For someone who wants to complain about being purposefully misrepresented, it's rather hypocritical of you to complain that I'm calling you stupid. I said the idea was stupid, which I see no need to recant. As I went on to say in the second post, if you are honest with yourself, you will admit that most atheists hold to evolution not because the science backs it up, but because it is philosophically necessary. And while most Christians are probably too PC to come out and call atheists stupid (much as many atheists are too PC to come out and call theists stupid, although this is beginning to change on both sides), I don't have a problem saying as much.
Atheism is stupid. The definition of stupid is to be dull or to lack sense, especially as it relates to meaning. This is precisely what atheism does. It dulls you to proper thinking. You find yourselves making absurd, dishonest statements in defense of evolution. You appeal to homology as evidence of evolution. You argue that with more research, we may someday discover the pathway for chemical evolution, implying that the problem is that we don't know enough, when in actuality, the problem is that we know too much. You claim that good and evil can have real, objective meaning apart from theism. Or, recognizing that it can't, you claim that good and evil really don't exist. You then live a schizophrenic life, acting
as if God exists by borrowing from theists all that you need to have a meaningful life (i.e., love, meaning, purpose, moral accountability, rationalism, etc.) but deny those things' basis. And those of you who have had any philosophical training realize that materialism necessarily leads to absolute epistemological skepticism, and thus you make the stupid claim, "There is no way to know absolute truth," which is, of course, self-defeating.
The necessary result of atheism is pure stupidity.
Now, does that make YOU stupid? No. You say stupid things. My wife assures me that I say them myself, far more often that I realize. And I have little reason to hope that a day will ever go by when I don't. But this is an area in which the stupidity I promote is less blatant than the atheist's, and the reason is simple: when I say stupid things about God/evolution, etc., it is only because I have thought too highly of myself and believed I was saying something that was true when it was not. But the position I begin with is fundamentally (and indeed, is
in principle capable of being) true. Against this, your position is fundamentally not true. You are defending a non-sense from the beginning. Are we, then, surprised when we hear the great lengths you will go to defend the indefensible?
So much for stupidity. So much for misrepresentations. I never called you stupid. I'm sorry if you are offended that I think your ideas are, but there is a clear distinction between the idea and the person (which it would take a stupid
person not to see).
Now, on to actual content . . .
Your original post only said that blind fish get their sight back by spending a few generations in the light, which completely misrepresents what really happened, and more importantly makes NO sense in light of how biology works here.
Exposure to light has nothing to do with it. "A few generations" has nothing to do with it. Your version wasn't even close.
I'm happy to see that your subsequent post now corrects the important details, which were in my response's hyperlink to the scientific investigation.
It doesn't misrepresent the position. It was a generally true principle. Not explaining the details of the mechanism doesn't make something not true. You misread (and thus misrepresented) my position when you
assumed a connotation I didn't intend, namely, that by one or two generations in the wild these fish naturally got their eyesight back. Why would you ASSUME I meant that? Perhaps because you fundamentally ASSUME that no creationist REALLY understands evolution? Like I said, it's the whole true-Scottsman fallacy you people are so famous for . . .
The only thing here you perhaps have any room to honestly complain about is the phrase "in the light." Now, I'll not be so disingenuous to claim that scientific work is done "in the light."
What I will say is that I (perhaps stupidly) expected an honest discussion between two people who assume a rather basic understanding in one another. I didn't know that you were the professor and I was the mere student. What I meant, and what I thought was rather clearly the meaning, was that descendants of blind fish can easily regain their ability to see in a relatively short period of time given the proper circumstances.
In any case, this still says nothing about the original argument I made. Blind fish have lost their sight because they have lost information. Nothing new was created. The genes that lead to seeing are
broken and can be repaired. That hardly makes the case for the blind fish eye being a vestigial organ, and thus certainly provides no new context against which to place the human appendix.
More misrepresentations; no wonder you think I'm stupid. Re-read what I said. I hypothesized a non-transparent thickening over the vestigal blind eyes. And I said that would function as skin, not "the eye has really become skin".
And as my comment above noted, the eyes are not vestigial. Thus, if you want me to be more precise, Professor, it is absurd to claim that "the vestigial eye now functions as skin." It functions as skin in the same way that a seeing eye does.
As far as any "non-transparent thickening" over the eye, we would have to look at that in detail, wouldn't we? It depends on the genetic structure of not just the eye, but the of structures that surround it. Given the fact that cross breading can restore sight, it seems the cross breading would remove such a non-transparent layer; but that would imply that the layer is directly related to the genes relating to eye's ability to see (I assume we both believe that if you cut away the layer, there would not be working eyes beneath!).
Misrepresents my position again. To understand what I'm saying, ask 100 people if a blind eye still functions as an eye. Let me know how that turns out, especially the parts just after when you call almost all of them stupid for saying "No." (BTW, I haven't cared what anyone has called me since I was 6 years old. But purposely or uncaringly misrepresent science and I care.)
"Functions AS something" is quite different from "has A function" or "used to function as something" or "could be fixed to function as something".
You are equating "function as" with "functioning properly." Let me make a rather important distinction here I think you may be missing. There is a difference in what something
is and what something
does. If what something does changes what it IS, then if it stops doing that, then it stops BEING what it was. But if that is true, then nothing in this world is broken.
A car engine has a function. If it breaks down--if it stops functioning as it was designed--it doesn't suddenly stop being a car engine. You can't equate a thing's function with what a thing IS (in old philosophical terms, with a thing's "essence"). An eye is an eye, whether it is in a human or a fish, whether working or not. It may be broken, but it is still an eye.
Now, you correctly note that to function as something is not the same as to have a function. I don't think you've considered what this means for your own example. Look again at the words you said that got this response you were complaining about:
- Really? A blind eye functions as an eye?! Really?!
And I haven't done the research, but I'd strongly suspect that the those blind cave fish also had, over many generations, mutations that produced a thickening (probably not transparent) over their vestigal blind eyes, e.g., so as to lessen the possibility of infection/injury.
In blind cave fish, I would call that function skin. What would you call it? Ears?
Yes, a blind eye functions as an
eye. It is just broken. It tells us nothing to say "A blind eye functions as a seeing eye." That's obviously absurd, as it contradicts itself. But as an EYE, it is what it is. We can say that it is trying to function as a working eye, which is evidenced from the fact that its ability to work properly can be restored.
Look, I see the point you are trying to make in context of the broader picture. You are trying to say that just like the eye of a blind fish no longer fulfills its original function (to see), but rather fulfills an unrelated function (to keep out bacteria/to protect the internal organs); as for that reason it can be called vestigial; so also can the human appendix be called vestigial, since the human appendix no longer acts in accordance with its original function.
What I am trying to tell you is that this point is wrong on multiple levels. A working eye and a blind eye (complete with a think, non-transparent surface) BOTH have the same
function as does skin. Your point is trivial here. But more, that the blind eye can be restored proves that what it still IS is actually an eye, which means the only reason it isn't fulfilling its intended function is because it is BROKEN. That hardly renders it vestigial. It just means it is broken and needs to be repaired. Finally, none of this is even a good comparison to the appendix in the first place, because the appendix isn't fulfilling some other function than it was originally designed (or evolved) to do. It isn't even broken. It just so happens that modern science is doing for the appendix what the appendix naturally does, which leaves the appendix nothing to do. If you put humans back in a pre-science environment, it seems the appendix has a function after all, which completely goes against the original Darwinian understanding of the appendix in the first place. So the appendix isn't vestigial by any definition of the word. In fact, the very fact that it is still trying to accomplish its function is precisely the reason we get appendicitis!
So, the bottom line is that the comparison between the blind fish eye and the human appendix is worthless. To the extent it is a worthwhile discussion is to the extent to which the blind fish can regain its sight, showing that original functionality was not permanently lost (in a distantly analogous way to which the original functionality of the human appendix was not permanently lost), but could be restored (as it can in the appendix' case) by putting it in the right environment (hence, by simplification to "in the light").
The proper comparison between the blind fish and human appendix lies only in the fact that the blind fish's eyes are broken, whereas the human appendix can't accomplish its original purpose because there is no environment in which to accomplish it, so in a sense, you could say it is "broken," too. Both can be restored. Neither are evidence for Darwinian evolution.
You have numerous misconceptions of science in the posts in this thread, but I had to start somewhere.
No, you assumed I had misconceptions and read into my words ideas that were not there.
If you won't acknowledge either your original misrepresentation of the science with the blind cave fish, or at least my point (whether you agree or not) about why a blind eye doesn't still function as an eye, then what hope do I have of pointing out your misconception of common descent being based on circular reasoning?
If you won't acknowledge either your original misrepresentation of my position on the blind cave fish, or at least my point (whether you agree or not) about why a blind eye's having a broken function as an eye, then what hope do I have that you will ever see that arguments for common descent based on homology are a textbook example of circular reasoning?
Igo, I clearly see that you a blind fish eye is not a working, seeing eye. That is trivial. It is simply true by definition. It is inherent in the meaning of the word "blind." Forgive me if I thought you were more philosophically sophisticated than that. But it is still functioning as an eye in precisely the same sense that a broke car engine is still functioning as a car engine. It is just broken and needs to be repaired.
As I've said elsewhere here, with a forum named Evidence for God from Science, I would think that conscientiously trying to faithfully represent science would be and should be of utmost importance.
We do. But like everyone who commits the True-Scotsman fallacy, you assume that everyone who disagrees must misunderstand science. You come to the table with an assumption of our stupidity from the outset, which is your fundamental problem. You ASSUME, like you have done repeatedly in this thread, that we don't understand what we are talking about, when, sadly, it seems the opposite is true. This is why I made the second follow up post before. This isn't a scientific problem, Igo. It is a philosophical one. In fact, the whole argument that we don't understand what science really is is actually a philosophical statement. WHAT science is is a question for philosophy, not science. Because you fundamentally misunderstand science, you have trouble grasping that, and then go on to make inaccurate claims about both science and philosophy. That will always happen when you confuse the subject matter of two fields.
Stick around and have an open mind for a change. You may very well come to see the error in your thinking.
God bless
Ha ha, I know you're being funny. Could lead to a lot of strange discussion, lol.