Design Question: Human Eye

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Could a camcorder with about 5 megapixel color resolution and 100 megapixel monochrome resolution have been made without a designer? Evolution is suppose to have no goal and there are no purposive forces in nature, so as often as something is made it would also be destroyed if even that much. The component of the human eye, and the software the brain uses to interpret data from the eye with moreso, is something that is unlikely to occur on it's own. It in itself suggests that there is a designer to it.

With even simple things, such as a paperclip, arrowhead, or even a magnifier lens, the question of whether they had been designed and constructed it is simple to answer, "yes, they were" even if you don't know who designed them or who made them. But when it comes to living things, there is much opposition to answering that they were. Our minds, our eyes, our muscles, our joints, ... etc, it is more in vogue today to verbally accept these amazing things as products of random development rather than even accept the suggestion of a designer of which they offer.

My biology text is packed away now, and I'm not sure if it's even the correct edition, but I have read compelling explanations for the evolution of the eye based on analogy to modern eyes in various organisms. The eye could have started out simply as a few light-sensitive cells.

The problem I see with this type of argument (similar to Michael Behe's famous flagella argument) is that it assumes the eye must work perfectly or not at all (thus necessitating the sudden chance development of a complete eye). However, this is not the case. My own eyes are pretty crappy without corrective lenses, so they obviously aren't working perfectly, but even without my glasses I'm much better off than a blind man. A kid I went to high school with was legally blind- but he could still detect light. His eyes were way off from the fully functional form, but still less bad than other alternatives. And all evolution goes for is what is least bad at the moment.

A camcorder of such ability? It is possible, but we have typically seen objects of that sort created by intelligences, namely people in factories and engineers, so claiming that people created camcorders seems rational.

Your argument from a lack of purposes and goals does not seem to mean that things will be destroyed as easily as they are created. If a thing provides benefit, then it will be more likely to be maintained. This over an extended period of time can end up creating increasingly complex structures.

In any case, with the abilities of the eye, there are still issues with the problems with the eye. After all, the eye has a blind spot created by the construction of it, and that would be easily resolved if the eye were constructed in a very different manner, (and is resolved in other creatures), so if there were a designer, then why did they not do a better job with the eye rather than making some flaw in it?

In any case, there is a wikipedia article called "Evolution of the Eye" which does talk about the evolution of the eye.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_the_eye

See http://www.scienceagogo.com/news/200508 ... _sys.shtml

An analogous question is whether the products of accidents can turn out to be good, adopted, and developed.

Yes.

As noted above, the eye started as relatively simple photosensors that gave some advantage, so organisms that had them were more prolific, and underwent trillions of generations of mutation/selection.

Like Darwin, Copernicus was right - the fact that some interpretations of the Bible conflict with a model of the universe that does not feature Earth/Humans as the absolute center does not disprove the moral truths in the Bible - I don't think that book was ever intended to be a science book.

Terrible argument. Dawkins pretty much destroys it in both "Climbing Mount Improbable" and "The God Delusion."

Have you noticed your blind spot apart from trying to? And would you notice it more if it were in the center of the eye? To call it a flaw would be to say that it is a problem, yes or no? The construction has the optic nerve connected so that the blind spots are off center and in respective locations of each eye to the other. You don't notice it because it is software corrected in the mind. As Orwell said, things don't have to be perfect in order to be passed on, so why the need for the software correction?

Monty, once an organism, assuming evolution and its required timescale are true, leaves the realm of the microscopic into the macroscopic, its generation time is reduced by orders of magnitude. And most of the necessary adaptations from simple to complex for the eye would have taken place on the macroscopic level.

Well, the blind spot problem still stands as a problem, because an unnecessary flaw is still an unnecessary flaw and still is evidence against a designer. Also, what would you have as a designer that would have unnecessary flaws in their design?

Well, as for the blindspot:
1) Is it a correction to have a problem that isn't even noticed? I mean, wouldn't people be better off knowing that there is a blindspot? So, how does this favor a designer if we have a software correction for no benefit?
2) When we combine the vision of both of our eyes, each eye provides information to fill in the blind spot of the other and the mind generally takes the seeing of each eye together, which isn't really anything, so having the brain adjust for the blindspot could just be a part of that tendency in the first place.
3) Why this and why not that does not really provide much information, because honestly, nobody here is an expert, and secondly, arbitrary things can emerge anyway in an evolutionary system.

1) I'd say it's a nice perk not to notice a missing part of one's vision, but, no, it conveys no survival advantage.
2) Even with one eye closed the blind spot isn't noticeable unless you deliberately seek it.
3) arbitrary things, if not needed or beneficial, would be selected against.

Here's something, is perfection a design feature of those items which are designed by men? Also, why should God have to make things perfect? And why not recognize what is rather than wishing for what is not and will not be?

well, perfection is a subjective human concept, and, it seems to be often related to aesthetics but I get that it is also related to function such as vision, but what many would assume to be 'perfection' is one, already explained by natural selection through out periods of time and second, if such perfection wouldn't exist, likely we would find another perfection to argue in favor of.

I see a problem with the designer thing, given that men design things, artificially. Natural processes and artificial processes work differently, so atrituiting nature characteristics applied to artificial objects created by men seems problematic. I can say that the issue of Men designing things artificially (being nature as the source material for it) Vs Natural selection (and how it works), seems to post some problems regarding the issue, given how construction by design differs from natural selection. Though, the problem here seems mostly to lie with science and its principles.

And well, from what we can see, it doesn't seem that God make things perfect, as there are some issues in nature and given that perfection is something men atribute to things subjectively, if God made things, he would have made them as they are and would work according to it, regardless of perfection.

You mean that the generation time is increased by orders of magnitude as an organism becomes more complex?? Yes. Which means that evolution slows with 'more advanced' life forms? Generally true.... although the 'more advanced' organisms have more genes, with more possibilities for mutations.

Consider insects, most of which are macroscopic organisms (with eyes).... they still breed relatively rapidly, and there are a vast number of them ... there are lots of photosensor development still going on today in the insect world.


In computing, we can use the evolutionary process to arrive at complex solutions to problems that we don't really understand - it is not necessary to map out a solution based on a pre-defined plan, as a watch maker does. Instead, we only set up an arena where various solutions are tried randomly, and the 'best' ones are {selected, multiplied, mutated} a large number of times ... this can lead to very complicated systems that are well adapted (even elegant) but which were 'grown' instead of 'designed.'


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_programming

AG and Parakeet: re flaws in human body: Our mesentery attaches at the spine. This makes perfect sense for quadrupeds, but in our bipedal state it really would be better if the mesentery attached at the rib cage. There are also flaws in our skeletal structure, inherited from quadruped ancestors. The basic mammalian body plan was established before we stood upright, and we often suffer from things like arthritis. I am roughly 6 feet tall (which is slightly above average but not at all exceptional), and the basic layout of the human body does not do a good job of supporting such sizes. At that height, I am at risk for developing scoliosis because human skeletal structure, which is derived from the layout of animals that walked on all fours, does a crappy job of maintaining a 6-foot body in an upright state.

What else... well, there's plenty of problems in our immune system. My immunology notes are archived somewhere on an external hard drive, but I do remember that certain perfectly normal immune responses are quite harmful and can lead to strokes, aneurysms, and blood clots. There's also the matter of a mother's immune system routinely attacking (and quite often killing) a developing fetus. Mother Nature is actually the biggest abortionist in history, one study found that as many as 90% of embryos are spontaneously aborted by the mother's immune system. Also, our immune system in fighting infections quite often does more damage than the infection ever would if left alone.

There are other examples, but this is enough for now.

1) No, it is an anti-perk to be less informed. So, no, it is less good to be uninformed.

2) I already admitted that, but a design flaw in the eye is still that, an argument against someone intelligently designed.

3) Not necessarily, they're only selected against if they take up a lot of resources, and even then it might still take some time for that to happen.


Well, no, perfection is not a design feature of things designed by men because men are imperfect.

God should make things perfect because if we posit a deity that does less than the perfect good when there is no cost to do so, by what can we call this being good? It is clearly doing an evil by underperforming it's potential when there is no cost to perform adequately. Would you call a worker who purposefully did a worse job than they could have to be a good worker? Then why would this God you posit be good?

Recognize what? You are making a statement about reality, this has to be compared to what would be predicted by a theory for such a behavior. I'd think you are too hard on evolution and too soft on God, if you are willing to let a perfect God create sloppy designs but would attribute no potential to millions of years of evolution to make these kinds of structures.

iamnotaparakeet, stopping bringing out Paley's Watch. This is, even by 'trampling old ground' standards, been trodden, bulldozed, and purged with fire and salt. Just because an eye is suited to vision doesn't mean that was always the case, and I would be talking to the designer, should he exist, about some of the pre-planned obsolescence he put in the design.

It's certainly a goal. It doesn't happen usually because humans are imperfect and have imperfect knowledge of the things they are designing.


Because God is perfect, and that which He creates should be perfect. Besides that, I've already pointed out a couple examples where humans can design better than what currently exists. If God is a worse designer than humans, it's no wonder some fundamentalists believe in a young Earth that's pretty much ready for the End Times. After all, if the Earth was made by so shoddy a designer, you wouldn't expect it to stick around for very long.


That's the exact question I ask creationists. We have observed evolution in the lab. That it occurs is simple, empirical fact. I honestly don't see how it's still possible to contest the point at all.