|
The Eyes Have ItThe trilobite is a creature that has long been extinct, but gives marvellous testimony to the creative power of God, and demonstrates the foolishness of belief in evolution.
According to the World Book Encyclopedia, the trilobite was a prehistoric sea animal that lived between 600 million and 225 million years ago in all parts of the world. Trilobites were covered by a shell, and most of the species were under 10 cm long. Two grooves divided the animal’s shell lengthwise into three lobes (sections). The name trilobite means three lobes. |
The eyes of the trilobite were the most remarkable feature about these animals. Scientists have been able to study the optics of the trilobite eyes. The lenses of our eyes are composed of living, organic tissues, so they rapidly decompose after death. The lenses of the trilobite eyes, however, were composed of inorganic, crystalline calcium carbonate, or calcite. Thus, the lenses of the trilobite eyes were still intact in the fossil remains recovered by the palaeontologists.
Each one of our eyes has only a single lens. In order to see under water without distortion, however, you must have a double lens in each eye, and that is precisely what the trilobite had. The most incredible thing about the trilobite eye is the fact that it produced perfect, undistorted vision. The trilobites had “solved” all the laws and principles of optics, and had perfectly constructed crystalline lenses so that there was no distortion at all. The scientists studying these eyes proclaimed, “Such a vision system has all the evidence of being constructed by an exceedingly brilliant designer.”
An article in Science (1993) Volume 261 states:
Researchers are trying to unravel the amazing complexity of how visual signals are processed in eyes. Rockerfeller University physicist Joseph Atick points out that visual information pours into the eye at about 100 megabytes every second. ‘Even computers of today’s power couldn’t handle it’, he says. This torrent of data needs to be dramatically compressed to flow along the optic nerve, yet retain enough information to enable the brain to reconstruct an accurate representation of what is seen.
Another baffling feat is the way in which the visual system somehow eliminates ‘noise’. Since every step in transmitting the visual signal involves only a few molecules, the random jostling of these molecules produces a ‘storm’ of noise, which has to be processed out.
In their early progress, the researchers have continually confirmed their working assumption – that all eyes, whether insect or vertebrate, do the best job possible – ‘just the way an astute instrument designer would have made them’.
Each one of our eyes has only a single lens. In order to see under water without distortion, however, you must have a double lens in each eye, and that is precisely what the trilobite had. The most incredible thing about the trilobite eye is the fact that it produced perfect, undistorted vision. The trilobites had “solved” all the laws and principles of optics, and had perfectly constructed crystalline lenses so that there was no distortion at all. The scientists studying these eyes proclaimed, “Such a vision system has all the evidence of being constructed by an exceedingly brilliant designer.”
An article in Science (1993) Volume 261 states:
Researchers are trying to unravel the amazing complexity of how visual signals are processed in eyes. Rockerfeller University physicist Joseph Atick points out that visual information pours into the eye at about 100 megabytes every second. ‘Even computers of today’s power couldn’t handle it’, he says. This torrent of data needs to be dramatically compressed to flow along the optic nerve, yet retain enough information to enable the brain to reconstruct an accurate representation of what is seen.
Another baffling feat is the way in which the visual system somehow eliminates ‘noise’. Since every step in transmitting the visual signal involves only a few molecules, the random jostling of these molecules produces a ‘storm’ of noise, which has to be processed out.
In their early progress, the researchers have continually confirmed their working assumption – that all eyes, whether insect or vertebrate, do the best job possible – ‘just the way an astute instrument designer would have made them’.
|
Charles Darwin was well aware of the intricacy and perfection of the eye. In his book “The Origin of the Species”, he admitted:
“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 confess, absurd in the highest degree.” Darwin continued with, in his opinion, a plausible explanation that overcame what he had previously acknowledged seemed “absurd in the highest degree”. |
|
He wrote:
“Reason tells me, that if numerous gradations from a simple and imperfect eye to one complex and perfect can be shown to exist, each grade being useful to its possessor, as is certainly the case; if further, the eye ever varies and the variations be inherited, as is likewise certainly the case and if such variations should be useful to any animal under changing conditions of life, then the difficulty of believing that a perfect and complex eye could be formed by natural selection, though insuperable by our imagination, should not be considered as subversive of the theory.”
However, it is the opinion of many other scientists that this is far from convincing. They contend that it is illogical in the extreme to suppose that such a marvel of engineering as the eye could either occur gradually or by chance. Each component of the device is integral to the whole. That is to say, all parts must either be present and working or the organ is a useless appendage. Perhaps Darwin had some lingering doubt when he wrote in a private letter, “the thought of the eye made me cold all over. ” (Letter to Asa Gray, April 3, 1860).
“The hearing ear, and the seeing eye, the LORD hath made even both of them.”
(Proverbs 20:12)
By Pr. Darryl Williams
“Reason tells me, that if numerous gradations from a simple and imperfect eye to one complex and perfect can be shown to exist, each grade being useful to its possessor, as is certainly the case; if further, the eye ever varies and the variations be inherited, as is likewise certainly the case and if such variations should be useful to any animal under changing conditions of life, then the difficulty of believing that a perfect and complex eye could be formed by natural selection, though insuperable by our imagination, should not be considered as subversive of the theory.”
However, it is the opinion of many other scientists that this is far from convincing. They contend that it is illogical in the extreme to suppose that such a marvel of engineering as the eye could either occur gradually or by chance. Each component of the device is integral to the whole. That is to say, all parts must either be present and working or the organ is a useless appendage. Perhaps Darwin had some lingering doubt when he wrote in a private letter, “the thought of the eye made me cold all over. ” (Letter to Asa Gray, April 3, 1860).
“The hearing ear, and the seeing eye, the LORD hath made even both of them.”
(Proverbs 20:12)
By Pr. Darryl Williams
|
|
|
