[_ Old Earth _] How did snoring evolve?

[Vaccine]

I don't presume to speak for Async but I don't think he was implying that God himself was guiding the birds. I think the explanation he was asking for was how did that ability get there in the first place.

 

[Barbarian]

I don't presume to speak for Async but I don't think he was implying that God himself was guiding the birds. I think the explanation he was asking for was how did that ability get there in the first place.

It seems to be a by-product of vision. Humans have it, for example:
http://www.polarization.com/haidinger/haidinger.html

So do many invertebrates. Some species just don't do much with it. And there is some evidence for humans having a weak ability to orient in magnetic fields. We have, in some bones in our heads, the same material that some flies use to orient in a magnetic field. Even some bacteria can do it. These are generalized abilities that were in play as soon as it was possible for organisms to detect light and magnetic fields.

Birds just use them more effectively, something that could easily be honed by natural selection.

 

[Asyncritus]

It seems to be a by-product of vision. Humans have it, for example:
http://www.polarization.com/haidinger/haidinger.html

So do many

It seems to be a by-product of vision. Humans have it, for example:
http://www.polarization.com/haidinger/haidinger.html

So do many invertebrates. Some species just don't do much with it. And there is some evidence for humans having a weak ability to orient in magnetic fields. We have, in some bones in our heads, the same material that some flies use to orient in a magnetic field. Even some bacteria can do it. These are generalized abilities that were in play as soon as it was possible for organisms to detect light and magnetic fields.

Birds just use them more effectively, something that could easily be honed by natural selection.

No. His is about sudden macromutational events leading to a new species. That seems to be vanishingly rare for mammals,

Vanishingly rare is a sad admission for evolution theory. If it is vanishingly rare, then yu have the problem of how the 100,000 or more mammalian species evolved - and from what. What is your answer to that little difficulty?

invertebrates. Some species just don't do much with it. And there is some evidence for humans having a weak ability to orient in magnetic fields. We have, in some bones in our heads, the same material that some flies use to orient in a magnetic field. Even some bacteria can do it. These are generalized abilities that were in play as soon as it was possible for organisms to detect light and magnetic fields.

Birds just use them more effectively, something that could easily be honed by natural selection.

What nonsense Barbarian.

Vaccine has got my question correctly. There are really two of them. Can you please address each one separately so we can all see just how feeble your responses really are?

1 How did the behaviour arise and
2 How did it enter the genome?

Sensitivity to the earth's magnetic field as an explanation of these fantastic migratory feats is purely nonsensical.

As you say, we are sensitive to it as well, but that does not mean that you can stick a nail through your nose, and be guided by it from a Alaska to New Zealand. No, that won't do.

They've known about the earth's magnetic field for ages, and experiments have been carried out in attempts to find out what part it plays in the migratory ability of birds. Here is ICR: http://www.icr.org/article/263/

Salomonsen, writing about this breathtaking navigational feat, says 3:

"Even when birds were anaesthetised for the outward journey, or if their cages were made to rotate continuously so that their orientation was constantly changing, they were just as able to find their way home as were the control birds. Therefore there can be no doubt that birds have a special sense of geographical position, i.e. a real navigational sense. The nature of this instinct remains a mystery; even more so, the location of the relevant sense organ."

They go into exquisite detail too:

"The bird's ability to find its way during migration is surely the greatest mystery. Seldom has another question given so much cause for theorizing and speculation as this one."

Indeed, this navigational achievement, performed without complex boards of instruments, compass and map and under constantly changing conditions, including sun position, wind direction, cloud cover and the diurnal cycle is an incomparable miracle.

During flight over wide, windswept stretches of ocean, a tendency to drift off course cannot be avoided. Such drift must be continually compensated for, as in a feedback system in control technology, in order to avoid losing energy by flying a longer route.

The Creator equipped the birds with a precise 'autopilot,' which apparently is constantly measuring its geographical position and comparing the data with its individually "programmed" destination. In this way an economical, energy-saving and direct flight is guaranteed. Just where this vital system is to be found and how this operating information is coded is known by no one today except the Creator, who made it.

That, of course, is their opinion: but there is no other explanation which is better.

I really don't know why you won't face up to simple facts and abandon this foolish theory which has no hope of explaining such vast swathes of irreconcilable data.

After all, this is only one of the vast multitude of facts about migration which demand explanation, and which violently reject pathetic evolutionary efforts.

We have the eels, with their 3000 mile migration, which ends in the death of the adults, and the young finding their way back to their parents' starting point, 3000 miles away, without any guidance.

We have the Monarch butterflies which migrate thousands of miles from Canada to Mexico, and never return - but their offspring do, and they know the way some how. The information crosses the barrier of death.

How is that evolutionarily explicable?

You keep mentioning natural selection. As you've been shown, Kimura, Lynch, Kingsolver and doubtless others, reject natural selection's ability to forward evolution. Why then, do you keep mentioning it as an evolutionary agency? You know full well that it is ineffective and can't do the trick.

Just think, what advantage is there in a whole species risking its very existence (as the godwit and the Pacific Golden Plover do, crossing 7,100 miles of ocean in one case, and 2,800 miles in the other) by making these incredible migrations? Why did natural selection NOT WIPE THE BEHAVIOUR OUT?

There is no sensible answer. God clearly put these things there as a challenge to unbelievers in His creative ability - and I'm afraid that you align yourself very firmly with the wrong side in this discussion.

Scientific optimism is a great thing - but not when it flies in the face of the Creator.

 

[Asyncritus]

Your quote:

Experiments over the last 30 years have failed to resolve the fundamental question of how migratory birds integrate multiple sources of directional information into a coherent navigational system.

Last autumn, Rachel Muheim, a postdoctoral associate in biology professor John Phillips' lab at Virginia Tech, captured Savannah sparrows in the Yukon before they headed south. She was able to demonstrate that the birds calibrate their magnetic compass based on polarized light patterns at sunset and sunrise.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/08/060810213154.htm

There. Isn't that amazing?

The question in bold above HASN'T BEEN ANSWERED, and your doofus has failed to answer the simple questions:

1 How did the birds figure out how to calibrate their magnetic compass?

2 How did they know they HAD a magnetic compass?

3 And how did they know that it HAD to be calibrated?

4 How did they learn to use polarised light, which has been a very recent discovery, and the birds were doing this since the year dot?

 

[Barbarian]

Experiments over the last 30 years have failed to resolve the fundamental question of how migratory birds integrate multiple sources of directional information into a coherent navigational system.

Last autumn, Rachel Muheim, a postdoctoral associate in biology professor John Phillips' lab at Virginia Tech, captured Savannah sparrows in the Yukon before they headed south. She was able to demonstrate that the birds calibrate their magnetic compass based on polarized light patterns at sunset and sunrise.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/08/060810213154.htm

There. Isn't that amazing?

What nonsense Barbarian.

You misspelled "evidence." So now, we see that birds use senses that exist in a rudimentary form in other organisms, and navigate by those. Something easily honed by natural selection.

There are no stupid questions, so let's address yours:

1 How did the behaviour arise and

It turns out that humans can also detect polarization, which can be used to locate true north. So we're talking about something already there, that was only improved. And since even humans have been shown to have a rudimentary sense of compass direction, it's clear that any increment in capability would be useful.

2 How did it enter the genome?

Already there. Remember what you learned earlier. Evolution doesn't make anything from scratch; it always modifies something already there.

Sensitivity to the earth's magnetic field as an explanation of these fantastic migratory feats is purely nonsensical.

As you learned, it's one of the ways birds navigate. Here's a place to learn more about it.

A cell in the eye may be worth two in the beak, at least when it comes to a migratory bird’s magnetic compass. In European robins, a visual center in the brain and light-sensing cells in the eye — not magnetic sensing cells in the beak — allow the songbirds to sense which direction is north and migrate correctly, a new study finds. The study, appearing October 29 in Nature, may improve conservation efforts for migratory birds.
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/birds-eyes-not-beaks-sense-magnetic-fields

As you say, we are sensitive to it as well

But in us, it's not sufficiently developed to be of much use, even though we have a weak ability to find magnetic north. After all we have a sense of smell, even though it's not good enough to track like a bloodhound.

Many birds have a compass in their eyes. Their retinas are loaded with a protein called cryptochrome, which is sensitive to the Earth’s magnetic fields. It’s possible that the birds can literally see these fields, overlaid on top of their normal vision. This remarkable sense allows them to keep their bearings when no other landmarks are visible.
But cryptochrome isn’t unique to birds – it’s an ancient protein with versions in all branches of life. In most cases, these proteins control daily rhythms. Humans, for example, have two cryptochromes – CRY1 and CRY2 – which help to control our body clocks. But Lauren Foley from the University of Massachusetts Medical School has found that CRY2 can double as a magnetic sensor.

Foley worked with Drosophila flies, which can normally sense magnetic fields using cryptochome.
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/n...-but-can-we-see-magnetic-fields/#.UooRbeK911s

but that does not mean that you can stick a nail through your nose, and be guided by it from a Alaska to New Zealand. No, that won't do.

But birds, using the same structures we have, can navigate effectively. It's not that they have something new, it's just that natural selection has sharpened the ability to a much higher degree.

They've known about the earth's magnetic field for ages, and experiments have been carried out in attempts to find out what part it plays in the migratory ability of birds.

(ICR tries to downplay the discoveries)

That's to be expected. It's their job to discredit science.

That, of course, is their opinion: but there is no other explanation which is better.

Comes down to evidence; science has it. They don't.

How is that evolutionarily explicable?

As you see, it requires no miraculous changes, (unless you consider God creating a world this amazing to be a miracle, which it is).

You keep mentioning natural selection. As you've been shown, Kimura, Lynch, Kingsolver and doubtless others, reject natural selection's ability to forward evolution.

As you learned, they consider natural selection to be an essential part of evolutionary processes. Would you like me to show you, again?

Why then, do you keep mentioning it as an evolutionary agency?

Evidence. Direct observation of the process. Things like that.

 

[Rick W]

http://christianforums.net/Fellowship/index.php?threads/reminder.51316/