Finding Nature's Most Efficient Flight Mechanism

"It's astonishing. What it shows is that aerodynamics is so important in shaping the wings in evolution, that very, very different organisms have all evolved the same mechanism to boost their lift,"

A little to "astonishing" to have just "evolved" don't you think?

And arguably too astonishing to have been creatively designed...but I digress.

I'm not an evolutionary biologist, but I'm willing to bet that precisely because aerodynamics is so important in shaping the wings, if the maple seed didn't have that wing shape, it wouldn't have extra lift, and wouldn't be as fit for survival in the environments in which it is found, meaning it wouldn't be astonishing us right now at all.

Evolution could easily produce the wing shape, because without the wing shape, there might not be any maple seeds for us to discuss. In other words, their very existence means evolution HAD to produce that wing shape.

Whether or not some deity had a hand in the process, however, is a whole other discussion...

Nope, astonishing yet almost bound to happen based on a few simple principles, aerodynamics, natural selection.

zip55: "A little to "astonishing" to have just "evolved" don't you think?"

No kidding. Amazing how Darwinists pretend that statistical mechanics, combinatorial dependencies etc. are unimportant considerations (no doubt because they know nothing of them) and that blind, purposeless, mindless nature can build such things by mere trial and error + humongous gobs of pure luck.

Of course a simple airfoil shaped leaf with a positive lift to drag ratio isn't anywhere near as complex as the flight systems used by insects or birds. Without question those specific types of flight systems require intelligent guidance from the start or forget it. Otherwise you have a series of combinatorial dependent mutations + selection that must occur or assemble in coordination.

The probability of such occurring without teleology decreases exponentially with each new required part in any system whose parts must assemble in a specific order to function.

The idea of flight 'evolving' from non teleological processes like random mutations + selection is ludicrous.
Those who think it isn't do not understand the complexities or physiological implications of flying nor the real nature of mutations (bugs in the genetic code).

Vigier your comment is so ridiculously wrong its clearly useless to argue with. You're obviously just one of those religious fanatics who wouldn't know the truth if god himself presented it to you. Plus if you had a thorough understanding of statistical mechanics (which you're claiming are not accounted for by darwinists) you would understand that the scale of space and time in which trial and error is taking place is bound to produce some highly unlikely events. Given the amount of time and space available, even something with an extremely low probability of occurrence is bound to help eventually.

Also it's ignoring that these complex organs might have a slightly less complex, slightly less useful ancestor that still preformed a viable function. A vortex-wing came from a regular wing that came from something that helped you glide. It didn't just pop up all at once.

bdhoro87, You're assuming that there were massive amounts of time for these events to take place, which is impossible to prove there have been vast lengthes of time. I also believe that religion shouldn't be mixed with science, however, Christianity isn't a religion, It's a relationship with our Creator.

May I ask you, how did these things "evolve"? They didn't decide to, did they? and if they did, why can't we decide to evolve the ability of flight, or more advanced traits? From what I understand about how evolution explains the very emergence of life is that the right molecules needed to form DNA happend to come together in the primordial soup, and how did that DNA form life. DNA in itself isn't life, but the coded information to sustain life. But if that is so, why can we create life of our own? If it is so easy nature could do it, why can't we with all our technology, why can't we replicate those conditions. this theory is incredibly faulty and yet is taught as fact to all our children.

criticalscience wrote: impossible to prove there have been vast lengthes of time

Very well but also impossible to prove that Jesus was/is God. And so we have believers in evolution and believers in creationism. That's pretty much the end of the debate.

"Christianity isn't a religion"
From Websters
Chris·tian·i·ty
1 : the religion derived from Jesus Christ, based on the Bible as sacred scripture, and professed by Eastern, Roman Catholic, and Protestant bodies.

criticalscience try making at least a little bit of sense when you comment, otherwise we all might as well disregard the whole thing.

Anyway, I happen to agree with you on the idea that no life "decided" to evolve, and there is still room for some spiritual/mystic explanation until our science on the subject is more complete.

Its also quite ignorant to say "If it is so easy nature could do it, why can't we with all our technology, why can't we replicate those conditions." The fact is we don't know exactly how nature works, its a lot more complicated than any of the technology we've been able to develop. Even so, there have been many experiments attempting to replicate the conditions of the early earth, and most of them did end up forming the basic ingredients of DNA and life.
The theory is actually incredibly thorough and is taught to our children as the best theory we have. What do you think we should teach to children? That God created everything and there's no reason to try to figure it out on our own because the world was produced by God's magic?

It just is. Why bother to argue the point until anything is fact?

Scientology+Religion= True Creation

(They) created us, and (They) are still creating us, which causes evolution, because (They) know that (we) are still not done being created. Sorry to burst the bubble, but both parties are right and wrong

Ok peeps; here is the final end all answer between all my Christian friends AND all my pure Science friends:

Evolution did not make us, IT made us better. Darwin was mostly right, but by Inspired thought. An understanding at his time period only ~ ahead of his time absolutely, fully accurate just mostly.

If time travel was available and we could bring him here now and he can watch/see what has evolved, HE would have added some more chapters to "On the Origin of Species: for sure!

NOW: my quiz to the evolutionist...

How many years (millennium)x(n) To write Shakespeare or a Mad Magazine article? Would it take Nomura's Jellyfish and a googolplex of Dell Computers to do that? Hmmm...