And if you look at other animals we have today, that have branched off and thrived in different environments, they all follow the same basic pattern which can be traced back to common ancestors or points in time where it 'split' and developed into two different species. Like the eye is often considered to be the most complex thing we have, or at least, it's always used in this argument (Paley's Watch - watch is complex = designed by watchmaker, eye is complex = designed by god). But if you look at other animals alive today, most have quite similar eye systems, to the extent that we can look at other animals and tell if they see in colour, or how well they see, or all number of things, just by how they relate to our own eyes and how we see the world. We can't climb inside a dog and see how they see, but we know from our understanding of the eye, that dogs can't see colour too well. A long long time ago, when mammals began to rule the earth (very small mammals), we all shared the same eye. Then through mutations and different environments, different species were 'born' which either had enhanced the eye or lost the use of it but still thrived in environments where sight wasn't needed. Fast forward millions and millions of years, and we have humans, that have developed quite sophisticated eyes that suit our environment.
Also you have to think about the slow passage of time. It's easy to look at how suited an elephant is to its landscape or how bats hunt at night and so have sonar and are blind, and think 'they're perfectly designed for how they need to live'. But that's just an illusion because we're only alive for a blink of an eye of their whole existence and evolution. Elephants today have such wide feet because that mutation helped elephant ancestors survive in such harsh environments, for example. And what we now consider bats, as they are today, are that way because at some time an ancestor had a very basic version of sonar and it helped him eat more because he could hunt in the dark and catch things unaware. Then it had a baby that also shared that mutation, and eventually along this line a bat was born with a stronger sense of sonar. Obviously I'm simplifying it, for my own benefit more than anything, but basically eventually we have today's bats that hunt exclusively (I think) using sonar at night, because it helped them survive.
And like Gopher said, I respect if you keep your opinion about life being too complex for evolution, that's fine. But from the evidence I've seen and from what I understand about Evolution, it is basically irrefutable. Until new evidence suggest to me otherwise, the theory of evolution is the best we have at explaining the present.
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Topic: [Quarter 1] 2012 WX Forum Roll Call (Read 653 times) Share