Turns Out Eyes Are Not Poorly Designed

[rhutchin]

Fiber optic light pipes in the retina do much more than simple image transfer

"Having the photoreceptors at the back of the retina is not a design constraint, it is a design feature. The idea that the vertebrate eye, like a traditional front-illuminated camera, might have been improved somehow if it had only been able to orient its wiring behind the photoreceptor layer, like a cephalopod, is folly. Indeed in simply engineered systems, like CMOS or CCD image sensors, a back-illuminated design manufactured by flipping the silicon wafer and thinning it so that light hits the photocathode without having to navigate the wiring layer can improve photon capture across a wide wavelength band. But real eyes are much more crafty than that."

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2014-07-fiber-optic-pipes-retina-simple.html#jCp

 

[Keith&Co.]

Turns Out Eyes Are Not Poorly Designed

And the creationist is back with another misleading claim!

Has anyone actually said the eye was POORLY designed? Anyone here, or elsewhere?
Or are you mis-stating what others have said for the purpose of effect?

 

[Bronzeage]

Poorly designed for what? Our eyes are poorly designed for seeing in low light conditions, which is fine, because that's when humans sleep. We evolved on the grasslands of Africa, where there is plenty of sunlight. As a result, we have very good color vision. We also have remarkable depth perception, which is useful for a creature with long arms and grasping fingers. What is probably our best optical advantage is our ability to see fine patterns. This makes the protective coloration and camouflage of other animals fully visible to the human eye. We have the eyes we need.

 

[Narapoia]

Turns Out Eyes Are Not Poorly Designed

And the creationist is back with another misleading claim!

Has anyone actually said the eye was POORLY designed? Anyone here, or elsewhere?
Or are you mis-stating what others have said for the purpose of effect?

To be fair I have seen that pointed out as a poorly 'designed' feature before. Doesn't mean it was designed or is any less a product of evolution though.

 

[Perspicuo]

From an evolutionary standpoint eyes could not be "poorly designed". That would be not a very felicitous literary trope by which to explain certain constraints, and constraints are not odd nor uncommon: we can run, but only to a certain speed; we can see, but only certain wavelengths; we can communicate loudly but up to a certain point, etc.

Our eyes have been good enough for our survival, and they've done an excellent job at that, with certain obvious constraints. That's it.

 

[Keith&Co.]

And the creationist is back with another misleading claim!

Has anyone actually said the eye was POORLY designed? Anyone here, or elsewhere?
Or are you mis-stating what others have said for the purpose of effect?

To be fair I have seen that pointed out as a poorly 'designed' feature before.

Really? I haven't seen a lot of 'fair' in rhutchin's posts. At least not the parts that are original to him.

He tends to poo-poo scientists' opinions and writings unless, like the OP, he thinks that he can use the science, to shit on science.

Either way, evolutionary processes won't produce poor design.
Blind trial and error could produce results that might be considered a design.
They just produce 'good enough' design.
'Good enough' as Bronzeage puts it, for the conditions we evolved in.

 

[Bronzeage]

To be fair I have seen that pointed out as a poorly 'designed' feature before.

Really? I haven't seen a lot of 'fair' in rhutchin's posts. At least not the parts that are original to him.

He tends to poo-poo scientists' opinions and writings unless, like the OP, he thinks that he can use the science, to shit on science.

Either way, evolutionary processes won't produce poor design.
Blind trial and error could produce results that might be considered a design.
They just produce 'good enough' design.
'Good enough' as Bronzeage puts it, for the conditions we evolved in.

A frog has eyes which have incredible short range vision and can see very rapid motion. This allows a frog to grab a fly in mid air with his tongue. If the fly is not moving, the frog may not see it at all. All good, if you are a frog.

 

[Underseer]

A lot of you don't seem to be aware of the argument Rhutchin is referencing. The wiring of the vertebrate eye is a classic  argument from poor design against creationism. The vertebrate eye is wired like a front-illuminated (CCD/CMOS) sensor in which the light has to pass through the wiring on its way to the sensor, whereas  back-illuminated sensors are better at operating in low light because the wiring is not blocking some of the light.

Rhutchin, this still does not negate the bad design argument. Yes, the vertebrate eyes have evolved amazing adaptations to deal with the fact that they are wired backwards. This has been known for some time. If the vertebrate eyes weren't wired backwards, then fewer photons would be blocked/absorbed/reflected, and there would be no need for an elaborate mechanism to steer photons to individual sensors in the first place. This is precisely why back-illuminated sensors are preferred for cameras expected to operate in low light.

The only reason front-illuminated sensors exist at all is because it took engineers a long time to figure out how to manufacture back-illuminated sensors. Presumably, an omnipotent, omniscient designer would not have this problem.

 

[Bronzeage]

A lot of you don't seem to be aware of the argument Rhutchin is referencing. The wiring of the vertebrate eye is a classic  argument from poor design against creationism. The vertebrate eye is wired like a front-illuminated (CCD/CMOS) sensor in which the light has to pass through the wiring on its way to the sensor, whereas  back-illuminated sensors are better at operating in low light because the wiring is not blocking some of the light.

Rhutchin, this still does not negate the bad design argument. Yes, the vertebrate eyes have evolved amazing adaptations to deal with the fact that they are wired backwards. This has been known for some time. If the vertebrate eyes weren't wired backwards, then fewer photons would be blocked/absorbed/reflected, and there would be no need for an elaborate mechanism to steer photons to individual sensors in the first place. This is precisely why back-illuminated sensors are preferred for cameras expected to operate in low light.

The only reason front-illuminated sensors exist at all is because it took engineers a long time to figure out how to manufacture back-illuminated sensors. Presumably, an omnipotent, omniscient designer would not have this problem.

Pretty silly, on the face of it.

 

[Malintent]

Eyes, like all other biological strutures, have evolved. They were not designed by an intellegent entity (at least, there is no reason to believe that they are / were).
So, to say that eyes are not a POOR design is begging the question (have you stopped designing bad weather yet?)
In RESPONSE to the assertion that a perfect intelligent designer had desinged everything, the eye was provided as one of nearly countless examples of how this alleged designer is either incompetant or evil (not perfect, nor any good at all).

Also, the article is about why evolution didn't "fix" the problem... because other elements of how the eye truned out were "good enough". This is an article about how evolution "works".

 

[untermensche]

I don't think evolutionists argue that natural selection inevitably leads to bad designs.

I think they argue the opposite, that it is a good process for tweaking and letting better designs win out over designs not as good.

 

[Underseer]

I don't think evolutionists argue that natural selection inevitably leads to bad designs.

I think they argue the opposite, that it is a good process for tweaking and letting better designs win out over designs not as good.

It's not that evolution makes bad design inevitable, it's that creationism demands that bad design be impossible. Bad design doesn't have anything to do with evolution, it's evidence against the Talking Snake Theory of Creation.

 

[Malintent]

I keep thining of a broken vase on the floor.

I wonder, "How did the vase get broken"?

If I was told, "Jim broke it" I wouldn't know how the vase got broken... just who broke it.

Intelligent design does not explain how the vase got broken (it does not answer any useful questions).. it just says that God broke the vase.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

The fact that the eye and the rest of the body are so easily damaged and destroyed is proof enough that none of it is designed. Anyone who thinks otherwise can't be very bright, and their "designer," therefore, will suffer the same limitations. If I'm going to design a body, why make it so frail, soft and crappy? Why does it have to shit? Obviously the designer has a great sense of humor and is somewhat sadistic. Seriously, what makes people have such low expectations when they build their gods?

 

[ideologyhunter]

Turns out the Bible is poorly designed for a 21st Century understanding of: slavery; women's rights; the need for oxygen and nutrients if consciousness & being are to persist; the assignment of authorship to scripture; the evil of genocide; the evil of infanticide; the evil of the hell concept; the cultural processes that lead to myth formation; the evil of killing people for touching an ark; chauvinism; disrespect for science and critical thought. I know there's at least one or two more.

 

[Bronzeage]

I think human eyes are very well designed, but I wish they came with a longer warranty.

 

[James Brown]

I think human eyes are very well designed, but I wish they came with a longer warranty.

You can't think of improvements that could be made to the human eye?

 

[Bronzeage]

I think human eyes are very well designed, but I wish they came with a longer warranty.

You can't think of improvements that could be made to the human eye?

A zoom lens and night vision capacity would be great, but I'd only get myself into trouble, which would require improvements in other body parts. If I could be faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive and able to leap tall buildings at a single bound, that would be great. I think x-ray vision comes with that package, too.

 

[Malintent]

You can't think of improvements that could be made to the human eye?

A zoom lens and night vision capacity would be great, but I'd only get myself into trouble, which would require improvements in other body parts. If I could be faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive and able to leap tall buildings at a single bound, that would be great. I think x-ray vision comes with that package, too.

... and don't forget friggin lasers... how can you forget the friggin lasers?

 

[Bronzeage]

I don't think evolutionists argue that natural selection inevitably leads to bad designs.

I think they argue the opposite, that it is a good process for tweaking and letting better designs win out over designs not as good.

The problem with the entire "design" discussion is we don't actually have any idea about what we are discussing.

The Space Shuttle is a very well designed machine, yet it has managed to kill its entire crew, twice. The designers were caught in a dilemma. No matter what they designed and built, it had to actually fly in space and come back. This required compromises which sometimes meant it couldn't always do both.

The better a design is, the more specific and limited it is. The Space Shuttle is a great way to get to space, but it's not much good for anything else. I live in a semi-tropical part of the US. It's 96F degrees today. I can handle that, but my cat is better designed to survive a Louisiana winter. She can stay outside in freezing weather with little chance of death from hypothermia, and still doesn't mind staying out all day long in the summer.

The idea that a device which functions for the purpose for which it is used is some kind of poor design, because someone thought of someway it could do something a little better is ridiculous. What would any possible eye design improvement yield a human, in terms of survival? Pull the lever on the Way Back Machine and consider what were the critical needs for human eyesight. We got all that and and the eye which once only had to worry about lions, turned out to be perfectly suited for spotting a polar bear on a snowbank. This was after we solved that "no furry skin" design problem.