Feedback for September 2003

Presenting other's words as if they were your own is dishonest. If you want to suggest a link, we have a convenient form for submitting a link at the bottom of our Other Links page.

In your last feedback item, you said that you weren't on commission. As you continue to push Jehovah's Witness materials, the veracity of that statement comes into question.

Wesley

The other was the microscope which showed that the world at our fingertips (even on our finger tips) was totally unexpected and unexplained by theologians.

These devices preceded the scientific revolution in geology and biology. The maintenance of the ancient point of view requires that you ignore the telescope, and the microscope - that you view the universe wearing blinders and look no further than your hand.

Spending some time in the T.O. archives (or a good science library) will start you toward answering the questions you posed.

Human brains are unusual in that they are much larger than the ordinary primate growth curve, so they need to be accounted for. One way to account for it is to seek explanation in the complexity, not of the environment, for many organisms live in the same environment with smaller brains, including our close cousins the Australopithicenes, but in the social interactions between humans. In short, we adapted to ourselves.

One way we did this is in language, and in telling each other stories as ways to hold the social group together and to organise the fair distribution of resources. One way we did that is to tell stories about the world, the forces of nature, and the past heroes of the group. In this, I believe, is the origins of religion, in the mythological stories we used to provide the world with a narrative.

This sets up a feedback loop. Once we can tell stories to each other about what is in our heads and the world, we get selection for better storytelling, and so religious ritual and myth makes for bigger brains. Please understand, though, that this is set back around a couple of hundred thousand years ago, and does not reflect on current religious views, which evolved in a rather different fashion in a rather different social structure.

So we adapt to the myths and rituals by getting bigger storytelling brains. This is, perforce, the simplified version and a bit of a Just So story, but backed by modern neurobiology and understanding of social patterns and dynamics.

I would further observe that there are several drugs that also produce this "religious" mental state. This is mentioned not as a recommendation, but as an observation that psychic states are fundamentally biochemical. Thus, human evolution made religiously interpreted mental states possible.

These are not new observations. I suggest the following reading:

Crapanzano, Vincent and Vivian Garrison 1977 Case Studies in Spirit Possession New York: John Wiley and Sons

Hurd, G. S., E. M. Pattison 1984 "Manifestations of Possession in Novel Ecological Contexts," in Ecological Models in Clinical and Community Mental Health, W. A. O'Connor and B. Lubin (ed.s). John Wiley & Sons: New York.

Klienman, Arthur 1980 Patients and Healers in the Context of Culture: An exploration of the borderland between Anthropology, Medicine, and Psychiatry. University of California Press

Ott, Jonathan 1976 Hallucinogenic Plants of North America. Berkeley: Wingbow Press

Pattison, E. M., Joel Kahan, G. S. Hurd 1986 "Trance and Possession States," In Handbook of Altered States of Consciousness. B.B. Walman and M. Ullman (ed.s) New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, Also look over these:

Amazon Books: The "God" Part of the Brain

Now, as the other comments have indicated, humans are also unusual that these physical states can be altered by thought and language. Thus, in humans, the ability to alter physical states by cognition may have also contribute to evolutionary selection. This is not religion per se.

In any case, cladogenetic change (increases in the numbers of species, and the larger groups species comprise, by branching - what Darwin called common descent) is as well attested a fact as anything in biology. We've seen it. And for each speciation event, no matter how large in the apparent changes, the reply from anti-evolutionists has been "but it's still the X kind", as if we expected anything else. All mammals are still vertebrates, and all vertebrates are still animals, and all animals are still eukaryotes, and so forth. And each of those "kinds" was once a single species.

As to a single common ancestor - Darwin thought that there would be "a few [original] forms, or one". These days a few people think that there were several original forms of life because lineages were not isolated then as now. Also, and this is my own opinion, you need an ecology for life to exist, and I think that life always existed in more than one "form". The base of the tree of life might have been a tangle of roots...

As to the "theory versus fact" bit, we have a very good FAQ explaining the meanings of these terms in biology - and in both the common sense and the scientific sense, evolution is a fact, and there is a theory to explain it. In fact, there are more than one.

Ah, you have encountered William Dembski's "Design Inference". Like you, I was less than impressed. I posed some questions about evolutionary computation back in 1997 that Dembski is still apparently trying to deal with. I outlined a number of problems in my review of "The Design Inference" back in 1999. But I can narrow it down to a couple of URLS that you should visit:

• The AntiEvolutionists: William A. Dembski (The Design Inference)
• The AntiEvolutionists: William A. Dembski (No Free Lunch)

Those two pages link to a whole bunch of criticism of the "Design Inference". Enjoy.

Wesley

Please have a look at our FAQ on Radiometric Dating and the Geological Time Scale by Andrew MacRae.

Feel free to tell us about any specific problems you have with the reasoning outlined in that document.

Wesley

Evolutionary biology is science. Your problem is that you've been listening to people who don't know what science is, but are willing to tell whoppers about it to preserve some of their ignorant ideologically-based preconceptions.

We hear people claim that evolution contradicts the second law of thermodynamics (SLoT). Uniformly, these people don't know thermodynamics, don't understand evolution, and couldn't form a valid argument if their lives depended on it. We have a whole section on thermodynamics here on the Archive. I have a challenge for those who wish to claim that evolution contradicts what we know about thermodynamics. This challenge lays out what is necessary to make a valid argument along those lines. So far, no antievolutionist has succeeded in meeting the challenge.

It is a favorite canard of antievolutionists that evolution cannot be observed. A cursory look at the scientific literature would disabuse them of this notion, but actual research and intellectual honesty is anathema to evolution deniers. The Archive hosts several resources that show that evolution is, indeed, observed to occur.

• Observed Instances of Speciation
• Some More Observed Speciation Events
• Evidence for Evolution: An Eclectic Survey
• 29+ Evidences for Macroevolution

Fossils suggest that evolution happened.

• Transitional Vertebrate Fossils FAQ
• Fossil Hominids

If Noah's Flood were a global deluge, it should have left some evidence behind. Geologists in the 19th who believed in the biblical creation account went and looked. The most prominent of these, Adam Sedgwick, had to admit that they had failed to find the signs of such a deluge that must have existed had it occurred. See this essay on Sedgwick's recantation.

As for Noah's Ark on Mt. Ararat, nobody has demonstrated that there are any remnants to be found there. We have a large number of resources on Flood Geology here on the Archive.

Theories and conjectures which contradict empirically observable phenomena can't be accepted. Evolutionary biology fits what we observe empirically. Young-earth creationism contradicts what we observe empirically.

Wesley

Hey, that sounds familiar... Have a look at this old post of mine.

Wesley

That's a good point. I've changed the title of the page to say, "Documenting the Existence of 'The International Flat Earth Society'".

I can't say that I'm optimistic about how much influence that will have on those determined to leave feedback on the topic.

Comments like yours help make the effort worthwhile.

Wesley

Roughly speaking, muscle strength increases proportionally to the cross sectional area, or as the square of the linear size. Weight increases as the cube of the linear size. Therefore, strength to weight is proportional to the 2/3 power of size.

There are lots of complications, of course -- musculo-skeletal systems are arrangements of levers, which can affect the effectiveness of activity, and respiration rates come into play as well. It's never as simple as one straightforward equation.

But, a partial answer to your question(s) can be found without considering Origin of Life (OOL) research at all.

"... why all life shares certain attributes from a very primative form?"

I think that if you consider this a bit more, you will see that this was a clear prediction of evolutionary theory that was only recently confirmed. If all life descends from one life form, then all life will share some common attributes. An interesting article is: J. Kirk Harris, Scott T. Kelley, George B. Spiegelman, and Norman R. Pace 2003 The Genetic Core of the Universal Ancestor

"Does this mean that the transitional object from non-life to life only happened once?"

The endosymbiont hypothesis (that organelles such as mitochondria are the symbiotic association of formerly independent life forms) rather suggests that there were multiple "origins" of life. A current discussion I recommend is :

Dyall, Sabrina D., Patricia J. Johnson 2000 Origins of hydrogenosomes and mitochondria: evolution and organelle biogenesis. Current Opinion in Microbiology 3:404-411.

A good review (and an extension) of the literature on the origin of cells is: Martin, William, Michael J. Russell 2002 On the origins of cells: a hypothesis for the evolutionary transitions from abiotic geochemistry to chemoautotrophic prokaryotes, and from prokaryotes to nucleated cells Philosophical Transactions: Biological Sciences Vol.358, No.1429:59-85

It is interesting to me that all that Darwin had to say about the origin of life in his Origin of Species was,

“ I believe that animals are descended from at most only four or five progenitors, and plants from an equal or lessor number.

Analogy would lead me one step farther, namely, to the belief that all animals and plants are descended from some one prototype. But analogy may be a deceitful guide. Nevertheless all living things have much in common, in their chemical composition, their cellular structure, their laws of growth, and their liability to injurious influences. ...

Therefore, on the principle of natural selection with the divergence of character, it does not seem incredible that, from some such low and intermediate form, both animals and plants may have been developed; and, if we admit this, we must likewise admit that all the organic beings which have ever lived on this earth may be descended from some one primordial form. But this inference is chiefly grounded on analogy, and it is immaterial whether or not it be accepted. No doubt it is possible, as Mr. G. H. Lewes has urged, that at the first commencement of life many different forms were evolved; but if so, we may conclude that only a very few have left modified descendants.”

From the 6th edition.

So I note that Darwin was consistent in his opinion that there were few first life forms, and merely a possibly that there could have been only one. Also note that Darwin is little interested in the issue using well under one page of text from a 450 page book.

Following a brief period of optimism from the early 1950s to the late 1960s, many scientists became discouraged about origin of life research. There seemed to be too many open questions about the early geochemical conditions of the Earth to properly constrain the problem. But, the overall scientific world view surely does encompass the nebular theory of planetary formation, the age of the Solar System, and (in my understanding) the origin of life. And, the last twenty years have resolved many of the issues that once seemed to have been out of reach.

There is good evidence for very early landforms, and oceans:

MOJZSIS, STEPHEN J., T. MARK HARRISON, ROBERT T. PIDGEON 2001 Oxygen-isotope evidence from ancient zircons for liquid water at the Earth's surface 4,300 Myr ago Nature 409, 178-181 (11 January )

Sleep, N. H., K. Zahnle, P. S. Neuhoff 2001 Initiation of clement surface conditions on the earliest Earth PNAS-USA v.98 no. 7: 3666-3672

Wilde, Simon A., John W. Valley, William H. Peck, Collin M. Graham 2001 Evidence from detrital zircons for the existence of continental crust and oceans on Earth 4.4 Gyr ago Nature Vol 409:175-181

The following comments from Lazcano and Miller are quite relevant: A. Lazcano & S.L. Miller 1994 How long did it take for life to begin and evolve to cyanobacteria Journal of Molecular Evolution 39(6): 546-554, December, From the abstract:

"There is convincing paleontological evidence showing that stromatolite-building phototactic prokaryotes were already in existence 3.5 x 10(9) years ago. Late accretion impacts may have killed off life on our planet as late as 3.8 x 10(9) years ago. This leaves only 300 million years to go from the prebiotic soup to the RNA world and to cyanobacteria. However, 300 million years should be more than sufficient time. All known prebiotic reactions take place in geologically rapid time scales, and very slow prebiotic reactions are not feasible because the intermediate compounds would have been destroyed due to the passage of the entire ocean through deep-sea vents every 10(7) years or in even less time."

So, even if we accept the notion that heavy impacts would have sterilized the Earth around 3.8Ga there is ample scope for life to originate by the age of the earliest known microfossils around 3.5Ga. There is more recent research results that show that Miller was too pessimistic in his opinion of hydrothermal vents as productive locations for the origin of life. The next three articles will give you a good set of materials to begin that reading.

Amend, J. P. , E. L. Shock 1998 Energetics of Amino Acid Synthesis in Hydrothermal Ecosystems Science Volume 281, number 5383, Issue of 11 Sep , pp. 1659-1662.

A. T. FISHER, E. E. DAVIS, M. HUTNAK, V. SPIESS, L. ZÜHLSDORFF, A. CHERKAOUI, L. CHRISTIANSEN, K. EDWARDS, R. MACDONALD, H. VILLINGER, M. J. MOTTL, C. G. WHEAT, K. BECKER 2003 Hydrothermal recharge and discharge across 50 km guided by seamounts on a young ridge flank Nature 421, 618 - 621 (2003);

Imai, E., Honda, H., Hatori, K., Brack, A. and Matsuno, K. 1999 Elongation of oligopeptides in a simulated submarine hydrothermal system Science 283(5403):831–833.

Perhaps I am missing the obvious, but I don't think that compitition for resources would be an issue at this level.

A brief introduction to the pre-cellular competition will come from these articles:

Mulkidjanian, Armen Y., Dmitry A Cherepanov, Michael Y Galperin 2003 Survival of the fittest before the beginning of life: Selection of the first oligonucleotide-like polymers by UV light BMC Evolutionary Biology 2003 3:12 (published online 28 May 2003)

Woese, Carl 1998 The universal ancestor PNAS Vol. 95, Issue 12, 6854-6859, June 9

Woese, Carl 2002 On the evolution of Cells PNAS Vol. 99 13:8742-8747, June 25

In the 2800m years that followed, why not any more transitons from non-life to life, at least any that sustained a lineage?

Once life forms became common, the conditions that had contributed to the origin of life no longer existed- transformed by the biochemical products of life. An additional problem that exists for the delineation of separate original lineages is lateral genetic transfer. For example: Harris et al (2003) ( cited above) and, Olendzenski, Lorraine, Olga Zhaxybayeva, J. Peter Gogarten 2000 How Much Did Horizontal Gene Transfer Contribute to Early Evolution?: Quantifying Archaeal Genes in Two Bacterial Lineages (Abstract) General Meeting of the NASA Astrobiology Institute.

My current favorite book on the Origin of Life for non-specialists is:

Iris Fry, 2000 The Emergence of Life on Earth: A Historical and Scientific Overview Rutgers University Press

We here have an eclectic collection of faiths and non-faiths, but this site is for refutation of bad science, primarily. Some incorrigibles have written on philosophy, though, but they are safely ignored.

At least one writer thinks the two views are compatible:

Evolution, Sociobiology, and the Atonement

Patricia A. Williams

Zygon Volume 33 Issue 4 Page 557  - December 1998

This essay views Christian doctrines of the atonement in the light of evolution and sociobiology. It argues that most of the doctrines are false because they use a false premise, the historicity of Adam and the Fall. However, two doctrines are not false on those grounds: Abelard's idea that Jesus' life is an example and Athanasius' concept that the atonement changes human nature. Employing evolution's and sociobiology's concepts of the egocentric and ethnocentric nature of humanity and the synergy between genes and environments to produce a "nature," this essay shows that these two doctrines can be amalgamated to make sense of the atonement in the late twentieth century.

and here is a Mormon compatibilist view, and here a more orthodox Christian survey of views and philosophies. Finally, to be complete, here is a 1916 edition of an 1899 Bible Study that asserts the incompatibility.

Well, first we have to determine what you mean by "older than the bible". Do you mean older than any portion of the written bible? If so, only writings predating 586 BCE will do, since prior to the Babylonian exile the Hebrews utilized oral tradition rather than a written record. But perhaps you meant books which were written before the latest written part of the bible, which would mean anything prior to about 100 AD would do. Or perhaps you meant any book written prior to the codification of what books comprised the bible, which would mean any book written before 400 AD would do.

I guess we will pass over the issue of "that I can read", since that would require some knowledge of your particular expertise in ancient languages. Assuming that the reader is capable of reading any ancient text that is available, we can move on.

The Egyptian Book of the Dead at about 1600 BCE easily predates the earliest written part of the bible. Fortunately, there is an online version. Many other written materials of great antiquity can be viewed via the CWRU ETANA collection.

Wesley

The seem to be three topics that are most difficult for creationists to reconcile their particular biblical interpretations with the direct observation of the world. One of these is the lack of geological data that is consistent with a global flood. The classic statement of the creationist's position from this century is found in The Genesis Flood by Whitcomb and Morris. How this became so central to the creationist worldview is examined by Ronald Numbers in The Creationists: The Evolution of Scientific Creationism .

If you would like to learn about the ancient literary tradition that was the original source for the biblical flood story I recommend Stephanie Dalley's Myths from Mesopotamia: Creation, The Flood, Gilgamesh, and Others. Revised . Blenkinsopp (1992) and Friedman (1997) are very important discussions of the flood's role in mainstream biblical exegesis.

An interesting idea linking ethnoastronomy with the flood myth is found here:

Introduction to Astronomy: EthnoAstronomy: Star Myths Deluge Stories

Note that I can't direct you to any geological data that supports the Flood story because there is none. Various creationist "ministries" have tried to selectively point to one small geological section or another as "proof" of their biblical interpretations, but all these fail when critically examined. Some relevant websites for consideration are:

By Joe Meert

• Radiometric Dating, Paleosols and the Geologic Column: Three strikes against Young Earth Creationism
• Can Creationists Fit the Flood in a Geologic Framework?

And here at TalkOrigins Archives

• A Criticism of the ICR's Grand Canyon Dating Project

Blenkinsopp, Joseph 1992 The Pentateuch: An Introduction to the First Five Books of the Bible The Anchor Bible Reference Library New York: ABRL/Doubleday

Friedman, Richarrd Elliott 1987 Who Wrote the Bible New York:Harper and Row (Paperback Edition)

Dalley, Stephanie 2000 Myths from Mesopotamia: Creation, The Flood, Gilgamesh, and Others. Revised Oxford: Oxford University Press

Numbers, Ronald L. 1993 The Creationists: The Evolution of Scientific Creationism Berkeley: University of California Press

Whitcomb, John C., Henry M. Morris 1961 The Genesis Flood Grand Rapids: Baker Book House

You present an intriguing speculation, that confusion between solar and sidereal days could have contributed to the development of this legend.

No doubt, anyone who is so confused about how computers extrapolate orbits as to give a moments credence to the legend might well make all kinds of strange associations in their mind. However, research into the origins of the story do not show any role for this particular error.

The links I gave last time do not go into a huge amount of detail, but essentially the earliest versions of the story date right back to 1890, long before NASA computers were introduced as a variation. Here is another link to someone who has actually managed to track down the 1890 booklet in which the notion was first proposed. See Joshua's Long Day and the NASA Computers by Robert Newman, at the "Interdisciplinary Biblical Research Institute".

I can assure the reader on one point, however. The contributors to this Archive have a great deal of familiarity with creationist arguments, many of them having numerous books and pamphlets from creationist sources in their personal libraries. In particular, Mark Isaak, the author of the Five Major Misconceptions about Evolution article, has just completed an extensive classification of creationist claims. Believe me, he's quite familiar with what creationists say.

The reader also makes several incorrect assertions. The first is that the universe is a not closed thermodynamic system; as Tim Thompson (I believe) has pointed out before, the universe is expanding and constant size is a precondition for a system to be thermodynamically closed. In any event, the question here is the development of life on Earth; the openness or closedness of the Universe thermodynamically has no bearing on that question.

Biologists define evolution as the change in the gene pool of a population of organisms over time, and as such, evolution encompasses adaptation, common descent, and many other observations and models. The reader should examine the following articles:

• 29+ Evidences for Macroevolution
• Observed Instances of Speciation
• Some More Observed Speciation Events
• Evidence for Evolution: An Eclectic Survey

Evolution thus explains why it is natural for people to place a special importance on their own families.

On the other hand, you are quite correct that science is not a basis for making moral decisions. Science is just the process for finding out about the natural world and how it works. It may be natural for people to put their own families first, but that is not a supreme moral imperative. Someone who deliberately subverts the rights of others for the advancement of their own children may be behaving naturally; but they are not behaving morally.

It is also, of course, completely false that only religion teaches right from wrong. There have been many great moral and ethical teachers who were not religious. Religion may also teach right from wrong; but in many instances religions have failed badly in their moral standing.

The story is this: in the 1950s, a branch of mathematics was formed called "game theory", which was the logic of decision making of ideally rational agents. It was soon discovered that this logic worked pretty well for a range of things that could not be rational agents. For a start, it worked in international disputes, in economics, and, as it turned out, in evolutionary biology.

These mythical ideally rational agents were "egoists" (not to be confused with "egotists", who think they are the most important people in the world; eogism is the view that all rational acts must be of direct value to the actor). This is to say, anything that game theory can describe, can be thought of as acting selfishly, coldly calculating their best interests. Why does it work for genes?

It turns out that evolution can be treated, as a first approximation, as if genes cared about their long term fitness, and strove to maximise it. Of course they don't; this is an illusion created by the fact that genes that are fitter than other genes do "behave" as if they were rational egoists. But all this amounts to is to say that evolution proceeds in ways that game theory can describe and predict.

In fact, these "rational egoist genes" can evolve cooperation in the most unusual cases. A classical book in economics - The Evolution of Cooperation by Robert Axelrod - shows how cooperation between kin and "like-minded strategists" can cause cooperative and altruistic behaviours (at the organism level) to evolve because they increase the fitness of the "selfish" genes.

One final point. You are quite correct that statements of fact ("is" statements) can never imply statements of value ("ought" statements). In fact, the origins or causes of something like altruistic behaviour do not make it worthwhile or bad. You can give it the value you want for other reasons no matter whether it is based on religion or on science. I happen to prefer a world full of altruism. It doesn't matter whether the individuals are altruistic because they believe in God or because they believe it is a survival-maximising strategy.

The first rule of responding to antievolution claims is never take an antievolution claim about biology as settled. If they claim the sky is blue, be sure to look out a window before agreeing. In this case, the claim that sea anemones have no nervous system is simply incorrect. They do have a nervous system arranged as a nerve net. There is no brain or central ganglion, but they do have neurons doing their thing. Some jellyfish (jellyfish and sea anemones both being in the same phylum) even have camera eyes and are able to do some image processing.

The truth value of evolutionary biology is not affected by who accepts it. Once one starts discounting concepts because pusillanimous people have embraced them, one would have to disavow most of the things taught in our culture, because pusillanimous people are so ubiquitous.

Wesley

It is not clear what you mean by efficient. There are advantages that come with sexual reproduction; and life forms have developed which use both sexual and asexual.

The solar system did not form from an explosion. It formed as a rotating cloud of dust and gas compressed under its own gravitational field. The full details of the mechanics are complicated and still being investigated; but the accumulation of particles into bodies in orbit about each other is an inevitable consequence of known Newtonian physics; so the probability of solar systems forming is 1.

The sea anemone gets along just fine without a central^* nervous system. Do you think this means all organisms should similarly have evolved without central nervous systems? But evolution predicts diversity; not uniformity.

The word "random" with respect to atomic structure is odd. Atomic physics and chemistry, proceeds according to natural laws which we can study. You may attribute the fundamental laws of nature to God, if you like; science does not address that metaphysical question. But why call it "random"? There are powerful regularities in how things behave, which is why science works at all.

Your final paragraph shows the real problem. You instinctively think of scientific study of the natural world — how atoms behave, how interstellar nebulae contract, how life forms diversify — as an atheistic rejection of religious explanations. That is, you are effectively setting up natural explanations for things as meaning that God is not involved. That is a strange principle for someone who believes in a God who is the author and maintainer of all things. You also describe science as a kind of sacred set of unquestioned precepts analogous to the narrow minded religious literalism which underlies creationism.

But that is not so. Christians and atheists can equally use the same tools of science to study the natural world. Biological evolution is a scientific model like any other. In fact, evolution stands in relation to biology much as the periodic table stands in relation to chemistry.

It is true that many scientists are atheists; and that many contributors to this archive are non-believers. But on the other hand, there are many scientists who are Christians, and some of the major contributors to this archive are Christians. You simply can't tell only by reading their scientific writings; the science and the data is the same in any case.

You may have heard the famous phrase Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution. This was by one of the major developers of the "New Synthesis" of evolutionary biology with genetics back in the 1970s: Theodosius Dobzhansky. Dobzhansky is an example of a leading and hugely influential evolutionist who was also a devout Christian.

You will never manage to learn about science until you can look at the evidence and the arguments plainly without thinking of it as some atheistic conspiracy. It isn't.

(*) I added the word central here thanks to Wesley's observation.

Philip may have meant no central nervous system; which is indeed a feature of the Cnidaria (Hydra, Jellyfish, Anemones); I have amended my original response by including this word.

I may have been lax in checking details here because I had in mind the old story about Ciona intestinalis, or "sea squirt" (a tunicate, not an anemone). The larvae of this organism has a simple central nervous system of 330 cells, of which less than 100 are neurons. The larvae swim freely for a couple of days, after which they metamorphose into an adult form, which is a sessile filter feeder permanently fixed in place on some rock. As part of the metamorphosis, most of the nervous system is consumed, since there is no more need for it. Daniel Dennet in Consciousness Explained made the famous observation that this is "rather like getting tenure".

I am startled to learn that some Jellyfish have complex eyes, despite lacking a brain. Checking claims is a great idea, including claims from a fellow evolutionist. Your claim checks out. The cubozoan jellyfish Carybdea marsupialis has 24 eyes, 8 of which are complex eyes including a lens. (Refs: [1], [2], [3])

Although much remains obscure, and will long remain obscure, I can entertain no doubt, after the most deliberate study and dispassionate judgement of which I am capable, that the view which most naturalists entertain, and which I formerly entertained -- namely, that each species has been independently created -- is erroneous.

I'm not sure whose "point" it is to which the reader is referring, or why there may be only one "point" under consideration. The point of this archive, as its welcome message should make clear, is to set forth for the public the mainstream scientific view on questions of origins, in response to pseudoscientific claims by a variety of individuals and organizations.

Overall, this archive takes no position on religious matters, to the extent that assertions about those matters comport with mainstream science. Contributors to this archive hold a variety of religious views, from strong atheism to evangelical Christianity. Certainly, one need not reject God, Christianity, or other faiths to accept evolution, as the article on God and Evolution sets forth.

As for the reader's comment about children, perhaps it is time for the reader to relinquish a child-like view of religion, science, and the Universe, and to discover a more adult perspective.