Saturday, February 28, 2015

It’s Just Getting Worse: Our Retina Structure is “optimized for our vision purposes”

Theory of the Gaps

Research out of Israel continues to hammer away at the once powerful proof text for evolution, that our retina is one big kludge given that the photocells were obviously installed backwards. Not only that, but to add insult to injury, the resulting neuron wire bundle had to go somewhere, and the result was a blind spot in our retina. Such a kludge could only be ascribed to the blind process of evolution. The problem with such arguments, aside being nonscientific, is that they are vulnerable to the inexorable march of scientific progress. The act has played out repeatedly: When we first observe a design we don’t understand it and conclude it must be mostly nonsense and another confirmation of evolution. Then, years later, science discovers a nifty function for the design.

So it is with our retina and its “backward” photocells. They were celebrated as an example of nature’s “errors and bungles” and yet another vindication of the Epicurean call for a designer-less world.

But that was then and this is now. It turns out those backward photocells, along with the retina’s Müller cells, work to focus the green-red part of the light spectrum onto the cone photoreceptors and pass the shorter-wavelength blue-purple light through to the rod photoreceptors. As Professor Erez Ribak put it, those backward photocells and the overall retina “optical structure is optimized for our vision purposes.”

This is another example of the danger of constructing theories on the gaps in our knowledge.

13 comments:

  1. Doesn't Darwinism vis a vis its larger claims exhibit one breathtaking hippopotomonstrosupergargantuan gap? It's remarkable how scientists tolerate theories leave us with oliphaunt's in the room.

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  2. We know the human visual system works very well as it is. That has never been in doubt. This research adds to our understanding of why it works as well as it does.

    The question, however, is still what it has always been. Wouldn't the 'design' of the eye be even better with forward-facing receptors that are not obstructed, even in the slightest, by a web of support structures like nerves and blood vessels. The fact that at the fovea, which provides the most acute vision, that web is pulled aside, suggests the answer is 'yes'.

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  3. I 'm not sure about this optimization stuff. That dress looked white and gold to me!

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    1. I can't see what the fuss is all about. It's plainly white and gold to me, too.

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  4. I am fearfully and wonderfully designed...(Ps.139:14)

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  5. There comes a time when even the most stubborn darwinists have to concede and admit it's absurd to believe such wonders like our eye/vision came about by 'chance'

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    1. I like how RC Spoul explains the creative power of chance.

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    2. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  6. I'd like to see even the most rational of intelligent design/creationists explain how their designer/creator came about at all. I'd like to see an explanation of how he/she/it accomplished those designs. You know, the sort of explanation that creationists demand scientists provide but don't seem interested in working out for themselves.

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  7. "I'd like to see even the most rational of intelligent design/creationists explain how their designer/creator came about at all."

    Since the identify of the designer is not within the scope of ID, how can it explain how the designer came to be?

    "I'd like to see an explanation of how he/she/it accomplished those designs. You know, the sort of explanation that creationists demand scientists provide but don't seem interested in working out for themselves."

    The problem with your complaint is that ID doesn't stipulate a specific process or processes by which designs emerged, whereas evolutionary scientists do. Since evolutionary scientists postulate specific processes, I'd say that they have the burden to demonstrate that those processes have in fact accomplished what they claim they have. However, as David Berlinski has demonstrated, modern science can't even tell us how many morphological changes would be required to cause the transition of, say, a land roaming creature to a whale, so they certainly can't tell us what specific mutations and selections brought about this naturalistic miracle.

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  8. Alethinon61 Since the identify of the designer is not within the scope of ID, how can it explain how the designer came to be?

    Fair enough, and since the origins of the Universe and all life are not within the scope of the biological theory of evolution, can it reasonably be criticized for not addressing them?

    Alethinon61 The problem with your complaint is that ID doesn't stipulate a specific process or processes by which designs emerged, whereas evolutionary scientists do.

    It has been noticed that IDCists carefully avoid committing themselves to anything in the way of specifics that might be subject to scientific scrutiny.

    Alethinon61 Since evolutionary scientists postulate specific processes, I'd say that they have the burden to demonstrate that those processes have in fact accomplished what they claim they have.

    Quite right, the burden of proof is with the claimant. So if the detailed step-by-step changes have not left traces that we can detect with our current technology, they must at least be able to show that the necessary processes can be observed in Nature. And they can.

    Alethinon61 However, as David Berlinski has demonstrated, modern science can't even tell us how many morphological changes would be required to cause the transition of, say, a land roaming creature to a whale, so they certainly can't tell us what specific mutations and selections brought about this naturalistic miracle.

    Berlinski's right, for what it's worth. Biology cannot cannot give a step-by-step account at the genetic level of all the changes that occurred during the transition from land-dwelling to sea-dwelling mammal. Just as physics cannot give a step-by-step description at the sub-atomic level of the order in which particles in a radioisotope decayed nor can it predict which will be the next one. That does not mean there is any real doubt about the existence of the process of radioactive decay or the theories which describe it.

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    1. It's good that you acknowledge that science can't provide the mutations and selections that caused whales to emerge over time. But it's much worse than that! As Harold and Shapiro have pointed out:

      "...we must concede that there are presently no detailed Darwinian accounts of the evolution of any biochemical or cellular system, only a variety of wishful speculations." (Franklin M. Harold, The way of the cell: Molecules, Organisms and the Order of Life, Oxford University Press, New York), p. 205.

      “There are no detailed Darwinian accounts for the evolution of any fundamental biochemical or cellular system, only a variety of wishful speculations. It is remarkable that Darwinism is accepted as a satisfactory explanation for such a vast subject—evolution—with so little rigorous examination of how well its basic theses work in illuminating specific instances of biological adaptation or diversity.” (James Shapiro, “In the Details…What?” National Review, 19 September 1996), pp. 62–65.

      So I would suggest that you haven't in fact observed the sort of change that I'm talking about. Darwinism is embraced, not because it provides a fruitful heuristic for scientific research, but because it provides a context, a sort of natural all-theory that is palatable in the modern age.

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