The Amazing Human Eye
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Back to By David C. Pack
The balance of this booklet contains a series of brief examinations of various examples reflecting God’s creative genius and bear testimony to a literal, divine creation. Each of these miracles of engineering defies atheists and evolutionists! Think carefully about what you are reading and ask yourself if even one of them could have evolved.
Begin with the human eye. This mechanism is spectacularly complex and is a particularly inspiring testimony to the greatness of God’s supreme intelligence.
Here are three statements from Dr. David N. Menton. The first represents the magnitude of difficulty in having the human eye evolve to its current state of extraordinary design and complexity:
“The most amazing component of the camera eye is its ‘film’ or retina. This light sensitive layer, which lines the back of the eye ball, is thinner than a sheet of Saran Wrap and is vastly more sensitive to a wider range of light than any man-made film. The best man-made film can handle a range of 1,000-to-one. By comparison, the human retina can handle a dynamic range of light of 10 billion-to-one (or 10 million times more) and can sense as little as a single photon of light in the dark! In bright daylight, the retina bleaches out and turns its ‘volume control’ way down so as not to overload.
“The light sensitive cells of the retina are like an extremely complex high gain amplifier. There are over 10 million such cells in the retina and they are packed together with a density of 200,000 (per millimetre) in the highly sensitive fovea. These photoreceptor cells have a very high rate of metabolism and must completely replace themselves about every 7 days! If you look at a very bright light such as the sun, they immediately burn out but are rapidly replaced in most cases. Because the retina is thinner than the wavelength of visible light it is totally transparent. Each of these minute photoreceptor cells is vastly more complex than the most sophisticated man-made computer.”
Now notice: “The evolutionist Dr. Ernest Mayer once said: It is a considerable strain on one’s credulity to assume that finely balanced systems such as certain sense organs (the eye of vertebrates or the bird’s feather) could be improved by random mutations.”
Even Darwin once said that the very thought of the complexity of the eye gave him chills. Here is another reason Darwin said this. This quote, while inspiring, certainly is chilling: “It has been estimated that 10 billion calculations occur every second in the retina before the light image even gets to the brain! It is sobering to compare this performance to the most powerful manmade computer. In an article published in the computer magazine, Byte (April 1985), Dr. John Stevens said: ‘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 one hundred times and would take at least several minutes of processing time on a Cray supercomputer. Keeping in mind that there are 10 million or more such cells interacting with each other in complex ways it would take a minimum of a hundred years of Cray time to simulate what takes place in your eye many times every second’” (Dr. David N. Menton, Ph.D., The Eye, Missouri Assoc. for Creation, Inc.—emphasis mine).
You are left to draw your own conclusions about how such a marvellous organism—the human eye—could have evolved. No wonder my own optometrist told me that he believes that the eye did not evolve. He understands that it could not! It was “invented” by the Great Inventor.
Contents
Australian Termites
Next, we look at a tiny, little-known creature—the Australian termite. This particular termite differs from all others. Actually, it is four creatures in one, and each depends on the others for continued existence. This termite represents a case in which you cannot have one without all the others. Consider this:
“A curiosity I studied in microbiology class was a microorganism called Mixotricha Paradoxa that lives in the gut of Australian termites. When it was first discovered, it looked as if it was covered with a bunch of curly hairs. Looking at it closer, it was revealed that these were not hairs at all, but spirochetes, which were a totally different type of microorganism. On the Mixotricha, there were bumps or appendages where the spirochetes attached, and bacillus which lodged on the other side of the bump.
The spirochetes provided a means of locomotion for the entire colony of microorganisms. They are three totally different germs that decided to live together in a community. So, what you have is an interdependence between a large microorganism, a spirochete, a bacillus, an Australian termite, and even the trees the termite feed upon. I suppose if you are an evolutionist, you would have to believe that at one point in time they formed a committee and decided to all work together; the Mixotricha ‘developing’ bumps where the spirochetes could bury their heads and behind which the bacillus could hide; all of whom ‘decided’ to live in the gut of a termite” (Douglas B. Sharp, The Revolution Against Evolution, ch. 5—emphasis mine).
Obviously, this illustrates the case for special creation of all these creatures at the same time. They could not have developed separately and ever made it to the point where they could “rendezvous” and forever spend their existence interdependent and together.
Koalas and Eucalyptus Trees
Most are familiar with cuddly koala “bears” and have at least heard of Eucalyptus trees. They have a special relationship. Each is native to only one place on earth—Australia. Koalas eat nothing but eucalyptus leaves, often living their entire lives in one grove. They also derive moisture from these leaves because they almost never drink water.
Koalas possess specific microorganisms in their digestive systems necessary to break down the elements in eucalyptus leaves that are toxic to every other creature. These toxins are actually converted into vitamins. How did koalas evolve, unless they were created with these microorganisms already present in their stomachs? Without them, they would have eaten eucalyptus leaves and died. Yet their systems are so specific that they can only survive by eating eucalyptus leaves. Many naturalists consider them to have “the most advanced digestive system on the planet.” Their low 5% protein intake, with tannins and toxins, would kill other animals.
To reject special creation by a God, evolutionists are forced to conclude, “What luck for koalas that just the right microorganisms entered their systems at the exact same time that they developed a taste for eating only eucalyptus leaves.” This proves that God created koalas.
Whales and Dolphins
The next quote demonstrates the impossibility of whales and dolphins evolving to their present state. It lies in the context of a larger statement about why there is no fossil record demonstrating various stages of transition in their development:
“We can demonstrate one such transition problem by using the example of dolphins and whales. These mammals bear their young alive and breathe air, yet spend their entire lifetime in the sea. Presumably, in order for dolphins and whales to have evolved, they must have originated from a land mammal that returned to the water and changed into a sea creature. But dolphins and whales have so many remarkable features upon which their survival depends that they couldn't have evolved! It would be a lot like trying to change a bus into a submarine one part at a time, all the while it is travelling at 60 miles per hour.
“The following is a list of transitions evolutionists have to account for in the dolphin in its evolution from some unknown land dwelling pre-dolphin: (1) The nose would have to move to the back of the head. (2) Feet, claws, or tail would be exchanged for fins and flippers. (3) It would have to develop a torpedo shaped body for efficient swimming in the water. (4) It would have to drink sea water and desalinize it. (5) It's entire bone structure and metabolism would have to be rearranged. (6) It would need to develop a sophisticated sonar system to search for food.
“Could the dolphin acquire these features gradually one at a time over a period of millions of years? What about the transitional stages? Would they have survived with just some of these features? Why is there a total absence of transitional forms fossilized?
“Consider the whale and its enormous size in comparison with the plankton it feeds upon. The whale is a nautical vacuum cleaner, with a baleen filter. While it was ‘developing’ this feature, what did it feed upon before? For me, it takes a great stretch of the imagination to picture the evolution of dolphins and whales” (Douglas B. Sharp, The Revolution Against Evolution, ch. 5.).
It must be concluded that whales and dolphins were created!
What About Hummingbirds?
The briefest overview of birds reveals some remarkable facts. Virtually every bird builds its nest in a different way. Courtship behavior, sexual roles and reproductive activity are different among nearly every species. In one bird, the roles of the male gathering the food while the female sits on the eggs are reversed. And when did the sexes diverge—for birds or any other animal? (Even some plants are male and female. How did this happen?)
Hummingbirds represent true genius. They weigh one-fourteenth of an ounce and, like helicopters, can fly forward, backward, sideways and can hover in mid-air. Their flight mechanism is incredibly complex and the quills in their feathers are stronger for their weight than any structure designed by man. These quills constantly change shape to adjust for wind and air pressure. The leading vane of their feather functions much like a propeller, to offer lift and propulsion.
Three-quarters of their entire weight is in their wing muscles. They possess a kind of jet-assisted takeoff mechanism that they can use during landings and takeoffs. Air flows only one way into their lungs so as to bring a constant supply of oxygen for such strenuous high-speed flight. They also possess retractable landing gear, a migration navigation system, streamlining and camouflage and an extraordinary respiration system where they can store extra air inside their hollow bones. In turn, this provides buoyancy and an internal air conditioner. Hummingbirds must eat continuously to satisfy their high level of metabolism. To stop eating would mean death. Only by undergoing a kind of “hibernation” at night, can they survive. Could all this have evolved or just happened?
Like the bumblebee, which also appears to completely defy the laws of physics in its ability to fly, the hummingbird is just as unique but is practically an aerodynamic perfection. Only God could have made such an efficient flying machine. No aeronautical engineer has ever designed anything close to this tiny marvel of flight!