The world is filled with magnificent biological designs and interrelated interdependent systems. I’ve been told that natural selection acting on random mutations has enough power to produce everything in biology. I’ve put these claims to the test several times
- Can Evolution Explain Altruism
- Can Evolution Explain Reason
- Can Evolution Explain Software
- Can Evolution Explain Software 2.0
- Can Evolution Explain The Indonesian Mimicry Octopus
Well, I got a new challenge from a God-denier, who made the claim that evolution can even account for eyes. They provided a link to a “scientific” paper thinking they could bluster their way through a conversation without being skeptical. But I don’t fall to bluster so easily. Let’s analyze the claim to see if the scientists, who made the claim are asserting based on evidence or assumptions
Here’s how this works: I will post the quotes from the article in red and then just below the quote, I’ll post my analysis in the default black font preceded by a dash. I have bolded key words throughout, so the bold does not appear in the original work. Throughout, you’ll notice that instead of actual evidence, the authors of the article rely on assumptions. And those who are particularly intrepid and can work through this analysis to the end will be gifted with a unique surprise at the end
“Sight is an evolutionary gift”
– Odd choice of words from a scientific journal. Notice how evolution is reified as a magnificent gift-giver. Sounds more like paganism than science
“Life probably first appeared ~3.7 billion years ago”
– Probably?!?!? Indeed
“more likely”
– Aren’t we supposed to be talking about evidence rather than making assumptions?
“The opsin in rhodopsin probably evolved”
– Probably?!?!? Notice the use of the magic word: “evolved”. Do you care to go into the details? It seems like they missed a step in the explanation and tried to sweep the actual explanation under the “it evolved” rug. Pathetic!
“The passage of such molecules from microbial opsins to metazoan opsins probably came from a common ancestor as these are related, albeit distantly”
– Probably?!?!? Probably is used TWELVE times in the article. It sounds like a collection of assumptions rather than the actual evidence that we were told to expect
“Once an opsin (or the predecessor of the opsins) covalently bonded with retinal, perhaps in a cell with a cilium or two, the slow crawl to an eye began”
– Perhaps?!?! It’s a fine yarn, but the science-sounding veneer is wearing thin
“Perhaps after 35 000 generations, an organism discovered that developing a concave cup instead of a spot produced a more successful and competitive organ for sight”
– I really thought this was going to be a peer-reviewed scientific paper, but it’s just probably after probably followed by reification fallacy. How exactly did the unguided, sightless process of evolution look ahead to discover anything? They don’t know
“As Nilsson and Pelger suggested, from an eyespot to an eyecup to a fully formed camera-style eye could take as few as 364 000 generations, and the production of such an eye in perhaps as short a period as half a million years”
– This is called hedging. Suggested. Could. Perhaps. It’s not even distantly evidence, just speculation
“If one assumes that the eye must provide spatial information to be defined as an eye, then the curvature of a cup would create the first eye, as primitive spatial information would be provided”
– Notice how they just assumed that a critical component of the eye just popped into existence. It was needed, so nature provided. No explanation, just that it would be magically provided
“A cornea, lens, extraocular muscles (EOMs), and ocular adnexa were added as necessary”
– In a cosmos with no design, no purpose, just blind pitiless indifference, what is necessary? How does the naturalist suddenly assume purpose and necessity? Even worse, the explanation is never given, just “it was necessary – so evolution provided” as if there’s design inevitabilities just waiting out in the ether to be added to biological organisms. It’s a ridiculous assumption by evolutionists
“Multiple such ommatidia would likely have been produced by gene duplication”
– That’s not science. It’s just an assumption wrapped in a façade of scientism
“The morphology of the compound eye would itself evolve”
– Why do they continue to use the magic word: evolve, rather than explaining what happened? Maybe they don’t know so they just say “it evolved”
“Although little is known about its genetics”
– That’s actually optimistic. What exactly do you know AT ALL about its genetics?
“How this organism interprets the image it receives remains a mystery”
– Indeed! Mysteries abound within this “scientific” paper
“These organelles are believed to have originated through ancient symbiosis with a red alga23 or perhaps other protists”
– Believed?!?!? Perhaps?!?!? Yawn. I was hoping to find some evidence in this scientific paper, but they keep giving me their beliefs. In addition to that, symbiosis is a paradox for evolutionists. Symbiosis is an unimaginable coincidence built on another unimaginable coincidence, but since symbiosis is observed, the evolutionist just says: “LooK wHaT nAtuRe diD!”
“convergent evolution”
– This is a term that simply means: “We Darwinists don’t know how/why the same structures emerged in disparate species, but here they are, so nature must have done it twice”. It has no explanatory power…just a sciency-sounding term
“This ancient arthropod probably lived between 600 and 550 mya before the Cambrian explosion”
– Again, we’ll note that we’re dealing with assumptions and not science. The giant pink elephant in the room with which these authors fail to deal, is how did the extremely complicated eyes of the trilobite emerge via natural processes. They have no explanations just the assumption that nature was able to produce these complex eyes. Do you doubt my analysis of this sentence? Check out the very next sentence in the peer-reviewed scientific paper
“This would suggest that eyes were forming well before the Cambrian period but no record of such pre-Cambrian trilobites, or other animals with eyes, exists, at least to date”
– THERE IS NO RECORD (NO EVIDENCE) OF THE EVOLUTION OF THE EYE…just more assumptions. The key to those who claim that there’s a mountain of evidence for evolution is the hope that no one will actually read their peer-reviewed papers. They didn’t count on ApoloJedi skeptically analyzing their claims of evidence…only to expose that this “mountain” is a bottomless crater covered by assumptions
“As discussed earlier, the compound eye began, possibly in a worm-like creature, preceding the trilobites or contemporary to them”
– This sentence is further proof that anonymous internet God-denying keyboard warriors have never read these peer-reviewed scientific papers. They Google search ‘the evolution of the eye’ and post the 1st link in the list. Little do they know that I’m not intimidated by their bluster. I’m literally taking these papers line by line and exposing the sheer blatant assumptions and complete lack of evidence. Because there is no evidence of the evolution of the compound eye of the trilobite, they have to say “the compound eye began”. It just began according to their assumption. No explanation. No evidence. It just began. When did the compound eye begin, evolutionists? “Possibly preceding trilobites or contemporary. We’re not sure” because THERE’S NO EVIDENCE
“There are at least six different models of compound eyes and it would appear that the most likely explanation is that the apposition-style eye came first and radiated into the other forms although this explanation is not completely satisfactory”
– No doubt. There’s at least 6 options, but none of them are satisfactory.
“The octopus evolved later and exhibits a more derived eye that includes a lens, a horizontally oval pupil, and a highly sophisticated system of EOMs”
– Hey evolutionists, how did the compound eye of the octopus come about…the steps…the processes? “It evolved”. Ohhhhhh, that’s not a very compelling explanation for us skeptics of evolution.
“The agnathans are the closest extant relative to the first cephalochordates alive today, so we must rely upon them to help us understand the development of eyes in the early vertebrate lineage”
– Notice the assumption of common decent and since there is no evidence of a step-by-step progression from agnathans to humans, the Darwinists “MUST RELY” on these assumptions in their artwork to show the fabled evolution of the vertebrate eye. Highly suspicious
“The Devonian was an important period”
– To the accidental aggregation of stardust in an amoral purposeless blind pitiless indifferent cosmos, how do you justify what is “important”?
“Some spiders developed excellent eyesight and clever adaptations to squeeze the optics and neurologic equipment into very small spaces”
– Sounds very much like purposeful design rather than natural selection throwing together random mutations into “clever equipment” with efficiency and effectiveness.
“Shubin and his team discovered the fossil of Tiktaalik, which probably represents the transitional form from an aquatic animal to a terrestrial one”
– Probably?!?!? The contrary analysis of Tiktaalik exposes the evolutionary assumptions as impotent
“external eyelids appeared”
– They just appeared! The explanation missed a step or 10,000
“Although our knowledge of dinosaurian vision is limited, we can make some assumptions based on the last common ancestor, indirectly related creatures and extant progeny including direct descendants”
– At least they admitted to making assumptions in this part, but they do fail to admit their assumptions about the ancestors and descendants of dinosaurs. There are no fossils of dinosaur ancestors. The evidence for dinosaur ancestors is completely missing
“We can conclude much of this from the avian lineage as birds are living dinosaurs”
– Not recognizing their own assumptions that birds are the direct descendent of dinosaurs, they try to make their assumptions count as direct evidence. It’s just an assumption, and their conclusions is based on the assumption – not evidence
“It is not known for certain”
– Clearly, but that doesn’t stop the authors from crafting a story filled with assumptions
“The Old World monkeys were separated from the New World monkeys and evolved a third visual pigment”
– There’s that magic “evolved” word again. No details. Just “nature-dun-it” I’ve been told that evolution simply means ‘change’. If indeed evolution just means change, can we substitute ‘changed’ in for ‘evolved’? Here’s what it would look like: “The Old World monkeys were separated from the New World monkeys and CHANGED a third visual pigment”. Maybe not. ‘Evolved’ doesn’t just mean changed. There’s way more magic built into the usage of the term
“This third visual pigment is not the same one as found in fish, reptiles, or birds, and likely represents an error in duplication of the LWL visual pigment”
– Likely. More assumptions. Evolutionists assume that an accumulation of errors (mutations) produced all of life. It’s all they have to work with. But it strains the very limited of common sense to assert that you can gain function from an accumulation of brokenness
“they illustrate visual photopigment evolution in progress”
– Isn’t evolution ALWAYS supposed to be in progress? I guess they have to assert this because observations of fossils show that “abrupt appearance” and “stasis” are the norm. No progress
In their conclusion (for those intrepid readers, here’s your gift from the scientists who authored their paper!):
“We know from computer models, and deductive reasoning, that eyes can evolve quickly”
– No evidence? Just assumptions and intelligently designed (biased) algorithms that assert an evolution of the eye. This can’t be repeated enough: if there were evidence, they would have produced it in this article. But they didn’t. In their concluding paragraph they admit that the evolution of the eye is speculated based on a computer model. And it’s not just that they claimed eyes evolved – but that they evolved QUICKLY. The Grand Theory of Evolution has been taught that it takes lots of time to change creatures from one to another. It’s likely these authors are not familiar with the waiting time problem…although they should be.
As Christians we know that evolution cannot explain the emergence of the eye because it is contrary to what God has revealed in the Bible. But the analysis of the claims of the evolutionists has a purpose beyond just saying (from the Christian worldview) that evolution is in conflict with God’s Word, so evolution isn’t true. This purpose is to see if their claims (from their perspective) is legitimate. Do they indeed have evidence to support their claims? After reading through this article, you can see that their claims are impotent and the definitive answer is NO. There’s no need to be bullied when an evolutionist claims: “There’s a mountain of overwhelming evidence for evolution.” As I’ve done in this series of articles, I say “SHOW ME!” And when we peek behind the curtain, it’s one assumption built on another.
We can trust What God has revealed in his Word about the past, so we can trust Him about the future too
ApoloJedi 