“Evolutionists don’t know a good eye when they see one”

Sebestyen @ 58 My apologies, I only just noticed this.

1. The whole world around us isn’t created to be perfect and neither is anything that’s created. In all known creatures and machines there are countless compromises to get things to work, there actually can’t be anything that’s really “perfect”.

Imperfection and compromise point to limitations in the knowledge and power of the Creator on the face of it. You could argue that this perfect Creator created the imperfection we observe for a reason but you would need to provide a credible reason for doing so, else this is no more than special pleading.

2. It’s the designers decision how he designs his work. Just because God is omniscient and omnipotent doesn’t mean he has to create everything better or more complex than it needs to be. Of course it would be fantastic to have the visual abilities of a mantis shrimp or an eagle but apparently God decided not to equip us with the ability to see ultraviolet light or spot a rabbit from 3 km away

Again, as Mill pointed out, design is only required where there are constraints on the knowledge, power and materials available. You still need to explain why God designed this limited and imperfect world.

In addition, since the creation must’ve been a long time ago and since it’s known that genetic material suffers from decay, most creatures/organs/etc. were likely in better shape than they’re now.

If genetic material were subject only to decay then, given the age of the Universe or even just our solar system life would have suffered catastrophic genetic failure and gone extinct long ago. Seversky

Molson- your eyes weren't designed as you are not the originally designed type. ET

I definitely wish that my eyes were better designed. Myopia from an early age. Macular degeneration. Astigmatism. Blocked tear ducts. Cataracts. Molson Bleu

@Seversky: I simply wanted to point out that you're wrong about the sensors, not use it as an example. But since you've mentioned it, your/Mill's argument is hogwash because it completely ignores two simple facts: 1. The whole world around us isn't created to be perfect and neither is anything that's created. In all known creatures and machines there are countless compromises to get things to work, there actually can't be anything that's really "perfect". 2. It's the designers decision how he designs his work. Just because God is omniscient and omnipotent doesn't mean he has to create everything better or more complex than it needs to be. Of course it would be fantastic to have the visual abilities of a mantis shrimp or an eagle but apparently God decided not to equip us with the ability to see ultraviolet light or spot a rabbit from 3 km away. In addition, since the creation must've been a long time ago and since it's known that genetic material suffers from decay, most creatures/organs/etc. were likely in better shape than they're now. Sebestyen Sebestyen

@Seversky The critique from Dawkins, et al on the eye is that a human designer could have done it better. The weakness of the critique is that no human designer can do it all, let alone do it better. The argument that an all-knowing, all-powerful Deity could do it better, suffers from a lack of knowledge. How do we know that it could be done better within the restrictions of the natural world that the Deity purpotedly created? Humans are the pinnacle of natural intelligence are far as we are aware. If we can't design it better, whose to say it can be done? Merely saying that in your conception of G-d, He ought to be able to do it, is a theological proposition, not a rational argument. Maybe he can do it even within the bounds of the natural world he created, maybe he can't. There's no way to know. I never found the imperfect design argument to be all that compelling (theologically both Jews and Christians believe that Creation is imperfect), but as to the eye it simply does not work logically. conceptualinertia

Sebestyen @ 30

Actually, almost all image sensors you can buy today are built backwards as well. The reason? It’s much easier to manufacture that way. There are so-called BSI sensors that are built the other way around (and they’re better in certain aspects) but they’re not widely used yet. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Back-illuminated_sensor or https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/149742-how-back-illuminated-sensors-work-and-why-theyre-the-future-of-digital-photography

Thanks for pointing to that article. It's very interesting. It illustrates nicely designing within the constraints of current knowledge and materials. The problem with all such examples, as the English philosopher John Stuart Mill pointed out 150 years ago, is that they imply a designer with limited knowledge and powers, not the omniscient and omnipotent God of Christianity.

Regarding your other “objection” I’d recommend you read a little about this topic, because then you’d probably won’t make a fool out of yourself anymore. http://webvision.med.utah.edu/ is a good start.

I'm already familiar with some of that. In return, I'll quote this passage from the article "Is Our “Inverted” Retina Really “Bad Design?” on the Answers in Genesis website:

Although the neurosensory retina is virtually transparent apart from the blood in its very slender blood vessels, there is an additional refinement of its structure in its central region called the macula. The retina and the occipital cerebral cortex (called the visual cortex)23 of the brain, to which the former transmits visual information, are so organised that the VA is maximal in the visual axis (line of sight—see Figure 2). The visual axis passes through the foveola which forms the floor of a circular pit with a sloping wall, the fovea (Latin: pit) at the centre of the macula (Figures 2 & 5). Away from the fovea the VA diminishes progressively towards the periphery of the retina. Thus the colour photoreceptors—the cones for red, green and possibly also blue24—have their greatest density of 150,000 per square mm at the foveola,25 which measures only 300–330 µm across.26 Moreover, the foveolar cones differ from those elsewhere in being taller, more slender, perfectly straight and accurately oriented to be axial with respect to incident light, for maximal VA and sensitivity. In this area, blood vessels are absent and the retina is much thinner, being reduced to only photoreceptors (cones) with minimal supporting tissue. The inner neural elements of the neurosensory retina are displaced from the foveola radially to allow unimpeded access of light and elimination of what little scattering of light occurs elsewhere (Figure 5).

Seversky

mike1962 @ 7

Let’s see you try, given the constraints of the overall animal. Problem is, you don’t know what the constraints are. You might be able to “design” a cartoon eye that looks nicer than a human eye on the inside. But in the Real World, you don’t know how the eye develops in ontogeny in conjunction with the rest of the genome. In short, you know damn little about the matter. You have no idea if the design is optimal given the constraints or not.

I certainly couldn't design or build a functioning organ like the eye but that isn't the point. I will put to you the same question that I put to kf elsewhere: is it your contention that the human eye is perfect and incapable of improvement? Seversky

kairosfocus @ 5

Seversky, what of those who went into Science or Medicine etc “to destroy Religion”?

Such as?

I suggest on the eye, it clearly works and works very well; indeed down to detecting single photons under the right dark-adapted circumstances. It may not appeal to your sense of how it should be laid out but it is hard to quarrel with success. And remember, that success is as a part of a self-replicating entity, a class of machines we don’t know how to design — so we are having arguments in the face of a huge hole in our understanding so we would be better advised until we can on balance build a better product from ground up, one that is robust and resilient in the face of drastic environmental shifts.

I entirely agree that the human visual system works wonderfully well just as it is. That doesn't mean it is perfect and incapable of improvement, however, and the same is true of many other parts of the human body. We can both acknowledge something as being well done while still recognizing that it might have been done better. Seversky

If we were designed by some one or some thing who knows when then who’s to say we – or more likely our distant descendants – won’t be able to do the same?

That would all depend on what is required and if those descendants haz it. ET

ayearningforpublius @ 4

So Seversky @3: We all await the brilliant human designers, engineers and manufactures that will duplicate — nay exceed — the multi-faceted capabilities of a Michael Jordon or a Leonard Bernstein. Or a human heart along with its supporting cast of lungs, liver, brain, hearing system, balance system, circulatory system, immune system, Kinesin Motors … and more.

If we were designed by some one or some thing who knows when then who's to say we - or more likely our distant descendants - won't be able to do the same? Most likely it won't happen until after we are all long gone but you never know. Seversky

'That is really strange. Maybe they are so accustomed to blind faith (in some omnipotent neo-darwinian mechanism) that they naturally apply the same dogmatism to the imagined target of their “scientific” confutations (some omnipotent, restraint-free designer).' Who can but marvel at the sublime, soaring imagination of unguided evolution, in all its myriad manifestations. Axel

Dean_from_Ohio, Maybe your objecting interlocutor could find out why a distinguished biology professor hasn't come back to continue his discussion with gpuccio about the spliceosome, after trying unsuccessfully to punch a hole in gpuccio's excellent presentation. Did the professor run out of valid arguments and decided to quit? Perhaps your objecting interlocutor could find another scientist who could continue the discussion? Dionisio

Sebestyen, Good responses. Thanks. Had we remained in Eden, those health issues, or even sociopolitical conflicts, would not have been problems to deal with at all. Too late now. We humans prefer to do things our way. Can't complain, we got what we wished for. Dionisio

as my beautifully designed eyes packed up at age 11, I began to worry about my upcomming adult erruption of pointless wisdom teeth; sure enough my mouth could not accomodate this wisely ‘designed’ addition. My knees, and lower back are now experiencing some pain, could we please revise this, ‘design’?

Sorry that you got the short end of the genetic stick but many people retain good eyesight throughout their lives, don't have any problems with their molars or their knees and back. Your personal problems are no evidence against design...

Apparently the appendix is designed to store essential bacteria when an illness destroys the main colonies in our gut. Was this its original purpose? All other primates have a different use for this ‘killer’ organ; to humans at least.

Your chances of dying from appendicitis is lower than 0,07%, don't be such a drama queen. And no, the appendix doesn't necessarily have other uses in primates. Maybe in other mammals but there simply hasn't been done enough research so far to be certain... Sebestyen Sebestyen

ET, what else can they do? They ran out of valid arguments. Actually, they never had them. Dionisio

LoL! @ rvb8 - trying to use those old, beaten-to-death, theological arguments against ID. ET

Keep an eye on this: https://uncommondesc.wpengine.com/evolution/rethinking-biology-what-role-does-physical-structure-play-in-the-development-of-cells/#comment-649856 Dionisio

Oh yeah, as my beautifully designed eyes packed up at age 11, I began to worry about my upcomming adult erruption of pointless wisdom teeth; sure enough my mouth could not accomodate this wisely 'designed' addition. My knees, and lower back are now experiencing some pain, could we please revise this, 'design'? Apparently the appendix is designed to store essential bacteria when an illness destroys the main colonies in our gut. Was this its original purpose? All other primates have a different use for this 'killer' organ; to humans at least. Design? Hmmm. rvb8

D_f_O, @18, "What are Seversky's qualifications to evaluate an engineering design?" Ahuh. And any person's qualification here, for commenting on Evolutionary Biology, or if you want, any Biology? Really? You want to get into an, 'argument from authority', argument? Alright we'll reel out our authoratative biologists, chemists, and scientists generally. You then produce yours. "What are Seversky's qualifications..."? Indeed, this supposed justified, constraint on Seversky, has never ever constrained ID commenters! rvb8

Dionisio- I find it very interesting that evolutionists, starting with Darwin, have approached the issue of vision systems from a Lamarkian perspective- meaning it has always been about just changing the physical characteristics and never about the underlying genetics. Dr Behe mentions this in "Darwin's Black Box"- he calls it discussing the changes in terms of "gross anatomy". It makes you wonder what the modern synthesis actually accomplished. ET

Dionisio @13......I don't think it's going to happen. I've been asking these guys for years. I think at this point it's pretty clear that darwinism lacks a legitimate mechanism for adding novel or innovative structures. Kinda makes it easy to be a creationist tommy hall

Keep an eye on this: https://uncommondesc.wpengine.com/evolution/rethinking-biology-what-role-does-physical-structure-play-in-the-development-of-cells/#comment-649839 Dionisio

Keep an eye on this: https://uncommondesc.wpengine.com/evolution/rethinking-biology-what-role-does-physical-structure-play-in-the-development-of-cells/#comment-649837 Dionisio

Keep an eye on this: https://uncommondesc.wpengine.com/evolution/rethinking-biology-what-role-does-physical-structure-play-in-the-development-of-cells/#comment-649835 Dionisio

ET @32: Valid point. Dionisio

Sebestyen @30: Interesting comment. Thanks. Dionisio

Keep an eye on this: https://uncommondesc.wpengine.com/evolution/rethinking-biology-what-role-does-physical-structure-play-in-the-development-of-cells/#comment-649829 Dionisio

Keep an eye on this: https://uncommondesc.wpengine.com/evolution/rethinking-biology-what-role-does-physical-structure-play-in-the-development-of-cells/#comment-649820 Dionisio

Seversky:

A human designer could have done better.

That is false as humans do not know how to make a vision system from starting from DNA, or whatever it is that produces vision systems in developing organisms. ET

Keep an eye on this: https://uncommondesc.wpengine.com/evolution/rethinking-biology-what-role-does-physical-structure-play-in-the-development-of-cells/#comment-649816 Dionisio

@Seversky: Actually, almost all image sensors you can buy today are built backwards as well. The reason? It's much easier to manufacture that way. There are so-called BSI sensors that are built the other way around (and they're better in certain aspects) but they're not widely used yet. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Back-illuminated_sensor or https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/149742-how-back-illuminated-sensors-work-and-why-theyre-the-future-of-digital-photography Regarding your other "objection" I'd recommend you read a little about this topic, because then you'd probably won't make a fool out of yourself anymore. http://webvision.med.utah.edu/ is a good start. Sebestyen Sebestyen

Keep an eye on this: https://uncommondesc.wpengine.com/evolution/rethinking-biology-what-role-does-physical-structure-play-in-the-development-of-cells/#comment-649809 Dionisio

Keep an eye on this: https://uncommondesc.wpengine.com/evolution/rethinking-biology-what-role-does-physical-structure-play-in-the-development-of-cells/#comment-649804 Dionisio

Keep an eye on this: https://uncommondesc.wpengine.com/evolution/rethinking-biology-what-role-does-physical-structure-play-in-the-development-of-cells/#comment-649801 Dionisio

Kew an eye on this: https://uncommondesc.wpengine.com/evolution/rethinking-biology-what-role-does-physical-structure-play-in-the-development-of-cells/#comment-649800 Dionisio

Keep an eye on this: https://uncommondesc.wpengine.com/evolution/rethinking-biology-what-role-does-physical-structure-play-in-the-development-of-cells/#comment-649797 Dionisio

Here's the original paper for one of the links provided by BA77: http://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms12172.pdf Dionisio

bornagain77 @15 & @16: Thanks for the interesting information. Dionisio

KF @14, Interesting reference. Thanks. Dionisio

ayearningforpublius @19 Thanks for your interesting comment. Sure, I'll look into your blogs again. I enjoy observing people who humbly draw wisdom from its true source. Ap22.21 Dionisio

Dean_from_Ohio @18: Valid commentary. Thanks. Dionisio

gpuccio & Dionisio -- thanks for the birthday wishes. And Dionisio ... thanks for the word correction, the error was either mine or WP, but I'll take the hit. Glad you like the blog, it's yet to be determined as to it's influence, but one primary reason I started it years ago was to leave a record for those who follow. Please click on "Why I Write" on the top menu bar and you will see more of my motivations at: https://ayearningforpublius.wordpress.com/about/. I've also discovered over the years that hard copy in the form of books is probably a better way to leave legacy things behind. Words in clouds such as a blog or UD will no doubt be lost as the months and years go by, so I also have been creating books. Take a look at http://www.blurb.com/user/donanddiana Best regards, don ayearningforpublius

Pretty sure we can take plenty of elegant human solutions that are contrary to some dude who doesn't build things' sense of functionality and let them tell us how it's wrong and how they'd do it better. Engineering is itself often a practice of watching things blow up that far better educated and capable people thought should work. Knowing something that works so well is "garbage" because of a detail that you can't make sense of, heh. As long as the integrated system lies so far out of our ability to engineer, it is, at best, an argument from ignorance. LocalMinimum

Of supplemental note, despite what you may have seen elsewhere in Grade school textbooks, "eyes don't assume a treelike pattern on the famous Darwinian "tree of life."

“The reason evolutionary biologists believe in "40 known independent eye evolutions" isn't because they've reconstructed those evolutionary pathways, but because eyes don't assume a treelike pattern on the famous Darwinian "tree of life." Darwinists are accordingly forced, again and again, to invoke convergent "independent" evolution of eyes to explain why eyes are distributed in such a non-tree-like fashion. This is hardly evidence against ID. In fact the appearance of eyes within widely disparate groups speaks eloquently of common design. Eyes are a problem, all right -- for Darwinism.” http://www.evolutionnews.org/2014/03/its_a_shame_rea083441.html

In fact, we now have evidence of eyes 'popping out of nowhere' in the Cambrian explosion: in the fairly recent ‘Mother-Lode of Fossils’ from the Cambrian Explosion, they found retinas and corneas:

‘Mother Lode’ of (Cambrian) Fossils Discovered in Canada – Feb. 11, 2014 Excerpt: Retinas, corneas, neural tissue, guts and even a possible heart and liver were found. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/mother-lode-of-fossils-discovered-in-canada/

bornagain77

of related note: The inverted retina, which evolutionists insisted was "bad design", is now found to instead be a 'optimal design':

Retinal Glial Cells Enhance Human Vision Acuity A. M. Labin and E. N. Ribak Physical Review Letters, 104, 158102 (April 2010) Excerpt: The retina is revealed as an optimal structure designed for improving the sharpness of images. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20482021 Light propagation explains our inverted retina - A. M. Labin and E. N. Ribak http://spie.org/documents/Newsroom/Imported/003189/003189_10.pdf Eye Cells as Light Pipes - article accompanied by video and graph - 2010 Simulations suggest that a set of cells in the eye can act like optical fibers to guide light through obscuring layers to the cells that detect light. http://physics.aps.org/story/v25/st15 Phys.org: Specialized Retinal Cells Are a "Design Feature," Showing that the Argument for Suboptimal Design of the Eye "Is Folly" - Casey Luskin - August 8, 2014 Excerpt: Now a new paper in Nature Communications, "Müller cells separate between wavelengths to improve day vision with minimal effect upon night vision," has expanded upon this (2010) research, further showing the eye's optimal design. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2014/08/physorg_special088541.html Fiber optic light pipes in the retina do much more than simple image transfer - Jul 21, 2014 Excerpt: Having the photoreceptors at the back of the retina is not a design constraint, it is a design feature. The idea that the vertebrate eye, like a traditional front-illuminated camera, might have been improved somehow if it had only been able to orient its wiring behind the photoreceptor layer, like a cephalopod, is folly. Indeed in simply engineered systems, like CMOS or CCD image sensors, a back-illuminated design manufactured by flipping the silicon wafer and thinning it so that light hits the photocathode without having to navigate the wiring layer can improve photon capture across a wide wavelength band. But real eyes are much more crafty than that. A case in point are the Müller glia cells that span the thickness of the retina. These high refractive index cells spread an absorptive canopy across the retinal surface and then shepherd photons through a low-scattering cytoplasm to separate receivers, much like coins through a change sorting machine. A new paper in Nature Communications describes how these wavelength-dependent wave-guides can shuttle green-red light to cones while passing the blue-purples to adjacent rods. The idea that these Müller cells act as living fiber optic cables has been floated previously. It has even been convincingly demonstrated using a dual beam laser trap.,,, ,,,In the retina, and indeed the larger light organ that is the eye, there is much more going on than just photons striking rhodopsin photopigments. As far as absorbers, there are all kinds of things going on in there—various carontenoids, lipofuscins and lipochromes, even cytochrome oxidases in mitochondria that get involved at the longer wavelegnths.,,, ,,In considering not just the classical photoreceptors but the entire retina itself as a light-harvesting engine,,, that can completely refigure (its) fine structure within a few minutes to handle changing light levels, every synapse appears as an essential machine that percolates information as if at the Brownian scale, or even below.,,, http://phys.org/news/2014-07-fiber-optic-pipes-retina-simple.html Look, your eyes are wired backwards: here’s why - 13 March 2015 Excerpt: The human eye is optimised to have good colour vision at day and high sensitivity at night. But until recently it seemed as if the cells in the retina were wired the wrong way round, with light travelling through a mass of neurons before it reaches the light-detecting rod and cone cells. New research presented at a meeting of the American Physical Society has uncovered a remarkable vision-enhancing function for this puzzling structure.,,, we passed light through their retinas and, at the same time, scanned them with a microscope in three dimensions. This we did for 27 colours in the visible spectrum. The result was easy to notice: in each layer of the retina we saw that the light was not scattered evenly, but concentrated in a few spots. These spots were continued from layer to layer, thus creating elongated columns of light leading from the entrance of the retina down to the cones at the detection layer. Light was concentrated in these columns up to ten times, compared to the average intensity. Even more interesting was the fact that the colours that were best guided by the glial cells matched nicely with the colours of the cones. The cones are not as sensitive as the rods, so this additional light allowed them to function better—even under lower light levels. Meanwhile, the bluer light, that was not well-captured in the glial cells, was scattered onto the rods in its vicinity. These results mean that the retina of the eye has been optimised so that the sizes and densities of glial cells match the colours to which the eye is sensitive (which is in itself an optimisation process suited to our needs). This optimisation is such that colour vision during the day is enhanced, while night-time vision suffers very little. The effect also works best when the pupils are contracted at high illumination, further adding to the clarity of our colour vision. - Erez Ribak, Israel Institute of Technology, https://theconversation.com/look-your-eyes-are-wired-backwards-heres-why-38319

Moreover, besides falsifying the Darwinian claim that the inverted retina is 'bad design', studies on the sensitivity of the human eye also reveal that 'random noise', which Darwinists supposed to be ubiquitous in biological systems, is virtually non-existent, thus falsifying another foundational Darwinian presupposition:

Study suggests humans can detect even the smallest units of light - July 21, 2016 Excerpt: Research,, has shown that humans can detect the presence of a single photon, the smallest measurable unit of light. Previous studies had established that human subjects acclimated to the dark were capable only of reporting flashes of five to seven photons.,,, it is remarkable: a photon, the smallest physical entity with quantum properties of which light consists, is interacting with a biological system consisting of billions of cells, all in a warm and wet environment," says Vaziri. "The response that the photon generates survives all the way to the level of our awareness despite the ubiquitous background noise. Any man-made detector would need to be cooled and isolated from noise to behave the same way.",,, The gathered data from more than 30,000 trials demonstrated that humans can indeed detect a single photon incident on their eye with a probability significantly above chance. "What we want to know next is how does a biological system achieve such sensitivity? How does it achieve this in the presence of noise? http://phys.org/news/2016-07-humans-smallest.html Darwinian Materialism vs Quantum Biology - video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHdD2Am1g5Y

bornagain77

Seversky, the Salvo article:

The light-sensing cells in a vertebrate retina require lots of nutrients and vast amounts of energy. In mammals, they have the highest metabolic rate of any tissue in the body.8 About three-quarters of the blood supply to the eye flows through a dense network of capillaries called the "choriocapillaris," which is situated behind the retina (e in the drawing).9 Oxygen and nutrients are transported from the choriocapillaris to the light-sensing cells by an intermediate layer of cells called the "retinal pigment epithelium" or RPE (d in the drawing).10 In addition to transporting oxygen and nutrients to the light-sensing cells, the RPE performs two other essential functions. First, the dark pigment in it absorbs scattered light, improving the optical quality of the eye. Second, it removes toxic chemicals that are generated in the process of detecting light. The light-sensing cells contain stacks of discs, and in 1967 Richard Young showed experimentally that a photoreceptor cell continually renews itself by shedding discs at the end closest to the RPE and replacing them with newly synthesized discs at the other end.11 The RPE then engulfs the shed discs and neutralizes the toxins.12 Blood is almost opaque, and the RPE absorbs light. If the light-sensing cells were to face the incoming light, the blood-filled choriocapillaris and the RPE would have to be in front of the retina, where they would block most or all of the light. By contrast, nerve cells (b in the drawing) are comparatively transparent, and they block very little of the incoming light. Because of the high metabolic requirements of the light-sensing cells and their need to regenerate themselves, the inverted retina is actually much better than the "tidy-minded" design imagined by evolutionary biologists. The blind spot (a in the drawing) is not a serious problem, because the blind spot produced by the left eye is not in the same place as the one produced by the right eye. This means that, in humans with two good eyes, the field of vision of one eye covers for the blind spot of the other eye, and vice versa. What about the claim that cephalopod eyes are better than vertebrate eyes? In 1984, a team of Italian biologists pointed out that cephalopod eyes are physiologically inferior to vertebrate eyes. In vertebrate eyes, the initial processing of visual images occurs in the retina, by nerve cells right next to the photoreceptor cells. In cephalopod eyes, nerve impulses from the photoreceptor cells must travel all the way to the brain to be processed. So a cephalopod eye "is just a 'passive' retina which is able to transmit only information, dot by dot, coded in a far less sophisticated fashion than in vertebrates." The result is slower processing and fuzzier signals.13 _________________ 8. Sidney Futterman, "Metabolism and photochemistry in the retina," in Adler's Physiology of the Eye, ed. Robert A. Moses, 6th ed. (C. V. Mosby, 1975), 406. 9. Albert Alm and Anders Bill, "Ocular and optic nerve blood flow at normal and increased intraocular pressures in monkeys (Macaca irus)," Experimental Eye Research (February 1973): researchgate.net/publication/18534855; Paul Henkind et al., "Ocular circulation," in Physiology of the Human Eye and the Visual System, ed. Raymond E. Records (Harper & Row, 1979), 139-140. 10. Roy H. Steinberg, "Interactions between the retinal pigment epithelium and the neural retina," Documenta Ophthalmologica (October 1985): https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF00158922. 11. Richard W. Young, "The Renewal of Photoreceptor Cell Outer Segments," Journal of Cell Biology (Apr. 1, 1967): http://jcb.rupress.org/content/33/1/61. 12. Richard W. Young and Dean Bok, "Participation of the Retinal Pigment Epithelium in the Rod Outer Segment Renewal Process," Journal of Cell Biology (Aug. 1, 1969): http://jcb.rupress.org/content/42/2/392. 13. Alberto Wirth et al., "The Advantages of an Inverted Retina," Developments in Ophthalmology 9 (1984): karger.com/Article/Abstract/409800. [Jonathan Wells, "Optimal Optics: Evolutionists Don't Know a Good Eye When They See One" (Salvo Magazine, No. 43, Winter 2017.)]

A tad different from the picture we are typically given, I'd say. And, you need to address this on the merits, not the motive-mongering. KF kairosfocus

tommy hall @6: Please, after you see them, would you mind posting a reference to them here, for the rest of us to see them too? Thanks in advance! BTW, wouldn't you like to see the evo-devo mechanism(s) that put them all together? Note that such information could badly weaken gpuccio's recent posts on RV+NS. :) Dionisio

gpuccio @10: Please, can you make the task requirements a little bit easier next time? :) Dionisio

ayearningforpublius @4: Happy Birthday! I like your blog. Great resource for your grandchildren to learn about their grandpa's thoughts. I may borrow your idea, if you don't mind. BTW, you may want to check the 7th word in the first sentence of your interesting comment @2. Ap22.21 Dionisio

Seversky: Maybe you could start by designing a new and simpler model of ATP synthase, without those useless aminoacids all around... :) gpuccio

ayearningforpublius: Happy birthday! :) gpuccio

mike1962: "Problem is, you don’t know what the constraints are." Absolutely! Seversky, like many other noe-darwinist interlocutors, seems to forget, or deny, that the biological designer is obviously acting under constraints. That is really strange. Maybe they are so accustomed to blind faith (in some omnipotent neo-darwinian mechanism) that they naturally apply the same dogmatism to the imagined target of their "scientific" confutations (some omnipotent, restraint-free designer). "I wouldn’t expect such a lame comment from you." I agree! "A human designer could have done better" is probably one of the statements of the decade! :) Strange, Seversky is usually better than that. Maybe, after all, that he went into science to destroy religion? :) gpuccio

Seversky: This is Jonathan “I went into science to destroy evolution” Wells? No, the “inverted” retina isn’t better than one that’s the right way round. It works as well as it does because of some neat workarounds and hefty image-processing but that doesn’t mean the best solution. A human designer could have done better. Let's see you try, given the constraints of the overall animal. Problem is, you don't know what the constraints are. You might be able to "design" a cartoon eye that looks nicer than a human eye on the inside. But in the Real World, you don't know how the eye develops in ontogeny in conjunction with the rest of the genome. In short, you know damn little about the matter. You have no idea if the design is optimal given the constraints or not. I wouldn't expect such a lame comment from you. mike1962

I'd like to see some of these mutations that create eye parts. tommy hall

Seversky, what of those who went into Science or Medicine etc "to destroy Religion"? Instead of motive mongering, let's look at merits. I suggest on the eye, it clearly works and works very well; indeed down to detecting single photons under the right dark-adapted circumstances. It may not appeal to your sense of how it should be laid out but it is hard to quarrel with success. And remember, that success is as a part of a self-replicating entity, a class of machines we don't know how to design -- so we are having arguments in the face of a huge hole in our understanding so we would be better advised until we can on balance build a better product from ground up, one that is robust and resilient in the face of drastic environmental shifts. KF kairosfocus

So Seversky @3: We all await the brilliant human designers, engineers and manufactures that will duplicate -- nay exceed -- the multi-faceted capabilities of a Michael Jordon or a Leonard Bernstein. Or a human heart along with its supporting cast of lungs, liver, brain, hearing system, balance system, circulatory system, immune system, Kinesin Motors ... and more. In other words, it's more than the eye ... much, much, much more than the eye. And all this, for the most part functioning well 24/7 - 365 days a year for - in my came now - 74 years (as of three days ago ... say Happy Birthday!). ayearningforpublius

This is Jonathan "I went into science to destroy evolution" Wells? No, the "inverted" retina isn't better than one that's the right way round. It works as well as it does because of some neat workarounds and hefty image-processing but that doesn't mean the best solution. A human designer could have done better. Why? Two reasons, First , you still don't see digital cameras with all the wiring draped across the front of the CCD or CMOS sensor. That's not to say it couldn't be done but why go to all the extra effort? Second, what Wells strangely (or not) doesn't mention, is that in the little pit in the retina called the fovea, where the cells are most densely-packed and which produces the highest resolution, all the "wiring" and "plumbing" is pulled aside so there is nothing in the way of the incoming, image-forming light. In other words, if you want the best possible image you just don't put stuff in the way of the light. Not if you were designing an eye. Seversky

Coyne, Dawkins et all, have long sense abandoned science and common sense, and have become professional atheists -- propagandists and nothing more. They would have us believe that a whale came from a dog that learned how to be a fish-like creature The evidence for design in nature has been around them and within them their entire lives, and they are too arrogant to recognize it. But their ego is well fed, and in the case of Dawkins his bank account as well. I lack (thank God) the advanced degrees that a Coyne and Dawkins have, but have just a bit of common sense and basic observations of what's around me. And a long career in systems engineering and software development, allows me to see through this "illusion of and appearance of intelligence" that Dawkins flaunts. Finally, here's my response to thinking and propaganda such as “ ... no intelligent engineer would be expected to design” the “functionally nonsensical arrangement” of cells in the human retina. ... " https://ayearningforpublius.wordpress.com/2016/08/05/the-not-so-intelligent-designer/ ayearningforpublius

Quantum Biometrics Exploits the Human Eye’s Ability to Detect Single Photons https://www.technologyreview.com/s/604266/quantum-biometrics-exploits-the-human-eyes-ability-to-detect-single-photons/ J-Mac