Be Grateful for the Intelligent Design of Your Eyes

https://youtu.be/kboUBQnMP8w

Interesting talk on the eye.

Watch or don't up to you always.

Evolution explains how the eye came to be.

And?

And what? If you'd like to frame a question of some kind I'll try to provide an answer....

Can you give specifics?

I'm not a biologist so I have to defer to those with specialist knowledge & I think this may help, as long as you can view it?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01117gr#:~:text=Scientist%20and%20atheist%20Richard%20Dawkins,many%20millions%20of%20year%20ago. 

Not sure if the eye is a great example of ID.

Did you know the optic nerve of all vertebrates runs from the eye, down the neck, and wraps around the heart, only to go back up the to the brain almost right where it started?

This becomes a very long detour in species such as giraffes.

And?

Clicked on your link, it said it wasn't available in my area, whatever that means. What were the salient points you had in mind when you made your comment? I assume you had some even without this link.

I don't believe that's correct. The optic nerve is made up of a vast number of individual nerve fibers & follows the shortest route to the opposite hemisphere of the brain ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optic_nerve 

Found it! I knew there was something about the anatomy of giraffes that was very strange & it's this...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giraffe#Internal_systems 

"In mammals, the left recurrent laryngeal nerve is longer than the right; in the giraffe it is over 30 cm (12 in) longer. These nerves are longer in the giraffe than in any other living animal;[75] the left nerve is over 2 m (6 ft 7 in) long.[76] Each nerve cell in this path begins in the brainstem and passes down the neck along the vagus nerve, then branches off into the recurrent laryngeal nerve which passes back up the neck to the larynx. Thus, these nerve cells have a length of nearly 5 m (16 ft) in the largest giraffes"

Considering the points brought up in the link presented when you consider what the eye and everything connected to it does, you think there is nothing to the specified functional complexity that things of that nature just happen no big deal?

ANd this is eveidence AGAINST Intelligent /Design.

Not for.

After all, why would a designer route an optic nerve many yards on an unnecessary detour? 

There are many things like this we find in modern physiology, which are better explained by random mutation, than intelligent design.

But there are other things, better explained by ID. Is just that optic nerve isn't one of them.

Really? How many different body types all have eyes? How many different eyes are there? Do you think a non-thinking, unguided process did all of that for all of the lifeforms with eyes and worked out each eye they have, including giraffes? Simply seeing something that doesn't make sense to us now may be profoundly clever when we do. I think you are in error if you think this particular body has things about it you think could be done better.

It seems like @Stephen_33 's post #12 was skipped over.  Unfortunate, because he provides a crucial correction to the conversation: it is the RECURRENT LARYNGEAL NERVE of all vertebrates that wraps around the aortic arch and goes up to the larynx ("voice box")---NOT the optic nerve (for eyes/vision).  

As far as the argument in general, I think YECs have painted themselves into a corner--at least those who require design to be synonymous with perfection.  Saddles them w/many philosophical burdens beginning w/how to define "perfection" and the presumption that any human conception of "perfection" would or even could be equivalent to that of a transcendant being (where theoretically an infinite number of scenarios could exist---that could include elements humans label as "imperfect"---that could collectively function to fulfill some "perfect" cosmic plan that we can scarcely begin to understand).

I find some of the anti-design rhetoric problematic for the same reason: it makes presumptions about what the "mind" and purposes/goals of a Creator should or would be, which is not a question science can answer (peculiar, that the scientific community would even try, when so much effort is spent educating people about how science can't "test" or prove/disprove God).  

I've also become leery of suboptimal/anti-design claims, because similar to god-of-the-gaps reasoning there are too many examples of this backfiring, where additional study reveals functional purpose where we assumed there was none (vestigial organs/structures and "junk" DNA comes to mind).  Saying that, of course, is not an argument for design, which would then have to employ the same god-of-the-gaps type reasoning.  Rather, it's just to say that the business of trying to prove negatives (e.g., something doesn't have a function/optimal function) is historically not a successful venture.

Finally, as far as eye evolution is concerned, there is a staggering amount of research on this, far too much to cover.  Suffice it to say, while the origin of many genetic systems is still problematic, once we have the requisite regulatory genes, an amazing variety of functional-morphologies can be produced by simple "tinkering," genetic "switch" re-configuration and the like. 

For example, it used to be thought that eyes had to separately evolve some 40-60 different times independently of one another due to all the variation in types of eyes that exists in nature as @TruthMuse notes.  The evidence now supports a single, monophyletic origin for all eyes with the discovery of the Pax gene: a master control gene found in all animals from mammals to insects to jellyfish to flatworms that regulates the expression and sequence in which other genes are switched on/off to effectuate the development of a diverse range of different eye forms that we see in nature.

The existence of this same master control gene in all animals is yet another one of countless evidences for common ancestry.  So, once again, even if for argument sake it's all the result of intelligent design, then it would still only show that EVOLUTION was intelligently designed/directed.

Thanks for reposting. The optic nerve of most mammals is such a huge collection of nerve fibres that I realised straightaway that the claim must be wrong. I spotted that the same mistaken claim had been posted again & meant to challenge it but something must have distracted me & I lost track of it.

Either way, the very strange anatomy of the Giraffe does seem to pose some sticky questions for the creationists?

As someone who is quite short-sighted & has needed to wear spectacles from the age of 8, I can only take a rather jaundiced view of the OP's title...

Be Grateful for the Intelligent Design of Your Eyes

I find myself thinking, is that really the best your 'designer' could do?

Although it's often the case that non-believers like myself come to a topic created by a member of faith who is making a claim about design by a particular deity. Usually it's understood what the creationist has in mind by perfect design & what they regard as anything that falls short of that standard.

Rebutting the claims of a single creationist with a particular model of their 'God' in mind is possible I think but I agree that refuting the general argument of design is utterly impossible when no model of the designer or His/Her intentions are provided.

@Stephen_33  Agreed.  I think you're absolutely correct and spot on.