@EOM,
All of these answers seem to be assuming that by chance an organism happens to over time look like it's surroundings and so those who happen to slowly mutate into looking more like their surroundings are the ones that blend in. That can make sense for those that have just one appearance, I might buy that for a dollar.
The first thing that pops out above the above statement is you are asserting that "all of these answers" rest on assumption that an "organism" (singular? an individual?) will start to look like its surroundings "by chance." In my previous posts, I was attempting to disarm misleading language like this. If a population, over time, starts to look like its surroundings, it is because if a PROCESS, not by chance. This process is simple, yet the results of the simple process can be quite complex. This process is normally called natural selection, and the results it produces (change in a populations frequency of traits) is called evolution.
Also, it may have been a typing mistake on your part, which is fine, but you described it as a singular organism, by chance, over time, looking like its surroundings. An organism, will never do this, ever. Only populations. Anyone that says an individual might change over time doesn't understand what evolution is, period.
Not for a chameleon though that changes his appearence to blend in to the surroundings and based on the type of predator looking at him.
Maybe this will answer my question, somebody explain to me before a chameleon had the ability to camouflage itself, if it was always just a brown skinned creature, explain the process of evolution and the triggers that it developed the ability to camouflage.
Cameleon generation 1 - one color, has no more ability to change it's colors and appearance then would a human be able to.
Explain how by generation 100, or 1000, etc, it can do it.
Now for something like why humans needed wisdom teeth but now they don't that would be easy to explain, but I can't think of how they would go from no ability to change color to what they do now, so perhaps if you can explain it that way, it will make sense.
You also later said:
Okay, chart out an evolutionary process that will allow humans to camouflage exactly like chameleons do, whether it takes 1,000 years, 1 million years, or 1 billion years, without direct scientists intervention, at some point in the future a human can do what chameleons do, and it must be by evolution only.
When I was first leaving the WTB&TS, I had a discussion about evolution with a family friend. After a few hours of discussion, involving different examples, he said that the only way he could believe evolution is true would be if a fossil (or even a live example) could be found where an organism was literally giving birth to another species. When I responded that it seemed like a pretty tall order, he just smiled. But when I said that if such an example were to be found, it would actually disprove evolution, he just looked at me with a blank stare. We had just spent three hours talking about evolution, and yet it became clear that no matter how many examples I could give, it didn't matter because he still didn't understand the process and what it implies. For him to believe in evolution, he was looking for a form of evidence that would actually show that evolution was false - it would be some other strange phenomena, but not evolution.
Ultimately, we can theorize how a chameleon came to have its ability, but we can't miss the forest from the trees, so-to-speak. Let's say it has nothing to do with social signaling. It doesn't matter at all. To me this question is absolutely no different than wondering how an eye might form, or wondering how the "irreducibly complex" flagellum might form through evolution.
Every now and then somebody looks at the complexity of life and just can't wrap their minds around how it could come about through evolution. It seems too complex, too intricate, and seems like it could never be reduced to a series of steps. When this happens, I think this is mainly because evolution, as a simple algorithm or process, is not understood. I can tell when someone has a problem with the basics when evolution is described as happing just "by chance." Or an unreasonable request is made - like demanding 1200+ generation list detailing how a human might be like a chameleon.
Let me approach it from a non-evolutionary perspective, something less controversial. I work as a software developer, and I have been involved in the development of several large scale applications. When all is said and done, and the application is delivered for the first time, there may be hundreds, if not thousands of different modules. They all depend on each other such that if one were removed, it would cause large scale failure. And yet, I am 100% positive, because I watch it occur, that the application was developed step-by-step. Also, if you were to ask me after the fact to list those massive series of steps, I would probably be able to do it generally (this part came first, then this intermediary part, then this), but I would have no idea of the details. And yet, I watched, along with others, as this came into existence step-by-step. The point is that you must step back and have a sense of proportion. As humans we have a huge epistemic limitation. But, if you asked me the process in which the program was developed, well, now that I can answer. And it would show how the program came about without the detail.
Another example, perhaps, is the free market. The famous example is the pencil. The rubber came from somewhere, the little metal rim came from somewhere else, and the wood from yet somewhere else. The wood, however, would need to be harvested with chainsaws, which are made from steel. But the steel manufacturing couldn't be done first without mining. But the miners might need steel too. How could that be? The graphite from the pencil is yet another story, each part having its own dependancies on some other part of the market. And yet, here it is. And there was no central intelligence. Nobody can detail the steps that created this interconnected production - but it came about. But, we know a lot about the process. The market is the natural minimizing algorithm that occurs when people come together to exchange freely.
These are a couple of non-evolutionary examples. The final answer to your question IMHO, is understand the process of evolution. It is not chance. It is not blind. This question boils down to all other "how-could-this-structure-ever-come-about" questions. You first have to come to see that complex structures really do come about, without any guidance, with the help of simple natural algorithms.
MMM
