Science, Creation & EvolutionEvolution vs. Intelligent Design for DummiesAnd a further good point...This is all from the same thread. On this forum there are a lot more scientifically educated people as part of the membership than the average webboard.
It's the usual creationist / ID argument. They're taking evidence and forcing it to fit their hypothesis. They're also making the usual baseless assumptions and ignoring alternative explanations in favor of intelligent design. Their conclusions sum it up nicely:
Quote:
Claims of poor retina design are often raised by evolutionists to argue against Intelligent Design.80 A review of research on the vertebrate retina indicates that for vertebrates the existing inverted design is superior to the verted design, even the system used by the most advanced cephalopods. Its design has been maximized for life in our environment and no doubt would function poorly in another environment, such as that experienced by undersea bottom dwellers. This review supports Hamilton’s conclusion:
Instead of being a great disadvantage, or a “curse” or being incorrectly constructed, the inverted retina is a tremendous advance in function and design compared with the simple and less complicated verted arrangement. One problem amongst many, for evolutionists, is to explain how this abrupt major retinal transformation from the verted type in invertebrates to the inverted vertebrate model came about as nothing in paleontology offers any support.
In this conclusion, we can observe the usual creationist tendency to force the evidence to fit their intelligent design hypothesis, while completely ignoring other mechanisms which dould produce the same end-result. (They point out that there are no transitional forms between invertebrates with verted retinas, and vertebrates with inverted retinas . . . ignoring the fact that vertebrates and invertebrates diverged a very long time ago, and that eyes generally don't preserve well in the fossil record.)
Of course, we have to ask if the inverted retina was perfect for terrestrial environments and poor for undersea environments, then why do fish have the same inverted retina that all other vertebrates do. If an intelligent designer designed the eyes of all creatures, then it would make sense that fish should have the same retinas that ocean-dwelling cephalopods have since, after all, the inverted retina allegedly doesn't work too well in a dark undersea environment.
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