1
Plant Sciences, Zoology & Evolution / How does "instinct" evolve?
« on: 26/03/2009 02:06:51 »Creationists cannot / will not accept the 'inside out' argument which evolution uses.
Basically, if there is an advantage in certain behaviour, then an organism may exhibit it. It is hard to conceive the colossal wastage in an evolutionary system. Most departures from the norm involve loss of reproductive capacity (failure to find a mate or death). Only the rare ones result in success. There must have been a lot of failures whilst a species 'learned' to migrate. Migration must have started as a relatively local behaviour pattern and then stretched to global dimensions, once they 'got the idea'.
I really cannot believe that an intelligent TNS can say such incredibly daft things!
So they flew 5 miles, and then worked that up to 7,500! Wowie!
C'mon Sophie, not even you can believe such nonsense!
Here are a few more facts which demolish the 'learned how to do it' school of thought:
"There is good evidence that young birds are equipped with endogenous migratory programs, which tell them roughly how many days and/or nights that they must fly, and in what direction."
In his book La Puissance et la Fragilité, Prof. Pierre Jean Hamburger from René Descartes University describes the extraordinary 24,000-kilometer journey made by the shearwater that lives in the Pacific Ocean:
(and also http://birdchaser.blogspot.com/2006/08/sooty-shearwater-migrationamazing.html)

It sets out from the coast of Australia. From there it flies straight southward to the Pacific. Then it turns north and flies along the coast of Japan until reaching the Bering Sea where it can rest for a while. Following that break it sets off again, and this time heads south. Crossing the western coast of America, it arrives in California. It then crosses the Pacific to return to its starting point. The route and timing of this 15,000-mile (24,000-kilometer) figure ‘8’ journey it makes every year never change. The journey in question lasts a whole six months, always coming to an end in the third week of September on the island it left six months before, at the nest it left six months before. What comes next is even more astonishing; after their return, the birds clean their nests, mate, and lay a single egg over the last 10 days of October. The chicks hatch out two months later, grow very fast and are cared for over three months until their parents set out on that stupendous journey. Two weeks later; around the middle of April, it is time for the young birds to take wing on their own journey. They follow exactly the same route as that described above, with no guide. The explanation is so obvious: These birds must have all the directions for such a journey within the inherited characteristics passed on within the egg. Some people may claim that birds navigate by the Sun and stars or follow the winds prevailing along their route on this journey out and back. But it is clear that these factors cannot determine the journey’s geographical and chronological accuracy."
Pierre Jean Hamburger, La Puissance et la Fragilité, Flammarion Pub., Paris, 1972.
"migratory birds have comprehensive, detailed, innate spatio-temporal programs for successful migration. Such programs evidently enable even young, inexperienced birds to migrate alone, with no adult guide, to the species- or population-specific winter quarters that they have never seen before. As will be explained further below, they do this by "vector" navigation: referring to a vector composed of a genetically predetermined migratory direction and to a time-plan, also genetically predetermined, for the course of migration... It follows that the departure time is programmed by genetic factors... "
Peter Berthold, "Bird Migration: Introductory Remarks and Overall Perspective", Torgos, 1998, Vol. 28, pp. 25-30
Not only is it preprogrammed, but it is preprogrammed to do impossible things!
"Some birds migrate at seemingly impossible altitudes. For instance, dunlin, knot and certain other small migrating birds fly at a level of 7,000 m (23,000 feet), the same altitude used by aircraft. Whooper swans have been seen flying at 8,200 m (27,000 feet). Some birds even reach the stratosphere, the layer of thin atmosphere, at an altitude of between 8 and 40 kilometers (5 and 25 miles).11 Bar-headed geese cross the Himalayas at an altitude of 9,000 meters (29,529 feet), close to where the stratosphere begins."
Quote
My anthropomorphic shorthand may be forgiven, here; no actual purpose was implied in my argument!
It is not surprising that they can't accept it because it doesn't include the existence of a God. It is amazing how 'they' prefer the complete absence of evidence for their God to the, sometimes, rather weak evidence, used to explain certain bits of evolution. Faith has been responsible for an awful lot of bad choices in the past but it is a very 'comforting' notion.
The evidence I have been presenting, and which has received no refutation worthy of the name, supports the exceedingly realistic hypothesis that these things were all super-intelligently designed.
Any aeroplane, flying a journey of 1000 miles or so, with fully functioning GPS, at an altitude of 25,000 feet or more at the very edge of the stratosphere, has got to be intelligently designed, or it would simply perish.
Yet, here are these birds, with brains the size of walnuts, performing feats of flight which strain the believability organ.
And they 'evolved' from reptiles, say the evolutionists!
Somebody is kidding you, guys!