Further to: The alleged poor design of the eye – JL Wile (where, in reality, the retina is revealed as an optimal structure), Tom Bethell kindly writes to say,
The allegedly poor design of the eye, or retina, has been cited by Dawkins, Coyne, Kenneth Miller and no doubt dozens of others, as support for Darwinism.
Notice how the evolutionists want to have it both ways. Natural Selection is their explanation of “apparent design.” So “good design” illustrates the efficacy of Natural Selection. But “bad design” is also to be expected if Nature is the designer. Why is that? Step-by-step improvement is the essence of Darwinism. Paul Nelson wrote some years back, quoting Kenneth Miller:
“If natural selection, but not an intelligent designer, created organisms, we should observe ‘organs and systems . . . that have obvious flaws, mistakes, and redundancies,’ as holdovers from earlier, different functions of the organ or system. Miller illustrates this point with several examples: the ‘backwards’ retina of the human eye (with its photoreceptors facing the ‘wrong way round’) , . . .”
An Intelligent Designer, on the other hand, is expected to attain perfection. Therefore, “design,” whether it is good or bad, shows that
Darwin was right. Natural selection can achieve the former, but an Intelligent Designer would have avoided the latter.
So natural selection is better than design because it can account for either good or bad design, or no design at all? And it doesn’t even matter that something that can account for everything can account for nothing?
No wonder this ended up being the doctrine taught in failing public schools.
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