Can sense organs like the eye really evolve?

Many scientists believe that natural selection is the main mechanism. Whats the problem?Edited by Portillo, : No reason given.

That's like saying the engine is the main mechanism allowing a car to run, so it should be able to make it run without the wheels.

As Taz hinted, this is the wrong question, or at least an incomplete question. The opening post implies that scientists believe natural selection produces innovations like eyes and brains, but they actually believe it's evolution. Natural selection is just one component of evolution. The other is variation, produced through new permutations upon existing genetic material or through mutations.A better question might be, "What is the evidence that evolution can produce an eye?"The answer is that selecting the best from a number of alternatives is what evolution does. Generation after generation of selecting the best and brightest produces gradual improvements, as breeders of both plants and animals prove every year. Slow and inefficient, evolution is also immensely powerful and effective.Much faster and efficient would be a designer who with intention and purpose designed and constructed plants and animals, but we have no evidence of designers, and if the life we observe today was produced by a designer then he for some reason used a design approach that mimics evolution perfectly.A natural objection is that evolution makes tiny changes that only infrequently produce new species and that there is no evidence of it making the large scale changes necessary to evolve, for example, land animals from fish. This objection is valid if you require actual observation of such transformations, but that would also require that humans have lifespans measured in thousands of years at least. For anyone who only accept direct observation of events as evidence then there is no evidence of large scale evolution, nor for anything else that takes longer than a human lifetime.But fortunately for us, things that happen leave evidence behind, and for evolution there is copious evidence both in the ground in the form of fossils and within life itself in the form of DNA.--Percy

I can show you how the eyes evolved, yes. Can you exhibit that it wouldn't be a waste of my time?Start by answering my questions...Do you have a better explanation than evolution? Why would a designer group the different eye types with specific creature groups (without one exception), in a manner that makes them look like they evolved independently?

We've seen natural selection in direct action, both in the lab and in the field, whilst we've never seen anything being poofed into existence. We've even discovered the mechanisms how natural selection works.Thus, no problem for natural selection. You've got a problem with magical poofing. Edited by Pressie, : No reason given.

You mean Darwins finches? Beaks changing sizes does not prove how an eye was created.

You've already been shown the evidence of natural selection in action. You ignoring it won't let the evidence get "poofed" out of existence.What you've never shown us, though, is anything that has been poofed into existence.Edited by Pressie, : No reason given.

Hi Portillo, Well, for starters, there are many more examples than that. For instance, Pressie mention lab-based studies, and those have observed natural selection in action, creating new features. Such studies do not prove how an eye was formed, no, but they do demonstrate that it is, both in principle and in practise, possible for natural selection and random mutation to create new features. Having established this, the evolution of a complex organ like the eye has to be viewed as rather less unlikely than the OP would have it.But I am less interested in that argument and more interested in asking you a question; what evidence would you expect to see if the eye did evolve?Just consider the hypothetical for a moment. Imagine, for argument's sake, that the eye did evolve. What material evidence of this would expect to see?Mutate and Survive

The earliest use of "transitional form" and "transitional variety" that I can find is from a book not renowned for its creationist bent - 'The Origin of Species', by one Charles Darwin:

quote:

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As natural selection acts solely by the preservation of profitable modifications, each new form will tend in a fully-stocked country to take the place of, and finally to exterminate, its own less improved parent or other less-favoured forms with which it comes into competition. Thus extinction and natural selection will, as we have seen, go hand in hand. Hence, if we look at each species as descended from some other unknown form, both the parent and all the transitional varieties will generally have been exterminated by the very process of formation and perfection of the new form.

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But, as by this theory innumerable transitional forms must have existed, why do we not find them embedded in countless numbers in the crust of the earth?
  —Charles Darwin

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...and so on. I've been unable to locate the origin of the specific term 'transitional feature', but it's used commonly in scientific publications.Not all features are transitional. A transitional feature would be one that is morphologically intermediate between primitive and derived members of a group. Archaeopteryx's tail could be said to be a transitional feature, since it combines traits that are primitive to Theropoda (long chevrons) and derived traits of birds (feathers).The peacock's tail, on the other hand, is not a transitional feature. There's no more derived tail we can point to, for which the peacock's tail would stand as a good intermediate between it and primitive birds' tails.Edited by caffeine, : No reason given.Edited by caffeine, : To add the quote from Taz

Not yet, anyway. But in a few million years - or perhaps even sooner - the descendants of our peacock will have tails which may be quite different from the current version. 'Transitional' is a relative term, in that a feature can only be said to be transitional with the benefit of hindsight.

Well again i read there are just a few types of eyes.If there was a single blueprint then the few types still would indicate a greater equation(not realized yet) of what sight is actually doing.
Just have lenses , despite differences, is case in point.The 'intermediate' eyes are in fact totally suitable mechanisms for seeing for these types of creatures Darwin talks about.
Still my point was that the fossil record, if possible to record eyes , should be swarming in intermediates and vestigial eyes.
In fact diversity in kinds of eyes should be the rule.
yet most creatures have eyes like me and insects have like eyes and so on.
Very controlled options for sight.

Nope. in fact modern evolutionists try to teach THERE is transitional features as opposed to transitional creatures.
they gave up on the latter and so concentrate on evolving features in the fossil record. They hope.Variety in eye operations is not evidence of evolution by the way.
Its just a interpretation.Yet the great fact of eyes is the lack of diversity.
Go to your zoo and look at all those eyes and you will conclude they are from the same model.
Evolution has not made such a complex organ in expected diversity of complexity.The eye is such a great case for creationism on many points.
It also is a chance for creationism to correct wrong ideas about sight and lead to healing sight.I say a single creator made a single equation for sight and only the basic restrictions of creatures bodies or locations is the origin for the minor cases of important diversity.
I think i'm right.This means there can be flexibility in eye adaptation.It seems so unlikely even to imagine that mutations could keep pushing to such common conclusions he things called eyes in all creatures.

Now this is a perfect illustration of why you shouldn't read things written by liars and fools.The broadest classification might distinguish between eyespots, pit eyes, lensed eyes, multiple lensed eyes, reflector eyes, apposition compound eyes, refracting superposition eyes, reflecting superposition eyes, parabolic superposition eyes ... but those are only fairly crude classifications. When you look at the details, thee's more diversity still. For example, squid and mammals both have simple lensed eyes, but in mammals the focus is changed by changing the shape of the lens whereas in squid the same function is served by moving it backwards and forwards. Or to take another subdivision, trilobites have appositional compound eyes, but unlike everything else with appositional compound eyes their eyes had hard lenses.And then there are the complete weirdos like copepods ...Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

Is this something else you read somewhere or did you make it up all by yourself? If the zoo happens to only contain mammals, then one would indeed correctly conclude that. Otherwise, not so much. It is in fact not merely unlikely but impossible for evolution to have produced the world that you have made up in your head. But the question is whether it is responsible for phenomena in the real world, the one that actually exists.

You are saying mammals have different kinds of eyes?
I read everywhere there are just a few types.
these divisions of yours are trivial.
Fine about squids and me.
it shows there is a common design and any creature can have the same eyes if some basic requirements are met.
Just having a lens is evidence of a single idea .You guys are strangely, or not, running from the commonness of eye types.
In fact I believe Darwin mentioned this to teach all coming from a common origin!