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Monday, August 23, 2010

Eye Opener


I am currently reading Richard Dawkin's The Blind Watchmaker". Although Dawkins' style does not really conform my taste, still he makes many good points that totally change my original anti-evolutionary bias. After all, how could an eye suddenly grow on someone's head and how can random change bring these changes about in such a small time scale of only a few billion years?

I still have many questions (how did the first DNA get created, e.g.) but I have 'evolved' in the meantime and I am looking forward to the rest of the book.

In the meantime, I came across a website with an article called "Top 10 Signs Of Evolution In Modern Man" (hat tip: NuBemet). It has 10 good arguments against the idea of a perfect Creator.

It shows some 'mistakes' of creation. All these fuckups faux passes can be ascribed to remnants of evolution. They also concern a favorite item of the kiruv clowns and evolution bashers - the eye:

If you watch a cat blink, you will see a white membrane cross its eye – that is called its third eyelid. It is quite a rare thing in mammals, but common in birds, reptiles, and fish. Humans have a remnant (but non-working) third eyelid (you can see it in the picture above). It has become quite small in humans, but some populations have more visible portions than others. There is only one known species of primate that still has a functioning third eyelid, and that is the Calabar angwantibo (closely related to lorises) which lives in West Africa.

If you still wonder how it could be that the eye evolved, even though half an eye doesn't do much, I invite you to watch the below video (a true eye-opener!):


6 comments:

  1. I am not convinced.

    AS C.S.Lewis noted, atheism is a boy's philosophy!

    Theists do not claim the universe is perfect. If the universe would be perfect, then what would be the point of Heaven, a perfect existence to be rewarded after this life? Imperfections in this life only go to show God did not make this world perfect, which does not hamper design in the universe. The universe made good enough to support life, but the perfect existence is one that will be rewarded to those who earn it :)

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  2. Yup, evolution is one of the truths that isn't intuitive without some level of investigation and contemplation. Being raised with "evolution is nonsense!" dogma is not helpful either.

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  3. Hey, new reader here! I feel a little weird about this, since you don't know me, but it sounds like you're on a journey of inquiry similar to mine and I thought I'd be presumptuous and offer some recommendations--things that I would have liked to have someone around to link me to, oh, about a year or so ago, I guess?

    First of all, I'm not sure if you realize this or not, but it's worth remembering that the question of the origin of life forms a field of study separate from evolution, called abiogenesis. After all, evolution can answer a lot of things, but it isn't some catch-all--there are plenty of questions left. There are a number of theories of abiogenesis, some of which sound like scifi, I swear, but it's worth looking into.

    There's a basic FAQ here about abiogenesis that you might find useful: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/abioprob/

    Actually, that whole general FAQ is great for a lot of basic science questions (http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/list.html#CB0) and I love this library, too, for a slightly more in-depth look at all kinds of questions: http://www.infidels.org/library/

    And this one is a bit of a tangent, but I don't know if you've ever heard anything from Lawrence Krauss, about the origins of the universe itself? It gets a bit technical, but he's very funny and engaging and I think it was worth a watch for me, anyway: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ImvlS8PLIo

    I'm restraining myself from linking you to my entire "atheism and science resources" tag in my delicious, lol. Hope you find at least some of this useful :)

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  4. I would suggest you try some of Dawkins' other books on evolution. The best general introduction is the newest, Evolution: The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution.

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  5. Anonymous: Many thanks, will look up the links and follow up. Feel also free to email me at undercoverkofer (at) gmail.com.

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