- Dogs have been bred by intelligent designers.
The only “intelligent” thing they did was to select dogs with certain characteristics. The mutations that caused the differences were not intelligently introduced by the human breeders. Those mutations were random.
And the very first evolutionary changes from wolves to dogs were not directed by humans at all. Some wolves were more tolerant of living alongside humans than other wolves. These wolves were rewarded with food and other benefits of human contact. That was the selection process. It was more natural than human directed. Humans did not even notice at first that certain wolves were changing and becoming more desirable as pets. But once that happened, changes took off in a bigger way. Still, the only thing humans did was to select among the choices offered by random mutations.
About those animals that lose their eyesight, why did they evolve eyes in the first place if they live underground?
Because their ancestors did not live underground, but lived above ground and had functioning eyes. But at some point some individuals chose to live underground, or maybe they were cut off by a natural accident. For whatever reason, they started living underground, and evolution gradually destroyed the eyes. Why should it do that? Because having eyes underground is no particular advantage, and the energy resources that went in to making eyes could be more profitably used in other ways. So those individuals who diverted their biological resources from eyes to, maybe, hearing, were more successful than those who continued to put their biological resources into developing eyes. That’s evolution at work.
Mutations are usually negative or neutral, yet evolutionists expect us to believe that, over time, billions of positive mutations have happened and been retained.
That is true. The vast majority of mutations are negative, and those individuals who are unfortunate enough to have a negative mutation are probably not going to live long enough to pass along that mutation to their offspring. So negative mutations die out really quickly. But every once in a great while, a mutation is positive, and such a mutation will allow the individual to pass along that mutation more successfully than others of his kind. So positive mutations, as rare as they might be, are amplified and eventually dominate the species.
Are you saying that this information inside the nucleus of a cell evolves as well?
Since you were the first one to use the term “information” with regard to the nucleus of a cell, I can only guess at what you might have meant. I assumed you meant the information to build an entire organism. But that is not really evolution. That is simple reproduction. And I suppose you already believe that in ordinary reproduction, all the information on how to build an complete organism is contained in the initial fertilized egg.
But if you were talking about information in the sense of evolution, like maybe saying that the protozoa nucleus has within it all the information about evolving eyes or whatever some future macro-evolved descendent might have, that is
not how evolution works. That information is definitely
not in the cell of primitive life forms. That information, such as it is, is acquired gradually through contact with the environment. It is the environment that provides the information of what characteristics are beneficial and which are not. Through the process of natural selection.
If you want to see a nice concrete example of how information can be acquired by a collection of matchboxes and colored beads, see
this article by the legenary Martin Gardener. It shows how, without any instruction or initial information, this collection of stuff can gradually learn the optimal strategy to play a simple game -** hexapawn** - in a way that mimics biological evolution. I actually built one of these when I was a kid.
The point is, it is only through the selection process provided by a sometimes hostile environment that the cells “learn” which random mutations to keep and which to discard. In other words, they learn how to evolve. The information was never in the cell to begin with, so you don’t need to imagine how a primitive cell could know all about what future evolutionary possibilities there are. It just doesn’t happen that way.
God did not break his own rules by creating organisms whole.
“His own rules” means the rules of nature that God set up when he created the universe. I certainly didn’t mean rules that God needed to abide by, since He is obviously not bound by any rules. But you have not addressed the issue of how God could be so deceptive as to make all the evidence point to evolution, yet not have evolution be true.
Rob
Rob