Creation: Facts that Support the Biblical Account III

….”Functional Objects which Provide an Attractive, even Beautiful Appearance”
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Two possible explanations for colors in butterflies and birds are related to either attraction of mates or warning to predators. Colors in flowers are related to attracting pollinators.

I add that some flowers have additional patterns which reflect in the UV range. poeple can’t see thme but insects can.
I think this is also true for some bird plumage but my memory is not clear on this.

…”Ideal location of Structures—Every component on or within each organism is consistently located in the best possible place, in relation to other components,”
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laryngeal nerve of the giraffe?

…”Logically, how does a flower “evolve” a color that is more attractive to insects? Does the plant hire a marketing firm to take a survey of insects and ask what most of them see as a favorite color? How does this support Darwinism since it is utterly illogical?”
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It’s logical. It works as usual by mutation, selection, drift, things like that.
For instance a (random) mutation that makes a plant’s flowers have a color that appeals to a particular pollinator type will get more visits from that type of pollinator. Depending on how many different pollinators of different types are available in that area, this may mean the plant gets a better chance of spreading its pollen around to make seeds. Or maybe there are enough pollinators that it won’t improve the chances compared to the other plants. But in either case, those seeds will carry the gene for the color change. The plants which grow from those seeds will also have flowers of the color more attractive to one type of pollinator. As the pollinator visits that subgroup of the population it will spread the color-gene-containing pollen between similar flowers so that the occurrence of that gene will be reinforced in that subgroup. Attracting one type of pollinator makes it more likely that pollen carried by that pollinator from one plant will match the next type of plant it visits. At the same time, the color change may make visits from another type of pollinator less likely. Bees prefer blue, and also yellow (from what I see online). Hummingbirds prefer red. Night-flying moths and bats see white flowers better in the dark. These are not necessarily absolute, just increase the chances that those types of pollinator will visit. Other possible pollinators for different flowers are flies, beetles and ants. And some plants like grasses and some trees (and evergreens) are wind-pollinated. there’s a lot of variety. (There are also other features of flowers that make one pollinator more likely to visit and more successful at transferring pollen such as flower shape, scent, markings, nectar.)

Another group that has the range of flower shapes and colors, including reds and blues, for a variety of pollinators is the penstemons. Also I think, Salvia. And I’m sure there are others, but I thought of those because I have them in my garden. The different adaptations to pollinations by different types of insects (for instances bees and some wasps and butterflies) and birds have happened in different groups of plants.

Why 16 million? I think there are maybe six common pigments which get made in different combinations and amounts. Plus this is not a precise thing – there is a range of sensitivity.
Why assume mutation stopped?
anyway I can’t think about this right now.

I’m not limiting it to visible light – I already mentioned UV in a previous comment on this post.
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…”Given, at the outset, an insect that favors one very particular shade of red…”
I didn’t say it was one very particular shade of red. You’re missing the fact that I said there would be a range of frequencies to which the different pollinators were sensitive. When you talk about 16 million, I think that number might be coming from the number of pixel combinations on the computer using three colors with 256 levels. But if you were to choose ‘reddish’ as distinct from blue-purple or yellow or cream-white or green, reddish would include a large number of those pixel combinations, would it not? Reddish could range from orange-red to magenta to deep pink. And I think hummingbirds also will visit yellow flowers. A moth looking for flowers in the dark would probably see all the light shades equally well, including white, cream, light yellow, pale blue, pale pink (I’m guessing here, but it seems reasonable). Bees don’t see red, but they are attracted to scent as well as color. And flowers may include UV markers that the bees can see. And there are different species of bees, butterflies, wasps. It’s complicated.
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Again, why are you assuming I would think there would be no more mutations? I haven’t said that, and it’s just the opposite. Mutations would continue to happen. Mutations that changed flower characteristics in a way that made them more appealing to certain pollinators, or that made pollination by those pollinators more successful, would be retained in the population (barring chance events that elimintaed them). Mutations that were able to reverse the color change (the likelihood of that would depend on the original mutation ) could cause a change to the previous color. A mutation that caused the plant to be less competitive would be likely to cause that particular plant ‘s descendents to die out over time. (Other mutations might affect the particular plant’s ability to tolerate a drier habitat. or other environmnetal conditions.)
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…”But isn’t it true that if the color of those flowers do not appeal to any insects, they won’t get any visits from pollinating insects at all? So how, then, would they be able to reproduce the mutated strain that DOES appeal to the pollinators? ”
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I’m not sure I understand your point here, but I think you are asking that if a mutation produces a plant with red flowers that attracts hummingbirds, what pollinators did the non-red flowers on the parent plant attract? If we’re talking about the columbines, the tree of species that some people have compiled by various types of analysis (genetic and also morphological features) suggests that those plants probably had blue flowers and were pollinated by bees. (Bees do pollinate blue columbines and they can also visit the red flowers mainly pollinated by hummingbirds.) But if you want to go farther back in the proposed history of flowering plants, as I said previously, initially plants were wind-pollinated the way grasses and some trees and evergreens are. Also there are insects like beetles and flies and ants which pollinate flowers in a general way.
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…” If red is favored, then when a random mutation to red occurs (as is your argument) then why would pink or white remain in the gene pool after millions of years of so called evolution? Why would not all flowers simply be that exact shade of red?”
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Because the original flower color was being successfully pollinated by the original pollinators.
And because the fact that the new color attracted a different pollinator meant (as I tried to explain in an earlier comment) that there would now be some form of reproductive isolation between the populations. If you have two populations of mice separated by a river that they mostly can’t cross, there is a geographic isolation that keeps the two populations from mixing their genes. Over time they might (or might not) accumulate different mutations that result in their being unable to reproduce if they are later brought together.
For the plants, even if they are two feet apart, if they are only pollinated by different pollinators then there is reproductive isolation for them just as there was for the mice separated by a river. Even if the plants could be hybridized by a horiculturist, in the wild, the different pollinators keep them reproductively isolated. OTOH, if there are additional polinators (like bees for the hummingbird-pollinated flowers) there can still be limited mixing. But if the majority of pollne transfer is done by different animals, the populations stay mostly genetically isolated.
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Thee’s also the idea of environmental niches. In Africa, why are there so many different types of antelopes? Why not just one? Each type can access a different height or type of vegetation, or live optimally in different environmental conditions. (plus drift and chance – I don’t wnat to make this sound more absolute than it is.) For the plants, they also have to compete for resources. One resource would be pollinators, so if one starin can be pollinated by a different pollinator it provides a new niche. There are also environmental niches for different habitats, dryness, altitude, etc; again, it’s complicated.
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…”Your argument is not sound, logically speaking, because the original flower would have had to have hit the jackpot at the outset and the insect would have had to find that jackpot color the winning color at the outset in order to then go into the types of hybridized and mutated variations you describe. Do you get my point?
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I’m not sure. Did I answer your objection or did I miss it? If when you talk about the original flower you mean way back during the earliest phases of angiosperm development, I think I did answer it with wind pollination and more random insect pollination.

I misread and thought you said the opposite of what you did say about hippos. Yes I do think hippos and manatees are beautiful in themselves. But I think a lot of people would disagree. Your initial post used qualifiers like ‘generally’ so I assumed that left room for some creatures not being considered beautiful.

….”The following are observed facts about nature and the universe that support the Biblical account of Creation. Note that these facts are held up by operational and empirical science.”
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….” Consider the color and shaping of the cardinal, the robin, butterflies, and many other animals and flowering trees and plants. These are elements and attributes which are simply not necessary for survival, yet which provide additional comfort and beauty.”
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How is this an observed fact? How do you support this point? These colors are functional in those species’ reproductive processes. Some have one color and others have another color. People may like some colors more than others. How do you show that the colors people do like were put there especially to be beautiful or to provide comfort to people?
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….” Only intelligence produces beautiful things. Random chance produces chaos, disorder, asymmetry, and confusion.”
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I think leaves floating on a pond, positioned by random chance, are quite beautiful, more so than leaves lined up in a line. Asymmetry can be beautiful.

Obviously all different colors of birds can lay eggs successfully. The colors are not necessary for the physiological production of embryos and eggs. The colors of birds (plus songs etc.) are used in mate recognition and also as a help in choosing a more fit mate and in males recognizing other males of the same species in defending territories. They also may, depending on the color or species, be a source of camoflauge.(There may also be some other effects of different colored feathers and the mutations that cause them that people are studying – for instance, are the feathers differently resistant to feather mites.) If we like the colors, that’s lucky for us, but I would say that the colors are not there for us. They are the result of some chance mutations plus all the other things that contribute to speciation, in the same way that there are red columbines and blue columbines.
I read about a new strain of (I think) blackbirds, anyway, some kind of bird that is developing on an isolated group of pacific islands. There was a species or subspecies of bird with a reddish chest (like a robin’s pattern) and a mutation produced birds which were all black, a dominant mutation. The black-colored birds are differently camoflauged and differently affected by sunshine so they tended to hang out on different parts of the island. The conclusion was that this was a new subspecies or species in the process of developing. It’s still whatever type of bird it was, just with a different color. But as there are more birds of that color, they recognize each other (maybe because their parents had that color? I don’t know the details) and they have some reproductive isolation, not complete at this point. I would have to look up the paper; I forget the details. But there is an explanation for how bird species with different feather colors develop, and this an observation of the process.
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…”Functional Objects which Provide an Attractive, even Beautiful Appearance”
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I still don’t understand this point.
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It is supposed to be an observed fact that supports biblical creation. Really it is not specific to biblical creation as far as I can see – it is more about any supernatural intelligent designer that could be imagined. The intelligent designer is being contrasted to non-intelligent evolutionary events as a source of beautiful organisms.
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This argument says that many commonly seen animals are thought to be beautiful by humans. Then it says that only intelligence can produce beautiful things. But to me this seems to be a logical error. If in fact organisms, including those considered beautiful by humans, developed by the non-intelligent processes of evolution, then intelligence is NOT required to produce beautiful things.
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Also according to this argument it is an observed fact that some organisms are more beautiful than they need to be ‘for survival’. I think ‘for survival’ is meant to refer to evolution, and thus implies that evolution cannot explain these features such as color, which seem to the writer to be excessive for mere survival. But this implication is a misrepresentation. The ideas of evolution do logically explain these features such as the color of flowers and birds. Part of survival is successful reproduction, and this means successfully competing for healthy mates or pollinators.