AB,
I am well aware of attempts by very clever people to postulate a method by which the eye could evolve by discrete steps.
It’s not “attempts by very clever people”, it’s facts and evidence supported by experiments and modelling and testable predictions. That the people doing it are often very clever is a good thing, not a bad one but even if they weren’t either the facts and evidence would stand on their merit or they wouldn’t.
But can you not see that this is showing just how intelligently guided evolution could work?
“Intelligently guided”
anything could work any way the intelligence wanted it to. The conjecture is though not supported by the evidence and it's unnecessary given that evolution demonstrably works without it. It would also incidentally seem an odd way for an intelligent designer god to work – vast numbers of trial and error events, with only a very few succeeding.
The big assumption in such illustrations is that the specific mutations required for each step in the process will occur naturally by unguided random forces over time.
No, the “big assumption” is that the end (or current) results were the intended outcomes all along. Once you dispense with that assumption, all becomes clear.
The harsh reality is that such a specific sequence of mutations could never be produced by random events.
No, the “harsh reality” is that probabilistically people and giant redwoods and dragonflies may seem unlikely given the countless interactions of random mutations with environments they required, but it’s still a problem that disappears once you remove the daftness of thinking that these particular organisms were in some way the intended outcomes all along.
The DNA molecule can be likened to a huge computer program with billions of instructions needed to construct and maintain a human being. From personal experience, I know that random copying errors in a computer program produce errors, not enhanced results. And you need someone intelligent to write the program in the first place.
No you don’t because the analogy is a false one. Random mutations produce adaptations that may or may not better help the organism to survive and breed in its environment.
No.
For natural selection to work, a beneficial mutation needs to give survival advantage. Implying that those without the beneficial mutation will not survive - hence extinction.
No, it needs a “survival advantage” only in the sense that it enables
populations with the mutation to establish, and that can be a localised phenomenon. There are countless examples of parent and daughter species co-existing.
Look, wouldn’t it be more honest if you just came clean here and said, “OK, I clearly know nothing about the theory I presume to critique but I don’t like it because it contradicts the version of religious faith I happen to have” and be done with it?
