Human Eye Function

Human Eye Function. Randall Niles shares what Organic Subsystems reveal about Irreducible Complexity and Intelligent Design.

"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 formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree possible."

-- Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, Bantam Books, 1999 (reprint of 1859 original), 155.

The human eye is enormously complicated a perfect and interrelated system of numerous individual parts, including the cornea, lens, pupil, iris, retina, optic nerve, and visual cortex.

Here's a simple snapshot

The cornea and lens refract light. The cornea is the transparent front of the eye that provides the primary focusing power, while the lens tunes the focus depending on an objects distance. Similar to a camera, the pupil is the aperture and the iris is the aperture stop, together controlling the amount of light that enters the eye.

The retina is comprised of over 100 million photoreceptors that capture the light impressions and translate them to electrical pulses and chemical events. The retina is a complex, layered structure of rods and cones that functions like camera film.

The electrical pulses and chemical events captured on the film are sent to the brain via the 1.2 million fibers contained in the optic nerve. Special visual centers in the brain, including the primary visual cortex, process the electrical/chemical information as color, contrast, clarity, depth, etc., which, when everything comes together, allow us to see "pictures" of our world.

Incredibly, the eye ball, optic nerve, and visual cortex are three totally separate and distinct subsystems. Yet, collectively, they capture, deliver, and interpret up to 1.5 million pulse messages a millisecond! Ask a savvy computer programmer how difficult it would be to perform this task!

Clearly, if all the separate subsystems arent present and performing perfectly at the same instant, the human eye wont work and has no purpose. Logically, it is impossible for random processes, operating through gradual mechanisms of natural selection and genetic mutation, to create numerous separate subsystems when they provide no advantage to the whole until the very last stage of development and interrelation.

When it comes down to it, Darwinian Theory declares that everything we see in the organic world merely has an appearance of design. Richard Dawkins, professor at Oxford University, writes:

Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose.

...the living results of natural selection overwhelmingly impress us with the appearance of design as if by a master watchmaker

-- Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker, W.W. Norton & Company, 1996, 1, 21.

Nevertheless, Richard Dawkins is an atheist who staunchly maintains that the design we see in the world is merely an illusion that these amazingly complex systems are an accidental product of natural selection.

Visit http://www.AllAboutTheJourney.org/human-eye.htm to understand how the development of Human Eye Function and other interrelated systems would be impossible through gradual evolutionary processes.

Also, go to http://www.RandallNiles.com/videos.htm to watch more videos about the human eye and other phenomenal subsystems!

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Human Eye Function
• Organic Systems
• Subsystems
• Body Functions
• Design of the eye
• optic nerve
• visual cortex
• retina
• Randall Niles

[reflect7]

Yes jgoemat, but if all these separate subsystems arent present and performing at the same instant, the human eye wont work and has no purpose. Logically, it is impossible for random processes, operating through gradual mechanisms of natural selection and genetic mutation, to create numerous separate subsystems when they provide no advantage to the whole until the very last stage of development and interrelation.

[thevalkerie]

why did god give us a blind spot in the eye?

[reflect7]

Study the inverted retina design and all the stunning things it provides with respect to all the other visual elements. There are tradeoffs in designing/engineering any system. By the way, since the two visual fields overlap to a large degree, the blind spot of one eye is covered by the other eye's visual field.

[reflect7]

But an earthworm photo nub is still an earthworm phot nub and a trilobite eye is still a trilobite eye -- Just because we have simpler eye structures in nature doesn't mean that those simpler eye structures were evolutioanry ancestors to the human eye. You have to make that philosophical conjecture outside of science, right?

[whoracle3]

lol. wow the creationists are running out of ideas "OMG ITS SO COMPLEX SO THAT MEANS GOD EXISTS!"

[DJROIDSS]

This guy is dumb, he took a 2 hour class and he thinks he knows everything. god also gave us glaucoma, cataracts, astigmatism, myopia, hyperopia, and retinal detatchment so we can go blindly slowly and painfully while other creatures like owls have superior eyes than us. us humans his ingenious creation the he loves so much is def and blind compared to animals

[andybreeden]

Does Niles know there are other books besides the bible?

[Hufflewaffle]

yah, the idea that photoreceptor cells can develop in organisms over millions of years is so much more far fetched than a non changing, immaterial consciousness existing in non-space/time building stuff out of nothing.

That takes a whole different kind of blindness!

[gregrutz]

You are not a scientist either.

The nuclear reactions of the sun are complex so I believe in Ra, the sun God.

[chillmax]

You were never a real atheist, you were confused, and by the sounds of it, you still are. Good luck with believing nonsense, what a waste of a life. Yes 'things' are amazing, but this does not mean a magical being created it.

[bellatrix336]

He's so right! how could all these complex systems just come into being from one big bang? God is real and he is the creator of all these things

[PrsnlFrdm911]

It's an interesting concept, I'd like to think we will have an answer someday.

[mmmcculloch3]

@thevalkerie The real question is: "Why did God give us life?" Each day truly is a gift.

[supertotoro]

Combine that critical thinking of yours with reading a book. (and I don't mean THAT book, I mean a real book written by scientist)

[adparker314]

Argument From Ignorance (well known logical fallacy):

"I don't get it, therefore..."

No Randall, you can't justify leaping from you own recognised ignorance to ANY conclusion!