Birds, Bees, Butterflies and Flowers

[atrib]

I guess I could just say that I don't understand the evolution of butterflies and flowers, etc, and I am amazed by it... I guess I can't really make further conclusions of whether an intelligent force definitely guided it...

Your lack of understanding of how evolution works can be fixed through education. But this takes real work, unlike the wishful thinking you apparently like to engage in. Again, there is a tried and tested naturalistic explanation for the processes that shape the evolution of living things, and there is no evidence to support the supernatural scenario you hypothesize about. The odds of your hypothesis being true are so infinitesimally small that they can safely be ignored.

Lets consider this hypothetical scenario: You know there was a slice of pie in the fridge when you left for work this morning. The pie is gone when you return home, and your wife informs you that she saw your son eating it. It would be irrational to believe that the slice of pie was taken by a supernatural entity from outside the universe in the face of all the information available to you. Just as irrational as believing that the natural world is shaped by the machinations of an unseen supernatural entity, when a good naturalistic explanation exists that explains how living things evolve.

 

[excreationist]

You could, but that would require work, investment in time, learning some biology, and actual effort.

Instead, you say it's 'amazing', throw up your hands and go with your gut.

You sure you're not a trumper?

Me thinking it is amazing is partly an emotional response.... and learning how it works would make it feel more rewarding...

 

[excreationist]

.....Actually why would beauty even occur to a God. I know why human beings think things are beautiful. They speak to our place in the world. About our survival needs. If I thought beauty was something that came from a God I'd have to believe that God appreciated beauty. But God isn't of this world

I believe I'm probably in a video game and the intelligences behind it come from a world similar to our own. From personal experience I think an intelligent force can have a sense of humour... see https://talkfreethought.org/showthread.php?21819-A-God-without-compelling-evidence

and so doesn't have those needs. The same thing goes for intelligence. Why would a tri-omni God need intelligence? Intelligent design is a human thing. Trial and error. Discovery. Theorizing. You know, rational stuff that requires a brain.

I think the intelligent force could be an AI. I don't necessarily believe the tri-omni thing. I think "god" can involve "tough love". I think that it isn't really all powerful - it is reluctant to perform miracles.

 

[Treedbear]

You could, but that would require work, investment in time, learning some biology, and actual effort.

Instead, you say it's 'amazing', throw up your hands and go with your gut.

You sure you're not a trumper?

Me thinking it is amazing is partly an emotional response.... and learning how it works would make it feel more rewarding...

Well, it is certainly a plus that living in Australia where it seems every other critter was designed to kill you and you can still maintain a sense of wonder.

 

[excreationist]

Your lack of understanding of how evolution works can be fixed through education.

Well in post #38 I talked about some things I learnt about the evolution of flowers....

But this takes real work,

Not necessarily.... some websites are very educational but also pretty entertaining....

unlike the wishful thinking you apparently like to engage in. Again, there is a tried and tested naturalistic explanation for the processes that shape the evolution of living things,

I know the general process... I'm looking for specifics about flowers, butterflies, bees, etc.

and there is no evidence to support the supernatural scenario you hypothesize about. The odds of your hypothesis being true are so infinitesimally small that they can safely be ignored.

Well I'm looking into it. I like to reason about these things for myself....

.....Just as irrational as believing that the natural world is shaped by the machinations of an unseen supernatural entity, when a good naturalistic explanation exists that explains how living things evolve.

Well if this is a video game it is easy for intelligent forces to intervene.... though I don't believe I can prove this to skeptics - maybe because there isn't real evidence....

 

[atrib]

And we go round and round in circles.

 

[Valjean]

The mechanisms of evolution are the same for a human and a flatworm. Unless you're a specialist in a particular species the individual steps would probably not add anything very interesting.

YouTube is full of videos explaining mechanisms of evolution.

 

[ronburgundy]

Guided evolution makes more sense to me than the naturalistic evolution of birds, bees, butterflies and flowers.... I recently learnt that caterpillars liquify in their cocoon....

Note that flowers (plants with sexual organs) seem to have coevolved with bees and butterflies... (then later some birds)

As far as butterfly evolution goes I thought it would make more sense to just turn into something like a bee... rather than go on a tangent to evolve into complex butterflies which might have trouble evolving the ability to fly....

I guess it just goes to show that naturalists will believe that anything could evolve even if it seems to me to be quite unlikely....

Also why is it that birds, butterflies and flowers can often be seen by humans as being very beautiful? Is it just by chance? (well I guess some animals and plants are a bit ugly) I thought only food and the opposite sex would involve selection pressures to look attractive....?

edit:

I realised that I already created a topic about flowers and bees... though this time I'm a lot more pro-guided evolution....

This has evolved into:

Was there an intelligent force guiding evolution in a simulation?


What if the millions of years of evolution never happened? What if a virtual evolutionary tree was generated by an intelligent force including the coevolution of metamorphosizing butterflies that help with the sexual reproduction of flowering plants?

Some of your questions and comments reveal two misconceptions about evolution: 1) That everything was selected for, 2) selection operates on very specific phenotypic traits. Many if not most things are just byproducts of other things being selected for. There is no evolutionary reason why butterflies in particular are attractive to humans. That is random happenstance. Butterflies rich colors and patterns were selected for b/c they serve several functions like camouflage, mate attraction, warnings to predators. Humans are attracted colorful things in general for a number of reasons, including that color often signifies a potential food source (like fruit standing out against a background of green forest). And patterns and symmetry catch our eye, b/c almost all multicellular live has some form of symmetry and asymmetrical faces can be a signal of genetic disorders in potential mates. Patterns often signify something that can be predicted or manipulated to change the outcome, and that this doesn't apply to really to butterflies and humans our pattern recognizing mental machinery is just "on" all the time and too "stupid" to save energy by only applying when relevant. Many behavioral traits are overly general and wind up getting applied to areas of live where they aren't useful, precisely b/c evolution is not designed, guided, or finely tuned, but is usually just good enough to get by with lots of inefficiencies and many traits under or over specified/generalized relative to the what they are actually selected for.

 

[skepticalbip]

^ ^

Surely you can see that the human face was "intelligently designed" with the nose bridge and ears "intelligently" placed so as to securely hold a pair of glasses in the exact proper place to correct vision problems.

 

[excreationist]

The mechanisms of evolution are the same for a human and a flatworm.

Actually it seems there are different mechanisms... (maybe?)
https://www.dummies.com/education/science/different-patterns-of-evolution/
e.g. allopatric, peripatric, parapatric and sympatric speciation....
And there's these things people wrote on Facebook:
"Fisher's Runaway, Sexy Son, Handicap Principle, my favorite Sensory Exploitation", "drift, or correlated traits under selection, or phylogenetic inertia"

Unless you're a specialist in a particular species the individual steps would probably not add anything very interesting.

Well in this thread I'm looking for specialist information about species such as butterflies....

YouTube is full of videos explaining mechanisms of evolution.

Good... I like watching educational YouTube videos....

 

[excreationist]

Some of your questions and comments reveal two misconceptions about evolution: 1) That everything was selected for, 2) selection operates on very specific phenotypic traits. Many if not most things are just byproducts of other things being selected for. There is no evolutionary reason why butterflies in particular are attractive to humans. That is random happenstance. Butterflies rich colors and patterns were selected for b/c they serve several functions like camouflage, mate attraction, warnings to predators. Humans are attracted colorful things in general for a number of reasons, including that color often signifies a potential food source (like fruit standing out against a background of green forest). And patterns and symmetry catch our eye.....

What you are saying can apply to just about any form of life. I was wondering about what makes bees, butterflies and flowers special.... they apparently co-evolved and caterpillars liquify in their cocoon and turn into a completely different form... well anyway I guess there is a naturalistic explanation....

 

[ronburgundy]

Some of your questions and comments reveal two misconceptions about evolution: 1) That everything was selected for, 2) selection operates on very specific phenotypic traits. Many if not most things are just byproducts of other things being selected for. There is no evolutionary reason why butterflies in particular are attractive to humans. That is random happenstance. Butterflies rich colors and patterns were selected for b/c they serve several functions like camouflage, mate attraction, warnings to predators. Humans are attracted colorful things in general for a number of reasons, including that color often signifies a potential food source (like fruit standing out against a background of green forest). And patterns and symmetry catch our eye.....

What you are saying can apply to just about any form of life. I was wondering about what makes bees, butterflies and flowers special.... they apparently co-evolved and caterpillars liquify in their cocoon and turn into a completely different form... well anyway I guess there is a naturalistic explanation....

Yes, it does apply to all forms of life. All life has traits that were not selected for and are even inefficient and harmful to survival. The beauty and power of scientific (aka unguided) evolution is that it not only explains why organisms change and are in general "adapted" to their environments, but also why organisms still have so many useless or even harmful traits that you would not expect if life were "intelligently designed". This is b/c the it's the outward physical and behavioral traits that are either helpful, harmful, or nuetral, but it is the underlying genes that actually get selected for and increase or decrease in the population. Suppose a specfic random gene mutation occurs that (via interactions with other genes) has 100 causal impacts on an animals traits. Suppose 90 of those impacts have no impact on survival (neutral), 6 are helpful (adaptive), and 4 are harmful (maladaptive). For simplicity we will assume each of those impacts is the same "size". The net effect of the mutation averaging across all 100 traits is slightly positive, so the gene will tend to be selected for and increase in the population. So, only 6% of the genes effect were what drove it's positive selection, and the other 94% of the trait effects increased only b/c they were tied to those same genes, even though most were useless and some were harmful.

BTW, don't feel bad about having this misconception that evolution assumes each trait serves a function. Most people who accept evolution share that misconception, including some evolutionary psychologists who see every difference between people as a nail for which they try to use natural selection as a hammer.

 

[Valjean]

Some of your questions and comments reveal two misconceptions about evolution: 1) That everything was selected for, 2) selection operates on very specific phenotypic traits. Many if not most things are just byproducts of other things being selected for. There is no evolutionary reason why butterflies in particular are attractive to humans. That is random happenstance. Butterflies rich colors and patterns were selected for b/c they serve several functions like camouflage, mate attraction, warnings to predators. Humans are attracted colorful things in general for a number of reasons, including that color often signifies a potential food source (like fruit standing out against a background of green forest). And patterns and symmetry catch our eye.....

What you are saying can apply to just about any form of life. I was wondering about what makes bees, butterflies and flowers special.... they apparently co-evolved and caterpillars liquify in their cocoon and turn into a completely different form... well anyway I guess there is a naturalistic explanation....

There is nothing "special" about bees, butterflies and flowers, at east no more special than other organisms.
What makes you say they're special?

 

[excreationist]

There is nothing "special" about bees, butterflies and flowers, at least no more special than other organisms.
What makes you say they're special?

Well bees apparently coevolved with flowers and make hexagonal honeycombs and do special dances.... flowers involve sexual reproduction and they lead to fruits and vegetables. People find a lot of beauty in flowering plants. People also find butterflies to be very beautiful i.e. they think they're special - more so than most insects.
Bees can be managed in bee hives.... not many insects can be farmed(?) like that.

 

[excreationist]

seyorni:

Related to butterflies - moths - and not only do they have many unique color schemes and patterns - but also wing shapes.... I'm not sure why they evolved lots of different wing shapes when the first one is good enough. Though I guess there is a naturalistic explanation....

 

[Valjean]

Do you know what sexual selection is? Animals evolve all kinds of "decorative" features and behaviors just to increase their reproductive success.
Wing patterns in moths may also serve as camouflage or as a warning.
Wing shapes vary in birds too, as do fins in fish and limbs in quadrupeds. Different lifestyles require different kinds of locomotion.

 

[Worldtraveller]

So if all the 'pretty' things imply some sort of intelligence or creator, then what about everything else?

You've got cruelty galore to pick from, and then the more banal poor design.

All this has been hashed over many times already.

https://frdbarchive.org/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=1774

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

There is nothing "special" about bees, butterflies and flowers, at least no more special than other organisms.
What makes you say they're special?

Well bees apparently coevolved with flowers and make hexagonal honeycombs and do special dances.... flowers involve sexual reproduction and they lead to fruits and vegetables. People find a lot of beauty in flowering plants. People also find butterflies to be very beautiful i.e. they think they're special - more so than most insects.
Bees can be managed in bee hives.... not many insects can be farmed(?) like that.

European honeybees are "farmed." What other bees are farmed? Are honeybees even native to the U.S.?

Many plants flower when it's too cold for honeybees to fly. How does that work?

Some flowers are pollinated by flies and beetles. No other critters involved.

Most butterflies have a host plant upon which they depend for survival. They lay their eggs upon the leaves of no other species and have nothing to do with its flowers.

Just some thoughts.

 

[excreationist]

seyorni:

I replied to the following:

There is nothing "special" about bees, butterflies and flowers, at east no more special than other organisms.
What makes you say they're special?

I wasn't saying that it was impossible for them to have evolved.... I was responding to what I just quoted....

BTW there's this:
https://askabiologist.asu.edu/explore/did-you-know-butterflies-are-legally-blind

It seems they'd have trouble seeing how elaborate the wing designs are....

https://animals.howstuffworks.com/insects/butterfly-colors.htm
"Butterflies possess some of the most striking color displays found in nature"

That seems a lot more complex than what is required - they could have just used regular pigments.

So this is another way in which life like butterflies ARE special. They are one of the most popular insects for women's T-shirts, etc.

 

[excreationist]

European honeybees are "farmed." What other bees are farmed?

Well it looks like collecting honey and bee hives have a long history:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beekeeping#Early_history
Are there any other insects with a similar long history? Then there are silk worms... which are moths (related to butterflies)

Are honeybees even native to the U.S.?

Many plants flower when it's too cold for honeybees to fly. How does that work?

Some flowers are pollinated by flies and beetles. No other critters involved.

I'm not saying honeybees are the only animal that fertilizes flowers... BTW if flies and beetles can do it I don't understand why bees had to evolve.... I'm not saying it is impossible for them to evolve though.

Most butterflies have a host plant upon which they depend for survival. They lay their eggs upon the leaves of no other species and have nothing to do with its flowers.

Well that makes it even more complicated...

Just some thoughts.

Thanks