The eye is a fascinatingly complex piece of machinery. So complex, in fact, that when looking at a diagram, a person can’t help but get the feeling it might have been designed for a purpose; much like the camera it mimics.
Why, then, do we have a blind spot near the center of our vision? Biology points to an optic nerve, carrying the newly gathered information back to the brain to be processed.
The theory of intelligent design ( “your father’s creationism” ) begs to differ. I’m hoping somebody who finds this blog might be able to suggest an answer? A human engineer would 
be fired for this type of design flaw in a camera; surely the all-knowing could be expected to hold down a job at Nikon, if he so chose.
Natural selection would favor a good, but imperfect, eye if it gave its owner an advantage at survival and procreation. The genes for making a flawed eye would quickly spread through a pool for not making any sort of eye. The information being gathered by our rods and cones has to make it back to the brain somehow. If a small blind-spot is the price for sight, this puts creatures with an eye at an advantage.
But God is all-powerful and all-knowing, unencumbered by simple physics. In creating the universe, God must have created the laws of the universe, to his satisfaction. He could easily have designed us with no blind spot. Or, of course, with a better resistance to disease, without such a foul temperament, or any number of ways more befitting the image of our creator.
How does the theory of intelligent design explain these and other design flaws?
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April 29, 2008 at 4:55 am
Ubiquitous Che
Now, don’t get me wrong: I am very much an anti-theist, and I think this is a really good argument.
But there’s a few arguments that I can concieve of that you didn’t cover in your challenge. Would you mind if I played devil’s advocate on this one, and argued the side of the creationists?
April 29, 2008 at 5:17 am
theism
I’ve been hoping somebody would…
April 29, 2008 at 6:11 am
cindyinsd
Hi there,
In case you’re really interested, you’ll find a quite comprehensive article on this subject at http://www.creationontheweb.com/content/view/1683/ which explains some of the answers to your question far better than I could–especially at 12:10 am. I hope it will be of help in your quest.
Grace and peace to you,
Cindy
April 29, 2008 at 7:03 am
theism
Thanks for the article, Cindy! It seems to pretty much agree with my take on the situation: the blind spot is a small price to pay for vision in general. That still leaves me confused, though … why did god choose to put it there?
It’s not at all a bad design, the eye with its blind spot. We all seem to agree on this; it’s even the article’s title. But is it the best of all possible designs? Is it a design that somebody who created the universe could be proud of?
That our blind spot isn’t terribly bad doesn’t mean it’s not there…
And then we have questions about the appendix. It has no function, and too often kills people when it becomes infected. Again, why would god create us with this time-bomb when he or she could just as easily have created us without it?
April 29, 2008 at 7:11 am
theism
Allow me to share a few quotes from the article that help to demonstrate my bewilderment:
What I don’t understand is: why would god be limited in exactly the same way human engineers seem to be?
April 29, 2008 at 7:42 am
Ubiquitous Che
Okay thei, getting into my stride now:
Vision was perfect when Adam and Eve were in the Garden of Eden; but when they were case out from perfection their bodies became flawed. You clearly haven’t studied your bible, so I’m glad you came to me for answers to your question.
It can be shown in : where it is written, “<quote mine the bible for a passage involving darkness and Original Sin in the same context>”
Although the literal translation might not make sense in this context, the true and deeper metaphorical meaning of the word ‘darkness’ clearly means the blindness and imperfection of the human eye. So even rational logic shows that the imperfection of the human eye is actually evidence that the Bible really is the literal Word of God and that evolution is a myth and never happened. After all, we can only move towards entropy and chaos; this is supported not only by the Bible, but also the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
You atheists are so filled with hate that you clearly can’t even understand even the rudiments of logic – which is why it is so good you came to me to clarify this point in the first place.
If you would just accept Christ as your Lord and Savior, then you would see how wrong you have been to question the Lord with a mere ‘theory’ like evolution.
…
…
…
Is it just me, or am I a little bit too good at sounding like a religious nutjob? I actually feel kind of dirty now. The kind that doesn’t wash out. I seriously don’t know how people like Dinesh D’Souza can do this for a living and still sleep at night.
Over to you.
April 29, 2008 at 7:48 am
Ubiquitous Che
*case = cast
April 29, 2008 at 7:50 am
Ubiquitous Che
*It can be shown in “” “”:”" where it is written, “<quote mine the bible for a passage involving darkness and Original Sin in the same context>”
Damn HTML entities getting stripped out.
April 29, 2008 at 7:52 am
Ubiquitous Che
Damnit!
It can be shown in (book) (chapter #):(verse #’s) where it is written, “”
April 29, 2008 at 7:53 am
Ubiquitous Che
Damnit!
Screw this. You get the point. Delete this and the last couple of posts, and feel free to edit in the book/chapter/verse correction in my original posting.
Stupid uneditable texts.
*mutters*
April 29, 2008 at 4:12 pm
cindyinsd
Dear Theism,
I’m glad you looked over the article. My take is that God created the laws of the universe. He could make everything work by some sort of “magic”, I suppose, but He doesn’t. Instead, He fitted together this intricate, marvellous, indescribably complex system we call nature and made everything work together logically. To me, this is absolutely amazing.
So the fact that we see the design of they eye as less elegant than it might have been in a universe with different laws doesn’t bother me. In the first place, our understanding changes so often. In the second, God made the human eye optimal for humans living in the environment we live in with the laws of science we live with.
Being omnipotent doesn’t mean being able to do anything. There are logical absurdities such as the idea of, say, existing and not existing at the same time. This is a thing that can’t be done. Being omnipotent means having all the power there is to be had. God abides by His own rules, at least so far as the universe is concerned. He is not capricious and silly–He’s brilliant. The human eye is evidence of this.
As for the appendix, I remember thinking when I was a kid that it must have some use we didn’t understand yet. By the time I went to nursing school “they” had discovered a number of them. You will find an article here: http://creationontheweb.com/content/view/5382/ that talks about just one. You can access other articles from there if you’re so inclined.
No, the only question in this line that really bothers me is about wisdom teeth. I can only speculate they may have become a problem because of devolution, but I’m sure our ever curious scientists will eventually explain this mystery to me. They come up with something new every day and the reasons for believing in evolution have suffered from this.
When I was a kid, I just disbelieved in evolution because it left no room for God. (My parents, btw, were believers in evolution, so my wierdness wasn’t their fault.) Now that I am old, there are plenty of scientific reasons to doubt evolution, not the least of which is the stubborn refusal of the earth to yield fossilized transitional forms at all, let alone in the thousands hoped for by Darwin.
I don’t believe it’s impossible to be a follower of Jesus and believe in evolution (in the way that most non-scientists believe in evolution). I just don’t see how you can be a true, comprehensive follower of evolution and logically find it in your brain to believe in God. But then evolution doesn’t look all that logical to me, so maybe one can. Mostly, to me, evolution seems to be a matter of emotion. The arguments for it keep changing as new science comes in, and they only get farther and farther from anything I would have recognized as science as a kid. They seem to move more toward the metaphysical and the speculativly quantum. Pretty wierd stuff and hard to take seriously a lot of the time.
Grace and peace to you (and also to you, UC
)
Cindy
April 29, 2008 at 4:47 pm
Deborah
You’ve all got your cart before your horse.
The eye WAS created perfect. That blind spot is your knowledge of God, a knowledge that man no longer possesses because of sin. Don’t believe in God, or that there is sin . . . well there is your blind spot!
That blind spot is repeated throughout the creation in many different ways.
Now, you may know you have a blind spot, but you have no idea what is hiding in it. Such is the mystery of God. If you will not seek to find out what is hiding in the blind spot, you will never know and stay forever bound and blind.
The quest to know drives man in the physical realm, and so you have science. Heed the message of science. Through diligence and effort, and empirical knowledge, it has come to learn what it has come to learn.
Likewise, through diligence, and effort, study (the empirical evidence of the truths of God) we will also now come to know the truths of God, and the light of His Christ will shine into your blind spot, and you will know.
April 29, 2008 at 5:46 pm
theism
I’ve never known a follower of evolution … I’m not sure if I’ve even heard of one? But to be fair, I don’t know any followers of gravity, either. Both of these [just a] theories are plainly true, and don’t need validation.
You’ll be happy to know the planet gave up its stubbornness and started unearthing those transitional fossils you asked for … starting in 1861, just two short years after Origin of the Species was published. There have been many:
* Archaeopteryx, something between a dinosaur and a bird. This was discovered in 1861; there’s been a lot of time to get used to the idea.
* The platypus, still with features you would associate with a reptile.
* Ambulocetus, something like a crocodile; this became the whales we know today over the course of tens of millions of years.
* Tiktaalik, a four-legged fish.
* The family tree of the horse.
I keep hearing, in very general terms, that new science points away from natural selection and affirms the story of biblical creation … but nobody has been able to tell me what this means, or show me examples so that, if wrong, I can change my ways. On the other hand, I know of many examples like bacteria evolving resistance to antibiotics.
April 29, 2008 at 7:21 pm
Who am I
Hey Ubiquitous,
Did you have any “devil’s advocate” counterarguments to refine Theism’s initial post, or was that bit of “religious nutjob” satire all you wanted to bring up?
April 29, 2008 at 8:42 pm
sean
I normally don’t post my comments to be read publicly, so I’d like to preface this statement with an apology for violating any courtesies or customs normally adhered to.
Theism– you seem to be questioning how the theory of intelligent design accounts for imperfections in nature.
First of all, I need to say that, there is a difference between intelligent design and creationism to my knowledge. Creationism is a theory indivorcable from Christian theology, while intelligent design is the idea that there was some supernatural intervention or intelligence behind the formation of nature.
I’m not an expert in the theory of intelligent design, but I do know a bit about scientific inquiry into the evolution of life. I will not address creationism because I don’t know anything about Christianity.
I think the “new science” you are referring to, in the above comment, is the development of a new theory in evolutionary biology that- Darwinist evolution is insufficient to explain all the biodiversity we see now. One of the most trustworthy and academically rigorous proponents of this sentiment is Michael Behe. I would suggest reading about him if you want to get a good idea of the scientific evidence for intelligent design. As I said, I’m not an expert.
Another question you have raised, that I would like to comment on, is– If god is omnipotent, all good, and responsible for the entire formation of the natural world, then why are our biological structures not perfect? Is this the proper phrasing of your question?
I don’t know very much about theology, but by pure logic, this argument is not necessarily valid, right? I mean, maybe all natural structures are perfect. Such an argument must be accompanied by a definition of perfect and good. These are very indepth problems, which, if your are at all intrigued, I’d be happy to discuss, but not in this current comment.
Essentially what I’m saying is that their meanings are very unclear. This is essentially referred to in Christian philosophy as the “Problem of Evil” and is a much researched and talked about problem for which there are volumes of interesting perspectives. I would suggest researching – The Problem of Evil, this may satiate your current inquiry.
April 30, 2008 at 3:43 am
J. R. Miller
So let me get this right. Because you don’t understand the particular function of the so called “blind spot” you conclude that there is no Intelligent Design?
I am fairly certain that good science does not make conclusions based on the absence of data.
For the record, I do not consider Evolution or Creation Theory to be viable science..
April 30, 2008 at 6:06 am
cindyinsd
Theism,
Sorry–a believer in evolution, then. Gravity, for all its flaws, has much to recommend it, including a highly visible habit of pulling things to the ground in plain sight. It’s relatively easy to experiment with and can be depended upon to come through for you, even if you want something so esoteric as a curve in the course of a light ray. Therefore, the theory of gravity is a true theory. It could be disproven, but has failed to be time and again. Evolution, on the other hand, could never be disproven by mere men and therefore, in the most constricting sense of the word, is not really a theory any more than ID or creationism is a theory. They are all hypotheses. This is not evolution’s fault–it’s just that it takes so long for it to happen (if, in fact, it does happen) that it’s impossible to experiment with it in any direct way.
Archaeopteryx: A true bird with modern feathers, bird bones, bird brain case–the whole bird thing. But not an ancestor of modern birds. The reptiles that look a little more avian aren’t found until (they say) tens of millions of years later. (I haven’t made my mind up on the tens of millions of years, btw. I’m still pondering the young-earth/old-earth thing.) The point is that the bird, archaeopteryx, was already here long before any reptiles were found to look remotely “birdy”.
Platypus: Evolutionary scientists don’t regard “mosaic” creatures such as the platypus to be transitional forms. I don’t know why, but I’m sure they have good reasons.
Ambulocetus: This fossil collection didn’t include the pelvic girdle necessary to establish ambulatory status. It didn’t even include enough bone parts to establish what sort of animal it was. In fact, it just didn’t include very many bones at all. In any case, the fossilized remains of Archeoceti whales were found in lower Eocene strata, making it unlikely that Ambulocetus was an ancestor of modern whales.
Tiktaalik: The fin was not connected to the main skeleton, so could not support the fish’s weight on land. The fin might have helped to prop up the fish as it moved on lake bottoms, but they did say that about coelacanth, and it proved not to be the case when we got the opportunity to study actual living specimens.
Horse: Dawn horse was disputed–the original discoverer decided it was a rock badger, though more evolutionary minded paleontologists decided it was a horse ancestor. Neohipparion and Pliohippus were found in the same layer in NW Oregon, and so were alive simultaneously–this doesn’t make it likely they were ancestors one of the other. We have three-toed horses today. The three-toed trait is apparently recessive but still present, though more common in earlier populations. Wider interbreeding would naturally suppress a recessive trait, whether three toes, or blond hair and blue eyes.
Bacteria: Some bacteria have always been resistant to antibiotics. When all the other bacteria have been killed off, these few remain and reproduce. Naturally, this produces resistant strains, particularly in areas where a lot of antibiotics are used, such as in the most advanced hospitals.
Bacteria can also pass their genetic information around in ways humans simply can’t. Plasmids and a pecular form of “cannibalism” help bacteria share genetic information.
Finally, some bacterial resistance is the result of mutation. Such mutations are the result of copying mistakes and, while they may make the bacterium resistant to a particular antibiotic, they represent a net loss, not gain of information, and they make the bacterium less likely to survive under normal circumstances.
The so-called supergerms are easily out-classed in ordinary circumstances, when forced to compete with their more normal cousins. (A good reason to actually stay away from all the “anti-bacterial” products we surround ourselves with today.) Take away the antibiotics and the germ population returns to its pre-antibiotic state. Micro-evolution if you like, but there are no changes from species to species in the offing here.
If you want more, I’ll be happy to discuss it. I don’t want to push my welcome, and this post is already really long. I didn’t plan to go into evolution/Id/creation on my blog, but I just posted a review on Expelled, and since have been looking at some of the blogs, like yours, that talk about it. I think it’s an important subject, so maybe I will do a few articles on it. In any case, thanks for a fun discussion.
Grace and peace,
Cindy
April 30, 2008 at 6:49 am
theism
Cindy;
I’ll have to give your response the attention it deserves tomorrow; it’s been an especially long day. But, in the meantime, please don’t get the sense you’re pushing your welcome.
You wrote something I’ve been curious about through much of today … I hope you don’t mind if I ask what you meant by: My take is that God created the laws of the universe. He could make everything work by some sort of “magic”, I suppose, but He doesn’t. [...] To me, this is absolutely amazing.
I feel the same sense of wonder and amazement at the complexity, but seemingly overwhelming coherence of the world. And I understand the notion that this could be all the more incredible without having to invoke the supernatural. Where I’m lost, though, is in the idea that our entire creation was a miracle? Adam from the clay; Eve from one of Adam’s ribs. It doesn’t make sense to your correspondent that god would stop using miracles mid-stream, why he would use “magic” to bring us to live, but not for our minor details?
Sean;
I don’t have the time at this hour or even the complete knowledge to express the perfect design for an eye. I can, however, recognize an obvious design flaw. Clearly, not having a blind spot is closer to perfection than having one. Not having an appendix also seems a closer step to perfection, since people remain healthy many years after its removal, while others die when it isn’t removed in time.
JR;
The post above explains why we have a blind spot … what I don’t understand is how the theory of intelligent design accounts for the fact that we have a blind spot, an imperfect design. The function is to carry information being gathered in the rods and cones lining the inside of the eye to the brain. This is something the study of objective reality has to account for, but, when supernatural miracles and the unexplainable are how we ( and our eyes with us ) came into being, it should be unnecessary to incorporate a flaw into a godly design for a lowly purpose like carrying data.
May 2, 2008 at 7:04 am
J. R. Miller
or… it just might be that what you, a person of limited intelligence (like me), see as a flaw has a purpose beyond your understanding.
To be clear, I don’t have an interest in defending ID, I just think you’re making a philosophical assumption about the “blind spot” to suit your predetermined conclusion.
May 2, 2008 at 7:19 am
J. R. Miller
oh, and I like your conversation here Theism.. so far you have done a nice job of talking respectfully with people. I appreciate that.
I can give you a non-scientific answer to your eye questions if you like. But remember, this is not science, but just speculation based on what I believe.
Let’s ASSUME, as you suggest, that the “blind spot” is a defect in the eye. The Bible says that Adam and Eve were created by God and the ASSUMPTION is that He would not create them with a flaw in the eye. However, we know that once Adam and Eve sinned, they were kicked out from the Garden and part of their punishment was that they would experience physical death. The ensuing physical corruption would, generation after generation, devolve into genetic flaws in the human DNA and systems like the eye.
Again, from a purely philosophical perspective, I have no problems reconciling the Biblical account of creation and the Fall with any of the defects in our human DNA.
May 4, 2008 at 9:55 pm
cindyinsd
Theism,
Sorry it’s taken me so long to get back to you. There’s been a lot going on. In reply to your question about Adam and Eve . . . Adam and the rest of us are basically made of earth–atoms of various stuff all arranged together–all from the earth. What else would we be made of? Because the Genesis account simply says that God formed man from the dust of the earth, we think it must have happend by some sort of magical and mystical process. I see God building a man. Certainly He would have an easier time of it that we would, but he created the universe after all.
As for Eve, well, I can only speculate. The choice of a rib may have symbolic implications. I’m sure you’ve heard of the poem about God making Eve from Adam’s rib–not from under his foot, to be dominated, nor from his head to rule over him, but from his side to be a companion, under his arm to be protected, near his heart to be loved by him–. I expect any body tissue would work as well. I would guess that all He was really after was the DNA, but where’s the symbolism in a fingernail clipping? God has style.
Grace and peace,
Cindy
May 15, 2008 at 6:03 am
What do we think about Convergent Evolution? « A Place for Reason on the Web
[...] and whales are experts in the art of sonar. This isn’t always the case. Most animals have eyes; each species changes some of the details, but inherits the idea from a common ancestor. Different [...]
May 16, 2008 at 6:57 am
Scott Thong
Whereas if you make the common confusion between ID (intelligent designer who is not identified) and Christianity (supreme and omnipotent creator God), then your exposure to theology is also lacking.
Within the first two chapters of the Bible, you will read that Man’s disobedience – i.e. ’sin’ – corrupted God’s original and perfect design.
From all animals having green plants for food, it became some animals killing for meat and others growing deadly defenses to protect themselves.
From having no death, it became a world of killing and aging.
In other words, sin caused all mutations and evolution away from God’s original creation.
Creation will eventually be restored to its perfect state, but not until the return of Christ to the Earth.
Therefore, the omnipotence and perfect intelligence of the Judeo-Christian God is not jeapordized by purported flaws or seemingly cruel and malicious biological features.
May 16, 2008 at 7:21 am
theism
That’s entirely untrue, and a bit deceitful, to suggest that intelligent design and Christianity are more than two sides to a coin. I can see that you believe yourself to be more wise than the recent Supreme Court, but beliefs aren’t always true.
“Intelligent design” is only practiced by Christians, only in the United States, and in thousands of years of recorded history has only sprung into light as ostensibly separate from creationism since creationism was outlawed from American science classes. Intelligent design is a specific form of Christian creationism. You’re invoking a distinction between six and a half-dozen.
May 16, 2008 at 6:38 pm
J. R. Miller
Theism, I gave an answer to your question and like to read what you think.
May 16, 2008 at 6:42 pm
J. R. Miller
Oh, and I am also curious to know. If I, or anyone else, could post the name of a non-Christian who supports ID, would you change your opinion expressed in the last post and retract your accusation that Scott is trying to deceive people?
May 20, 2008 at 1:17 am
Scott Thong
Even if I accept your postulation that all ID proponents are also Christian, that does not change the points I raised:
1) ID itself does not state that its Creator is perfect and infallible, no matter what its adherents may personally believe;
2) Within Christianity, the doctrine of sin explains any seemingly ‘unintelligent’ designs.
May 20, 2008 at 3:17 am
theism
JR;
I’m sorry for having not responded to all of your points. I’ll fix this, with an apology. The weather has been unseasonably gorgeous, so much so that mountains a hundred miles away are visible. I’ve been spending most of my time outdoors, and limiting how much I spend in front of the computer.
That said … if you can find the name of a single non-Christian, out of 5.7 billion of them, who subscribes to ID apart from their religion … I won’t be terribly impressed. If you can find a statistically significant population of people like that, I’ll be forced to change my opinion, and to thank you for it.
I know of a person who calls himself an “atheist for Jesus;” he doesn’t change my opinion of what an atheist is, and he probably doesn’t change yours, either. Nor should he be a representation of the other tens ( or hundreds? ) of millions of atheists around the world.
May 20, 2008 at 3:30 am
theism
Scott;
I don’t think the doctrine of sin can explain unintelligent designs … I don’t think anyone who’s read Genesis lately could say that it does. I’d be curious to know why, if you disagree:
The “fall of man” didn’t happen until after man’s creation. God created us in his image, then two of us ( or perhaps one, depending how you read it ) sinned. All of the creation story, and a few thousand years after it, are told in a time-moving-in-one-direction manner, the same way we experience the world. Moreover, God is explicitly clear about it every time he punishes us, throughout the Old Testament. Yet it’s completely silent about God going back and redesigning humans ( other than with mortality ) to spite us for original sin, or any other sin.
The bible clearly says we’re made in God’s image. Nowhere is it mentioned that god changed the design to punish us. The bible goes into a great amount of detail on this stuff … and an all-knowing being could be expected not to forget that part while writing the story.
May 21, 2008 at 2:50 am
Scott Thong
Well, if you read the link I gave you, I don’t postulate that God went back and changed His original designs… Rather, His perfect designs were corrupted through mutations. The mutagen in this case was not radiation or terragens, but sin.
Compare:
And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air and all the creatures that move on the ground—everything that has the breath of life in it—I give every green plant for food. – Genesis 1:30
As you can see, God’s original plan would have meant that multitudes of modern physical traits would be useless – such as canine teeth, fangs, poison, spikes, and the entire meat-digestion system.
Next:
And the LORD God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die. – Genesis 2 :16-17
…Sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned… – Romans 5:12
Man’s sin somehow brought death to God’s perfect and peaceful world.
My theory therefore postulates that before sin, there was no evolution… Because there was no NEED for evolution.
Evolution happens due to natural selection, the fittest surviving. Before sin and death came, there WAS NO natural selection – every animal survived.
Further evidence of the deterioration of creation can be seen in this:
To the woman he said,
“I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing;
with pain you will give birth to children.
Your desire will be for your husband,
and he will rule over you.”
To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat of it,’
“Cursed is the ground because of you;
through painful toil you will eat of it
all the days of your life.
It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
and you will eat the plants of the field. – Genesis 3:16-18
From almost painless childbirth, something changed (mutated) so that childbearing became much more painful. From being defenceless, the plants began producing physical defences to protect themselves from beign eaten (whereas God originally willed them to be eaten by all animals).
Anyone is free to disagree with my exegesis, but I think it fits Creationism, Intelligent Design and the basic processes of Evolution well.