Science, Creation & EvolutionThe dangers of EvolutionWhat I have been attempting to accomplish with the human eye is that evolutionists would share a rational explanation of why the “blind spot” is poor design. So are all I have seen posted is rhetorical questions concerning an omnipotent creator who should have known that men would fly airplanes and such an omnipotent designer would have never “designed” a flawed organ. This is simply begging the question.
Now lets see what an M.D. has to say about evolution and the human eye and just how idiotic the evolutionists appeal to “poor design” really is: The most advanced verted retinas in the world belong to the octopus and squid (cephalopods). An average retina of an octopus contains 20 million photoreceptor cells. The average human retina contains around 126 million photoreceptor cells. This is nothing compared to birds who have as much as 10 times as many photoreceptors and two to five times as many cones (cones detect color) as humans have. 4,5 Humans have a place on the retina called a “fovea centralis.” The fovea is a central area in the central part of the human retina called the macula. In this area humans have a much higher concentration photoreceptors, especially cones. Also, in this particular area, the blood vessels, nerves and ganglion cells are displaced so that they do not interpose themselves between the light source and the photoreceptor cells, thus eliminating even this minimal interference to the direct path of light. This creates an area of high visual acuity with decreasing visual acuity towards the periphery of the human retina. The cones in the macula (and elsewhere) also have a 1:1 ratio to the ganglion cells. Ganglion cells help to preprocess the information received by the retinal photoreceptors. For the rods of the retina, a single ganglion cell handles information from many, even hundreds of rod cells, but this is not true of cones whose highest concentration is in the macula. The macula provides information needed to maximize image detail, and the information obtained by the peripheral areas of the retina helps to provide both spatial and contextual information. Compared with the periphery, the macula is 100 times more sensitive to small features than in the rest of the retina. This enables the human eye to focus in on a specific area in the field of vision without being distracted by peripheral vision too much.6
The Evolution of the Human Eye
Dr. Pitman continues:
The Error of Presumption
To say then that the human eye is definite proof of a lack thoughtful design, is a bit presumptuous I would think. This seems to be especially true when one considers the fact that the best of modern human science and engineering has not produced even a fraction of the computing and imaging capability of the human eye. How can we then, ignorant as we must be concerning such miracles of complex function, hope to accurately judge the relative fitness or logic of something so far beyond our own capabilities? Should someone who cannot even come close to understanding or creating the object that they are observing think to critique not to mention disparage the work that that lies before them? This would be like a six-year-old child trying to tell an engineer how to design a skyscraper or that one of his buildings is “better” than the others. Until Dawkins or someone else can actually make something as good or better than the human eye, I would invite them to consider the silliness of their efforts in trying to make value judgments on such things… such things that are obviously among most beautiful and beyond the most astounding works of human genius and art in existence.
The good doctor then quotes Dawkins: In his 1986 book, “The Blind Watchmaker,” the famous evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins posses this design flaw argument for the human eye:
“Any engineer would naturally assume that the photocells would point towards the light, with their wires leading backwards towards the brain. He would laugh at any suggestion that the photocells might point away, from the light, with their wires departing on the side nearest the light. Yet this is exactly what happens in all vertebrate retinas. Each photocell is, in effect, wired in backwards, with its wire sticking out on the side nearest the light. The wire has to travel over the surface of the retina to a point where it dives through a hole in the retina (the so-called ‘blind spot’) to join the optic nerve. This means that the light, instead of being granted an unrestricted passage to the photocells, has to pass through a forest of connecting wires, presumably suffering at least some attenuation and distortion (actually, probably not much but, still, it is the principle of the thing that would offend any tidy-minded engineer). I don’t know the exact explanation for this strange state of affairs. The relevant period of evolution is so long ago.” 3
However: Dawkins’s argument certainly does seem intuitive. However, the problem with relying strictly on intuition is that intuition alone is not scientific. Many a well thought out hypothesis has seemed flawless on paper, but in when put to the test, it turns out not to work as well as was hoped. Unforeseen problems and difficulties arise. New and innovative solutions, not previously considered, became all important to obtaining the desired function. Dawkins’s problem is not one of reasonable intuition, but one of a lack of testability of his hypothesis. However reasonable it may appear, unless Dawkins is able to test his assumptions to see if in fact “verted” is better than “inverted” retinal construction for the needs of the human, this hypothesis of his remains untested and therefore unsupported by the scientific method. Beyond this problem, even if he were to prove scientifically that a verted retina is in fact more reasonable for human vision, this still would not scientifically disprove design. As previously described, proving flaws in design according to a personal understanding or need does not disprove the hypothesis that this flawed design was none-the-less designed.
Since a designer has not been excluded by this argument of Dawkins, the naturalistic theory of evolution is not an automatic default. However true the theory of evolution might be, it is not supported scientifically without testability. This is what evolutionists need to provide and this is exactly what is lacking. The strength of design theory rests, not in its ability to show perfection in design, but in its ability to point toward the statistical improbability of a naturalistic method to explain the complexity of life that is evident in such structures as the human eye. Supposed flaws do not eliminate this statistical challenge to evolutionary theories. Dawkins’s error is to assume that the thinking, knowledge and motivation of all designers are similar to his thinking, knowledge and motivation.
My problem with teaching Darwinian evolution, macroevolution, or the origin of species by whatever name you choose to use is the lack of “testability” of what is taught as a scientific fact.
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