DavidMcC wrote:...

"turned out to be a lucky break for the vertebrates" does not equate to good design!

"It's a pity that my original posts in richarddawkins.net are lost" they are not lost, and I did see them the first time around which is why I have previously commented that you seem to have a bee in your bonnet about this.

Re- "facing the wrong way", I do agree that this is badly phrased, it should be "wired the wrong way"

I still maintain that you were making up the comment about “one extra step to turn the retinae inside out” and the progression of mollusk to vertibrate eyes. The simulation as posted by Animavore above in no way shows 'steps that are all mollusk eyes apart from the last one', as you state yourself, this can't be discerned because of the "vagueness of the diagrams".
You have completely failed to back up these assertions.

That "self repairing circuits" link does nothing for your argument regarding requiring that the wiring be on top, in a traditional circuit board repair can be achieved by re-soldering from the top, however, the wiring is often still below the surface of the board often in multiple layers hence the term multi-layer board and is not analogous to the CCD devices used for imaging technologies anyway.

(I am sure that I have been through this before with you as well, maybe it was on the old richarddawkins.net site). Meh...

Well, JayJay, I guess I could say that's it's been fun discussing this nonsense with you but that would be a lie, and it's actually gotten boring having you misinterpret even what you've written yourself. Having you densely or purposely ignore and deny points of fact and blithely go on is no fun to respond to the second or third time.

You can have your stupid idea that picking up a stick can create a new genus, enjoy it. And I hope your fantasy of "atheist ideology" controlling biology and evolutionary thought provides for you warm fuzzy feelings.

It's enough for me to know that your foolish ideas have been exposed, as has your lack of reading comprehension and bias towards any fantasy that you lock on to.

DavidMcC wrote:

halucigenia wrote:Come on, admit it, you were making this up all along.

No, I damn well wasn't! Dawkins reson for publishing the simulation scheme already mentioned was that he saw parallels between them and various actual eye types. The problem was that all except the last were, or could have been, mollusc eyes, whereas the final one was a vertebrate eye (the penultimate being an octopus eye)! The gross structural difference between those last two was masked by the vagueness of the diagrams.

I don't think I'll ever understand why some people get such a hardon over bashing Dawkins for things he never said or wrote. I understand why creationists do it and love to quote mine and misrepresent him, but that doesn't explain why others do it.

EDIT: In short, I am saying that Dawkins was so keen to show what a "bad idea" the vertebrate eye is, that he failed to realise the big advantages over any invertebrate eye that it had, not withstanding the smaller problems associated with the more complex layout. Loss of vision is a bigger problem than the snags with vertebrate eyes, which are two "expensive" to simply throw away and replace every few years.

Again the argument isn't over whether the vertebrate eye functions well, it is over whether it's an intelligent design, and many people don't think that it is. It's similar to the long detour that the recurrent laryngeal nerve takes in animals with necks.

This confusion over whether Dawkins knew what he was taking about concerning the eye comes from the pax6 gene being present and performing the same function in cephalopods and vertebrates concerning development of the eye. Dawkins and others pointed out that this is evidence of a common ancestor, but some creationists got mixed up or just lied saying that Dawkins claimed that the human eye evolved from the cephalopod eye. What I don't understand is why people that aren't creationist insist on spreading this lie.

The way you tell if a cretinist is lying is to watch their mouth. If it moves they're lying.

Oldskeptic wrote:Well, JayJay, I guess I could say that's it's been fun discussing this nonsense with you but that would be a lie, and it's actually gotten boring having you misinterpret even what you've written yourself. Having you densely or purposely ignore and deny points of fact and blithely go on is no fun to respond to the second or third time.

It’s OK to end a discussion at any time but it’s not quite OK in my book, to use the ending as an excuse for unreferenced bad mouthing. With all my faults I’ve scrupled to do that.. For my part I have enjoyed our discussion. You have a good ability to see the point at issue.

Oldskeptic wrote:You can have your stupid idea that picking up a stick can create a new genus, enjoy it. And I hope your fantasy of "atheist ideology" controlling biology and evolutionary thought provides for you warm fuzzy feelings.

Small correction. It wasn’t picking up a stick that was capable of creating a new genus it was habitually carrying around a stick (and maybe a stone)and using those habitually in defense against predation by African predators who had as alternative prey, African antelope and baboons. It’s completely reasonable to look into the case that that would have been a game changer for the wielders body, brain, social organization and interest in objects.

In the case of the pom pom crab, an analogous habit is actually shared by members of a distinctive genus Lybia. Let me put in that charming pic again:



And the atheist ideology isn’t a fantasy. Give a sample of people a shared important idea, give them opposition and soon they will develop an ideology that protects and develops that belief. They might develop their own origin narrative, if their opposition has one. I’m baffled why you should deny it. Maybe it’s to do with a culturally dominant ideology gaining power by presenting itself to be the whole world.

Oldskeptic wrote:It's enough for me to know that your foolish ideas have been exposed, as has your lack of reading comprehension and bias towards any fantasy that you lock on to.

Sure Oldskeptic. You go well.

DavidMcC wrote:Sorry to be such a purist, and refer to the OP topic, but something was left unsaid throughout this thread (mainly because I did not look at it for a long time):
Dawkins misunderstood vertebrate eye biology for a long time, and that made him vulnerable to criticisms along the lines of the OP linked creationist article. He had not understood that the selective traits of the vertebrate eye were very different from those of the cephalopod eye, because the latter was based on maximum sensitivity to light, sacrificing maintainability, whereas the former sacrificed some sensitivity, but achieved a much greater useful life in daylight, making it possible for some vertebrates to be sometimes much longer lived, and hence bigger, stronger, cleverer than most invertebrates, who are compromised by the "design" weakness of their retinae from that POV.

EDIT: A key cell type in the vertebrate eye is the retinal pigment epithelial cell. This is the real work-horse of retinal maintenance, as one of its key functions is the daily recycling of the hindmost opsin discs in its associated photoreceptor cell.

I don't have any in-principle problem with the notion that for some developmental reason, the vertebrate eye might be wired non-optimally. But the other day I asked a trainee ophthalmologist if she had come across that notion and she said No, she hadn't. Either she hadn't been told of this "fact" or had forgotten it. That's the second time I've asked that of such a medical specialist, with the same response.

Strange that this factoid, familiar to everyone on this forum, isn't known to some intelligent people who spend their whole professional lives working with the eye. It might stand in the way of a useful attitude to their subject. This whole trope of regarding organisms as "jury rigged" is intrinsically sneery and inhibits deeper inquiry. It's important for the critic to claim to see an obvious defect at first glance. It's not uncommon to claim that a human engineer who came up with such a design would be fired. That's strange if one has any knowledge of what some engineers haven't been fired for. At one level it is an exercise in positioning the claimant in some high place, with an easily acquired critical overview of biological design.

But it sometimes happens, as you have pointed out in the case of the vertebrate eye, that on further inquiry the supposed defect isn't so clear. Further inquiry about anything is good and the jury-rigging trope inhibits it. And it's notable how trustworthy the search for function from appearance has been, how often it has yielded delightful insights. That delightedly satisfied curiosity must be what fuels the productive life sciences.

Jayjay4547 wrote: The ostrich is a bipedal adept sprinter. Its high-mass muscles are at the top of its legs, with relatively thin, long lower legs. Quadruped antelope prey species that are good sprinters embody the same logic of lowered inertia in the lower limbs. Modern man, who has inherited the gross features of australopiths, is known to be a poor sprinter,

Homo sapiens is a poor sprinter compared to other mammals, but outrivals most species as a persistance hunter.
Sprinting aside, given that against an ambush like predator such as a leopard, sticks and stones are going to achieve very little, you have to wonder if australopiths were so adept at selecting and using weapons as tools (of which there is no evidence for), why didn't this trait persist into later generations of hominids? Why were homo sapiens in africa living off a largely vegetarian diet which they supplemented with meat gathered from persistance hunting?

Jayjay4547 wrote:Glad to hear we can outsprint an elephant and a mamba. Seems we can also outsprint a squirrel, chicken, house mouse, spider, three-tailed sloth and garden snail.

With the exception of a few species, homo sapiens is quite capable of running them until they drop and invariably die of overheating. Homo sapiens didn't use weapons to use hunt meat in africa (the use of weapons and complex hunting strategies was very much the domain of neanderthal man), they used a hunting strategy ideally suited to certain key features of human biology.

Jayjay4547 wrote:

DavidMcC wrote:Sorry to be such a purist, and refer to the OP topic, but something was left unsaid throughout this thread (mainly because I did not look at it for a long time):
Dawkins misunderstood vertebrate eye biology for a long time, and that made him vulnerable to criticisms along the lines of the OP linked creationist article. He had not understood that the selective traits of the vertebrate eye were very different from those of the cephalopod eye, because the latter was based on maximum sensitivity to light, sacrificing maintainability, whereas the former sacrificed some sensitivity, but achieved a much greater useful life in daylight, making it possible for some vertebrates to be sometimes much longer lived, and hence bigger, stronger, cleverer than most invertebrates, who are compromised by the "design" weakness of their retinae from that POV.

EDIT: A key cell type in the vertebrate eye is the retinal pigment epithelial cell. This is the real work-horse of retinal maintenance, as one of its key functions is the daily recycling of the hindmost opsin discs in its associated photoreceptor cell.

I don't have any in-principle problem with the notion that for some developmental reason, the vertebrate eye might be wired non-optimally. But the other day I asked a trainee ophthalmologist if she had come across that notion and she said No, she hadn't. Either she hadn't been told of this "fact" or had forgotten it. That's the second time I've asked that of such a medical specialist, with the same response.

Strange that this factoid, familiar to everyone on this forum, isn't known to some intelligent people who spend their whole professional lives working with the eye. It might stand in the way of a useful attitude to their subject. This whole trope of regarding organisms as "jury rigged" is intrinsically sneery and inhibits deeper inquiry. It's important for the critic to claim to see an obvious defect at first glance. It's not uncommon to claim that a human engineer who came up with such a design would be fired. That's strange if one has any knowledge of what some engineers haven't been fired for. At one level it is an exercise in positioning the claimant in some high place, with an easily acquired critical overview of biological design.

But it sometimes happens, as you have pointed out in the case of the vertebrate eye, that on further inquiry the supposed defect isn't so clear. Further inquiry about anything is good and the jury-rigging trope inhibits it. And it's notable how trustworthy the search for function from appearance has been, how often it has yielded delightful insights. That delightedly satisfied curiosity must be what fuels the productive life sciences.

Jayjay, I suspect that your "support" comes from your religious belief that our eyes (and everything else) was designed by the great engneering genius in the sky, right? Well, wrong. Evolution by random genomic change and natural selection is wot did it, OK? No magic men involved.

Jayjay4547 wrote:

DavidMcC wrote:Sorry to be such a purist, and refer to the OP topic, but something was left unsaid throughout this thread (mainly because I did not look at it for a long time):
Dawkins misunderstood vertebrate eye biology for a long time, and that made him vulnerable to criticisms along the lines of the OP linked creationist article. He had not understood that the selective traits of the vertebrate eye were very different from those of the cephalopod eye, because the latter was based on maximum sensitivity to light, sacrificing maintainability, whereas the former sacrificed some sensitivity, but achieved a much greater useful life in daylight, making it possible for some vertebrates to be sometimes much longer lived, and hence bigger, stronger, cleverer than most invertebrates, who are compromised by the "design" weakness of their retinae from that POV.

EDIT: A key cell type in the vertebrate eye is the retinal pigment epithelial cell. This is the real work-horse of retinal maintenance, as one of its key functions is the daily recycling of the hindmost opsin discs in its associated photoreceptor cell.

I don't have any in-principle problem with the notion that for some developmental reason, the vertebrate eye might be wired non-optimally. But the other day I asked a trainee ophthalmologist if she had come across that notion and she said No, she hadn't. Either she hadn't been told of this "fact" or had forgotten it. That's the second time I've asked that of such a medical specialist, with the same response.

Strange that this factoid, familiar to everyone on this forum, isn't known to some intelligent people who spend their whole professional lives working with the eye. It might stand in the way of a useful attitude to their subject. This whole trope of regarding organisms as "jury rigged" is intrinsically sneery and inhibits deeper inquiry.

That's funny. There's nothing sneery about realizing that something is much more complicated than it needs to be and asking why it is that way, and how it can work as well as it does even so. What stands in the way of deeper inquiry are pseudo explanations making apologies that wave away the poor design based on how well it works.

It's important for the critic to claim to see an obvious defect at first glance. It's not uncommon to claim that a human engineer who came up with such a design would be fired. That's strange if one has any knowledge of what some engineers haven't been fired for.

But the claim isn't that a human engineer did it, now is it? It's that an intelligent engineer possessing vast or infinite knowledge did it, that's something quite different.

At one level it is an exercise in positioning the claimant in some high place, with an easily acquired critical overview of biological design.

The positioning of the claimant in some high place, with an easily acquired overview of biological design is that of the person claiming absolute knowledge provided by and based on revelation from their god.

But it sometimes happens, as you have pointed out in the case of the vertebrate eye, that on further inquiry the supposed defect isn't so clear.

Let's say that there is a machine that lifts things and all that is needed to work well and accomplish the task is a motor, rope, a high cross post, and a pulley. But when we look at it the rope goes first under a low cross post then to the high cross post and back down and up again and back down to the thing to be lifted. Can you see where the design defect is? It's in the waste of resources.

Or the thing to be lifted only needs to be lifted 20' but the high cross post and pulley are 1000' in the air. This is similar to the recurrent laryngeal nerve in a giraffe. Now, there's an engineer that should be fired.

[flashback]A late postscript on collosal squid eyes. I mentioned that these eyes solve the invertebrate eye longevity problem by being ultra-sensitive, but what I forgot to mention is how they do that. Basically, it is just a case of "size matters". They are as big as dinner plates, and are the largest in the animal kingdom, AFAIK. Thus, the pupils are also very large, letting in much more of the scarce light than other eyes would, but the detected light is spread over an unusually large number of retinal cells, and this is what limits the photo-oxidative damage rate to any one photoreceptor. [/flashback]

Sendraks wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote: The ostrich is a bipedal adept sprinter. Its high-mass muscles are at the top of its legs, with relatively thin, long lower legs. Quadruped antelope prey species that are good sprinters embody the same logic of lowered inertia in the lower limbs. Modern man, who has inherited the gross features of australopiths, is known to be a poor sprinter,

Homo sapiens is a poor sprinter compared to other mammals, but outrivals most species as a persistance hunter.
Sprinting aside, given that against an ambush like predator such as a leopard, sticks and stones are going to achieve very little, you have to wonder if australopiths were so adept at selecting and using weapons as tools (of which there is no evidence for), why didn't this trait persist into later generations of hominids? Why were homo sapiens in africa living off a largely vegetarian diet which they supplemented with meat gathered from persistance hunting?

Jayjay4547 wrote:Glad to hear we can outsprint an elephant and a mamba. Seems we can also outsprint a squirrel, chicken, house mouse, spider, three-tailed sloth and garden snail.

With the exception of a few species, homo sapiens is quite capable of running them until they drop and invariably die of overheating. Homo sapiens didn't use weapons to use hunt meat in africa (the use of weapons and complex hunting strategies was very much the domain of neanderthal man), they used a hunting strategy ideally suited to certain key features of human biology.

Supposing for the sake of argument that Australopiths were persistence hunters, exhausting their prey that invariably died from overheating, that would only make the hominins more vulnerable to predation themselves. As they ran they would open up new unfamiliar vistas, coming now and then upon sabretooth, leopard, hyena and lion who could simply run them down because unlike alternative prey, they could not sprint fast. You are conflating two quite different issues. You are offering an explanation for how the Australopiths got things to eat, as if it also explained how they avoided being eaten. It’s muddle-headed and not because you are, but because of stupid group think. None of your rational, skeptical confreres have pointed out this problem in your argument. Indeed your line of argument has been used before.

Your argumwent has another problem: Immediately after you supposed that persistence hunting would magically give hominins immunity from being hunted themselves, you then visualize one actually being hunted by an ambush predator, against which yiou say, sticks and stones would be little use. Now you inconsistently confront the fact that a felid predator rushes up at unmatchable speed, jumps on the prey and bites. Yes, and you need some way to stop it from doing that.

You say that sticks and stones would be little use against a leopard. Well in the first place, that obliges you to scout around for some other anti-predation strategy that the hominins appear to have been adapted into. I have suggested that there is no sign of either sprinting or tree-climbing adaptations. Descendants of Australopiths certainly do use sticks in the form of knobkerries and spears and are adept at that. So then one needs to look critically at whether hand-held unworked stones and sharpened sticks could be effective against predation. That’s where my little observation is relevant; that a stick held defensively can stop an attack, take the initiative away from the attacker and make it vulnerable. I called that Surveyor’s theory, it could equally have been Postman’s theory. Here’s a selfie I took some time ago:

Does the dog look a bit box-like to you? I thought so too. When you have a stick in your hand a quadruped doesn’t look so impressive. Apart from being cognitively challenged; what to do with this close threat, while keeping alert to what the hominin might do with its other arm.

Another sign of muddle in your argument is when you ask, why were the australopiths largely vegetarian? Well that’s the point. There are certain found objects (I called them “ems” in the pic, to avoid unjustified assumptions that would go with calling them “tools”) that are useful in defense against predation but irrelevant in hunting. A modern example of such a “stopper” is a shield. But originally a sharpish stick would serve. The australopiths must have been extremely proficient defenders long before their descendants developed the sophisticated tools needed for hunting big game.

I would pay great sums to see you defend yourself against a big cat with any handheld weapon that you can make yourself.

Great sums.

I recommend smoothing whatever you make very well though, so it doesn't hurt so much when a big cat shoves it up your ass before biting off your head.

Jayjay4547 wrote:And the atheist ideology isn’t a fantasy.

It is. Once again, NOT TREATING UNSUPPORTED ASSERTIONS AS FACT IS NOT AN "IDEOLOGY", IT'S THE VERY ANTITHESIS THEREOF. Fucking learn this elementary lesson once and for all, will you?

Jayjay4547 wrote:Give a sample of people a shared important idea, give them opposition and soon they will develop an ideology that protects and develops that belief.

Oh you mean the way supernaturalists have been protecting their beliefs from scrutiny? Projection, much?

Here's a clue for you. Unsupported assertions treated as fact are what ideologies are all based on. Which means that not treating unsupported assertions as fact, once again, is the very antithesis of an "ideology". Going to learn this lesson, after much schooling with respect thereto?

Jayjay4547 wrote:They might develop their own origin narrative, if their opposition has one.

JayJay, stop peddling this blatant lie you keep vomiting up here, that developing ideas about observed phenomena on the basis of observational evidence purportedly constitutes an "ideology". It fucking doesn't. It's precisely because doing so doesn't involve injecting superfluous assertions from sources other than the observational data that once again, it's the antithesis of an "ideology". Now drop this blatant creationist lie you keep peddling here once and for all, will you?

Just because scientists have been able to develop an extremely successful theory without once bothering with superfluous mythological assertions, does not mean they're engaged in an "ideological" process. Your assertion that they are, is steaming bullshit. What part of "why bother introducing assertions that are manifestly superfluous to requirements and irrelevant" do you not understand as being a perfectly proper course of action in any proper, rigorous discipline?

The only reason for erecting your bullshit about scientific practice being an "ideology", is because you can't stand the fact that they're not genuflecting before your ideology.

Jayjay4547 wrote:I’m baffled why you should deny it.

That's because you can't imagine the existence of a view of the world without unsupported assertions treated as purportedly constituting "axioms" about the world. And as a corollary, when faced with an example of one, you have to force-fit its existence to your own ideological presuppositions, in order to deal with the cognitive dissonance said existence elicits. The reason we don't accept your blatant creationist fabrication, is because all the evidence says it's a blatant fabrication. See above.

Jayjay4547 wrote:Maybe it’s to do with a culturally dominant ideology gaining power by presenting itself to be the whole world.

Oh wait, we saw that in action in Europe in the past, when supernaturalism ran riot. Did supernaturalism once present evidence for the assertions it insisted constituted established fact? No. What happened was that supernaturalists forced people to treat those assertions as fact, using dungeons, torture instruments, and murderous suppression of any alternative. Which is why we in Europe expended a lot of effort ridding ourselves of supernaturalist control of discourse and policy, because supernaturalists demonstrated routinely that they couldn't be trusted to behave themselves when they wielded power.

On the other hand, no one has ever been thrown into a dungeon for failing to accept a scientific hypothesis. The worst thing a scientist will do to you is is say to you, "present evidence for your hypothesis, otherwise I have no need for it". But of course I can see how supernaturalists regard this as some sort of personal affront, mostly because supernaturalists don't have any evidence for their assertions, and consequently, they think that asking them to get in line behind physics, chemistry and biology, instead of being given privileged access to the front of the queue, is some sort of malicious imposition. To which my answer is quite simply, fucking tough. The reason scientific ideas survive, is because evidence support them. Scientists don't need special privileges to put forward their ideas, they get off their backsides and do the hard work of supplying the evidence for those ideas, and asking supernaturalists to do the same is long overdue. All of which flushes your assertions about "ideology" down the fucking toilet. You've been schooled on this repeatedly, JayJay, and your continued peddling of the "atheist ideology" bullshit after said schooling is starting to emanate a truly unpleasant smell of mendacity,to borrow a phrase from Cat On A Hot Tin Roof.

Now can we put this "atheist ideology" bullshit back in its hole in the ground where it belongs, and bury it once and for all?

Jayjay4547 wrote:
Supposing for the sake of argument that Australopiths were persistence hunters,

They weren't. I was talking about homo sapiens.

Jayjay4547 wrote:You are conflating two quite different issues.

Nope.

Jayjay4547 wrote:
You are offering an explanation for how the Australopiths got things to eat,

Nope. I was talking about homo sapiens.

Jayjay4547 wrote:
It’s muddle-headed and not because you are, but because of stupid group think. None of your rational, skeptical confreres have pointed out this problem in your argument. Indeed your line of argument has been used before.

It's not muddled, you just don't understand what signifies with respect to your own assertions.

Jayjay4547 wrote:
Your argumwent has another problem: Immediately after you supposed that persistence hunting would magically give hominins immunity from being hunted themselves,

It only has that problem if it were the argument I was making. It wasn't.

Jayjay4547 wrote:
you then visualize one actually being hunted by an ambush predator, against which yiou say, sticks and stones would be little use.

Which is correct. They would be of little use.

Jayjay4547 wrote:
Now you inconsistently confront the fact that a felid predator rushes up at unmatchable speed, jumps on the prey and bites. Yes, and you need some way to stop it from doing that.

What's inconsistent about pointing out that a successor hominid didn't use tools to hunt and pointing out that an ancestor hominid didn't use tools to defend itself?

Jayjay4547 wrote:
You say that sticks and stones would be little use against a leopard. Well in the first place, that obliges you to scout around for some other anti-predation strategy that the hominins appear to have been adapted into.

Simply moving as a group is shown to be pretty effective at deterring predators. Moving as a group and throwing stones at a potential predator could also work, although this requires no tool making ability.

Jayjay4547 wrote:I have suggested that there is no sign of either sprinting or tree-climbing adaptations.

Well you're correct on the sprinting. I think you'd be hard pressed to demonstrate that australopiths couldn't climb trees. Indeed the evidence suggests that they were quite capable climbers.

Jayjay4547 wrote: Descendants of Australopiths certainly do use sticks in the form of knobkerries and spears and are adept at that.

Indeed. But that doesn’t mean that this was a behaviour they inherited from the australopiths. As I’ve already stated, homo sapiens in Africa was a persistence hunter before it started to use tools to hunt. The development of complex weapons and hunting tactics came much later.

Jayjay4547 wrote: So then one needs to look critically at whether hand-held unworked stones and sharpened sticks could be effective against predation.

Unworked stones combined with a group could theoretically work to deter a predator. Of course a single australopith is still pretty stuffed.

Jayjay4547 wrote: That’s where my little observation is relevant; that a stick held defensively can stop an attack, take the initiative away from the attacker and make it vulnerable.

An attack from what? A Marmot? Probably. Another human? Maybe? A Leopard? Mmmmmm, no.

Jayjay4547 wrote: Another sign of muddle in your argument is when you ask, why were the australopiths largely vegetarian?

I don’t recall saying any such thing. Perhaps you should not make up what I said and focus on the material at hand.

Jayjay4547 wrote: There are certain found objects (I called them “ems” in the pic, to avoid unjustified assumptions that would go with calling them “tools”) that are useful in defense against predation but irrelevant in hunting. A modern example of such a “stopper” is a shield. But originally a sharpish stick would serve. The australopiths must have been extremely proficient defenders long before their descendants developed the sophisticated tools needed for hunting big game.

If we’re going to describe “throwing stones” as a proficient defence, then I will concur at this point. However, it should also be noted that chimps do this as well. It should also be noted that chimps are bloody strong creatures and there is no reason to surmise that australopiths were lacking in physical strength. Indeed the bone structure of the australopith suggests they were strong, certainly stronger than homo sapiens relative to their size.
Use of “shields” or “spears” is a pure fantasy on your part, not backed up by the available evidence.

DavidMcC wrote:
Jayjay, I suspect that your "support" comes from your religious belief that our eyes (and everything else) was designed by the great engneering genius in the sky, right? Well, wrong. Evolution by random genomic change and natural selection is wot did it, OK? No magic men involved.

So you demonstrate your fealty to the party line by restating its Apostles Creed. Just in time, you had collected some flak for your small deviations. Still it’s a pity you didn’t follow up on my point that whatever the ostensible logic behind citing cases of supposed sub-optimal design, their assertion puts the speaker in a posture towards nature that is cross-grained. I gave the example of two ophthalmologists who hadn’t heard of this inverted retina notion- and ophthalmologists spend their professional lives developing a closeness to that subject. Your own posts show that you have a real interest in the functionality of the eye, that crude assertions of jury-rig could only blunt.

So, what can one do with that perception of the cross-grainedness of “jury rig” assertions? It doesn’t prove that ID is correct. It’s more like a red flag, a warning not to treat Nature with affected contempt- not if you want to understand her the way an opthalmologist needs to understand the eye. Speaking of contempt, have you heard the jury-rig assertion accompanied with a respecting caveat? Say, an acknowledgement that the vertebrate eye works wonderfully? Some awareness of the red flag? Rather, the whole point is really to assert the obvious superiority of the human intellect as judge of the better solution.

Like I said, I don’t have an in-principle objection to the notion that sub-optimal organisms could arise- that means, I accept that evolution happens by random genomic change and natural section as you put it. Except that Darwin’s Theory of Natural Selection included random genomic change. But I think change and selection only give populations mobility and a tendency to improve, creation has happened because of creative opportunities for improvement in the way the world is. It’s marvelous that the world has such opportunities, we should be careful not to remake the world so as to damage and maybe destroy them.

So basically you're just here to troll?
Seeing as how you keep mindlessly regurgitating the same ideology claptrap even when it's been pointed out to you it's anything but.

The_Metatron wrote:I would pay great sums to see you defend yourself against a big cat with any handheld weapon that you can make yourself.

Great sums.

I recommend smoothing whatever you make very well though, so it doesn't hurt so much when a big cat shoves it up your ass before biting off your head.

How is a big cat going to shove a stick up my ass? Align the stick with its paw while holding the butt in its teeth? How is it going to get behind me so as to stick it up my ass? Does it do this difficult and task reguiring accuracy habitually? Nope, the visualisation just doesn't work. You are just using this scenario as an excuse to express extreme personal animosity. It's people like you who have given internet discussions a bad name. And you are a moderator on this forum? Good Grief.

Jayjay4547 wrote:creation has happened because of creative opportunities for improvement in the way the world is..

Wait? What? Eh?

Jayjay4547 wrote:

The_Metatron wrote:I would pay great sums to see you defend yourself against a big cat with any handheld weapon that you can make yourself.

Great sums.

I recommend smoothing whatever you make very well though, so it doesn't hurt so much when a big cat shoves it up your ass before biting off your head.

How is a big cat going to shove a stick up my ass? Align the stick with its paw while holding the butt in its teeth? How is it going to get behind me so as to stick it up my ass? Does it do this difficult and task reguiring accuracy habitually? Nope, the visualisation just doesn't work. You are just using this scenario as an excuse to express extreme personal animosity. It's people like you who have given internet discussions a bad name. And you are a moderator on this forum? Good Grief.

Yes, I started a topic describing a form of this stupidity.

Metaphor. It's point is to illustrate how, in a contest between a big cat that wants to kill you and you, carrying nothing but some sort of striking or poking weapon you can make, you are going to die. I'd be surprised if absolutely everyone else who read it didn't understand it.