ALL IN THE EYE

EYES are wonderful organs which enable us to see the world around us. The origin of the eye is a serious problem for those who believe in evolution. Charles Darwin wrote: 'To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration could have been formed by natural selection seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree.'¹

RODS AND CONES

However, Darwin went on to say that he believed the eye had evolved through gradual stages from a simple light-sensitive spot to the complex eye of humans. Modern-day evolutionists make similar claims, but in doing so, they gloss over the sheer impossibility of producing a fully-functional eye by chance, random processes, because even a complete eye is of no use without the complex nerve connections necessary to transmit signals to the brain, and the ability of the brain to convert these signals into images. The human eye has 137 million special cells — called rods and cones — which receive light from the lens, and convert it into electrical signals. These then travel at 300 miles an hour along the optic nerve to the brain, where millions of intricate electrical connections produce the image we see. Just as a partly-developed eye would be of no use to any organism, neither would a fully-developed eye that did not have all the necessary equipment to create images. The eye has often been compared to an ordinary camera, and there are indeed many similarities, but, as Dr. Michael Denton has pointed out to, 'We now know the eye to be a far more sophisticated instrument than it appeared a hundred years ago... Today it would be more accurate to think of a television camera if we are looking at an analogue to the eye.'²

We know that cameras don't just happen — they are designed by people with a knowledge of optics, and each part is manufactured with precision.

THREE TIMES!

As though it were not incredible enough to believe that eyes could evolve at all, evolutionists actually believe that complex eyes evolved separately at least three times! The eyes of cephalopods (i.e. octopuses, squids and cuttlefish), are very similar to those of humans, but because evolutionists do not believe they are closely related to us, their eyes are supposedly an example of 'convergent evolution'. The eyes of insects, although different from those of mammals and cephalopods, are in some ways even more complex. The eye of a fly, for instance, has thousands of lenses.

Evolutionists sometimes claim that there has been plenty of time for eyes to evolve during the millions of years which they believe have elapsed since life on earth began. However, the discovery of fossil trilobites with perfectly preserved compound eyes in the supposedly '600 million-year-old' Cambrian rocks, effectively destroys this theory. These eyes have a double-lens structure ideally suited for underwater vision.

This design was so precise that the mathematics to understand it was not discovered until the 17th century! So much for the theory that eyes evolved from a 'simple' beginning, for here — if we accept the evolutionists' own time-scale — we have fully-developed compound eyes appearing at the very beginning of the evolution of life. The Cambrian trilobites have no fossil ancestors, so what could their eyes have evolved from?

RE-EVOLVED?

The theory that eyes have evolved becomes even more absurd, if we accept the supposed ancestry of the higher mammals and human beings from fish, via amphibians, and reptiles. According to this scenario, the lower mammals “lost” most of the cones in their retina, and also the oil-droplets in the cones they did have, which meant they could not distinguish between colours. Did evolution make a mistake here, as this meant that the “higher” mammals, including the primates, would have had to “re-evolve” these features? Yet the cones of the primate eye are nothing like as good as those of reptiles, and our lenses are less efficient than those of snakes. As Dr. Evan Shute has pointed out, these problems arise because the evolutionists arranged their “family tree” long before they thought about the origin of colour vision. 'Had he made vision his criterion, animal 'relations' could be much different than they are now said to be'³

SPECIALIZATIONS

There are many specializations in the eyes of living organisms. The mud-skipper fish has no eyelids, but to protect its eyes is able to rotate them in their sockets, so that they face into the head! Another fish — the anableps — has “bifocal” eyes; the pupil of each eye is split by a line into two parts. The fish swims with this line on the water level, and is able to see both below and above the water at the same time. How did this bifocal arrangement originate? To quote Dr. Evan Shute again: 'It must try evolutionists' imaginations to evolve such specialized structures. Usually such things are conveniently ignored. At least they rarely creep into the college textbooks which set out to prove the plausibility and credibility of the theory.'⁴

FAR-FETCHED

When we consider the complex structure of eyes, the intricate circuitry provided to make them work, Mid the many wonderful variations in the eyes of living things, the idea that “blind chance” was responsible seems particularly far-fetched.

To find the only rational explanation for the origin of eyes, we turn to the Bible: 'Does he who formed the eye not see?'(Psalm 94:9) 'Ears that here and eyes that see - the Lord has made them both.' (Proverbs 20:12)

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REFERENCES:

1. The Origin of Species
2. Evolution: a Theory in Crisis, Burnett Books, 1865, p. 333.
3. Flaws in the Theory of Evolution, Craig Press, 1961. p. 132.
4. Reference 3, p. 133.

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