An expanded and illustrated version of this article is on stevechallis.net.
This article has been removed from the Betta Trading website. If it appears to still be there it is because of the collective memory of the internet.
Was the Eye Evolved? or Designed? or Both?
The Eye
Evolved? Designed? Or both? "Could the eye evolve?" "Half an Eye?"
A human eye is extremely complicated. How could it have been produced by evolution?
In
evolution, the intermediate stages would have to have an advantage at
each stage, and what possible advantage would half an eye be?
Many
people over the years have come up with this objection to evolution 'By
means of Natural selection'. The first objection of this type I am
aware of was in a book published on November 24th 1859. I would like to quote from this book, please excuse the length of the quotation:
'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 possible
degree. Yet reason tells me that if numerous graduations from a perfect
and complex eye to one very imperfect and simple, each grade being
useful to its possessor, can be shown to exist'.
This quote is
from the first edition of the book 'On the Origin of Species' by
Charles Darwin. Darwin goes on to give examples of animals with light
sensitive organs from a nerve slightly sensitive to light, through an
animal, such as the planarian, with a light sensitive patch, to the
most complex eye.
So 'half an eye' does not need to be an
intermediate stage, and I would only expect opponents of the theory of evolution to suggest it. I suggest that some of the people who bring up
the 'half an eye' objection might never even have read the book: 'On
the Origin of Species'.
Darwin did not have a computer, but much more recently, the evolution of the eye has been modelled on computer. The computer
was programmed to start with the simplest light sensitive organ,
generate random variations, and choose the one that appeared most
advantageous, then do the same with this variation. The computer came up with an actual eye surprisingly quickly.
However,
showing that the eye could have evolved without such absurdity as 'half
an eye' at any stage is not proof that this is how eyes came about.
Naturally, God could have created eyes as well as everything else. The
Holy Bible can be interpreted in ways that make evolution impossible.
However, the Holy Bible can be interpreted in many ways, including ways
completely compatible with evolution. There are many Christians that
accept the probability that God made use of evolution in His creation.
I believe that God is not limited.
I will leave the question 'Does God sometimes deliberately influence evolution?' to other people.
