Evolved? Designed? Or both?"Could the eye
evolve?" "Half an
Eye?"
A human eye is
extremely complicated. How could it have been produced by evolution?
In
evolution, the intermediate stages would have to have an advantage
at
each stage, and what possible advantage would half an eye be?
Many
people over the years have come up with this objection to evolution
'By
means of Natural selection'.
The first objection of this type I am
aware of was in a book published on November 24th 1859.
I would like to quote from this book, please excuse the length of the
quotation:
'To suppose that the
eye,
with all its
inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different
distances,
for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of
spherical and chromatic aberration could have been formed by natural
selection, seems, I freely
confess, absurd in the highest possible
degree. Yet reason tells
me that if numerous graduations from a perfect
and complex eye to one very imperfect and simple, each grade being
useful to its possessor, can be shown to exist'.
This quote is
from the first edition of the book 'On the Origin of Species' by
Charles Darwin. Darwin
goes on to give examples of animals with light
sensitive organs from a nerve slightly sensitive to light, through
an
animal, such as the planarian, with a light sensitive patch, to the
most complex eye.
So
'half an eye' does not need to be an
intermediate stage, and I would only expect opponents of the
theory of evolution to
suggest it. I suggest that some
of the people who bring up
the 'half an eye' objection might never even have read the book:
'On
the Origin of Species'.
Darwin
did not have a computer, but much more recently, the evolution of the eye has been modeled on computer. The computer
was programmed to start with the simplest light sensitive organ,
generate random variations, and choose the one that appeared most
advantageous, then do the same with this variation. The computer came up with an actual
eye surprisingly quickly.
However,
showing that the
eye could have evolved
without such absurdity as 'half
an eye' at any stage is not proof that this is how eyes came about.
Naturally, God could have created eyes as well as everything else. The
Holy Bible could be interpreted in ways that make evolution
impossible.
However, the Holy Bible can be interpreted in many ways, including
ways
completely compatible with evolution. Most Christians belong to churches that
accept the probability that God made use of evolution in His
creation. They believe that God is not limited.
I will leave the question
'Does God sometimes deliberately influence evolution?' to other people.
