siti
Well-Known Member
I'm sorry @nPeace - the post that you linked to consists of a link that doesn't work and then a series of questions that presumably relate to the information in the link. I still can't follow.At this point, you can add my pots, and think a little deeper about the post.
Anyway,
You did answer the questions - you said (for example):I can't answer the three questions with either yes or no, so I hope I did answer. I tried.
if you are talking about the natural way genes are passed on by reproduction, and vary in offspring, this is what I can agree with.
Genes play a role in variations.
A child is not specifically designed to resemble it's parents...otherwise logically it would be expected that every child would have twin features.
So, you agree that the genetic features of a child do not exactly match the genetic features of the parents they are inherited from because they are "imperfectly replicated" (by which I don't mean there is something wrong, just that the copies are not exactly duplicated).
And presumably you agree that the closer resemblance of a child to its parents is simply because the child is genetically more closely related to its parents.
So the next question then is why do primate ears bear a much closer resemblance to human ears than other mammals? Why are other mammals ears more like human ears than reptile ears? Could it be because humans are genetically more closely related to other primates than they are to other mammals like cats and dogs and elephants? Could it be that mammals are genetically more closely related to each other than any of them are to reptiles? OK - let's leave that as a "maybe" for now.
The alternative to evolution of course is creation. You asked us to consider ears in particular - so the question now arises - if ears are specifically designed for hearing, why don't they all look alike. Why are there so many different "designs" of ear? Surely, mammal-like hearing would be a great advantage to a lizard - but it doesn't have it. Why were lizards designed with rather different ears? And fish ears are almost unrecognizable by comparison and completely unlike the mammalian ears of whales and dolphins. And if all that variety has come about as the result of deliberate design it seems that the design process was very ad hoc - doesn't it? Why, for example, would the designer put ears that are much more like those of a grassland herbivore than a seafaring shark in a whale?
On balance, I think common sense suggests that imperfect genetic replication (now that we know for sure that this happens) is a far more sensible explanation for the "diverse" designs of ears than the idea of a divine creator scratching his ear as he tries to think of yet another ear design to pop into his latest masterpiece. And it is surely confirmatory evidence to note that animals that bear a closer resemblance to humans in other respects - giving birth to live young, larger brains, ability to walk on two legs...etc...also happen to have more similar ears. Don't you think?
BONUS FACTOID: Since you mentioned cerumen, did you know that plugs of cerumen as long as ten inches have been extracted from whale's ears? And that examining the content of the earwax allows scientists to discover important information relating to the whale's lifecycle - where it has been swimming, pollutant levels in its habitat, its diet...etc?
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