Design Question: Human Eye

Post Reply New Topic

This would suggest that if a creator made man, he made pointless decisions that had no functional purpose OR he was using trial and error to get to his desired end-product. This actually sounds more like a child playing with toys, that an omnipotent creator.

As for the eyes, there are shades of colours we cannot percieve because of the way our brain handles colours, the way in which the brain handles colour is called the opponent process. The groups of shades we cannot see are greenish-red and yellowish-blue. It's actually possible to negate the opponant process and allow people to see these shades for a short time. Why on earth would a creator allow us to see something, but then create a mechanism to prevent us from seeing it? The same could be said for many of the processes in the brain, they are adequate but far from optimised. This suggests more of a random progression and only "being as good as it needs to be" rather than some design-plan.

Who designed the designer?

Actually, there's a book out there by someone (wish I could remember, but it's about 20 books or so ago) literally about the design process of the paper clip, and some other simple things, like flatware. Strangely enough, it was fascinating. But each of them evolved over the centuries.

It's hard to say if the final design has left the blackboard...

Tell me about this:

I'd also like to note that the colors are not unseen, but rather are perceived as the closest shade that is render-able by the eye. Unless its laser light, no colors are that pure.

Color is manufactured by the visual system; it is only coarsely related to the actual wave form. If a color can in principle be seen but cannot ordinarily be seen, then it seems reasonable to say that these colors aren't generally perceived by the eye but nonetheless exist.

As for what he's talking about, it sounds like imaginary colors.

The answer, if any, will be something like 'turtles all the way down'.

Basically the brain looks at the difference between the amount of red and green coming into the eye to decide what colour/hue it is. If the eye was designed you'd expect a different system to be in place. I can't really explain in greater detail, because i have severaly impaired colour vision.

The three types of cone-cells in the human eye that allow us to see in colour are actually set to green/yellow and violet. One perculiarity is the fact that the violet cone is activated by ultra-violet light, but the lens itself blocks the ultra-violet light from reaching the cones. Which ties in with the "Allowing us to percieve colours, but then designing something that blocks us from percieving said colours". Another perculiarity is the fact that some people have 4 cones instead of 3, you just have to ask "why"? You wouldn't see any of these adapatations in something that was designed.

I'll never claim that an all-powerful entity didn't create the universe, it wouldn't be a proovable claim and the scientific community don't have any better idea's. They have some great idea's of how the universe formed, but what caused the big-bang? there's always the question of "what happened before". But evolution? there really is no doubt about it. I don't know why religious types can't accept evolution AND creationism at the same time, they aren't mutually exclusive. If you believe in an all-powerful, all-knowing entity, it's hardly a stretch to believe he set things in motion billions of years ago knowing fully exactly how we'd turn out via evolution.

But that would imply all that stuff about God's wrath over violations of his basic rules is nonsense. An omniscient god, of course would have to be a total maniac to perform the way He is supposed to perform drowning or blasting non-believers as described in the Bible but most people of faith have to be a bit nuts to swallow all that nonsense anyway.

Honestly iamnotaparakeet, I thought you were smarter than that. Why would you ever fall to the "It's too complex, therefore it's wrong" argument? Though I won't go so far as to say you're going with the "I don't understand it, therefore it's wrong" argument, I'll give you that.

Saying a system is so complex that the science can't be right is a horrible, horrible argument, because the same can be applied to religion (if you believe that complexity disproves scientific theories, then you have to believe that complexity disproves God/religion). I've said it before, but since it can relate to this, however loosely, to say something along the lines of "God works in mysterious ways" is no different than saying "Science works in mysterious ways".

Your argument is another version of irreducible complexity, and that idea, when tested, has failed. Several of Behe's examples of alleged irreducible complexity had already been shown wrong even before he published his book. Simpler precursors of allegedly irreducibly complex systems had already been found.

The irreducible complexity argument suffers from the problem that it claims a structure or process must have been assembled all at once because it can only function if all the components are present, but it fails to prove two necessary premises. To be sure there is irreducible complexity you have to be sure you really know what is the simplest structure that can function. ID advocates' repeated failure in that respect shows they have no method for doing that. You also have to be sure there has been no change of function. I never have seen ID advocates discussing that point.

iamnotaparakeet, I have a serious question for you: how much do you know about the theory you attack? How much of an effort have you made to find out what evolutionary biology has to say about the origin of eyes? Would you read Nilsson and Pelger's paper and make a serious effort to understand the argument? You have posted about evolution and ID often enough to show that you find the topic worth your time.

So your saying that it took god billions of years to create an eye and it only took humans a few hundred? It seems to me that if you believe god really did create eyes himself then in the facet of the creation of viewing equipment then we are somewhat superior to him. but since hes god hes supposed to be superior, if he is superior why did we do it faster and better?

My obsession as an aspie is truth as such things like this fascinate me.

I was brought up as a christian until my grandmother forced me to read the bible, the worst moment in my faith was when i found that most christians did not even know their own religion. Another interesting tidbit, why people so reverentially believe in a religion which they know almost nothing about.



Example.
If you believe god created the angels then you know nothing of christianity. It clearly says in the bible that god and the angels all came out of a "pool of life" (taken from text between god and lucifer) of course this was before lucifer was cast out of heaven. Religion and all its complexities are fascinating to me. Arguing with the people who have faith (definition of faith - belief without proof and the ability close their minds to all contradictions within their own faith)





Parakeet
...... i was going to say quite a few things but orwell unfortunately go there first.

I wish the intelligent designer had been a little less intelligent about designing the eyes of house flies, mosquitoes, and those rats that bite kids and spread bubonic plague.

But the intelligent designer is having a hard time keeping up with things. His email inbox is overflowing with customer complaints about the human knee and the human appendix.

Considering almost all of what I see in human history and on the news, I'd think that an intelligent designer who wants to see people being compassionate made some serious errors when he designed the human brain.

But the human eye is small potatoes when you're looking for evidence of intelligent design. The intelligent designer's most brilliant creation is the smallpox virus. It's not only designed to spread exponentially in stealth mode unnoticed until it's too late, it also has a brilliant system to hide from the immune system.

But that's only a small part of the intelligent designer's brilliance. It's designed to maximize suffering. People stay conscious and fully aware while their internal organs are disintegrating, too weak to move but clear minded while pieces of shattered intestine flow out of their as*hole.

It's unlikely that such a brilliantly engineered design could happen just by random chance.

and how could he/she see to design the designer before the designer had designed eyes.

Surely the complexity of the eye is proof that it wasn't designed. I'm not very clever but I can see this quite clearly. ID is nonsense.

Umm... can you tell me where the verse is?

I mean, there are a number of verses that I see that suggest that God created the angels and just about everything else:
Psalms 148:2-5 Praise him, all his angels; praise him, all his hosts! (3) Praise him, sun and moon, praise him, all you shining stars! (4) Praise him, you highest heavens, and you waters above the heavens! (5) Let them praise the name of the LORD! For he commanded and they were created.

Col 1:16 For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities--all things were created through him and for him.

Psalms 33:6 By the word of the LORD the heavens were made, and by the breath of his mouth all their host.

Nehemiah 9:6 "You are the LORD, you alone. You have made heaven, the heaven of heavens, with all their host, the earth and all that is on it, the seas and all that is in them; and you preserve all of them; and the host of heaven worships you.

Revelation 10:6 and swore by him who lives forever and ever, who created heaven and what is in it, the earth and what is in it, and the sea and what is in it, that there would be no more delay,


The only verse I can see that might be taken to be a pool of life would be this one:
"Gen 1:2 The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. "

But the verse before this suggest that all things were created:
"Gen 1:1 In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth"

And I cannot think of any other time that could be taken as before the fall of Lucifer, as the snake in Genesis 3 is usually taken to be the devil, so it would have to be Genesis 1-2 as far as I can tell.