Question for Evolutionists, Creationists, Christians and Atheists and Agnostics, about Eye Evolution?

Question

I'm an Atheist and and Evolutionist, but I came across something last night while researching Creation Science.

The point was made that what would be the benefit to the creatures who would have been born with an incomplete eye during the process of Eye Evolution.

I don't believe there would have been a benefit to a creature swimming around the ocean with an incomplete eye, but logically we reason that there must have been hundreds of parent to child generation to generation of such creatures born with an incomplete eye.

Now, this doesn't mean "there must have been a God".

But it is interesting, not that this means "life is so complex, it had to have a designer",

does it, however, pose to modern science the question of how, for which inevitably science will improve the Theory of Evolution,

What are your thoughts please?

Answer 1

It started off as heat sensitivity. And slowly became able to detect light.

In this stage, it wasn't an eye, but was more a patch on the skin. Over time, it became concave so that it could detect direction.

The evolution of the eye is amazing. But the eye is not irreducbily complex.

Answer 2

Wrong. You're ignoring many other possibilities, the most obvious which could be that time itself only exists here, within this particular universe. And that it has no meaning "prior" to this universe, so your claims about beginnings, creators, etc. are all meaningless. I'm not saying this is the case. But I am saying that since you've ignored the most obvious of countless alternative explanations you need to sit down and do a little book-learnin' before making such an error again. When you ask a question you don't get to stipulate the only possible answers, either. Are you a fisherman or a lawyer?

Answer 3

There are currently living animals which demonstrate many different stages of eye development, from a rudimentary light-sensitive pigment spot that allows an organism to move toward light, to more complex eyes lacking a lens, to very complex eye structure with a lens. None of these is an "incomplete" eye. Each such structure is complete and serves the needs of the animal which possesses it. It is simply erroneous to think that no eye can function unless it has all the parts of the human eye.

Answer 4

The argument that the eye could not have evolved is most commonly invoked in questions such as "What good is half an eye?"

The assumption is that an incomplete eye would be completely useless for sight, and therefore an eye could never have evolved through the gradual, step-by-step progression required by modern evolutionary theory. However, this claim has been heavily disputed based on the plentiful evidence of suboptimal eyes in nature.

Such eyes, despite their shortcomings, tend to be dramatically more useful for organisms than no eyes at all would be: people with visual impairments are generally much more able to function normally than people who are completely blind, and there are millions of species of animals with significantly simpler eyes than humans that nonetheless thrive, and are in many cases much more successful than similar species with still poorer vision.

Thus eyes with decreased functionality, in humans and in numerous other species, still tend to be more beneficial than having no eyes at all.

Answer 5

My thoughts are that the incomplete eye discussed in evolution, is not worthless. It's an eye in developmental stages. A person with cataracts has a technically incomplete eye, because he or she cannot see (which is the point of eyes), but they are attributed with having worthless eyes and thus can't be real. You understand?

Answer 6

Of course there's benefit to an incomplete eye.
An organism able to detect just simple changes in light intensity (one or more photosensitive cells) is harder to sneak up on than a completely blind one. Succeedingly, an organism that's able to detect intensity and direction is even harder to sneak up on. And so on, and so on.
The same argument could be made for predatory organisms.

There are many very plausible theories on how the eye evolved gradually. Google it up.

Answer 7

An excellent question from a Atheist Evolutionist. I have another for you:

When Darwin made his observations, the cell was the smallest object known to man. Now of course, we know that the cell itself is composed of many, many parts, Darwin did not know this. What do you think his reaction would have been? Could the complexity of a single cell have happened by chance and if so, what were the intermediate forms of such? Were they alive?

Answer 8

I think you should avoid being sucked in by these creationist red herrings-they're designed to confuse not enlighten. "Incomplete" eyes are better than no eyes at all and complete eyes are even better still so eyes have just adapted and improved through the natural evolutionary process over eons of time.

Answer 9

misunderstanding about the evolution of the eye.

This is the 'irreducible complexity' thing isn't it? Of course it is based on our understanding of evolution as it was in the 70's or 80's, like so many of the creationists 'arguments'.

Luckily, since then we have advanced our theories. Sadly, they are still stuck in the same mire.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye#Evolution_of_eyes

Answer 10

You mean how will Evolution be perfected and fine-tuned as we move forward? I imagine through careful analysis and re-analysis of the fossil record and other environmental factors. The evidence is stronger now than ever in support of Evolution, that it really has become a scientific fact.