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Rhiannon wrote:
But isn't that just a variation on the 'eye' argument, where people say you can't get a whole eye in one go, in one mutation? Cos eyes aren't like that - in nature there is everything from a dob of flat light-reacting pigment (like a flatworm?) to a cupshape (that helps with direction) to full blown eyes like mine or a cuttlefish's. And as they say, every little helps. So likewise it won't be the difference between a massive flood and a dry desert (despite my example). It'll be the difference between surviving in a little bit of rain and surviving in a tiny little bit more rain. And maybe a little mutation could do that. Then the offspring of that better adapted creature go on to have more offspring with a range of features. And again the best fit survive better and go on to produce more offspring.
That's a lot of maybes though. An eye would have to start with a single light-sensitive cell, and there is simply no way that that's going to provide sufficient survival advantage for natural selection.

I'm not saying natural selection or evolution are necessarily wrong, but I think we accept them at face value because they're received wisdom, and it seems to me that there's something more going on that isn't currently understood.

No - someone with a single light reacting cell does have a huge advantage over someone who hasn't got any light reacting cells at all! You can detect whether it's day or night, or whether somebody's leaning over you about to eat you - it's hugely beneficial. If you're a bit of phytoplankton, you can move into the light to photosynthesise, not sit in the dark or just wander around randomly. And if you've got 100 light reacting cells, you're potentially 100 times better off. You might even be able to form an image of what's out there. Pixels and that.