Can sense organs like the eye really evolve?

Silly fantasy indeed. Maybe the ancestors were not fossilized, even though there are billions of fossils. The tree of life that is common to textbooks is actually drawn by the evolutionist. All you have are the leaves, the tree doesnt exist in nature. Edited by Portillo, : No reason given.

Hi Portillo,This thread is the eye evolution thread, remember? It's not the "Random Whines About Evolution" thread or the "Let's Quote Mine Stephen Jay Gould!" thread. It's the eye evolution thread. For talking about eye evolution.Do you have anything to say about eye evolution? Like a reply to message 153 for example? It's the one entitled Eye Evolution.Or you might like to respond to this; As was shown in one of the videos I linked to earlier, all eyes share basic elements, like ciliary and rhabdomeric photoreceptors. The difference is what structures evolved from these basic building blocks. Further, the differences in structure fall into a clear evolutionary pattern, with closely related creatures having similar eyes. Genetic analysis shows the same pattern. You can read more about it here; How Many Genes Does it Take to Make a Squid Eye?So yeah. Eye evolution. Feel free to touch on that subject any time you like.Mutate and Survive

Is this meant to be an apology for quote-mining Stephen Jay Gould?
Could you perhaps be honest and admit that your claim regarding Steven Gould was wrong?And then could you support your statement that "The cambrian explosion proves that animals appear suddenly and fully formed", because Stephen Gould clearly does not support your claim.

Or maybe the paleontologist Stephen Gould knew more about paleontology than you do when he wrote: "Transitions are often found in the fossil record."

You ignoring the fossils we have found won't let them magically disappear.

Actually, it was first drawn by Linnaeus, 100 years before "Origin of Species" was published. The tree is formed by shared characteristics, not evolutionists.The fact remains that eye designs fall into a nested hierarchy, just as evolution predicts. How does creationism explain this? Why do all animals with a backbone need an inverted retina according to creationism?

Well, not really. Linnaeus recognised hierarchies of characteristics, but he didn't draw any 'tree of life'. You can argue the idea is derived from concepts recognised by non-evolutionary biologists, but a branching tree is, nonetheless, an evolutionists' idea, drawn and conceived by evolutionists. This seems to be the earliest drawing, from French botanist Augustin Augier in 1801 (warning, full size image is big)

I would argue that they are the same thing. Nodes in the tree of life are the shared characteristics that were discovered by Linnaeus. All evolutionists did was connect the dots.

quote:

---

So that we here have many species descended from a single progenitor grouped into genera; and the genera into subfamilies, families and orders, all under one great class. The grand fact of the natural subordination of organic beings in groups under groups, which, from its familiarity, does not always sufficiently strike us, is in my judgment thus explained.--Chapter 14, Origin of Species

---

I will try to answer your question as soon as I can.

Gould is right when he talks about sudden appearance and stasis. 100 million year old clam looks just like todays clams. 200 million year old crocodile looks like todays crocodiles. 300 million year old paddlefish looks like todays paddlefish. 50 million year old stingray looks like todays stingrays. 160 million year old squid looks like todays squids. 200 million year old lobster looks like todays lobsters. 300 million year old dragonfly looks like todays dragonflys. 250 million year old cockroach looks like todays cockroaches. 50 million year old beetle looks like todays beetles. 65 million year old bat looks like todays bats. Crickets, scorpians, flies, lizards, centipedes, spiders, termites all look like todays animals. Why didnt trilobites evolve into anything in 200 million years?Many species were bigger in size in the past and there is variation within fundamentally stable species. But no visible step by step development of earlier forms. This isnt crazy creationism, but is scientifically and positively documented. "The known fossil record fails to document a single example of phyletic evolution accomplishing a major morphologic transition, and hence offers no evidence that the gradualistic model can be valid." - Steven M Stanley, Macroevolution: Pattern and Process

Sorry to pop your balloon, Portillo - but that is a well documented quote-mine. It is a 'crazy creationism' lie.
The Quote Mine Project (Or, Lies, Damned Lies and Quote Mines)
Scoll down to "Quote #3.11"...

Yes he is. How does this work against the Theory of Evolution? Remember, Gould also said: You forgot about the first life found. Four billion old prokaryotes. Don't forget about them. However, we don't find any 4 billion old trilobites or clams. Or humans. We only came by later. Around 200 000 years ago. How does this tie in with creation? I don't think different species of the dinoaurs were "fundamentally stable species", as they died out, although they survived for hundreds of millions of years. Only birds are left. Their descendents. We still don't even know whether humans are a "fundamentally stable species". Only around 200 000 years since we appeared! You like your porkies, don't you? What about those where we do have visible step by step development from earlier forms? How does that tie in with creation? Just ignoring them? It is real creationism. Porkies. That’s it. You like telling porkies, don’t you? Are porkies really all you have? (rhetorical question)

Is Gould right when he says this?

I will not address the others directly, but I can comment on dragonflies. I have spent my life studying the Odonata (dragonflies and damselflies). None of the fossil dragonflies from 300 million years ago belong to the same species as any modern dragonfly, or to the same genus, or even to the same family.None of the modern families of Odonates are represented in the fossils discovered from 300 million years ago. All of those fossils are collectively called Proto-odonata. They share more characteristics with modern Odonates than with any other order of insects, but they have striking differences from the modern Odonates.You mention larger size. Meganeura monyi, the largest fossil species of Proto-odonata discovered so far had a wing span of 27 inches and is ~325 million years old. The oldest fossil suspected to be related to the Odonates is ~404 million years old.We do not know if any of the fossils discovered before the emergence of modern Odonate families are ancestral, but we can infer from the evidence that a Proto-odonate from that period was ancestral. They did. They evolved into a hugely diverse group of Trilobites.You see, that is one of the things you do not seem to get. When new species evolve they still belong to the ancestral group, so Mammals are still vertebrates, dogs are still Mammals and so on.This is what we mean when we refer to a "nested hierarchy".Fossil species may superficially resemble modern species but they seldom, if ever, look exactly alike, and they very often cannot even be placed in modern families, let alone modern genera or species.

You've continued to make this claim.
You've had evidence handed to you countless times.
You've then repeated the claim without addressing the evidence.So, either you are being dishonest, you don't understand the big words, or you just can't handle the reality.I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and say that you are just terrifically uneducated.What SPECIFICALLY are you asking to see?What, in your mind, would be sufficient evidence?