Updated: Sunday, January 2, 2005
The Eye
Revealing the Creator's brilliance and glory through the miracle of the Eye
Many thanks to Dr. Jim Livengood, specialist
in diseases of the eye and contact lenses
The Cornea...coincidence or created?
From the top of your head to the bottom of your feet, all cells are supplied with life-giving oxygen that is delivered by the heart, lungs, and blood vessel system. That is, all cells except for the ones that comprise one particular tissue…….the cornea (the clear portion through which light passes in the front of the eye). If there were blood vessels and blood cells racing through the corneal tissue, we would not be able to see. Compared to light wavelengths, the relatively giant red blood cells would interfere with the transmission of light to the retina in the back of the eye. The cornea, therefore, is the only tissue in the body that, due to its function, cannot have life-giving oxygen delivered to it by the bloodstream. Amazingly, the cornea is also the only tissue in the body that does not get its oxygen from the blood system. Coincidence? No, it was an ingenious move. The Creator enabled the cornea to get its oxygen supply directly from the air. The cornea has its own private breathing ability.
Corneal structure and function: The Cornea is composed of 5 cell layers: Epithelium, Bowman's Layer, Stroma, Descemet's Membrane, and Endothelium. The cornea protects the rest of the eye from foreign material and germs, but it also acts as the eye's outermost lens, focusing the entry of light into the eye. The cornea contributes 65-75% of the eye's total focusing power!!
If the cornea did not first appear [some would say the cornea "evolved"] 100% totally functional, then the eye would lack its protection and lose most of its function! The rest of the eye just couldn't wait for the eons of years it would have supposedly taken for the cornea to "evolve" to a point where it was functional!
The Retina--brilliant design, brilliant Creator!
Retinal photoreceptors: High
density, Extreme sensitivity, Ingenious filters, Phenomenal processors:
The retina contains photoreceptors that can be compared to
transistors, though a photoreceptor is much more complex. In the foveal area
(the very center) of the retina, there are 200,000 of these photoreceptors
FOR EVERY ONE SQUARE MILLIMETER OF RETINAL AREA. Phenomenal! The high technology
of the computer chip (100,000 transistors in a 7 millimeter area) does not
even come close to the retina in complexity. One type of photoreceptor, called
the rod, has a dynamic range of about 10 billion to one. Modern photographic
film has a dynamic range of only about one thousand to one. This means that
when you are out on a dark night with only starlight in the sky, the rod
can pick up a single photon of light and see it. Further, the retina is designed
to pull off an amazing “processing” trick. It wants at least
six rod receptors in the same area to pick up the same photon light signal
before it “believes” that it has really seen light and sends
it to the brain. This happens so that the person does not see static at night.
Yet, these rods, so extremely sensitive to light, bleach out in the bright
daylight so that they don’t work as efficiently. In essence, the rod “volume
control” is turned way down so that the sunlight does not fire off
the rods and cause them to blind the eye with light awareness. Again, the
brilliance of pulling off that design is beyond comprehension.
Ten
billion
retinal calculations occur every second before the image even heads back
to the brain.
____________________________________________________________________________
John
Stevens, Ph.D. in physiology and biomedical engineering says,
“ To simulate 10 milliseconds of the complete processing
of even a SINGLE nerve cell from the retina would require the solution
of about 500
simultaneous non-linear differential equations done 100 times. It would require
several minutes of processing time on our fastest supercomputers. If we keep
in mind that there are over 10 million such nerve cells interacting with
each other in the retina, we realize that it
would take a minimum of a hundred years of high speed computer processing
time to simulate what
takes place
in your eye MANY TIMES every second.”
____________________________________________________________________________
The retina keeps repairing itself constantly. Wouldn’t it be nice if the Pentium computer chip repaired itself when it went bad!? Now that would be a sophisticated design accomplishment.
The Retina photoreceptors: How do they compare to a comparable computer
chip?
A computer chip needed to perform
these functions will need to weigh about 100 pounds in order to accomplish
what the retina does. This “dream chip” would also have to occupy
10,000 cubic inches of space. In comparison, the retina is almost weightless
and occupies only .0003 (that’s three ten-thousandths) cubic inches
of space. The “dream chip” would need about 1 million gates in
it (transistors that act like one way valves), whereas the actual retina
has twenty five billion gates in it. The circuit layout of this “dream
chip” would be two dimensional whereas the retina is three dimensional.
Remember that this retinal engineering feat was designed several thousand
years ago by the Living God.
Inside out is best!
The photoreceptors themselves are buried underneath
layers of nerve cells. That fact causes the light to have to pass through
layers of nerve “hardware” before it can get down to the photoreceptors.
This “backwards” design
turns out to be indispensable. There is an enormous metabolic activity going
on in those photoreceptors. If the photoreceptors were sitting out on top
of the nerve layer, they would have much less access to the nutrient supply
which is vital in keeping them fully operational. Without immediate access
to the nutrients, one blast of sunlight would render the photoreceptors inactive
for long periods of time while they “recharged.” Therefore, it
makes a lot more sense to have the photoreceptors in contact with the choroid,
the bottom most layer with its very rich blood supply that cases the inside
of the eye ball and nourishes the retina. In other words, inside out is best!
The Retina : Did it evolve? What good would a partly functioning eye be?
A halfway functioning eye is worthless. It can’t see! If the eye’s pupil did not “evolve” exactly at the same moment and exactly at the right distance from the photoreceptors, the eye wouldn’t see. If the retinal nerves did not “evolve” exactly at the same moment as the pupil did, the eye wouldn’t see. If the optic nerve (which carries the light “images” to the brain) did not “evolve” exactly at the same moment as the retinal nerves, the eye wouldn’t see. If area 17 of the occipital lobe in the brain (the part of the brain that “sees”) did not “evolve” exactly at the same moment as the optic nerve, the eye wouldn’t see. Hence, unless the entire eye with all of its advanced intricacies simultaneously came into existence at exactly the same moment, the eye will not work. It will not see.
Therefore, in regards to the eye, what happens to the evolutionary argument that mutational features which improve a creature’s chance for survival get passed on to succeeding generations? A partly developed eye is no improvement whatsoever to the creature that possesses it. Since it would not see, it would be worthless. If worthless, there is no reason for a partly developed eye to get passed on in its halfway development while it awaits further mutational improvements. How would evolution know that the partly developed eye would eventually be an improvement to its owner? It wouldn’t. The eye cannot therefore be a product of evolution. Instead, it screams out that there is a master Designer, an ingenious Creator. The eye testifies to the Glory of God.
What would we think of a person who saw a computer chip, a little wafer of silicon that had the complexity of 100,000 transistors in a thin 7 millimeter square shape with prongs sticking out of it in just the right places such that it can be plugged into its proper location and instantly work. And then said, “Wow, look what a series of accidents of fire, water, gravity, sparks, chemicals, and wind created. Isn’t it marvelous?” We would think that person a confused. Yet, that is precisely what evolutionists think about the human eye, a far more complex system than our most advanced computer chips.
"I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful, I know that full well."
[Psalm 139:14]
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