I agree that evolution to multi cellular yeast is possible but, evolution from single celled asexually reproducling animals to multicellular heterosexually reproducing animals, requires a complex male reproductive system and a complex female reproductive system to evolve simultaneously, and then those two animals need to be programmed, or learn to have sexual intercourse.
Yes it does require them to evolve simultaneously but not instantaneously. Your expectation is therefore invalid and misleading in this argument.
Read my post
http://www.longecity...-32#entry716149 to see that there genomic evolution is "increasingly aided" (as in Computer Aided Design) by existing evolved structures and so evolution is smarter than expected from stressing the randomness of it.
I think that is statistically harder to do by chance than to evolve an eyeball. Anyway, mathematically it seems impossible, and evidence of transitions in the fossil record is non existant for one animal, let alone all the different types of heterosexual reproduction( spawning, egg laying, nursing, womb, etc...), but evolutionary scientists still accept Darwinian evolution as the only viable scientific possibility for a theory.
This is simply self-blinding.
The biggest evolutionary leap is the evolution of genetic sexual reproduction itself and of the eukaryote cell. Compared to that, evolution of the reproductive organs is straightforward and obvious.
The first sexually reproducing single celled life required (chemical) signalling and genetic/molecular scaffolds to perform sexual reproduction. It requires recognizing your own status for fertilization, recognizing your partner as compatible and also ready for sexual reproduction, and communication coordinating the reproduction process. This is the basic paradigm that evolved through multicellularity. So "sexual attraction" has been there since inception, it did not evolve suddenly in humans or mammals. All the basic behavior is there since inception. The communication and state/species/compatibility detection is a scaffold for sexual selection. "Newer" animals can refuse copulation if deemed unworthy or have to compete for copulation - this is evolved control of the sexual reproduction process towards a greater end result -> better selection means better variety is retained in the pool.
Now saying that there are no transitions in the fossil record is simply so misleading that it's hard to stay polite. You don't even need the fossil record, you have all the animals showing the transitions alive and kicking today.
From the simplest multicellular reproductions of animals like the hydra to the reproductive organs of humans. You can literally see animals existing without any part of the current mammalian reproductive tract. You can see animals (and plants) that have an option to sexually reproduce, and can do it asexually. You have evolutionary older animals being hermaphrodite, you have animals that change their sex with temperature or other ambient conditions and lifeforms that are able to have sex with themselves. Both plants and animals evolved food supply for their "seed" in the form of the egg or a fruit. You also have animals that hold eggs within themselves till they hatch, you have all variants of egg laying and nurturing etc.
Why would the evolution of limbs be any more "straightforward" than the evolution of a penis? It took like a billion years for the mammalian reproductive tract to evolve from the more simpler variants.
Sexual reproduction is a way of producing, selecting and retaining good genetic variety in the genetic pool. Some lifeforms are literally able to do this without a partner.
For some reason there seems to be a biult in bias here. Can we try to look past this possible bias, and ask how a designer might have done it without bringing in religion? I think yes. I think I can talk scientifically about anything somebody designed without talking about that person's religions beliefs. Granted, like talking about the design of a guillotine or chemotherapy without talking about their purpose, talking about ID could be a little tough without brining in some talk of purpose, I think we cankeep it scientific.
Since I actually design systems, I can and have talked of this, and both of you "intelligent designers" actually ignored the post that does approach I.D. scientifically by first defining what intelligent decision making is and how it performed evolution.
So I'm sorry, but you can talk pseudoscienticially and that's it, talk about "irreducible complexity" and other important looking words than someone conjured up in order to win some creationist debate rather than find out some real truth of the world. This entire thread is about pseudoscience and all scientific arguments are in fact ignored.
So, can we step away from what's right and wrong with darwinian evolution for a bit and see if we can come up with a theory that either works through evolution with intelligent guidance or some other mechanism. Could we make an assumption for now that if there is an IDER he thinks logically similar to us?
Creationism is all about projecting the human mindset onto an omnipotent, invisible substanceless entity that controls everything. Once you set that up, your theory loses all explanatory power, all predictive power, becomes unfalsifiable and is rendered as useless as a story on unicorns and dragons.
So, you can never form a credible theory that supposed a human like omnipowerful entity. Although I.D. is conceivable by defining the genomic processes as adaptively intelligent - this however does not produce an omnipowerful entity to pray to, but produces a weakly intelligent genomic entity that requires lifetimes of stress and suffering in order to produce a next step/change in the genomic configuration.
Also, both of you talk as if we're all here for your lecture. You keep using plural, 'we can do this, we can do that', you keep using indoctrinating forms of sentences, you both seem to think other people on the subject are ignorant token puppets that you will lead towards some conclusion as if they are kids in the first grade. It's annoying and discrediting.
Edited by addx, 03 March 2015 - 08:06 AM.