Blindness in Cave Fish is Due to Epigenetics

Evolutionists Say “We See”

A recent paper out of Brant Weinstein’s and William Jeffery’s laboratories on eye development, or the lack thereof, in blind cave fish has important implications for evolutionary theory (paper discussed here). The study finds that the loss of eyes in fish living in dark Mexican caves is not due to genetic mutations, as evolutionists have vigorously argued for many years, but due to genetic regulation. Specifically, methylation of key development genes represses their expression and with it eye development in this venerable icon of evolution. But the finding is causing yet more problems for evolutionary theory.

Darwin appealed to the blind cave fish in his one long argument for evolution. It is a curious argument in many ways, and the first sign of problems was in Darwin’s presentation where he flipped between two different explanations. At one point he explained the loss of vision in the cave fish as an example of evolutionary change not due to his key mechanism, natural selection. Instead, the Sage of Kent resorted to using the Lamarckian mechanism or law of “use and disuse.” Privately Darwin despised and harshly criticized Lamarck, but when needed he occasionally employed his French forerunner’s ideas.

Elsewhere Darwin hit upon a natural selection-based mechanism for the blind cave fish, explaining that elimination of the costly and unneeded vision system would surely raise the fitness of the hapless creatures.

This latter explanation would become a staple amongst latter day evolutionary apologists, convinced that it mandates the fact of evolution. Anyone who has discussed or debated evolutionary theory with today’s Epicureans has likely encountered this curious argument that because blind cave fish lost their eyes, therefore the world must have arisen by itself.

Huh?

To understand the evolutionary logic, or lack thereof, one must understand the history of ideas, and in particular the idea of fixity, or immutability, of species. According to evolutionists, species are either absolutely fixed in their designs, or otherwise there are no limits to their evolutionary changes and the biological world, and everything else for that matter, spontaneously originated.

Any evidence, for any kind of change, no matter how minor, is immediately yet another proof text for evolution, in all that the word implies.

Of course, from a scientific perspective, the evidence provides precisely zero evidence for evolution. Evolution requires the spontaneous (i.e., by natural processes without external input) creation of an unending parade of profound designs. The cave fish evidence shows the removal, not creation, of such a design.

The celebration of such evidence and argument by Darwin and his disciples reveals more about evolutionists than evolution. That they would find this argument persuasive reveals their underlying metaphysics and the heavy lifting it performs. It is all about religion.

We are reminded of all this with the news of Weinstein’s new study. But we also see something new: The insertion, yet again, of Lamarck into the story. The irony is that the epigenetics, now revealed as the cause of repressed eye development in the cave fish, hearkens back to Lamarck.

Darwin despised Lamarck and later evolutionists made him the third rail in biology. Likewise they have pushed back hard against the scientific findings of epigenetics and their implications.

The environment must not drive biological change.

False.

Well such biological change must not be transgenerational.

False.

Well such inheritance must not be long lasting, or otherwise robust.

False again.

This last failure is revealed yet again in the new blind cave fish findings.

False predictions count. A theory that is repeatedly wrong, over and over, in all of its fundamental expectations, will eventually be seen for what it is.

The rise of epigenetics is yet another such major failure. Evolutionists pushed back against it because it makes no sense on the theory, and that means it cannot now be easily accommodated.

One problem is that epigenetics is complex. The levels of coordination and intricacy of mechanism are far beyond evolution’s meager resources.

It’s not going to happen.

Another problem is the implied serendipity. For instance, one epigenetic mechanism involves the molecular tags places on the tails of the DNA packing proteins called histones. While barcoding often seems to be an apt metaphor for epigenetics, the tagging of histone tails can influence the histone three dimensional structures. It is not merely an information-bearing barcode. Like the tiny rudder causing the huge ship to change course, the tiny molecular tag can cause the much larger packing proteins to undergo conformational change, resulting in important changes in gene accessibility and expression.

This is all possible because of the special, peculiar, structure and properties of the histone protein and its interaction with DNA. With evolution we must believe this just happened to evolve for no reason, and thus fortuitously enabled the rise of epigenetics.

Another problem with epigenetics is that it is worthless, in evolutionary terms that is. The various mechanisms that sense environmental shifts and challenges, attach or remove one of the many different molecular tags to one of the many different DNA or histone locations, propagate these messages across generations, and so forth, do not produce the much needed fitness gain upon which natural selection operates.

The incredible epigenetics mechanisms are helpful only at some yet to be announced future epoch when the associated environmental challenge presents itself. In the meantime, selection is powerless and according to evolution the incredible system of epigenetics, that somehow just happened to arise from a long, long series or random mutations, would wither away with evolution none the wiser.

These are the general problems with epigenetics. In the case of the blind cave fish, however, there is possible explanation. It is a longshot, but since this case specifically involves the loss of a stage of the embryonic development, evolutionists can say that genetic mutations caused changes in the methylating proteins, causing them to be overactive.

This explanation relies on the preexistence of the various epigenetic mechanisms, so does not help to resolve the question of how they could have evolved. What the explanation does provide is a way for evolutionists to dodge the bullet presented by the specter of the cave fish intelligently responding to an environmental shift.

Such teleology in the natural world is not allowed.

So the evolutionary prediction is that these proteins will be found to have particular random changes causing an increase in their methylation function, in particular at key locations in key genes (i.e., the genes associated eye development).

That’s a long shot, and an incredible violation of Occam’s Razor.

My predictions are that (i) this evolutionary prediction will fail just as the hundreds that came before, and (ii) as with those earlier failures, this failure will do nothing to open the evolutionist’s eyes.

Religion drives science, and it matters.

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.

Without Evolution, Life Itself Would Be Impossible

A Case Study

Have you heard the one about the evolutionist who defined life as things that evolve? Evolutionists have never been too humble about their theory. Farmers must be evolutionists to grow their crops. Doctors must be evolutionists to heal their patients. Scientists must be evolutionists to do their research. In fact without evolution, life itself would be impossible. A sarcastic caricature? Not at all, for evolutionists say all these things. Listening to evolutionists one would think that the life sciences would be crippled without evolutionary theory to guide the way and explain all things. A delusion or simply the hard truth? Let’s have a look at a case study in the life sciences.

At Jacob Sivak’s lab at the University of Waterloo researchers have studied snakes and their vision. Snakes do not have eyelids. Instead they have a clear scale called a spectacle that protects the eyes. Now how a snake just happened to randomly develop a clear scale, so it could see and be selected by natural selection, is unknown.

Did each of the snake’s many scales occasionally develop to be clear due to some strange mutation? And at one point, in the evolution of the snake, did that mutation make the scales over the snake’s eyes clear? How did the snakes survive before that lucky mutation? They would have been blind.

But back to our story. When researcher Kevin van Doorn was examining a snake his instrument detected something strange. van Doorn wasn’t looking for it, but he discovered that blood vessels in the snake’s spectacles might obscure the snake’s vision.

How common it has been in the history of science that researchers have made such accidental discoveries. van Doorn’s discovery is a reminder not of how crucial theories are in guiding researchers to their discoveries, but how capricious the process can be. Breakthroughs often are not so much because of our theories, but in spite of our theories, and this should engender some humility, rather than certainty, about our theories.

But getting back to our story, van Doorn’s next move was to study the blood flow through those blood vessels under different conditions. That was the obvious and natural next move. Sivak and van Doorn didn’t need a theory to tell them what to do. van Doorn found that under normal conditions blood flow through the spectacle was cyclical, with periods of reduced and periods of increased flow, thus allowing improved vision at regular intervals.

But when the snake was exposed to a threatening environment the cycle ceased and the flow was minimal, “thus guaranteeing,” Sivak and van Doorn concluded, “the best possible visual capabilities in times of need.”

It was all reminiscent of Leibniz’ theodicy which recognized that while, yes, evil exists in the world (at least some evil is required, Malebranche had pointed out, otherwise the creation would be no different than the perfect Creator), and in fact a great deal of evil exists, what is optimized is the good-to-evil ratio. There could be less evil, the co-inventor of calculus pointed out, but in that case there would be a great deal less good.

Like a good polynomial, the world could be optimized, and it was. This is the best of all possible worlds. Voltaire sarcastically panned the whole idea with his character Dr. Pangloss, but now science seemed to have the last laugh. Perhaps the snake’s spectacle’s are a necessary evil, but their designs are optimized to minimize the negative impact of the blood vessels obscuring the snake’s vision. As van Doorn concluded, “This research is the perfect example of how a fortuitous discovery can redefine our understanding of the world around us.”

But back to our story, we now ask, How exactly did evolution contribute to the research? For that we need to look at the abstract of the journal paper:

The eyes of snakes are shielded beneath a layer of transparent integument referred to as the ‘reptilian spectacle’. Well adapted to vision by virtue of its optical transparency, it nevertheless retains one characteristic of the integument that would otherwise prove detrimental to vision: its vascularity. Given the potential consequence of spectacle blood vessels on visual clarity, one might expect adaptations to have evolved that mitigate their negative impact. Earlier research demonstrated an adaptation to their spatial layout in only one species to reduce the vessels' density in the region serving the foveal and binocular visual fields. Here, we present a study of spectacle blood flow dynamics and provide evidence of a mechanism to mitigate the spectacle blood vessels' deleterious effect on vision by regulation of blood flow through them. It was found that when snakes are at rest and undisturbed, spectacle vessels undergo cycles of dilation and constriction, such that the majority of the time the vessels are fully constricted, effectively removing them from the visual field. When snakes are presented with a visual threat, spectacle vessels constrict and remain constricted for longer periods than occur during the resting cycles, thus guaranteeing the best possible visual capabilities in times of need. Finally, during the snakes' renewal phase when they are generating a new stratum corneum, the resting cycle is abolished, spectacle vessels remain dilated and blood flow remains strong and continuous. The significance of these findings in terms of the visual capabilities and physiology of snakes is discussed.

As you can see, in the journal paper the research results have been cast into the evolution template. The eyes of snakes are “well adapted” yet there is the presence of the blood vessels. Therefore one would predict that evolution would mitigate such an impact. In other words, it was evolutionary theory that led to the discovery.

But of course evolutionary theory did no such thing. So this is the role of evolution, as an after-the-fact framework to which the results must be conformed in a fictional reconstruction of events.

Like the wicked witch of the west, evolution threatens and demands acquiescence from its soldiers while adding nothing.

Müller Cells are Wavelength-Dependent Wave-Guides

Enhancing the Cone Photoreceptor Sensitivity

The best arguments for evolution have always been from dysteleology. This world, as evolutionists explain, just does not appear to have been designed. Consider our retina for example. Isn’t it all backwards, with the photocells—which detect the incoming light—pointed toward the rear and behind several layers of cell types and neural processes. Does this make any sense? Surely such a claptrap would offend any “tidy-minded engineer,” as Richard Dawkins put it. But such arguments have never worked and the history of evolutionary thought is full of their failures. Aside from the fact they are metaphysical and not open to scientific testing, they inevitably are simply false. The “bad retina design” argument, as discussed here, here, here, here and here for example, has repeatedly been rebuked. As we learn more we find the retina has all kinds of subtle and clever designs. And now new research out of Israel continues to confirm this trend. Unbelievably, the scientists have demonstrated that the retina’s Müller cells are wavelength-dependent wave-guides that focus the longer-wavelength green-red light onto the cone photoreceptors and pass the shorter-wavelength blue-purple light through to the rod photoreceptors.

It just so happens that is a great idea because while the cone photoreceptors are fast acting and provide color vision, they are less sensitive and need all the help they can get. The rod photoreceptors, on the other hand, are mainly sensitive to the shorter-wavelength blue-purple light, so they don’t miss too much the filtering out of the green-red light. As one science writer concluded:

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.

It just isn’t very smart to criticize a design when you’ve never built one yourself and, much less, don’t even know how it works. It’s even worse to then use that ill-conceived criticism as justification for the claim that the design arose spontaneously. From a scientific perspective that claim was always weak. Now it is simply ridiculous. The retina’s incredible design reveals the details of what always was intuitively obvious. As Paul explained, God has made foolish the wisdom of this world.

Mouse Retinal Assembly “Immensely Complex” and “Confounding”

Beyond Lineage-Specific Biology

The fundamental unit of life is the cell and there are many different types of cells. In humans, for example, there are skin cells, muscle cells, blood cells and so forth. In all there are hundreds of different kinds of cells that need to work together in various ways. Now a recent study has investigated the different cell types in the retina of mice. The research focused on the number of cells present in the retina. That may not sound very interesting, but the results were indeed eye-opening.

The researchers looked at 12 different types of cells in the retina, across 30 different strains of mice. Naturally they expected to find some fairly strong patterns. The population sizes for the different cell types should be similar. And if two different types of cell work together and perhaps are synaptically connected, then their cell counts should be correlated across the different strains. That is, if the count is a bit low for one of those cell types, then it should also be on the low side for the other type of cell.

But such patterns were not found. Instead the researchers were surprised to find all kinds of variability. The population sizes of the different cell types varied substantially with little correlation across the different strains.

The researchers also looked at which parts of the genome influence the population counts of the different cell types and concluded that multiple genes, acting differently in the different strains, are involved in specifying these population counts.

The study concluded that retinal assembly is far more flexible than thought. For instance, they concluded that the different retinal cells adjust their size and shape according to their local environment, including the density of the different types of cells around them.

What is emerging is a far more sophisticated retinal assembly process than was imagined. As one report summarized the study:

The circuitry of the central nervous system is immensely complex and, as a result, sometimes confounding. When scientists conduct research to unravel the inner workings at a cellular level, they are sometimes surprised by what they find.

Needless to say, this sort of variability between highly-related strains, and this level of sophistication and complexity, are inconsistent with evolutionary theory.

This Journalist Uses Critical Thinking

Evolution Can Even Explain How the Human Eye Evolved

Benjamin Radford writes for the Discovery News and is interested in why people believe things for which there is little or no evidence. He applies critical thinking and scientific methodologies to unusual claims. One of those things that interests Radford is skepticism of evolution. After all, as Radford notes, there is “overwhelming scientific evidence for evolution,” and it is “confirmed by nearly every scientific discipline.” Evolution is all around us, all the time. Evolution is why we need to get a new flu shot every year and, notes Radford, evolution can even explain how the human eye evolved. It is strange that such claims come from a critical thinker such as Radford because, in fact, they are all false.

Consider the evolution of the human eye. Charles Darwin considered the eye to be an “organ of extreme perfection.” Even after writing Origins he confessed it gave him a cold shudder. He needed to focus on his theory’s fine gradations to give himself comfort. But one hundred and thirty four years later, in 1994, evolutionists claimed they had solved the problem. The evolution of the eye was finally understood. It turned out such evolution was no big deal after all. In fact the eye could rather easily evolve.

The only catch to the conclusion was that it was circular. The evolutionists, who believe evolution is a fact, first assumed the evolution of the eye in order to solve the problem of the evolution of the eye.

With evolution taken as a given, whether or not vision systems evolved was no longer in question—they did. The only question was how they have evolved. The 1994 paper explained that although Darwin “anticipated that the eye would become a favorite target for criticism,” the problem “has now almost become a historical curiosity” and “the question is now one of process rate rather than one of principle.” The evolutionists estimated this rate by first assuming that the eye indeed evolved. They wrote:

The evolution of complex structures, however, involves modifications of a large number of separate quantitative characters, and in addition there may be discrete innovations and an unknown number of hidden but necessary phenotypic changes. These complications seem effectively to prevent evolution rate estimates for entire organs and other complex structures. An eye is unique in this respect because the structures necessary for image formation, although there may be several, are all typically quantitative in their nature, and can be treated as local modifications of pre-existing tissues. Taking a patch of pigmented light-sensitive epithelium as the starting point, we avoid the more inaccessible problem of photoreceptor cell evolution. Thus, if the objective is limited to finding the number of generations required for the evolution of an eye’s optical geometry, then the problem becomes solvable.

The problem becomes solvable? The evolutionists skipped the entire evolution of cellular signal transduction and the vision cascade. That would be like saying you have showed how motorcycles evolved although you took the engine, drive train and wheels as your starting point.

The evolutionists then skipped all of the major problems that arise after you have a signal transduction system in place, such as the incredible post processing system and the creation of the machinery to construct the vision system. The problem they ended up solving is sometimes affectionately referred to as a “cartoon” version of the real world problem.

The research, if you can call it that, did not demonstrate that the eye evolved or could have evolved. Yet the paper became a favorite reference for evolutionists wanting to promote evolution. Eye evolution, they insisted, was now known to be straightforward. Here, for instance, is how our tax dollars are used by PBS to promote this abuse of science:

Zoologist Dan-Erik Nilsson demonstrates how the complex human eye could have evolved through natural selection acting on small variations. Starting with a simple patch of light sensitive cells, Nilsson’s model “evolves” until a clear image is produced.

This spreading of false information is not limited to popular presentations. A paper reporting on “highly advanced compound eyes” which are “as advanced as those of many living forms” in early arthropods begins by informing the reader that “theory (i.e., the Nilsson paper) suggests that complex eyes can evolve very rapidly.” This helps them to conclude that those incredible arthropod eyes are “further evidence that the Cambrian explosion involved rapid innovation.”

With the mythological framework in place, the findings could then safely be presented as confirmations of evolution. As the journal’s editor added:

Charles Darwin thought that the eye, which he called an “organ of extreme perfection,” was a serious challenge to evolutionary theory — but he was mistaken. Theory predicts that eyes can evolve with great speed, and now there is support for this prediction from the fossil record.

Support for this prediction? You’ve got to be kidding. A cartoon version of reality, taking the myth of evolution as true, is considered a “prediction” and amazing early complexity in the fossils then becomes a “support for this prediction”?

What the arthropod fossils revealed is an early Cambrian, highly advanced vision system more elaborate than any so far discovered. Its compound eyes have more then 3,000 lenses optimally arranged in the densest and most efficient packing pattern. As the paper explains:

The extremely regular arrangement of lenses seen here exceeds even that in certain modern taxa, such as the horseshoe crab Limulus, in which up to one-third of lenses deviate from hexagonal packing.

All of this is presented to the reader as merely another demonstration of how fantastic designs just happen spontaneously to arise:

The new fossils reveal that some of the earliest arthropods had already acquired visual systems similar to those of living forms, underscoring the speed and magnitude of the evolutionary innovation that occurred during the Cambrian explosion.

Ho-hum, yet more evolutionary innovation. For evolutionists it was just another day in the office. As PZ Myers explained, we already knew that complex animals appear rapidly. After all, that is why they call it the “Cambrian explosion.” Evolutionists have written “whole books on the subject.”

Myers follows this circular reasoning with yet more question begging:

The sudden appearance of complexity is no surprise, either. We know that the fundamental mechanisms of eye function evolved long before the Cambrian, from the molecular evidence;

Of course there is no “molecular evidence” that gives us such knowledge (see here for example). But if you assume evolution is true to begin with, as do evolutionists who analyze the molecular patterns, then Myers’ fictional, question begging, world makes sense.

Myers follows these circular arguments with a more subtle type of fallacy. He explains that these particular findings are no big deal because both this finding and the similar trilobite vision systems require cellular signal transduction, development machines and so forth:

It is also the case that the measure of complexity here is determined by a simple meristic trait, the number of ommatidia. This is not radical. The hard part in the evolution of the compound eye was the development of the signal transduction mechanism, followed by the developmental rules that governed the formation of a regular, repeating structure of the eye. The number of ommatidia is a reflection of the degree of commitment of tissues in the head to eye formation, and is a quantitative difference, not a qualitative one.

Setting aside the usual evolutionary speculation about how easily designs evolve, the problem here is that the cellular signal transduction, development machines and so forth are themselves problems for evolution. Indeed, even the simplest of light detection systems sport such incredible designs for which evolution has no explanation beyond vague speculation.

Next Myers is back to question-begging. In typical fashion he attempts to shore up the evolution position with the usual reference to, yes, the mythical 1994 Nilsson paper:

And finally, there’s nothing in the data from this paper that implies sudden origins; there can’t be. If it takes a few hundred thousand years for a complex eye to evolve from a simple light sensing organ, there is no way to determine that one sample of a set of fossils was the product of millions of years of evolution, or one day of magical creation.

Next is the fallacy of credulity. If you present an evolutionist with the scientific failures of his theory, he will accuse you of basing your skepticism on your own failure to imagine a solution. As Myers puts it:

It’s a logical error and a failure of the imagination to assume that these descriptions are of a population that spontaneously emerged nearly-instantaneously.

Failure of the imagination? Indeed, we just need to do more imagining, that’s the problem.

Finally Myers reiterates the flawed Darwinian argument that whatever abruptness you see in the fossil record is, after all, merely a consequence of all those gaps in the fossils:

Darwin himself explained in great detail how one should not expect fine-grained fossil series, due to the imperfection of the geological record.

When in doubt, doubt the data. Paleontologists agree that the fossil record reveals abrupt appearances, but when convenient evolutionists can always protect their theory with those gaps in the fossil record.

Evolutionary thinking is remarkable. I am reminded of John Earman’s remarks about Hume’s arguments. For it is astonishing how well evolution is treated, given how completely the confection collapses under a little probing. So if Benjamin Radford really is interested in why people believe things for which there is little or no evidence, we have just the topic for him.

The Brittlestar’s Distributed and Multifunctional Vision System

“Optimized by Phototropic Chromatophores”

Biology is full of unique and exotic solutions that appear in only one or a few species and a good example of this the brittlestar’s vision system. “System” is a good word for the vision capability in this relative of the starfish, for its arms are covered with precisely aligned microscopic calcite domes—structures that also serve as lenses, focusing light before it reaches photoreceptors. Here is how a 2001 paper described this finding:

The lens array is designed to minimize spherical aberration and birefringence and to detect light from a particular direction. The optical performance is further optimized by phototropic chromatophores that regulate the dose of illumination reaching the receptors. These structures represent an example of a multifunctional biomaterial that fulfills both mechanical and optical functions.

Designed? Optimized? An example of a multifunctional material? As one researcher exclaimed, “It's astonishing that this organic creature can manipulate inorganic matter with such precision - and yet it's got no brain.” Another research explained just how unique this design is:

It's bizarre - there's nothing else that I know of that has lenses built into its general body surface.

Nothing in biology makes sense in the light of evolution.

[h/t uncommondescent]

Those Bothersome Tiny Eye Movements Really Do Have a Purpose

More Incredible Vision Functions

A few years ago we reported on fascinating eye movement research. If you stare at a horizontal line first, then a circle appears stretched out, like an ellipse. This simple fact was ingeniously used in an experiment to study how signals from the eye are processed. Our eyes move several times per second. If we were aware of what our eyes were seeing we’d have difficulty making sense of such rapid movements. As it is we don’t sense such movements, and one theory held that the signal processing in our vision system deleted certain scenes to keep the image steady in our brains. But when human subjects were shown a horizontal line too quickly to be sensed, they nonetheless then saw a circle as an ellipse. In other words, even those scenes of which we are not aware have an effect on the scenes that we do see. Now an equally ingenious and complicated experiment helps to explain tiny eye movements of which we are barely aware.

When you are trying to fix your gaze on an object your eyes will occasionally, and seemingly without reason, make rapid, tiny movements away, temporarily disrupting your focus and concentration. Evolutionists long thought that these so-called microsaccades were nothing more than useless, random twitches. But the new research found that just prior to a microsaccade our visual perception is altered in a very specific, repeatable manner. Specifically, objects in the center of our vision appear more toward the periphery, and objects in the periphery appear more toward the center. In a complicated way this spatial compression works together with the microsaccade in allowing us to maintain our situational awareness while otherwise concentrating and focusing on one object.

Once again science finds that our vision system is even more complex than we thought, and the evolutionary narrative, that a few mutations created and modified a few genes from which arose fancy new vision capabilities, has become that much more unlikely. How could microsaccades and the spatial compression logic and wiring have evolved to all work together?

Evolutionists call this the fallacy of incredulity. Complex organs and structures, they say, are not problems for evolution just because we cannot explain how they could have evolved. These are not problems, evolutionists explain, because they will be resolved by future research. But how do we know that? So while evolution is a fact, there nonetheless are myriad biological designs which evolution cannot explain.

William Bialek: More Perfect Than We Imagined

Roll Over Voltaire

Three hundred years ago Gottfried Leibniz said we live in the best of all possible worlds but today Princeton’s world reknown theorist William Bialek explains that it is more perfect than we imagined. This video is long and it sometimes dwells on Bialek rather than the slide he is talking to, but those drawbacks are minor compared to what you will learn. If you want to hear an intelligent, thoughtful scientist scratch the surface of creation’s wonders and reflect on what it all means, then this video is for you.

Bialek, for instance, discusses compound eyes of insects such as the fly. These compound eyes have a large number of small lenses packed into an array. A large number of small lenses gives high resolution, just as does a digital camera with a large number of pixels.

But when the lens becomes too small its optics become distorted due to diffraction. So in determining the best lens size there is a tradeoff between resolution and diffraction. In the optimum solution the lens size is roughly proportional to the square root of the radius of the head. An indeed, Bialek shows an old paper surveying the compound eye designs in more than two dozen different insects. That paper shows that for the different size insects, the lens size is proportional, as predicted, to the square root of the head size.

This is one of Bialek’s half a dozen or so examples showing the optimization of biological designs and, as Bialek assures the audience, there are many, many more. Here is how one science writer explained it:

Yet for all these apparent flaws, the basic building blocks of human eyesight turn out to be practically perfect. Scientists have learned that the fundamental units of vision, the photoreceptor cells that carpet the retinal tissue of the eye and respond to light, are not just good or great or phabulous at their job. They are not merely exceptionally impressive by the standards of biology, with whatever slop and wiggle room the animate category implies. Photoreceptors operate at the outermost boundary allowed by the laws of physics, which means they are as good as they can be, period. Each one is designed to detect and respond to single photons of light — the smallest possible packages in which light comes wrapped.

“Light is quantized, and you can’t count half a photon,” said William Bialek, a professor of physics and integrative genomics at Princeton University. “This is as far as it goes.” …

Photoreceptors exemplify the principle of optimization, an idea, gaining ever wider traction among researchers, that certain key features of the natural world have been honed by evolution to the highest possible peaks of performance, the legal limits of what Newton, Maxwell, Pauli, Planck et Albert will allow. Scientists have identified and mathematically anatomized an array of cases where optimization has left its fastidious mark, among them the superb efficiency with which bacterial cells will close in on a food source; the precision response in a fruit fly embryo to contouring molecules that help distinguish tail from head; and the way a shark can find its prey by measuring micro-fluxes of electricity in the water a tremulous millionth of a volt strong — which, as Douglas Fields observed in Scientific American, is like detecting an electrical field generated by a standard AA battery “with one pole dipped in the Long Island Sound and the other pole in waters of Jacksonville, Fla.” In each instance, biophysicists have calculated, the system couldn’t get faster, more sensitive or more efficient without first relocating to an alternate universe with alternate physical constants.

But there is much more to Bialek’s talk than examples of nature’s optimal designs. In a thoughtful segment Bialek discusses his philosophy of science. At the [16:30] mark he asks “That was fun, but what does it mean?” The answer, he begins, is that nature’s many examples of optimization help to highlight the difference between two ways of doing and thinking about science.

Bialek describes a cartoon in which a family is driving the car over a bridge with a posted weight limit. The son asks the father how they know what is the weight limit. The father responds that they wait until a sufficiently heavy truck destroys the bridge, they then weigh the remains of the truck, rebuild the bridge exactly as it was, and post the sign.

Bialek uses this funny cartoon as a metaphor for evolutionary theory’s reliance on contingency. This trial-and-error approach to understanding and invention is, Bialek explains, a very common view. The species are the way they are because that is the way they happened to evolve.

In fact, Bialek cogently points out, evolution’s promotion of contingency and trial-and-error is not so much out of scientific necessity. In the bridge example, we could actually model and compute the load limit, based on the design of the bridge and the types of materials used.

But given the “political context” in which many of these discussion occur, it is understandable why evolution is presented as a process of tinkering and not design. [19:30] In fact, the Yale biophysicist notes, these arguments are opposed to the idea of a “interventionist designer,” rather than the question of whether there are design principles in biology.

Bialek contrasts this approach with another view—the view that guides so many physicists—which he represents with Galileo’s famous quote that “The book of Nature is written in the language of mathematics.” Physics, Bialek points out, has been remarkably successful using this formula. It is, he notes, an “astonishing achievement” of the human mind over these four hundred past years. Bialek laments the evolutionary view that Galileo would never have said such a thing if he had known about biology.

Bialek’s point that evolution opposes the idea of a interventionist designer is crucial. For far from reflecting atheism, as so many have charged, and far from being a scientific finding as today’s positivist sentiment wants to believe, this foundation of evolutionary thought is religious.

That is not to say evolution is right or wrong, or true or false. It simply is religious. And until we understand the religion we are immersed in, we will not comprehend its influence on our thinking.

Without this religion, which is ubiquitous, evolution could certainly continue as a theory of mechanical origins. But evolutionary thought would be stripped of its core theoretic and its metaphysical certainty. The theory of evolution would then, rather than be mandated to be a fact, lie exposed to the light of science which shows it to be so improbable.

But it is precisely this distinction, this parsing of the religion from the science, that is so difficult to achieve. When I first began to study the evolutionary literature I was constantly fooled by its intertwining of metaphysics with the empirical science. The evolution literature is rife with religious claims in hiding.

But when properly distinguished and separated, one immediately can see that the conviction of evolution’s truth lies in the non scientific claims whereas the empirical evidence, alone, gives us no such confidence.

Religion drives science, and it matters.

New Research Shows Retina Complexities

Not Just a Sheet of Light Sensors

New research out of Germany is helping to pinpoint details of how the mammalian retina converts incoming light into digital signals which ultimately make their way to the brain. Before the information is shipped off to the brain, however, it undergoes massive processing which, among other things, helps to extract features present in the incoming image. It is so complex that we are still a long way from understanding how it all works. The new research, as one report explains, “show that the retina is by no means as well understood as is commonly believed.” We have discussed some of the complexities of converting the incoming light into digital signals to be sent to the brain here, here and here. There is no doubt much yet to learn about this incredible image processing capability, but what we do know indicates it is profoundly sophisticated. As the report explains:

The retina in our eyes is not just a sheet of light sensors that – like a camera chip – faithfully transmits patterns of light to the brain. Rather, it performs complex computations, extracting several features from the visual stimuli, e.g., whether the light intensity at a certain place increases or decreases, in which direction a light source moves or whether there is an edge in the image. To transmit this information reliably across the optic nerve - acting as a kind of a cable - to the brain, the retina reformats it into a succession of stereotypic action potentials – it “digitizes” it.

Feature extraction is an important technology these days, with all kinds of applications. Engineers have been working hard at developing such techniques for years. As usual, nature provides examples of astonishing precision and efficiency.

Evolutionists Solve Eye Evolution (Again)

Recently we discussed a paper from 2008 in which evolutionists claimed to have solved the long-standing question of how the eye evolved. It is a problem that famously once made Darwin shudder but the evolutionists claimed that now, with our advanced scientific knowledge, “the gap in understanding of the molecular evolution of eye components is all but closed.” That was quite a claim and, not surprisingly, there was no such breakthrough. In fact, the “explanation” that the evolutionists provided was simply that the key cellular signal transduction pathway in our eyes came from a very similar pathway in yeast that senses certain types of signaling chemicals known as pheromones. The evolutionists had no explanation for how the yeast pathway arose in the first place or exactly how it could morph into the animal vision system. It was yet another example of evolution’s trivial, non scientific, solutions that do nothing but generate vacuous headlines. Well evolutionists have done it again. This month they “solved” the problem of eye evolution yet again. Apparently that 2008 solution didn’t take, but this new solution is no better.

You may have seen the Wall Street Journal article from earlier this month proclaiming the new discovery of how vision evolved. The headline read, “A Relief to Darwin: The Eyes Have It.” Or perhaps you saw the press release trumpeting the new “Breakthrough study” that “Pinpoints Evolutionary Origins of Sight.”

The paper itself was no less triumphant. It claimed to reveal “a simple route to animal vision.” But in fact the evolutionists discovered no such thing. It was all yet another abuse of science.

As with the earlier 2008 paper, the new study appeals to yet another signal transduction pathway as the progenitor of later vision systems. This time instead of yeast, the paper appeals to a pathway in placozoa. As with the yeast system, the placozoa system probably detects signaling chemicals.

As usual, the evolutionists “solve” the problem simply by pushing it back in time. The evolution narrative continues to push complexity to earlier stages where it somehow and fortuitously appears. As the evolutionists conclude: “Our results are compatible with the view that the last common neuralian ancestor might have been more complex than generally assumed.”

So the new study makes evolution even more heroic and implausible. What it does not show is precisely what the paper and the articles claim that it shows: how vision evolved.

Evolution is more ludicrous with each passing week. It is a religiously-motivated movement that force-fits scientific findings to its truth. Its unending trail of vacuous discoveries is nothing more than a reflection of the underlying religion. As John Ioannidis has put it, “claimed research findings may often be simply accurate measures of the prevailing bias.” That is a good description of evolutionary science.

Religion drives science and it matters.

Incredible: Evolutionists Have Now Solved Eye Evolution

Evolutionists now understand how the eye evolved. While skeptics have been claiming something doesn’t come from nothing, evolutionists have been busy tracking down the details. As one paper explains, “the gap in understanding of the molecular evolution of eye components is all but closed.” That is amazing. For understanding eye evolution at the molecular level is the holy grail, or at least a holy grail. As we have discussed before, vision is profoundly complicated and it is not clear how it could spontaneously arise as evolutionists believe it did. And vague speculation, with cartoon illustrations, of light sensitive patches magically morphing into a series of increasingly sophisticated eyes do not help much. What is needed is a plausible explanation of how such evolution could occur, and an account of how the eye evolved at the molecular level certainly does the job. It is terrific news that evolutionists have now achieved this incredible accomplishment.

The key in providing such an explanation, say evolutionists, is two-fold. First, they needed the detailed account of how vision works at the molecular level. These details have been increasingly elucidated in recent decades and they are crucial in understanding the evolutionary steps that led to the eye.

Second, they needed a better understanding of the evolutionary tree, telling them which species evolved from which. This provides the framework from which to derive the sequence of molecular changes that led to the eye.

With these two developments well in hand, evolutionists have now laid out what was once thought impossible. They have derived a detailed account, at the molecular level, of vision. They have discovered how chance mutations could spontaneously create the eye. They now have the holy grail.

And as is sometimes the case with the greatest scientific breakthroughs the answer turns out to be rather simple. Newton explained that F=ma and Einstein found that E=mc^2. Now we have an even more profound discovery. The incredible cellular signal transduction cascade at the heart of vision evolved from a similar system in yeast. Yes, believe it or not, it is that simple. As the evolutionists explain:

In yeast (a fungus), these receptors are sensitive to pheromones, and they even direct a signal through proteins homologous to non-opsin phototransduction proteins. As such, a signaling pathway exists outside animals, which is very similar to phototransduction, except that the receptor protein detects pheromones, not light. Receptors outside animals share some characteristics with opsin, like snaking through a cell membrane seven times. It is one of these serpentine proteins that served as the progenitor of the first opsin protein, as evidenced by the similarity of opsins and other serpentine proteins.

There you have it. The eye evolved from a signaling pathway outside of animals. The evolutionists triumphantly conclude that:

the gap in understanding of the molecular evolution of eye components is all but closed, highlighting the bankruptcy of the argument that design is required to explain the origins of biological features

What is perhaps most remarkable about this finding is the sheer genius of evolutionists. This is just the stuff of good solid scientific research and once again we’re reminded of why evolution is such an undeniable fact.

Now the evolutionists admit they haven’t figured out every last detail—such as how the yeast system arose in the first place or exactly which mutations morphed it to the animal vision system—but those are details. As you can see, they’ve answered the big questions.

The evolution of the eye, a problem that once made Darwin shudder, is now obviously solved.

New Book (Doesn’t) Explain How Eyes Evolved; The Bible Versus Evolution; Evolutionists Say “We See”

Ivan Schwab’s new book on the evolution of vision systems is a vivid reminder of our blindness. Recently we reviewed how minor changes such as viruses mutating and allele frequency dynamics are, according to evolutionists, proof texts of evolution. Now in Schwab’s new book we have an example of how comparisons of various designs, again according to evolutionists, show how evolution occurred. Like the ancient myths, it is difficult to believe that anyone actually believes these things.

Vision Systems and Evolution

As we have discussed here many times vision systems are astonishingly complex and evolutionists have failed to explain how such intricacies could have arisen spontaneously (yes, evolution claims that vision systems, and the entire biological world for that matter, arose spontaneously and when evolutionists protest that they would never say anything so ridiculous they are merely judging themselves).

You can read here, for example, about the photocell’s cellular signal transduction cascade which is initiated by a photon interacting with a light-sensitive chromophore molecule known as retinal. The interaction alters the electron distribution of the retinal molecule, thus making intricate changes to its force field which influences several amino acids of the large, trans-membrane opsin protein to which the chromophore is attached.

Next the opsin causes the activation of hundreds of transducin molecules. These, in turn, cause the activation of cGMP phosphodiesterase (by removing its inhibitory subunit), an enzyme that degrades the cyclic nucleotide, cGMP.

A single photon can result in the activation of hundreds of transducins, leading to the degradation of hundreds of thousands of cGMP molecules. cGMP molecules serve to open non selective ion channels in the membrane, so reduction in cGMP concentration serves to close these channels. This means that millions of sodium ions per second are shut out of the cell, causing a voltage change across the membrane. This hyperpolarization of the cell membrane causes a reduction in the release of neurotransmitter, the chemical that interacts with the nearby nerve cell, in the synaptic region of the cell. This reduction in neurotransmitter release ultimately causes an action potential to arise in the nerve cell (of course we’ve skipped a library of detail).

Needless to say evolutionists have no explanation for how this could have arisen from random mutations and the like. Yet they insist that it did. Evolutionists sometimes point to simpler vision systems, such as the so-called third eye (parietal eye) which is not an image forming eye but rather provides for light sensitivity. Was not such a primitive eye an evolutionary precursor, laying a simpler groundwork for the awesome complexities to follow?

No, as you can read here the third eye’s cellular signal transduction cascade is even more complex. For this system includes two antagonistic light signaling pathways in the same cell. Blue light causes the hyperpolarizing response as described above, but green light causes a depolarizing response.

How is this done? By the inhibition of the cGMP phosphodiesterase enzyme. Specifically, there are two opsins, one that is sensitive to blue light which activates the cGMP phosphodiesterase enzyme, and another that is sensitive to green light which inhibits the cGMP phosphodiesterase enzyme. Darwin’s prediction that primitive systems laid a simpler groundwork failed badly.

Or you can read here about the remarkable hammerhead shark’s binocular vision, here about the bug with bifocals, or here about incredible photocell optical filters that focus the incoming light which one writer called “a masterpiece of biological design.”

You can read hints about the massive signal processing that occurs downstream of the photocell here, or here about some of the various and diverse visions systems that contradict evolution’s common descent expectations.

In fact evolutionists have been forced to say that entire vision systems must have evolved more than once because they are found repeated in distant species. The human and squid, for example, share similar intricate vision system designs even though they come from different initial conditions and different environments. These findings make no sense on evolution.

There is Anableps anableps, a fish with eyes half in and half out of the water. Its eyes are divided into two parts giving it the remarkable ability to look simultaneously above and below the water line. Or again, there is the ancient trilobite. It had eyes that were incredibly complex. One expert called them “an all-time feat of function optimization.”

In fact biology’s vision systems display all manner of high-tech gadgetry and creativity. There are telephoto optics, scanning optics, and mirrors. Not surprisingly, evolution over and over fails to explain how these wonders arose spontaneously. This, it would seem, would be rather uncontroversial. After all, evolutionists have presented no scientific explanations for how their theory could have, against all odds, stumbled upon these incredible designs.

But this is where the story takes a turn for the strange. For evolutionists do claim they have provided such explanations. This may be hard to believe since evolutionists, in fact, don’t have any such explanations. But nonetheless they do make such claims. You can read about one pathetic example here.

Now we have another example in Schwab’s new book which bears the rather heroic title: Evolution’s Witness: How Eyes Evolved. How eyes evolved? Is Schwab really going to explain to us how eyes evolved? Of course he can do no such thing. That would be quite an accomplishment.

What evolutionists do tell us is which design came when, which subsystems and molecules where used and reused where, how the fossils and extant designs are all related, what the evolutionary tree looks like, and so forth. In other words, evolutionists tell us just-so stories about their mythical big-picture evolutionary moves.

And of course, all of this is predicated on the assumption that evolution did, in fact, occur. Meanwhile evolution’s massive scientific contradictions and problems remain. The heavy lifting—explaining scientifically just how such marvels actually arose spontaneously as evolution claims they did—is not surprisingly nowhere to be found. It is like a five-year-old “explaining” how Santa comes down the chimney.

And so we have yet another example of the curious dichotomy between evolutionary claims and reality. The immense abyss between the two reminds us that evolution is more than merely a flawed scientific theory. It is a religiously-driven creation narrative and we wonder if, while evolution’s predictions regarding vision (and everything else for that matter) have consistently failed, how have the Bible’s predictions regarding vision held up?

The Bible Versus Evolution

While evolution’s vision-related predictions have fallen one after the other, the Bible also makes certain vision-related predictions. Interestingly, not only have they held up rather well, but evolutionists themselves have done much of the fulfilling. Let’s have a look.

The Bible’s vision predictions often deal with the related topics of blindness and darkness. For instance, at one point Jesus refers to certain religious leaders as blind guides who “strain out a gnat but swallow a camel.” This fits evolutionary thought very well. Elsewhere Paul speaks of men’s understanding being darkened because of the blindness of their heart.

But the Bible’s vision predictions don’t stop there. For while the Bible speaks of blindness and people in darkness, and of God opening the eyes of the blind and leading people out of darkness, the Bible also speaks of a willful aspect to our blindness.

Isaiah, for instance, discusses the blindness of disobedience. “Blind yourselves and be blind,” he writes. Likewise Jesus explains to Nicodemus that though the light has come into the world, “men loved darkness rather than light.”

And thus Paul explains to Timothy that the time will come when men “will heap up for themselves teachers, and they will turn their ears away from the truth, and be turned aside to fables.”

When Jesus healed a blind man the religious leaders were upset. Jesus suggested they were blind but that the real problem was their certainty amidst their blindness. They denied their blindness and instead said “We see.”

So how do the Bible’s descriptions hold up? Blind guides and straining out a gnat while swallowing a camel? Given the evolutionists many misrepresentations of science in textbooks and popular works, and their focusing on trivial points of consistency while ignoring massive scientific problems, these biblical descriptions fit very well.

And do men love darkness rather than light? Given evolutionists unceasing, unswerving, inexplicable attachment to twisting the science, this too seems quite accurate. They won’t even consider the possibility that their bizarre ideas could be wrong. They seem to be dogmatically attached to scientific lies.

And do men heap up teachers to turn away from the truth and turn to fables instead? Again, a perfect description of evolutionary thought.

And do evolutionists say “We see”? Indeed, for evolutionists their ideas are not merely ideas. They are not merely theories or hypotheses. For evolutionists, evolution must be a fact. They are insistent that they are right. There is no awareness of the incredible scientific absurdity that attends their ideas. No sense of the uncertainty, no shadow of a doubt. The idea that the entire biological world spontaneously arose is held with a mixture of certainty and hubris. Anyone who reasonably doubts is ridiculed, dismissed and blackballed. It isn’t pretty.

Religion drives science, and it matters.

New Cambrian Arthropod Vision System: No More Shudders

Years ago physicist Riccardo Levi-Setti became fascinated with trilobites. He wrote a book about them and at one point called their 500 million year old eyes “an all-time feat of function optimization.” They were, as evolutionists admitted, “an impressive feat of early evolution.” But now a new finding shows evolution to be even more impressive.

Charles Darwin considered the eye to be an “organ of extreme perfection.” Even after writing Origins he confessed it gave him a cold shudder. He needed to focus on his theory’s fine gradations to give himself comfort. But one hundred and thirty four years later, in 1994, evolutionists laid the problem to rest. The evolution of the eye was finally understood. It turned out such evolution was no big deal after all. In fact the eye could rather easily evolve.

The only catch to the conclusion was that it was made by evolutionists. Remember that evolutionists insist evolution must be a fact for religious reasons. As such their objectivity is sometimes wanting, as in this case. With evolution taken as a fact, whether or not vision systems evolved was no longer in question—they did. The only question was how they have evolved. The 1994 paper explained that although Darwin “anticipated that the eye would become a favorite target for criticism,” the problem “has now almost become a historical curiosity” and “the question is now one of process rate rather than one of principle.” The evolutionists estimated this rate by first assuming that the eye indeed evolved. They wrote:

The evolution of complex structures, however, involves modifications of a large number of separate quantitative characters, and in addition there may be discrete innovations and an unknown number of hidden but necessary phenotypic changes. These complications seem effectively to prevent evolution rate estimates for entire organs and other complex structures. An eye is unique in this respect because the structures necessary for image formation, although there may be several, are all typically quantitative in their nature, and can be treated as local modifications of pre-existing tissues. Taking a patch of pigmented light-sensitive epithelium as the starting point, we avoid the more inaccessible problem of photoreceptor cell evolution. Thus, if the objective is limited to finding the number of generations required for the evolution of an eye’s optical geometry, then the problem becomes solvable.

The problem becomes solvable? The evolutionists skipped the entire evolution of cellular signal transduction and the vision cascade. That would be like saying you have showed how motorcycles evolved although you took the engine, drive train and wheels as your starting point.

The evolutionists then skipped all of the major problems that arise after you have a signal transduction system in place, such as the incredible post processing system and the creation of the machinery to construct the vision system. The problem they ended up solving is sometimes affectionately referred to as a “cartoon” version of the real world problem.

The research, if you can call it that, did not serve as evidence for evolution. Yet the paper became a favorite reference for evolutionists wanting to suppress scientific skepticism of evolution. Eye evolution, they insisted, was now known to be straightforward. Here, for instance, is how our tax dollars are used by PBS to promote this abuse of science:

Zoologist Dan-Erik Nilsson demonstrates how the complex human eye could have evolved through natural selection acting on small variations. Starting with a simple patch of light sensitive cells, Nilsson’s model “evolves” until a clear image is produced.

With such mythology now internalized in evolutionary lore, evolutionists will believe practically anything, including a new finding of even greater evolutionary wonders. The new paper reports on complex vision in early arthropods long predating most of the trilobites. But in order to properly “educate” the reader and prepare them for the findings, the paper begins with, yes, a reference to that 1994 Nilsson paper:

Despite the status of the eye as an “organ of extreme perfection,” theory suggests that complex eyes can evolve very rapidly. … Here we report exceptionally preserved fossil eyes from the Early Cambrian (~515 million years ago) Emu Bay Shale of South Australia, revealing that some of the earliest arthropods possessed highly advanced compound eyes, each with over 3,000 large ommatidial lenses and a specialized “bright zone.” … The eyes are more complex than those known from contemporaneous trilobites and are as advanced as those of many living forms. They provide further evidence that the Cambrian explosion involved rapid innovation in fine-scale anatomy as well as gross morphology, and are consistent with the concept that the development of advanced vision helped to drive this great evolutionary event.

With the mythological framework properly in place, the findings could then safely be presented as confirmations of evolution. As the journal’s editor added:

Charles Darwin thought that the eye, which he called an “organ of extreme perfection,” was a serious challenge to evolutionary theory — but he was mistaken. Theory predicts that eyes can evolve with great speed, and now there is support for this prediction from the fossil record.

Support for this prediction? You’ve got to be kidding. A cartoon version of reality, taking the myth of evolution as true, is considered a “prediction” and amazing early complexity in the fossils then becomes a “support for this prediction”?

What the new fossils revealed is an early Cambrian, highly advanced vision system more elaborate than any so far discovered. Its compound eyes have more then 3,000 lenses optimally arranged in the densest and most efficient packing pattern. As the paper explains:

The extremely regular arrangement of lenses seen here exceeds even that in certain modern taxa, such as the horseshoe crab Limulus, in which up to one-third of lenses deviate from hexagonal packing.

All of this is presented to the reader as merely another demonstration of how fantastic designs just happen spontaneously to arise:

The new fossils reveal that some of the earliest arthropods had already acquired visual systems similar to those of living forms, underscoring the speed and magnitude of the evolutionary innovation that occurred during the Cambrian explosion.

Ho-hum, yet more evolutionary innovation. For evolutionists it is just another day in the office. As PZ Myers explains, we already knew that complex animals appear rapidly. After all, that is why they call it the “Cambrian explosion.” Evolutionists have written “whole books on the subject.”

Myers follows this circular reasoning with yet more question begging:

The sudden appearance of complexity is no surprise, either. We know that the fundamental mechanisms of eye function evolved long before the Cambrian, from the molecular evidence;

Of course there is no “molecular evidence” that gives us such knowledge. But if you assume evolution is true to begin with, as do evolutionists who analyze the molecular patterns, then Myers’ fictional, question begging, world makes sense.

Myers follows these circular arguments with a more subtle type of fallacy. He explains that these particular findings are no big deal because both this finding and the trilobite vision systems require cellular signal transduction, development machines and so forth:

It is also the case that the measure of complexity here is determined by a simple meristic trait, the number of ommatidia. This is not radical. The hard part in the evolution of the compound eye was the development of the signal transduction mechanism, followed by the developmental rules that governed the formation of a regular, repeating structure of the eye. The number of ommatidia is a reflection of the degree of commitment of tissues in the head to eye formation, and is a quantitative difference, not a qualitative one.

Setting aside the usual evolutionary speculation about how easily designs evolve, the problem here is that the cellular signal transduction, development machines and so forth are themselves problems for evolution. Indeed, even the simplest of light detection systems sport such incredible designs for which evolution has no explanation beyond vague speculation.

Next Myers is back to question-begging. In typical fashion he attempts to shore up the evolution position with the usual reference to the mythical 1994 Nilsson paper:

And finally, there’s nothing in the data from this paper that implies sudden origins; there can’t be. If it takes a few hundred thousand years for a complex eye to evolve from a simple light sensing organ, there is no way to determine that one sample of a set of fossils was the product of millions of years of evolution, or one day of magical creation.

Next is the fallacy of credulity. If you present an evolutionist with the scientific failures of his theory, he will accuse you of basing your skepticism on your own failure to imagine a solution. As Myers puts it:

It’s a logical error and a failure of the imagination to assume that these descriptions are of a population that spontaneously emerged nearly-instantaneously.

Failure of the imagination? Indeed, we just need to do more imagining, that’s the problem.

Finally Myers reiterates the flawed Darwinian argument that whatever abruptness you see in the fossil record is, after all, merely a consequence of all those gaps in the fossils:

Darwin himself explained in great detail how one should not expect fine-grained fossil series, due to the imperfection of the geological record.

When in doubt, doubt the data. Paleontologists agree that the fossil record reveals abrupt appearances, but when convenient evolutionists can always protect their theory with those gaps in the fossil record.

Evolutionary thinking is remarkable. I am reminded of John Earman’s remarks about Hume’s arguments. For it is astonishing how well evolution is treated, given how completely the confection collapses under a little probing. And yet evolutionists are supremely confident they are right.

Evolutionists such as Myers are very book smart, but the wisdom and common sense is lacking. The evolutionist’s confidence is exceeded only by the absurdity of his theory. Religion drives science and it matters.

The Vision Cascade is Initiated Not by Isomerization but by Force Field Dynamics

As you read these words a frenzy of activity is taking place as the light entering your eye triggers a highly detailed sequence of actions, ultimately causing a signal to be sent to your brain. In fact, even a mere single photon can be detected in your vision system. It all starts with a photon interacting with a light-sensitive chromophore molecule known as retinal. The interaction alters the retinal molecule and this, in turn, influences the large, trans-membrane opsin protein to which the chromophore is attached. This is just the beginning of the cellular signal transduction cascade. In the next step the opsin causes the activation of hundreds of transducin molecules. These, in turn, cause the activation of cGMP phosphodiesterase (by removing its inhibitory subunit), an enzyme that degrades the cyclic nucleotide, cGMP.

A single photon can result in the activation of hundreds of transducins, leading to the degradation of hundreds of thousands of cGMP molecules. cGMP molecules serve to open non selective ion channels in the membrane, so reduction in cGMP concentration serves to close these channels. This means that millions of sodium ions per second are shut out of the cell, causing a voltage change across the membrane. This hyperpolarization of the cell membrane causes a reduction in the release of neurotransmitter, the chemical that interacts with the nearby nerve cell, in the synaptic region of the cell. This reduction in neurotransmitter release ultimately causes an action potential to arise in the nerve cell.

New research is now helping to explain the details of the first step in this Rube Goldberg machine. What happens when the photon interacts with the retinal molecule? And how does this influence the opsin protein? It had been thought that the key step was a change in the structural configuration of the chromophore. This photoisomerization is caused by the photon and was thought to be how the chromophore influences the opsin.

The new research, however, found that when isomerization is disabled the vision cascade continues to function normally. It seems that a key step, occurring before isomerization, is a shift in the electron distribution of the chromophore. This shift modifies the electric field surrounding the molecule, and this in turn influences several amino acids of the opsin protein, which in turn leads to the activation of the transducin molecules.

An argument from ignorance?

As is typical these new findings do not bode well for evolution. Think of it, evolution designing force fields. But evolutionists cry foul. “You are arguing,” they say, “that since you can’t imagine how evolution could have created such a design that evolution therefore is false. That is nothing more than an argument from ignorance.”

You will be told you don’t understand how science really works and that such findings don’t harm evolution at all. In fact, they open new avenues for understanding how evolution works. Far from a problem for evolution, they enlarge our understanding of what has long since been known to be a fact.

A big design space

Well is it fallacious to think such findings are problematic for evolution? A key issue is the design space. Imagine that a mutation occurs somewhere in a segment of DNA. And imagine that a particular residue within that DNA segment needs to be a certain base, say cytosine. There are a total of four possible bases (adenine, guanine, thymine and cytosine). So the design space for that residue has a total of four possible choices, and the needed design constitutes 25% (one in four) of the design space. It won’t require too many mutations to luckily obtain the needed cytosine. In this case evolution seems reasonable.

But real-world, biological designs require a great deal more than the specification of a single DNA residue. Proteins, for instance, require a great many DNA residues to be specified. Even a single, typical protein requires more than 10^100 (a one followed by one hundred zeros) evolutionary experiments to find. This is an astronomical problem that is well beyond evolution’s capabilities. See here, here, here and here for more details.

In other words, for a typical protein the design space is large and the number of selections, within that design space that work, is relatively small. Instead of a 25% chance of success as we saw in the above simple example, it is many many billions and billions of times less likely. Even optimistic estimates of how many evolutionary experiments are possible fall many orders of magnitude short of what is needed to evolve a protein. Evolutionary theory simply doesn’t work.

Does evolution shape force fields?

The new research presents a different problem for evolution. In addition to designing the opsin protein, evolution must now design the electric field surrounding the chromophore, and how it responds to photon interaction. And while it is busy with that task, it must also specify the correct amino acids at the correct locations within the opsin, that will be influenced by the chromophore’s dynamic electric field.

This massive design problem involves what is known as an n-body solution. That is, the various sub atomic particles in the opsin amino acids and the chromophore, including the chromophore’s flowing electrons which respond to the photon, all contribute to the environmental force fields.

Modeling these force fields and how molecules respond to them is a major problem in molecular dynamics studies. Both the modeling of the force fields, and the molecular dynamics is challenging and computationally intensive. For instance, each particle influences each of the other particles. And as a particle moves, all of its influences change. But other particles are moving as well, so the dynamics quickly become extremely complicated.

The previous model, which had evolution designing the chromophore and its photoisomerization, was complicated enough. Now evolution must also design force fields and their dynamics caused by electron flow within the chromophore. The design space just took another quantum leap.

An argument from ignorance or theory protectionism?

Needless to say evolutionists have only the usual hand-waving speculation to explain the evolution of such designs. The problem is not that skeptics cannot explain how evolution can create such designs, the problem is that evolutionists cannot explain it. Skepticism of evolution is not a consequence of ignorance, it is a consequence of the theory falling far short of its claims. The fact is evolutionary theory doesn’t work and evolutionary cover-ups are nothing more than theory protectionism. Religion drives science and it matters.

New Research: Retina Wiring Architecture Crucial in Image Processing

Our different senses rely on a complex process known as cellular signal transduction which converts an external stimulus, such as sound or light, to a nerve signal. But the nerve signal doesn’t go straight to the brain. In the case of mammalian vision the massive data stream emanating from the millions of photoreceptor cells undergoes substantial signal processing before the information is sent to the brain. New research is now providing more information about the cellular architecture involved in this intermediate processing stage.

Seeing the light

At the molecular level vision begins with a complex signal transduction cascade. As photons enter your eye they interact with light-sensitive chromophore molecules in the photoreceptor cells. The interaction causes the chromophore to change configuration and this, in turn, influences the large, trans-membrane rhodopsin protein to which the chromophore is attached.

The chromophore photoisomerization is the beginning of a remarkable cascade that causes action potentials to be triggered in the optic nerve. In response to the chromophore photoisomerization, the rhodopsin causes the activation of hundreds of transducin molecules. These, in turn, cause the activation of cGMP phosphodiesterase (by removing its inhibitory subunit), an enzyme that degrades the cyclic nucleotide, cGMP.

A single photon can result in the activation of hundreds of transducins, leading to the degradation of hundreds of thousands of cGMP molecules. cGMP molecules serve to open non selective ion channels in the membrane, so reduction in cGMP concentration serves to close these channels. This means that millions of sodium ions per second are shut out of the cell, causing a voltage change across the membrane. This hyperpolarization of the cell membrane causes a reduction in the release of neurotransmitter, the chemical that interacts with the nearby nerve cell, in the synaptic region of the cell. This reduction in neurotransmitter release ultimately causes an action potential to arise in the nerve cell. The next step is to process these nerve signals.

Image processing

A variety of signal processing, involving different types of cells, takes place downstream of the photoreceptor cells, before the vision information is sent to the brain. For instance, the signals from different photoreceptor cells are processed together to derive image information. In addition to this spatial processing, temporal processing derives motion information.

The amacrine and ganglion cells are important components in this processing stream. But this processing stream is not merely a massively parallel operation, where the signal from each photoreceptor cell is individually and simultaneously processed.

For instance, by the time they reach the ganglion cells, signals from the different photoreceptor cells are mingled. The result is that a given ganglion cell receives information for a circular image area. And different types of ganglion cells are sensitive to different spatial and temporal image patterns within that area.

What the new research discovered is that the signals feeding the ganglion cells sensitive to temporal image patterns (that is, motion) have intricate connection patterns. Specifically, if the ganglion cell detects motion from left to right, then it is connected to dendrites which extend from the amacrine cell in the opposite direction. As the researchers concluded, “Our findings indicate that a structural (wiring) asymmetry contributes to the computation of direction selectivity.”

Meanwhile evolution is left only with its foolish dogma. Evolutionists have long since committed themselves to the insistence that evolution is fact. Like the marching band that took a wrong turn down a dead end alley, they have no graceful exit. This is not going to end pretty.

Unexpected Role for Ciliary Photoreceptor Cells in a Brachiopod

New research has discovered ciliary photoreceptor cells providing directional light detection in the brachiopod Terebratalia transversa. This unexpected finding further complicates the already circuitous evolutionary narrative of the origins of vision at the cellular level.

Background

At the molecular level vision begins with a complex signal transduction cascade. As photons enter your eye they interact with light-sensitive chromophore molecules in the photoreceptor cells. The interaction causes the chromophore to change configuration and this, in turn, influences the large, trans-membrane rhodopsin protein to which the chromophore is attached.

The chromophore photoisomerization is the beginning of a remarkable cascade that causes action potentials to be triggered in the optic nerve. In response to the chromophore photoisomerization, the rhodopsin causes the activation of hundreds of transducin molecules. These, in turn, cause the activation of cGMP phosphodiesterase (by removing its inhibitory subunit), an enzyme that degrades the cyclic nucleotide, cGMP.

A single photon can result in the activation of hundreds of transducins, leading to the degradation of hundreds of thousands of cGMP molecules. cGMP molecules serve to open non selective ion channels in the membrane, so reduction in cGMP concentration serves to close these channels. This means that millions of sodium ions per second are shut out of the cell, causing a voltage change across the membrane. This hyperpolarization of the cell membrane causes a reduction in the release of neurotransmitter, the chemical that interacts with the nearby nerve cell, in the synaptic region of the cell. This reduction in neurotransmitter release ultimately causes an action potential to arise in the nerve cell.

This is the beginning of vision. And while there are variations on this remarkable sequence, it is found throughout the wide variety of vision systems found in biology. It is even found in the relatively simple, non image forming, third-eye. You can read more about this here.

Phylogenetic duplicity

Because this signal transduction cascade is so widespread, evolutionists must envision it to be present in the earliest organisms with vision capabilities. This need for evolution to have created unimaginable complexity early on is a consistent theme in evolutionary theory. Over and over, the fascinating designs found in biology must have, according to evolution, appeared early on, even before any need for such marvels.

For vision, this theme of early complexity is repeated at the cellular level, where two distinct photoreceptor cell morphologies—rhabdomeric and ciliary—are found. These two morphologies have different membrane folding strategies as well as biochemical pathways. But their widespread presence in organisms forces evolutionists to conclude they both must have been present in the last common bilaterian ancestor. Rhabdomeric photoreceptor cells are often associated with invertebrates and ciliary photoreceptor cells with vertebrates, but both invertebrates and vertebrates have cells with both morphologies.

And so both morphologies must trace back to that last common bilaterian ancestor. While it may stretch common sense for early evolution to create such complexity in duplicate, if you believe it can perform the feat once, then why not twice?

But there is more to the story. In invertebrates the ciliary morphology plays a lesser role. It is not found to provide directional light detection, but in more rudimentary light detection roles. So how then does it emerge as the chief architecture in vertebrate vision systems? The evolutionary narrative calls for a migration of the ciliary photoreceptor cells to the retina where they overtake the rhabdomeric photoreceptor cells while attaining new visionary skills. Why (and how) this would happen is anyone’s guess.

Only a few years ago evolutionists were confident of this narrative. It was, according to evolutionists, a compelling story that reaffirmed the truth of evolution. These amazing claims were yet another demonstration of how evolutionists interpret unlikely data into a favorable apologetic.

But now the story has become even more unlikely. The new research has indeed found ciliary photoreceptor cells providing directional light detection in Terebratalia transversa, an invertebrate. The narrative of ciliary photoreceptor cells migrating to the retina in vertebrates suddenly makes little sense. Evolution needs a new narrative, and as usual it is more complex:

The presence of ciliary photoreceptor-based eyes in protostomes suggests that the transition between non-visual and visual functions of photoreceptors has been more evolutionarily labile than previously recognized, and that co-option of ciliary and rhabdomeric photoreceptor cell types for directional light detection has occurred multiple times during animal evolution.

In other words, yes that evolutionary scenario we were so confident of must be discarded, but so what? We can always add more drama to the plot line. Whatever biology reveals, it must have evolved—theory respectability is not important. Religion drives science, and it matters.