Evolution v Creationism

[Sigurd]

I believe we basically agree, my trusted old sparring partner - even though you sound a bit like a 1927 Volvo crying 'I did not descend from a Fiat!'

Of course there is more than physical similarity. Mutation has been observed both in vitro and in the field, for instance. The main problem besetting neo-Darwinism (gradualism) seems to be that mutation does not add information, hence does not explain the increasing complexity of successive organisms. A second problem for gradualists is that so-called 'transitional' forms of features (such as the eye) would never present an evolutionary advantage over previous forms.

This is why Richard Dawkins was always left speechless (except for gobbledygook or insults) in debates with that great American mind Stephen Jay Gould.

It may, in future. But various proposed transitional forms between reptile and human in particular would have had terrible disadvantages leading to extinction. Of course blindness can be a transitional stage toward human perfection, in which case you and I would be prime examples. In that order, mind you.You are just the tonic that this forum needed.

You are referring to the vertebrate eye or to any Creationist (I was about to write Creationalist ) objection called irreducible complexity. On this I must jump fences a bit because on the eye issue the current science has discovered that each part made the light-detecting apparatus more adaptive, even in the absence of some or all of the other parts. The old theory was that each part of the eye can't function without the other and only the sum of working parts makes it a functional eye, hence it would seem not to fit in with evolution.

I guess I'll drop my question whether you had alternative hypotheses on one or more aspects of speciation. Mind you, I wasn't asking you to explain Askthepizzaguy in one go. That's too tall an order for even the direst evolutionist.

I don't really subscribe to any of the theories out there as a true agnostic. But should I once decide that there is a God (edit: ok that sounded a bit cocky - I meant to say: Should I come to the belief that there is a God through personal revelation), I would look more into the watchmaker analogy or Intelligent Design.
There is still some areas which can still be called non sciences.
a few previous non sciences has become science in this century f.ex. geopoetry -> geoscience and cosmology. There were no way of testing hypotheses in these areas in the past and therefore they were non sciences. Today there is one particular which is called origin of cellular life. It seems it is still an irreducible complexity. But hey, someday it might not. Science advances into non science areas all the time as history testifies to. The origin of cellular life could lend an ear to the watchmaker anolgy, but then it becomes a Aquinas fallacy doesn't it?

[Adrian II]

You are referring to the vertebrate eye or to any Creationist (I was about to write Creationalist ) objection called irreducible complexity.

About the complexities: yes, some are apparently irreducible - at this moment in time. Complexities that were previously considered irreducible can now be explained because the workings of regulating dna have been gradually explored.

Most of the regulating dna in (all) animals has remained unchanged for at least five hundred million years. It encodes organising principles, not just protein production codes. This insight has resulted in a an emerging school of thought in biology, called 'evo-devo'. You have probably heard of it, but anyway. Evo-devo considers evolution as a competition between opposing and/or complementary organising principles, which find expression in organisms of successively higher scales of complexity. It could explain apparent jump-mutations in ways that gradualism can't.

Speaking of gradualism, regulating dna also explains the evolution of the eye. The regulating part of dna, called 'eyeless', was isolated in 1995 by a Swiss team. In other words, the code for the human eye has been there since five hundred million years ago, but it has found its present expression only in Habilis and his contemporaries.