On the other hand, can all of the terrible afflictions to the eyes and the brains that mere mortals endure be explained by a God that is not basically a sadistic monster?
In the presence of disease, suffering and disease can only indicate a sadistic god, if you have to insist that god is a reality.
But I rather think that there is no god.
But eyes and brains with and without their associated diseases, suffering and problems can be explained by natural selection as long as you do not expect every aspect of nature such as traits and features of living things to have to mandate a successful or useful function.
The beauty of natural selection is that 99% of traits and behaviours renders no specific selective advantage and this can be true without diminishing the theory one iota.
The most primitive organisms sustained themselves by absorbing chemicals from the environment. SSome of these processes required light energy, and soon through variations in DNA transcriptions caused in part by the very same light that those processes required, caused variations in subsequent generations. The light energy was usable in differing degrees by these variants, and those that managed to orient themselves towards the light out competed those that were not so able. In time single celled organisms learned to move towards light sources, and sub cellular structures were better able to become light sentitive.
Organelles that were able to detect light gave organisms that were able to emply light as a source of energy were massively advantaged. As creatures evolved in multicellular organisms these organelles became specialised cells whose main fucntion was the detection of light and the communication of that source to other cells in the organism.
At some point a branch occurred between plant like and animal like organisms whereby light detection and light energy gathering becames differentiated.
SOme of the most primitive animals have what you might call psuedo-eyes, or proto-eyes that are able through nervous communications to inform the rest of the organism as to where the light is. And where these were mobile, plants , on the other hand, turned these skills to Chloroplasts, capable of using light to convert CO2 and water into carbohydrates.
The motile organisms were now able to detect changes in light and began to map their environments in different ways.
And so on…
Well, for the reasons I stated earlier. “Natural selection” attempts to explain how environmental factors can allow or not a change to be transmitted, but it cannot explain what causes those changes to happen.
But even that is iffy, because many genes are actively counterproductive to both survival and reproduction with 0 benefits.
On a philosophical level, it is even debatable whether a cause-consequence approach is adequate. It is a linear analysis that necessarily excludes more than it includes. A single chain of single links of cause and consequence must be found to exist, and if not found, then forced.
A wider view that includes all factors non-exclusively can allow one to look for patterns that are consistent and suggest coherence through time. Relationships between factors can often be apparent and hold with perfect consistency with no cause-consequence being discernible without abusing reason with endless, precarious chains that inevitably become circular.
What matters for science is not the determination of causality, but the consistency of its findings. Cause-consequence will always beg the question, such that one inevitably winds up with the Aristotelian paradox of the First Cause.
A consequence has a cause, and a cause gives a consequence. There’s not really a way around that. Not because you can’t find it so much as because it’s baked into the definition.
Yo momma.
You keep making these assertions.
Well, to be clear, you said light. And I guess I don’t see why other chemicals couldn’t interfere with DNA as it splits, but I would need you to be a little more specific as to how.
That’s the question people tend to sort of jump over.
But you seem to be saying that variations occur only because of extragenetic factors acting on the moment of transcription. Again, you are not being too clear, but I’m interested.
And if I could bother you, answer me this: do you believe discernible patterns can be found in the occurence of variations, or do you believe them to be simply random?
What the fuck do you think skin cancer is?
How the fuck have you managed to make it to adulthood without learing that radiation causes mutations.
Your ignorance is astonishing. britannica.com/science/radi … -mutations