Darwin vs. the eye Darwin vs. the eye
[Darwin vs. the eye by Tom Wagner] "Charles Darwin
himself realized that it seemed incredible that evolutionary processes had to
explain human vision. He said:
'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 degree.'
Yet, later on in the same chapter of his book, he explained how he believed it
evolved anyway and that the ‘absurdity’ was illusory. Had Darwin had the
knowledge about the eye and its associated systems that man has today (which is
a great deal more than what it was in his time), he may have given up his
naturalistic theory on the origin of living things.
One fascinating discovery in the study of modern ophthalmology (eye science) is
that, aside from what Darwin was able to observe, there are three almost
imperceptibly tiny eye movements. These three, referred to as ‘tremors, drifts
and saccades’, are caused by minute contractions in the six muscles attached to
the outside of each of your eyes. Every fraction of a second they very slightly
shift the position of your eyeball, automatically, without conscious effort on
your part, making sight as you know it possible.
Tremors — the tiniest and probably the most intriguing of these movements,
continuously and rapidly wobble your eyeball about its center in a circular
fashion. They cause the cornea and retina (front and back) of your eyes to move
in circles with incredibly minute diameters of approximately 1/1000 (.001) of a
millimeter, or .00004 inch.
This size is about 70 times smaller than the thickness of a piece of paper.
Carefully look at a piece of paper, edge on, then try to imagine 70 circles of
the same diameter (OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO) touching and placed in a row straight across the
thickness of the paper. If you can do that, you will have a feel for the
minuscule nature of the tremors along with some appreciation for the Creator who
has demonstrated His capacity for designing such a thing.
An even more amazing characteristic of tremors is that the seemingly tireless
muscles that produce them wobble your eye 30 to 70 times each second. If sound
were involved, that would be fast enough to produce a low-pitched hum.
Amazingly, on average, each of your eyes completes one million of these tiny
circular motions in 5 1/2 hours. The number of tremors taking place in a
lifetime is astronomical.
Even though tremors are not large enough to be visible without great
magnification, you could not see properly without them.
For example, consider what would happen if these and all other eye movements
stopped while you were staring at someone's face. The light-sensing cells in
your retina would quickly 'stabilize', and cease to send updated information to
your brain, causing the image you perceive to fade into a uniform gray within
seconds. If the person you were staring at smiled, their mouth, and only their
mouth, would momentarily reappear out of a visual field of nothingness!
(This has been done in the laboratory, and was said to have looked like the
smile of the Cheshire cat in Alice in Wonderland.)
The reappearance of only part of the face would happen because only the mouth
moved, causing a momentary change in that part of the picture which the retina
was seeing at the time.
Thus, continued change in the light projected on each retinal cell in your eyes
is crucial for constant vision. Hence the need for tremors that God has made to
supply the retina with a slightly shifting picture many times each second.
Without the tremors, which are probably the most critical muscular phenomenon
for normal vision, you would have to be constantly looking about or continuously
altering the light on a subject to see anything for longer than a few seconds at
a time..." Full text:
Darwin vs. the eye by Tom Wagner.
Darwin vs. the eye