New finding: 600M years ago, a single mutation changed everything

Re:New finding: 600M years ago, a single mutation changed ev... by cperciva on Monday January 11, 2016 @06:01PM (#10884296)

it is impossible for complex features such as wings, eyes etc to evolve because they will require a series of mutations that do not individually confer any evolutionary advantage

The answer to this proposition is that the fact we aren't aware of the evolutionary advantages which were obtained en route doesn't mean there weren't any.

The feathered wing is very complex and it won't fly until it has fully evolved, for example -- but as we learned quite recently, feathers evolved (and were an evolutionary advantage) because dinosaurs needed to stay warm. Birds can fly because a feather which is efficient at capturing air and keeping a giant lizard warm also turns out to be very efficient at pushing air and keeping a proto-avian aloft.

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Re:New finding: 600M years ago, a single mutation changed ev... by fiatjaf on Monday January 11, 2016 @06:16PM (#10884380)

> The answer to this proposition is that the fact we aren't aware of the evolutionary advantages which were obtained en route doesn't mean there weren't any.

Your argument begs the question. It is the same as saying: "since evolution actually happened, these mutations must have conferred some evolutionary advantage".

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Re:New finding: 600M years ago, a single mutation changed ev... by cperciva on Monday January 11, 2016 @06:20PM (#10884405)

That wasn't an argument. That was pointing out a flaw in the counter-evolution argument.

The fact that we are not aware of any evolutionary advantage conferred by a change yields no information in either direction about the validity of the evolutionary theory.

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Re:New finding: 600M years ago, a single mutation changed ev... by nitrogen on Tuesday January 12, 2016 @12:56AM (#10885801)