What did Darwin mean when he said...?

Question

“To suppose that the eye . . . could have been formed by [evolution], seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree.”

Answer 1

I am amazed how the answers to your question are either wrong because of prejudice, lying or just ill informed.
Darwin described the eye as one of the greatest challenges to his theory and he just could not explain it,in his own recorded words Darwin confessed,`To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances could havebeen formed by natural selection, seems I freely confess,absurd in the highest degree,(Origin of Species,p. 146)
The eye possesses 130million light sensitive rods and cones that convert light into chemical impulses,these signals travel at a rate of a billion per second to the brain,the problem for Darwin and his supporters was how so many intricate componenets could have independently evolved to work together perfectly when if just one single component did not function properly then nothing would work at all.
So the eye functions as a whole or it does not function at all.

Answer 2

The human eye is one of the best examples why "Intelligent Design" is a load of codswallop. The retina is not firmly attached to it's backing membrane and most of the blood vessels supplying it are in front of it, blocking some of the light arriving from the lens. The brain has to make up the bits that the eye does not see by inference and guesswork.

The televison camera is a designed analogue of the human eye and does not have it's power supply in the region between the lens and the light-sensitive screen. Neither would the human eye if it had been "designed".

What Mr. Darwin may have written 150 years ago is probably neither here nor there. The question has been settled by later scientists. Slavishily following everything in "The Origin of Speicies" (whatever edition) is something that scientists don't do, unlike those who put a great deal of faith in the Old Testament, (whatever interpretation).

Answer 3

When Darwin wrote the theory of evolution he made mention that it was a theory based on suppositions. He stated that if the theory of evolution was true then we would be sure to find billions upon billions of transitional fossils. That is to say we could map the evolutionary process by reason of the fossil record. He then stated that he felt archeology would support this in the future. The problem comes in the fact that evolutionists have never been able to find the transitional fossils. In fact the scientific world has been plagued with fraudulent claims by people who wanted to prove evolution so bad that they falsified their findings. See Darwin understood that there were difficulties with the theory. But he thought archeology would explain those difficulties. The fact is every evolutionist is a evolutionist because they refuse to accept the only other option and that is that God created the world. If you look hard you will find that evolutionists have tried with every means at their disposal to erase the fact that later in Darwin's life he refuted his own theory of evolution.

Answer 4

Here is the full quote in context

PS Christianity considers it a sin to knowingly bear false witness.
============================================
ORGANS OF EXTREME PERFECTION AND COMPLICATION.

To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree. When it was first said that the sun stood still and the world turned round, the common sense of mankind declared the doctrine false; but the old saying of Vox populi, vox Dei, as every philosopher knows, cannot be trusted in science. Reason tells me, that if numerous gradations from a simple and imperfect eye to one complex and perfect can be shown to exist, each grade being useful to its possessor, as is certainly the case; if further, the eye ever varies and the variations be inherited, as is likewise certainly the case; and if such variations should be useful to any animal under changing conditions of life, then the difficulty of believing that a perfect and complex eye could be formed by natural selection, though insuperable by our imagination, should not be considered as subversive of the theory. How a nerve comes to be sensitive to light, hardly concerns us more than how life itself originated; but I may remark that, as some of the lowest organisms in which nerves cannot be detected, are capable of perceiving light, it does not seem impossible that certain sensitive elements in their sarcode should become aggregated and developed into nerves, endowed with this special sensibility.

Answer 5

That it SEEMS absurd... he follows this quote with 'If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down. But I can find out no such case. ' Amongst possible explanations for the eye, and other things people once thought ridiculous.

Answer 6

He was reeling people in so that he could show them how it actually DID evolve.

Creationists gleefully quote this sentence again and again. Needless to say, they never quote what follows.

Darwin's fulsomely free confession turned out to be a rhetorical device. He was drawing his opponents towards him so that his punch, when it came, struck the harder.

The punch, of course, was Darwin's effortless explanation of exactly how the eye DID evolve by gradual degrees.

Answer 7

He meant it as an intro to the next few paragraphs in the book which explain how the eye could be formed by evolution.

He meant that it may seem very complex and difficult to explain, but is explainable, nonetheless.

Answer 8

It means that with the limited technology he had he couldn't figure it out.

Perhaps if he'd lived a few years later he wouldn't have said that. Oh and plus what the guy above me said.

Didn't he come up with a theory for it too.

Answer 9

Wow, David S! Darwin refuted his own theory? Can you please give me a link so that I can read this for myself? And could it please not be an anti-evolution website....

Answer 10

Dude, that was a misquote. They misquoted him