Can anyone explain how the moth got it's owl eyes?

Thurston-howell-III said:

"Evolution" depends on DNA so why do you shy away from discussing the evolution of DNA? The start of life is which evolution is founded and is required by evolution as the starting point.

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Do you need to understand the full production method of steel and electronics to know how to repair a car?

The start of life is not what evolution is founded on, and while the first life form IS needed for evolutionary process to work, it is not a necessary element of evolutionary theory. Evolution just needs life to be there. That's it.

CoreyD said:

I find Understanding Evolution – Your one-stop source for information on evolution to be a good source.
This is a good quote. Would you agree with it?

... “need,” “try,” and “want” are not very accurate words when it comes to explaining evolution. The population or individual does not “want” or “try” to evolve, and natural selection cannot try to supply what an organism “needs.” Natural selection just selects among whatever variations exist in the population. The result is evolution.

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Why are you responding to me?

Thurston-howell-III said:

I am making that claim because all codes come from intel, PERIOD. coded information only exists in the realm of conscious minds.
Show me one that doesn't.

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No, that won't work. The trick has already been exposed.

Thurston-howell-III said:

I am making that claim because all codes come from intel, PERIOD. coded information only exists in the realm of conscious minds.
Show me one that doesn't.

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DNA.

Now you need to show HOW it was created by an intelligence, as well as showing that it WAS created by an intelligence. All the other codes can be done so easily. But showing intelligence behind DNA has not once been shown.

expos4ever said:

It seems to me that you are not properly accounting for the role of natural selection. Yes, mutations are a matter of luck, I suppose. But luck is not all that is involved - natural selection is also at play, and is simply not a random process.

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The thing about natural selection is that it can only select from whatever genetic variations exist in the population due to mutation, and these variations are random.

Though natural selection acts on these variations "in a very non-random way", and variants that aid survival and reproduction may be selected, that does not add up to "perfection", neither does it mean that mutation over generations will all be positive - leading to... "the perfect mechanism for survival".

Since mutations are random, although a single mutation might be beneficial, mutations occurring at the rate they do does not give the likelihood of variants aiding the organism, more of an advantage.
If there is an example out there of this, here might be a good place to show it.

According to popular culture, it seems that mutations mainly cause either cancer or superpowers. Of course, the cancer is true enough. But in the real world, beneficial mutations are rare. Most mutations have no effect or a detrimental effect. And major evolutionary change (e.g., the “superpower” of flight in bats!) generally involves the accumulation of many, many mutations over many, many generations.

Moths have not only adapted a very effective camouflage mechanism, they know how to use it extremely efficiently.

Warden_of_the_Storm said:

Why are you responding to me?

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I thought we were allowed to respond to anyone we are on a public forum with.

Also, I noticed:
Warden_of_the_Storm said:
That's quite a nonsensical statement and shows that you don't get how evolution works. We don't know the exact number of mutations for anything because that's not something that science is able to answer. But to say 'as many as needed' is accurate. Trial and error is the name of the game when it comes to evolution, and it would take many, many, many tries, especially for creatures as short lived as moths.

I was hoping to help you appreciate that those statements are not accurate for describing the process of evolution.
I will not respond to you if you don't want me to.

Thurston-howell-III said:

"Evolution" depends on DNA so why do you shy away from discussing the evolution of DNA? The start of life is which evolution is founded and is required by evolution as the starting point.

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But it doesn't matter to biologic evolution how that life started. If you're right and an intelligence is required, that's perfectly fine as far as evolution is concerned. If the first forms of life were created by an intelligence, evolution took off from there. Like I said before, you're not arguing against any current scientific theory.

CoreyD said:

I thought we were allowed to respond to anyone we are on a public forum with.

Also, I noticed:
Warden_of_the_Storm said:
That's quite a nonsensical statement and shows that you don't get how evolution works. We don't know the exact number of mutations for anything because that's not something that science is able to answer. But to say 'as many as needed' is accurate. Trial and error is the name of the game when it comes to evolution, and it would take many, many, many tries, especially for creatures as short lived as moths.

I was hoping to help you appreciate that those statements are not accurate for describing the process of evolution.
I will not respond to you if you don't want me to.

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It would be interesting to see how exactly my statement is incorrect or inaccurate since everything I've been taught and read is that, in its simplest form, evolution is just trial and error on a biological stage.

Warden_of_the_Storm said:

It would be interesting to see how exactly my statement is incorrect or inaccurate since everything I've been taught and read is that, in its simplest form, evolution is just trial and error on a biological stage.

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I already posted it, but you did not respond to, or acknowledge it, so I am not sure if you were interested in it.

Here is a copy paste from that post.

Misconceptions about natural selection​

Because natural selection can produce amazing adaptations, it’s tempting to think of it as an all-powerful force, urging organisms on, constantly pushing them in the direction of progress — but this is not what natural selection is like at all.

First, natural selection is not all-powerful; it does not produce perfection. It’s all about getting genes into the next generation, and if your genes are “good enough” to do that, you don’t have to be perfect. This should be clear just by looking around us: human populations carry genes that cause disease, plants may not have the genes to survive a drought, a predator may not be quite fast enough to catch her prey every time she is hungry. No population or organism is perfectly adapted.

Second, it’s more accurate to think of natural selection as a process rather than as a guiding hand. Natural selection is the simple result of variation, differential reproduction, and heredity — it is mindless and mechanistic. It has no goals; it’s not striving to produce “progress” or a balanced ecosystem.

CoreyD said:

I already posted it, but you did not respond to, or acknowledge it, so I am not sure if you were interested in it.

Here is a copy paste from that post.

Misconceptions about natural selection​

Because natural selection can produce amazing adaptations, it’s tempting to think of it as an all-powerful force, urging organisms on, constantly pushing them in the direction of progress — but this is not what natural selection is like at all.

First, natural selection is not all-powerful; it does not produce perfection. It’s all about getting genes into the next generation, and if your genes are “good enough” to do that, you don’t have to be perfect. This should be clear just by looking around us: human populations carry genes that cause disease, plants may not have the genes to survive a drought, a predator may not be quite fast enough to catch her prey every time she is hungry. No population or organism is perfectly adapted.

Second, it’s more accurate to think of natural selection as a process rather than as a guiding hand. Natural selection is the simple result of variation, differential reproduction, and heredity — it is mindless and mechanistic. It has no goals; it’s not striving to produce “progress” or a balanced ecosystem.

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I read it and saw nothing in it that stated that my description of evolution as trial and error was incorrect or inaccurate. I never once stated that evolution creates a perfect organism or strives to, only that it works with what it has. That it takes as many mutations as is needed for a creature to evolve whatever it needs in its population to survive and thrive is an accurate representation of what the evolutionary does.

You're making arguments against things I didn't say.

Warden_of_the_Storm said:

I read it and saw nothing in it that stated that my description of evolution as trial and error was incorrect or inaccurate. I never once stated that evolution creates a perfect organism or strives to, only that it works with what it has. That it takes as many mutations as is needed for a creature to evolve whatever it needs in its population to survive and thrive is an accurate representation of what the evolutionary does.

You're making arguments against things I didn't say.

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Perhaps I should have posted the other part in that same post.
This is why “need,” “try,” and “want” are not very accurate words when it comes to explaining evolution. The population or individual does not “want” or “try” to evolve, and natural selection cannot try to supply what an organism “needs.” Natural selection just selects among whatever variations exist in the population. The result is evolution.

However, please forget that I said anything, if you really believe you did not say anything this information applies to.

CoreyD said:

Perhaps I should have posted the other part in that same post.
This is why “need,” “try,” and “want” are not very accurate words when it comes to explaining evolution. The population or individual does not “want” or “try” to evolve, and natural selection cannot try to supply what an organism “needs.” Natural selection just selects among whatever variations exist in the population. The result is evolution.

However, please forget that I said anything, if you really believe you did not say anything this information applies to.

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Then I will forget it because I did not say any of things you think that I have said.

Thurston-howell-III said:

Evolution is based on chance luck, do you run your life on luck?

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Yes. We all do. Random events, over which we have no control, occur globally, locally, within our network of friends and family, and personally that impact on us to a greater or lesser extent. We then select how we will respond to those events, thereby modifying the impact. This personal evolution is analagous to biological evolution, but the bottom line is that it starts with luck.

Thurston-howell-III said:

The Universe only has 10^160 electrons.

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You don't know that because you don't know how big the Universe is.

Thurston-howell-III said:

There is!
“Information, transcription, translation, code, redundancy, synonymous, messenger, editing, and proofreading are all appropriate terms in biology. They take their meaning from information theory ( Shannon, 1948) and are not synonyms, metaphors, or analogies.”
(From Hubert Yockey , Information Theory, Evolution, and the Origin of Life, Cambridge University Press, 2005).
Yockey’s work is far from being anti-evolutionary material about information theory; Yockey is in fact an evolutionist.

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Nothing in that demonstrates teleology. This puts DNA in a different category to intentionally created codes. If you've got any evidence of the coding in DNA being intentionally created, present it.

Also, citing Yockey is rich, given that he's essentially arguing that there's a fundamental split between chemistry and information when it comes to

"The idea that ‘life is chemistry plus information’ implies that information is ontologically different from chemistry, but can we prove it? Perhaps the strongest argument in support of this claim has come from Hubert Yockey

...

In a long series of articles and books, Yockey has underlined that heredity is transmitted by factors that are ‘segregated, linear and digital’ whereas the compounds of chemistry are ‘blended, three-dimensional and analogue’. Yockey underlined that: ‘Chemical reactions in non-living systems are not controlled by a message . . . There is nothing in the physico-chemical world that remotely resembles reactions being determined by a sequence and codes between sequences’

What is information? Marcello Barbieri, 2016


From that same article:

"Wächtershäuser [2, p. 492] claimed instead that ‘information is a teleological concept’, and gave a specific example of the conflict between chemistry and teleology: ‘On the level of nucleic acid sequences it is convenient to use the information metaphor . . . and apply teleological notions such as “function” or “information” . . . but in the course of the process of retrodiction the teleological notions, whence we started, fade away. And what remains is purely chemical mechanism’.

...

"We realize in this way that there is no more teleology in organic information and in the genetic code than there is in the quantities of physics and chemistry. Sequences (organic information) and coding rules (organic meaning) are descriptive entities and are absolutely essential to the scientific
study of life. -

What is information? Marcello Barbieri, 2016