, is better than nothing " (3:50ff).

Basic physiology disagrees:

It doesn't work like that.

In the trade, there's a technical term for what you are when you have a half, a quarter, or a hundredth of an eye (and by this we mean not just the eyeball itself, but the entire cascade of processes enabling vision): BLIND.

Darwin, and Dawkins, have a four-year-old's scientific apprehension of how vision happens, which he exhibits in this debate, and which he shares with fellow lunkhead Casper Milquetoast, scientific imbecile, and Defender Of The Faith. Milquetoast should have trounced Dawkins' retardedly facile explanation and mopped the floor with him at that point, but he wasn't bright enough to attempt that, lacking even the most rudimentary concept of vision physiology  himself. As this was programmed, he was either controlled opposition, or deliberately chosen for being this ignorant. The Washington Generals are everywhere, and about as obvious.

The so-called "debate", therefore, is simply a real-life exhibition match between Dumb and Dumber, to make the most annoying sound in the world.

The actual process of phototransduction, which is how reflected light and images are transmogrified into mentally usable images in the brain, is incredibly ridiculously complex. The idea that all the physical structures and biochemical processes that make those structures needful and useful all aligned precisely from beginning to end simultaneously out of random chance and selective evolution is akin to positing that a flight-worthy 747, whole, fueled, and ready for takeoff, would spontaneously generate from enough tornadoes hitting an airplane boneyard. Frankly, of the two cases, the spontaneously assembled 747 is the likelier of the two, by orders of magnitude.

Sh'yeah, that engine could just appear randomly too.











There are thousands of biochemical actions and reactions in the cascade of vision, which have to happen immediately in forward and reverse, acting on microscopic and specialized physical structures that accommodate those processes, every fraction of a second, to get the image from one single light photon to the retina. And as many again to get from the retina to the visual cortex. And then it has to instantly reverse to reset the rods and cones so that you can receive the next image, rather than have visual imagery locked on, or see life like a flickering silent-movie-era projection, flickering in and out forever. And it has to happen the next instant. And the next. And the next, endlessly and seamlessly. As it has since you were born.

If any of the bio-mechanical structures of vision are missing or flawed, you won't see, at least not well. If some certain of them are missing, or if any one of those hundreds of thousands of biochemical and bioelectrical processes fail, you don't see dimly; you're simply and completely blind.

So you can't have any "fraction" of an eye, and build any delusional "ramp of improvement" on that. You have to have the whole process, top to bottom, front to back. There is no reason to expect 99.9999% of them to "evolve" and hang around just waiting perpetually, when they'd serve no purpose without the missing piece(s). One does not see a hubcap, and imagine an entire automobile will eventually spontaneously assemble around it either, and for the same reason: the entire idea is delusionally recockulous.

We'll leave off the problem of the lack of the billions and billions of fossils of blind animals necessary, even over billions of years, before sight developed. The process, even for relatively "simple" eyes in the animal kingdom, is all or nothing. And it's no more likely to have spontaneously and randomly generated than is the computer screen, tablet, or smartphone you're reading this on to have just been burped up by the cosmos out of blind luck.

In Dawkins' delusional universe, these fall off of trees too.














Dawkins, and Evolution since Day One, skips that conundrum by saying, in effect, "but a Galaxy 1 is better than no Galaxy, and an iPhone 1 is better than nothing", which begs the question of how you got from Og and Thag beating on hollow logs to having any Galaxy or iPhone at all, plus the entire cellular telephone network worldwide, without someone to build them in the first place. Just like eyes, and a vision process.

Dawkins knows that (if he doesn't, he's a gibbering moron), and were he ever smacked in the face with that frozen mackerel of truth he's spent a lifetime ignoring, by someone scientifically brighter and rhetorically less handicapped than segment opponent Casper Milquetoast (which is an incredibly low bar), he'd dissemble, dig in and double down. Or else be forced to admit that his pet theory and favorite philosopher is so much codswallop, and had to be for the decades and decades of physiological discoveries of the complexity of vision, of a magnitude never imagined by 1800's dimwit Darwin. But I doubt, with Dawkins being so invested, intellectually and morally, in the lifelong lie, he'd ever be intellectually honest enough to admit that he, just like Darwin, had a grudge against the idea of the divine or supernatural, and both had therefore sunk their spurs into the idea that there is no god, because it makes the rest of their pathetic existence tolerable and comfortable, not to mention lucrative.

He's entitled to go to hell in whatever way he sees fit to do so; that's free will in action.

But to make it his life's work to try and bamboozle others by deliberately ignoring the utter lack of any scientific underpinning for his delusions, and furthermore ignoring the monumental evidence to the exact contrary, and outright lying about both in support of his line of twaddle, is quite inarguably and inexcusably monstrous and damnable.

But it obviously calms the simple-minded on their way to the abattoir.

43 comments:

June J said...

Dawkins found a good scam with plenty of dim witted followers who are willing to keep him well paid.

brian said...

And yet for all of that, the only thing you can offer is the same as literally every apologetic ever written:

"I don't know, therefore God."

Anonymous said...

So what you are saying is that life is so complex it couldn't have evolved but had to be created by intelligent beings, or a god. So who created the god...

elysianfield said...

If not evolution, then magic.

Greg said...

I've read Dawkins, and Hitchens, and others of the same ilk, AND their counterparts in the Intelligent Design faction to the point that I find it all very tedious and boring. I am of the Robert Anton Wilson school of Radical Agnosticism. And lest it be said that RA is a cop-out, I assert that our feeble, partially evolved, chimpanzee brains are not remotely capable of apprehending reality. It's not about God, it's about everything, the fundamental structure of reality. Quantum physics hasn't a clue WHY the six fundamental constants are what they are.
I have gone considerably further than the vision argument into molecular biology, and yes, science can demonstrate spontaneous generation of lipid vesicles, ribonucleic acid polymers, and amino acid chains, but none of that can explain lipid encapsulated, nucleic acid directed, protein generation in the unfathomably complex array needed for the most simple bacterium. It doesn't matter how many billions of years of "primordial soup" is posited, it just doesn't add up. I have yet to hear any argument, from anyone, to assert anything beyond profound ignorance.

Aesop said...

@brian and Anonymous,

Grade: F.
Reading comprehension fail.
Show the class where I said "I don't know, therefore God", or anything like.

As John McLane said to Hans, "Oops.".

So the gun you tried to point at me turns out to have no bullets.

So take another whack at reading what I actually wrote, without coloring it with your own prejudices, nor putting words into my mouth, and note my ire is directed at those who cling to the pseudo-science of Evolution as a viable theory, when it's no such thing, nor anything remotely possible, and employed nearly every single time as simply a cop-out to excuse an anti-deistic agenda.

That doesn't equal "Therefore God", nor did I anywhere suggest otherwise.

Not grasping that obvious point is why Dawkins, and you, continually fail.
I didn't write anything here that posits God, nor suggest any such thing.
You could look it up.

I just pointed out Darwinism is blown to doll rags.
Bummer, huh?
Kind of leaves people who cling to that failed religion sucking wind.

Notably, neither of you chose to engage the original point on the merits, because you cannot.
Color me shocked.

If you're any kind of intellectually curious and honest, why ignore the entire thesis to get to your underlying agenda?

And if you're not, why pop off at all?

Thanks for reinforcing my points.
Your emperor is naked.

brian said...

@Aesop -

I'm sorry, I figured that you actually meant something when you wrote:

"...had a grudge against the idea of the divine or supernatural, and both had therefore sunk their spurs into the idea that there is no god, because it makes the rest of their pathetic existence tolerable and comfortable, not to mention lucrative."

And you seem quite insistent that vision had to come about in one great lump. Now maybe I'm wrong to take from your writing that you believe that the whole of everything, including vision, can only be explained by having been created by an external force, but you really seem to be leaning on the whole "god" thing.

I don't know Dawkins' arguments, I've never read him. And Darwin's guesses are just that - guesses. We know far more than Darwin did, and the idea that complex systems like hearing or vision developed by emergent processes is not really all that far fetched.

The idea that the entire universe was created ex-nihlio by a supernatural dude that can neither be measured nor perceived however?

Aesop said...

@elysianfield,

Well, that may be your solution, but it wasn't mine.
If that's not your position, but rather simple sarcasm, you're in the same camp as Brian and Anonymous, tilting at a windmill you brought to the party.

@Greg,
I'm not peddling beliefs here. I'm pointing out gargantuan holes in junk "science".

"I have gone considerably further than the vision argument into molecular biology, and yes, science can demonstrate spontaneous generation of lipid vesicles, ribonucleic acid polymers, and amino acid chains, but none of that can explain lipid encapsulated, nucleic acid directed, protein generation in the unfathomably complex array needed for the most simple bacterium. It doesn't matter how many billions of years of "primordial soup" is posited, it just doesn't add up."

Truth.

God will not be proven, nor disproven, scientifically.
Science is about experimental repeatability.
I have yet to hear anyone suggest any possible experimental construct for either purpose that didn't demonstrate profound ignorance.

People should stop using science to tackle questions beyond its realm.
The idea that nothing is outside the realm of science is a religious assumption a priori, which explains the pseudo-scientists' fury to pursue heretical responses to their one true faith.
But as you noted, practitioners of sciencism cannot fabricate an old enough system to account for the current realities. This frustrates them to the point of attempting obvious deceit.
QED

Angantyr said...

Too bad you weren't on the debate panel - the entertainment value would have been off the charts to see Dawkins squirming. Only problem is I'd put on 10 pounds from popcorn alone....

brian said...

@Aesop -

"I have yet to hear anyone suggest any possible experimental construct for either purpose ..."

Yet.

50 years ago, it was a dead certainty that nothing escaped from a black hole. We now know that is not true.

The weakness here is that some people just cannot accept "I don't know yet" for an answer, and therefore decide that science is inadequate to the task, and alternative explanations for phenomena are required.

And I'm not the one that brought religion and supernatural explanations to the party, you did. Multiple times.

Aesop said...

@brian,

Your apology for leaping to conclusions is accepted.

Trying to shoehorn more of your pre-conceptions into your apology shows it to be less than honest.

I offered an explanation of the motives of Darwin, Dawkins, and countless others, borne out by both first-hand and second-hand experience.

The whole of vision cannot have evolved from random hops, on any time scale, when to have it at all would require the equivalent of the collected works of Shakespeare to be shat out with no typos simply by having billions of people eat alphabet soup.

But I don't have to give birth to a steer myself to recognize a mound of bullshit when I see it. Dawkins has built his whole life's philosophy on that as a foundation. Darwin's Theory is taught at innumerable institutions of allegedly learned people as scientific fact, and to dispute it is regarded as intellectual treason. Dawkins' entire appearance on that program was in service of that narrative, which is so fundamentally flawed a middle-schooler could undo it.

And as to

"The idea that the entire universe was created ex-nihlio by a supernatural dude that can neither be measured nor perceived however?"

The salient question for you becomes, "From whence are you bringing that concept (completely missing from anything in this post) to this party, and to what end?"

Aesop said...

brian,

Either quote me - directly and verbatim - from that above post, and tell everyone where I "brought religious or supernatural explanations to the party".

If you can't do that, you're simply not bright enough to carry on your end of the conversation, and kicking you further for that basic lack of comprehension is therefore unfair.

The concept that explaining Darwin, Dawkins, et al's animus for religious explanations without expressing an opinion myself in either direction has evidently blown all the gaskets in your head.

How sad for you.
You have thence proceeded to supply words and thoughts unuttered by me anywhere in the post, and having constructed your Straw Men, seek an audience whilst you tilt at them.

10 yard penalty, and loss of down.

In the immortal words of Ice Cube: "Check yourself before you wreck yourself."

Aesop said...

And this, kids, is why eyewitness testimony is so notoriously unreliable.
brian, bare minutes after reading the post, and with literally the entire post to peruse and review at his leisure, has manufactured an entire argument based on faulty powers of observation, comprehension, and recollection.

Greg said...

Thanks for bringing up the distinction between Science and Scientism. Science is a method, nothing more, and has been enormously successful within its cognitive framework. Scientism is where the train of thought derails into garbage. One of the requirements of true science is profound humility: to be able to discard ones most cherished research if the facts compel it. Therein lies why true scientists are so rare.
One of the fields of philosophy is Aesthetics. I find the contemplation of the profound beauty in the mysteries of science to be one of the doors to wisdom.

Borepatch said...

The idea that nothing is outside the realm of science is a religious assumption a priori, which explains the pseudo-scientists' fury to pursue heretical responses to their one true faith.

Bingo. What's hilariously ironic is that Dawkins' One True Faith is a non-theistic Calvanism. Moldbug wrote about this years ago: How Dawkins Got Pwned. If you haven't read this, you should.

Anonymous said...

I don't know. Seems to me the closest @Aesop got to a religious statement there was that Dawkins was entitled to go to hell in any way he chose. That's easily read either way, but since he is a stickler for detail, I'd think if he meant for it to be religious, he'd have capitalized, "Hell".

Dawkins is being deceitful, no doubt in my mind. Darwin said flat out that if there were something that could not come about by gradual steps, each an advantage, his model would not explain it. And now there are a plethora of examples which show Darwin's gradualism is not up to the task. I don't think Dawkins is a stupid man; he must know the holes in the model. So why hasn't he at least added Gould's insight to his model? Probably not just a rookie mistake. Pride, maybe? A fear that having to abandon gradualism in some cases might be exploited by his interlocutors?

Regardless, Dawkins has to know that Darwinian evolution is not a complete explanation, at the very least. It is intellectually dishonest to try to trick people who lack his level of understanding with the "1% of an eye" BS.

Borepatch said...

@Greg, you can find humility in the School of Engineering, because bridges fall down otherwise. Engineering is science that works.

Today's later day Sheldon Coopers are entirely uninterested in humility; they're interested in grant funding. That's why scientific progress has noticeably showed down.

Aesop, not trying to comment spam you with the links, but everything is pertinent to this discussion.

TechieDude said...

You hit upon the main argument against evolution - there are no 1/2 steps.

We've never found intermediate steps for anything evolution. And many of the mutations would have been fatal. One of the books I read had to do with finches. To get the 'specialized beak' that it had, an intermediate step would have made it unable to eat.

Eyes aren't the only biological processes that are incredibly complex.

Dan said...

Currently we have two theories to explain how we got here. Darwin's Evolution or religion's holy creation. I'm unaware of any third hypothetical argument.
Either we choose Evolution, as flawed a theory as it is or we choose Creationism, which has ZERO tangible evidence to support it. With evolution we take what evidence we can find, postulate theories and try to explain what we see. With creation theory we don't need that pesky evidence. We have FAITH, a BLIND belief that isn't allowed to be questioned. The problem with creation is it requires a deity, a higher power who waved their hand, or their tentacle,claw, whatever and wished everything into existence. If that is what happened why wouldn't such an omnipotent, omniscient being PROVE they exist, they made everything. Instead we are supposed to just "take in on faith". Sorry. But I am rational. If a god exists and we are supposed to believe the they made everything it's not unreasonable to want some actual proof to back that up. Till then I will stick with a theory that while flawed and incomplete at least has some tangible evidence supporting it. And if the theoretical deity takes offense...he can get his ass back here and provide proof of our error regarding evolution. Till then this deity...and creation are in the same realm as Santa Claus. Fiction.

Mahtomedi said...

Greg.

C.S. Lewis and Mortimer Adler would concur. That's good company.

T-Rav said...

This comment thread is proof that watching evolutionists find out they're not as smart as they think they are will never not be funny.

JC said...

An oldy from Fred Reed

https://www.unz.com/freed/the-bugs-in-darwin-580/

Termite said...

Agnostics and non-theistics are understandable.

But Atheism is a religion, despite what it's adherents claim.

Anonymous said...

So no clue who created god! For all you know it could have been through evolution. Wouldn't that be ironic. But A+ on dodging the question.

Stealth Spaniel said...

Thanks for bringing this yahoo up for the class to see in action. I listened-ad nauseum- to idiots of his ilk for many college classes. Thankfully, I had my brain on straight before I crossed the darkened path of "College Education" in all of its starcrossed malarky. Without God, there is no SCIENCE. Before any of us were called to the forefront, The Magi visited The King of Kings by "reading the stars". Pharmacists originally needed to be Botanists-BEFORE- they could attend pharmacy school. In another words, you needed to understand nature and man. I have always found it sad that most pharmacists these days have zero understanding of nature. It explains why researchers in U.S. laboratories kill more than 110 million animals in wasteful and unreliable experiments each year. Each year, more than 110 million animals—including mice, rats, frogs, dogs, cats, rabbits, hamsters, guinea pigs, monkeys, fish, and birds—are killed in U.S. laboratories for biology lessons, medical training, curiosity-driven experimentation, and chemical, drug, food, and cosmetics testing.

John Wilder said...

And let's not even get to folding proteins.

Aesop said...

@Anon 6:28P,

1) The Question, earnest lackwit, was How Did Eyes And Vision Come About?
So if we're going to point fingers about who's dodging questions, you're ahead by a country mile. Hypocrisy is a poor way to say "Hello".

2) I didn't posit "god", thus see no need to explain the creation of said entity, irrelevant to the immediate topic. If you want answers to your questions on wholly separate topics, search for yourself, or start your own blog, and see who shows up. You brought your own Straw Man here to this discussion, as was noted at the outset, and you can jolly well cart it back to your car trunk and toddle off, if that's all you brought to the party.

3) If that sophomoric attempt at "Gotcha!" is the best you can do, you're not tall enough for this blog. Probably not for the internet. Having thus failed abysmally, scuttle back under your bridge. And if you can't abide personal attacks, best not to bring them to rational debates.
_____

@Dan,

It's not quite so dichotomous. Among many other possible theories are: another advanced race of beings somewhere in the cosmos seeding planets like this with offspring a la Johnny Appleseed: or a pre-existing civilization on this planet, of whom we've long since lost all identifiable trace. (Both of which answer the current question without answering ultimate questions, but such is much of reality.)
Just for openers.

Evolutionism is merely a failed religious explanation, which much like movie sets of Dr. Frankenstein's lab is possessed of sciency trappings but no real substance, and with even less actual evidence than most religions, including the Flying Spaghetti Monster. It makes Ray Stantz in Ghostbusters look like a serious scientist by comparison.

That's why I ridicule it as any sort of serious contender for the attentions of any thoughtful persons, and instead relegate it to the maliciously stupid and deceitfully lazy.
Like poster-boy Dawkins.

Anonymous said...

OK on god you are an agnostic. So then you must believe in evolution. Those are the two choices. You can't enter into this argument and then say I refuse to discuss certain aspects of it. Well, you can but it is disingenuous and cowardly.


Evolution is proven and can be seen by the naked eye. Can you search diligently and find gaps in evolution that can be used to argue against it? sure. Have at it. But what is the sense in that if you got nothing!

Oh wait! You do have something... Name calling!

Aesop said...

NOOOOOOO!

1) I haven't expressed any beliefs or lack of them here, which is why there's nothing I "must be". This concept keeps kicking your ass.
"Darwinism Is A Mound Of Bullshit" ≠ "Therefore, God"
So the only thing I must be, to be logically consistent, is anti-bullshit.
Now, knowing that, ponder why you're having such a tough time here.

2) Theistic creation and evolution aren't the only two choices. Scroll back up through previous replies and educate yourself even a little. (It won't hurt. Much.) False Dichotomy is another fallacy. Just like Straw Man. I'm not "refusing to discuss certain aspects of it". I'm simply refusing to be drawn into your Straw Man argument, on the grounds that it's wholly irrelevant to the point of how vision came to be. Natural Selection, as an optional explanation, is entirely inadequate, and has no possibility of explaining the existence of something so immensely complex.
Darwin was limited by his childlike understanding of human anatomy, physiology, biochemistry, and probability. These are rather important when forming even a half-assed theory claiming to reconcile the origin and progression of all of earthly life. His excuse was that he was simultaneously pissed off at God, jackassically stupid, and born at a time when scientific knowledge of these things was still in its infancy. That's always a toxic stew.
What's your excuse?

3) Evolution hasn't been "proven" by anything. Words mean things. You still haven't even demonstrated nor explained to any degree of adequacy how an eye "evolved". That's not a "gap". That's proof that it's bullshit. Darwin himself noted this.

"If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.." - Charles Darwin

You could look it up. And you obviously should, since clearly you haven't read that far in a book that was released nearly a century ago. So it's you who've "got nothing".

4) I'm not calling names. I'm applying taxonomy. When someone's arguments are sophomoric twaddle introduced with pejorative and invective, there's no point in lying about that to cover up such obvious rhetorical and logical shortcomings. So you've already failed two of the three fundamental subjects of the Trivium, back to when Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle were teaching it. This is something the ancient Grecian equivalent of grade-schoolers were expected to master.
Own your mental capabilities - and lack thereof - with pride. Or, shock the world and educate yourself on the universe of things, just on this narrow topic, about which you obviously know absolutely nothing. Whittle down that cavernous black hole of Things You Don't Know About. Your only service to the internet and this blog, at this point, is a negative example to them, and a cat toy for me.
And you still haven't answered on the subject topic in any of your responses. At some point, the probability of why that is goes from "won't" to "can't". Evidently the dog ate your homework. Best wishes in your future endeavors.

You could start with "The complexity of vision proves Darwin's Theory Of The Origin Of Species, by his own admission, is manifestly nothing but untenable hogwash."
Work forward from that point.

Anonymous said...

But Darwin was right. Evolution is real and provable. If you have a dog it is an evolved dog and someone with an IQ of 100 can do it themselves. There are a billion provable examples of evolution. To deny it is just stupid.

As for vision... What would possibly make you think vision could not come abut through evolution? It is a nifty talking point BUT I have to point out that you and I have vision, eyes that see, and there is no other possibility except that they evolved. Seriously! What other possibility is there?

Steve said...

Part of the problem is that strictly speaking, Dawkins is not really a classical Darwinist. He is much more fixated on the role of genes from an information theory point of view. But in seeking to be accessible to those without that kind of background, he has to riff off what someone with a high-school understanding of evolution can grasp. And for that audience, it all sounds fine, but as @Aesop has tried to explain, it sounds fine only to those who don't really understand evolution.

Dan (I'm assuming) if you have a genuine interest seek out pretty much anyone's treatment of Stephen Gould's Punctuated Equilibrium. Or, heck, Gould's book itself. It's geared to a reasonably intelligent high school grad. It, too, is not sufficient, but it does present a functional explanation of "gaps" in the fossil record, which "evolution" is really bad at.

If you are up for the challenge, check out something like Brian Goodwin's How the Leopard Changed His Spots. He merges complexity/chaos theory and information theory into biochemistry. As an aside, he was in the camp that saw no problems with gradual evolution of the eye, not because of the outdated idea of Darwinian gradualism, but because of some esoteric details about resonance in chemical equilibria, which, if it turns out to be true, would go a long way in explaining why there is not enough information in the human genome to make a human from scratch, when obviously, there is. His published papers are way beyond a reasonably intelligent college grad who studied something other than biochem, so while interesting if you have the background to understand them, they are not light reading.

But again, not sufficient. How did the information get encoded to permit the proper protein folding that @John Wilder mentioned? That's left as an exercise for the reader. ;)

Aesop said...

@Anon 11:18A,

But Darwin was right. Evolution is real and provable.
No he wasn't. Gainsaying Fallacy. -10 yards and loss of down.

If you have a dog it is an evolved dog and someone with an IQ of 100 can do it themselves. You cannot "evolve" a dog. Bred ≠ "evolved". Evolved requires a gain in function. The change over time you're talking about is small "e" evolution. No one's arguing that wolves cannot or did not branch out into Pomeranians and Pyrenees. But Large "E" Evolution is recockulous and wholly unsupported. Horseflies do not become horses, on any time scale supportable by evidence.

There are a billion provable examples of evolution. To deny it is just stupid.
Gainsaying fallacy, again. Additional -10 yard penalty, and loss of down. You're now in danger of scoring an own goal, at 3rd down and 30. Warm up your punter. To assert what you have absent any factual support is what's stupid. And pointless.

As for vision... What would possibly make you think vision could not come abut through evolution?
The fact that it all had to evolve simultaneously, from eyes to brain, including literally thousands of separate structures already tuned to the thousands of necessary biochemical reaction to enable even the simplest cascade of vision. This is directly contrary to all evolutionary theory, which Darwin himself admitted from the outset circa 1859. The word for a theory that cannot be disproven is "religious belief". Trying to defend such a quack hypothesis with religious fervor, rather than scientific rigor, is why you, Dawkins, and every deluded evolutionist fails.

It is a nifty talking point BUT I have to point out that you and I have vision, eyes that see, and there is no other possibility except that they evolved. It's not a "nifty talking point, it's a kill-shot, straight to Darwinism's empty head. You think that eyes evolved? Show your work. No one in history has been able to explain the unimaginable complexity of vision evolving ex nihilo, by any amount of random chance over any time frame within the realm of plausibility.
Since you're evidently handicapped by knee-jerk logic, let's lay out the magnitude of your problem:
You need simultaneous structures, composed of multiple subassemblies, called rods and cones. Within each one, there are seven different sub-structures necessary to process one photon of light. Just one rod has to process 800 separate chemical functions, including a feedback loop, so that your vision is seamless.
Then you need 120,000,000 rods and 6,000,000 cones in just the retina. In each eye. Then all the other structures of both eyes: retina, iris, musculature for focusing, aqueous humor. Tis all has to come from the factory attached to optic nerve (nerve being a misnomer, it's actually a part of the brain, not the nervous system per se.
Then you need hundreds of thousands of instantaneous chemical processes to evolve from none of the above, simultaneously. Then you need a visual cortex in the brain to control direction of vision, focus, and interpretation of images, hundreds of millions of times a second, in real time.
If any of the structures on a binary Got it/Don't got it continuum aren't all there together, you're not partially sighted; you're blind. Utterly and totally.
(cont.)

Aesop said...

(cont.)
A mousetrap has but 10 individual pieces. No one with an IQ above room temperature at McMurdo Sound, upon finding one, would posit, "Hmm, how curious. This mouse trap simply evolved over time." If they did, they'd be referred for psychological treatment for delusional psychosis. And there's no gain-of-function until the mousetrap has all ten pieces in the right place, simultaneously. This is the textbook definition of a structure too complex to be accounted for by Natural Selection.

That's for ten extremely simple pieces.
In binary, that's only a 1 in 512 chance of lining up all ten pieces at the same place and time, and nine places more than evolution can account for through evolutionary gain of function steps, and such is rightfully seen as a recockulous hurdle for natural selection.
For the human vision system, it would be hundreds of thousands of binary places, (call it even 1 x 10 to the hundred-thousandth power) none of which would individually convey any gain of function unless and until all the pieces happened at the same time, violating the immutable Prime Directive of Natural Selection: "survival of the fittest" requires every step to be a gradual improvement over time, conveying the gain of function that 99.9999% of those pieces cannot, without the missing piece. At. The. Same. Time. Like has never happened ever, and cannot, according to Darwin's dead-end theory.

That's not even as complex as finding a completely random-generated airworthy 747, pre-flighted and fueled, idling for takeoff in your driveway when you wake up tomorrow morning.

Pray, tell the class how that evolved from blindness, and where all those blind failures prior to the first working prototype are to be found in the fossil record.
Show. All. Work.
Hand-waving and gainsaying don't cut it here.
Darwin knew it. Dawkins knows it, and long has. Now you do to.

Seriously! What other possibility is there?
After walking all around the elephant in the room, you've finally stumbled over the exact question at issue.
Bravo.
Pray, do not get up, dust yourself off, and continue to run into the walls or spout unsupported religious orthodoxy, rather than answering that question with something besides fallacious quibbling and a total inability to grasp the root of the problem if one clings to the codswallop espoused by Darwin, Dawkins, et al.
You're dangerously close to an epiphany here.
Don't muck it up.

Anonymous said...

Bred ≠ "evolved"

Wrong again! Exactly the same mechanism but controlled by man rather than by chance and millions of years. Look at what an ear of corn looked like 2000 years ago. Evolution is all around you BUT if you continue with the ≠ Well, you will miss the point.

Another point often used to "prove" evolution wrong is we can't find some things and there are gaps. Well, duh! No one was keeping records. What was left to discover and was discovered is all you got that does not mean there was never evidence to explain the gaps is simply means you don't have it. It would be like throwing a 1000 piece puzzle on the floor but keeping 100 random pieces hidden and then challenge people to put the puzzle together well they can't... completely. To YOU that means it is ALL wrong as in ≠ But you're wrong you just don't have the missing pieces.

Aesop said...

Retarded again!
Controlled by man ≠ natural selection.
Controlled by man = "intelligently designed".
You've just shotgunned your entire argument in the crotch. Repeatedly.
And then made the entire case for creation.
Well-played, yet again.
You scored a safety against your own team, and now you're doing the end zone dance and spiking the ball!
You really aren't tall enough for this discussion.

You don't have "gaps". You have insurmountable Grand Canyons.
All imagination, lacking any factual underpinning.
Your flowchart looks like this: BLIND + hundreds of thousands of missing steps = VISION.
Which is pretty much Darwin's entire speculative theory, in a nutshell.

And by postulating something that cannot be disproven by any means, you have defined a religious belief immune to reason and logic, to a "t".
Once again, this appears to be news to you, and you have no idea how you've dynamited any chance of proving your point.
You not only don't understand what the answer would look like, you don't even understand the most basic part of the question.

You've literally made it impossible to prove your thesis, while once again dodging the central question (in case you thought no one noticed). Waving your hands and shouting "missing steps" isn't an explanation. The correct statement is "You have no fucking idea to even know where to begin. But eyes, therefore a million things you cannot begin to explain."

You're not missing 100 pieces. You're missing 100,000 pieces, and then trying to explain one physiological system on the basis of a childlike misunderstanding of the complexities involved.
It's cute with 4-year-olds.
When it's adults, it's simply profound mental retardation.

Stop, while you're only 4,000,000 points behind, with two broken legs, and a midwit IQ.
This is like the Dream Team playing a basketball game with the Munchkins.

Anonymous said...

You have no vision, no understanding. The mechanism is there naturally. Evolution is natural. That humans can see this and use it to cause an effect doesn't mean that it must be used by human or other intelligence. But never the less you panicked, grabbing "intelligence" as the alternative to evolution brings back that question; if a greater intelligence created man than who created that greater intelligence. Conversely if even barely intelligent men can utilize the naturally occurring evolutionary predisposition of living organisms imagine what millions of years and chance can do. You simply cannot doublespeak your way out of this argument. Your only choice will be to admit you have no clue or continue to call names. Somehow I suspect your choice will be to again shoot the messenger.

Aesop said...

You've brought no message but pure unsubstantiated gainsaying, since your first
lame attempt.
Then doubled and tripled down.

Natural evolution is how wolves become poodles.
But neither of them could evolve a vision system that requires the simultaneous development of dozens of specific physical structures and thousands of biochemical processes all at once. Without that entire chain, there is no gain of function. The system is too complex to evolve bit by bit, which disproves Darwin's entire spurious notions, based on his own childish 19th-century misunderstanding of what was involved.

And let's be clear: it was you that dragged in human intelligence as the guiding force behind brute-forcing "natural" selection. The problem (besides violating every precept of Darwin's Theory, and simultaneously appropriating intelligent design and calling it Evolution) is that none of the human-sponsored breeding changes involve a gain of function. The dogs are simply cuter, and/or more appealing to humans. They aren't stronger, faster, smarter, more capable, or longer-lived, and absent deliberate breeding, would wink out of existence through natural counter-breeding undirected by humans in a generation or less. Or be eaten by fitter predators. Or starve. This is why everything you put forth is Total Fail: you don't even understand your own argument, let alone how to defend it.

Since you want to ramble, you can answer your own question on that greater intelligence you think impossible: What difference does that answer make to anything? None whatsoever. It's a scientific null.

The only difference is on philosophical and theologic grounds, with no scientific value of stake whatsoever, which leads to the inescapable conclusion that exactly as stated in the OP, you too are scared witless by the concept that there may be any higher intelligence, let alone a supernatural explanation, at play in your imaginarily closed system.

So, just as with Darwin and Dawkins, this isn't about science: it's about you.
Color me shocked.

You persist in thinking millions of years + chance = everything, and pull that excuse out of your hindquarters as if it were a portmanteau explaining the universe. Even Darwin himself admitted that was not possible. So you don't even understand what Darwin wrote.

You can, indeed, suppose Dawkins' "ramp of improvement".
Right up until you run into the vision cascade, which requires simultaneous development of multiple structures and thousands of biochemcial processes.
Otherwise, you have an organism with continued blindness, and no reason for natural selection to prefer that dead end any more than an organism without it.
Therefore Darwin's Theory of Natural Selection And the Evolution Of Species fails.
QED
Say it with me.

(cont.)

Aesop said...

(cont.)
That's not double-speak, great Question-dodger, that's reality, smacking you across both cheeks like a wet halibut swung at speed.

Darwin himself, by his own words, stands in accusation at your continued hand-waving and gainsaying, absent any proof of a single contention, and your steadfast determination to avoid, at all costs, answering that problem the only honest way you can: by admitting the whole theory is a monstrous fraud, disproven by the simplest of observations: no species "evolves" something infinitely more complex than Darwin ever imagined eyes and vision to be, on his brightest day. (And that's a very low bar.)

He could hide behind the scientific ignorance of the 1860s.
You, Dawkins, et al have no such recourse.

Thus you simply stick your fingers in your ears, and insist the evidence of the very system your farcical Theory cannot explain doesn't exist.

Your pig-headedness score: 100%
Your basic intellectual honesty score: 0%

There's no need to shoot such a mute messenger; you've gut-shot your pet theory, and any credibility on the topic, so many times it would take the better part of an hour just to tally them up.

You've thus forfeited the match, every single time you were up to bat.
We've wasted far more time on your sophomoric twaddle than it deserved, just to prove the point: You've Got Nothing.
Scuttle back under your bridge, and take a chance on 5th grade science.

Steve said...

@Anon @7:51 AM

The real problem you face is that by it's own mechanism, it prevents evolution of multi-part structures.

Imagine something with 2 necessary parts. Neither serves any purpose by itself. For argument's sake, say random mutation produces one of these parts, and this part requires only 10 kCal per day to sustain. Something negligible, on the order of 1 soda cracker's worth of calories.

What does natural selection predict? That when a population faces shortages of food (the basic condition of life since forever) those wasting calories on that wasted organelle will be at a disadvantage, and will be selected out of the gene pool, right?

You called on @Aesop to use his vision, his understanding. I'd challenge you to do the same thing. Visualize not 2 necessary organelles or systems, but instead 10,000 or more. Visualize not just getting in a lucky few years of plentiful food, but rather requiring millions of years of plenty, millions of years without a drought, or a late spring frost, or an early fall frost. Do you really not see the leap of faith required?

mongoose said...

Aesop, my friend, I make no argument with your general idea that evolution does not explain the extraordinarily complex and wonderful phenomenon of animals being able to see stuff. There's lots of sciency stuff to explain and science is only a few hundred years old really. But it isn't true that the full complexity needed to be "evolved" at some single step.

For instance, you are covered with an organ called your skin. Close your eyes on a sunny day and walk out into the garden, raise your palm to the sky and you will be able to feel the sun. Your palm or even the cheek of your face will receive the "light" - non-visible light, different wavelengths - and your brain will be able to identify the direction of the sun. Your palm or your cheek will "see" the sun, and your brain will interpret it and you can then adjust your cheek or your palm to find the direction of the maximum. Point your finger. You have detected the source of some electromagnetic radiation and pointed at it. You have pointed your finger at the sun and you are a new miracle.

I'm not trying to be argumentative but just to give an example of "seeing" which isn't the full complex marvel. We have a first step, and maybe there could then be a second step.

Helpfully!

Anonymous said...

" The system is too complex to evolve bit by bit" And yet that is exactly what happened and the evidence is everywhere.

"Darwin's entire spurious notions, based on his own childish 19th-century misunderstanding of what was involved."
Thias isn't about Darwin. He was only one of a million serious scientists who have asserted that evolution is fact.

There really is no viable alternative to evolution.

Aesop said...

And still you do nothing but gainsay the indefensible!
Small primates can reason better than that.

"If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down." - Charles Darwin, Origin Of The Species, 1859

Cornea, iris, lens, aqueous humor, retina, globe, a dozen separate opposing individually-responsive muscles, the skeletal socket to hold it all, the skin and muscles to protect it, 120,000,000 rods, 6,000,000 cones, another seven separate structures in every one required to process a single photon and reset seamlessly thousands of times a second in 100,000,000 colors, and an unbroken chain of communication to the visual cortex, which represents 60% of all brain function via hundreds of thousands of biochemical and synaptic activities cannot "evolve" simultaneously by gradual steps.

To persist in that error with just hand-waving and gainsaying mumbo jumbo is to admit profound mental retardation.

Darwin's theory was absolutely broken the day he proposed it (he just didn't know it was overtaken by events thousands of years before writing), and still earnest lackwits persist in trying to defend it without a shred of evidence, by claiming no other theory could possibly explain reality.

That position, that something cannot be wrong no matter what, is the sine qua non of a religious dogma, which very thing is anathema to scientific method.
The last popular expression of it was the fixed belief of almost all of science that the earth was the center of the solar system, and that Galileo was therefore a heretic.

Eppur si muove.

Try googling all of that instead of leaping to conclusions, and see if you can develop better thinking muscles. Right now, you're the starfish competing in the marathon.
It's gone beyond comedy relief to pure retard-kicking farce.

Anonymous said...

I never thought I'd agree with the aesop...

After being wrong on covid19 AND Ukraine, I thought he'd be wrong forever...

I was wrong.

Evolution has failed 99.9 percent of the time. Nitwits complain about species going extinct and still believe in evolution.

Evolutionists who do not believe in God believe humans are the first forms of life to evolve...period...we humans, are the first...therefore, we can create our own moral code since no other code has ever existed to be used as a guide.

Evolutionists who do not believe in God believe the 6 billion years prior to Earth's existence, evolution was on hold...waiting for the first human...to evolve.

Good work, Aesop. You are worthy of capitalization...today.