The Extraordinary Design of the Eye

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By Harun Yahya

When you look around you out in the open air or in a broad field, you can readily see all objects farthest from you and closest to you in all their colors, shapes, and sizes. This view, which you have obtained without making any effort, is produced as a result of numerous complex reactions and interactions in your body. Let us take a closer look at these complex operations.

The Macro-structures of the Eye

The human eye has a fully automatic mechanism that works perfectly. It is made up of the combination of 40 different basic parts and all these parts have critical functions in the process of seeing. Any defect or disability in even one of these parts would make seeing impossible.

The transparent layer in the front part of the eye is the cornea. Right behind it lies the iris. Giving the eye its color, the iris adjusts its size automatically according to the sharpness of light thanks to the muscles attached to it. For example, if we are in a dark place, the iris widens to take in as much light as possible. When light increases, it shrinks to decrease the amount of light entering the eye.

The automatic adjustment system in the iris works like this: The moment light enters the eye, a nerve impulse travels to the brain and gives a message about the existence and degree of brightness of the light. The brain immediately sends back a signal and gives orders as to how much the muscles around the iris should contract.

Another eye mechanism working parallel to this structure is the lens. The duty of the lens is to focus the light entering the eye onto the retina layer in the back of the eye. Thanks to the movement of the muscles around the lens, light rays entering the eye from different angles and distances can always be focused onto the retina.

All the systems we have mentioned are far smaller yet far more superior to the mechanical devices designed by the use of the latest technology in order to imitate the eye. Even the most advanced artificial imaging system in the world remains extremely simple and primitive compared to the eye.

When we think of the effort and knowledge that has been put into developing these artificial imaging systems, we can get a grasp on the superior creation that has gone into designing the eye.

The Micro-world of the Eye


If we examine a single cell in the eye at the microscopic level, the superiority of this creation will be further revealed.

Let us suppose that we look at a crystal bowl full of fruit. The light rays coming from this bowl to our eye pass through the cornea and iris and are focused on the retina by the lens.

So, what happens in the retina so that the retinal cells can perceive light?

When light particles, also called photons, strike the cells in the retina, they produce a cascading effect like a row of dominoes carefully arranged one after the other. The first of these dominoes in the retinal cells is a molecule called 11-cis-retinal. When a photon of light interacts with it, this molecule changes shape. This forces a change in the shape of another protein, rhodopsin, to which it is tightly bound. Now, rhodopsin takes such a form that it can stick to another protein, called transducin, which was already present in the cell, but with which it could not previously interact due to the incompatibility of its shape. After this union, another molecule called GDP also joins in this group.

So at this stage we have two proteins, rhodopsin and transducin, in addition to a chemical molecule called GDP bound together.

The process, however, has just begun. The compound called GDP now has the proper form to bind to another protein called phospho-diesterase, which always exists in the cell. After this bonding, the shape of the molecule that is produced will trigger a mechanism that will start a series of chemical reactions in the cell.

This mechanism changes the ion concentration in the cell and produces electrical energy. This energy stimulates the nerves lying right at the back of the retinal cell. Consequently, the image that came to the eye as a photon of light sets out on its journey in the form of an electrical signal. This signal contains visual information about the object outside.

In order for seeing to take place, the electrical signals produced in the retinal cell have to be transmitted to the center of vision in the brain. Nerve cells, however, are not directly connected to one another: there is a tiny gap between their junction points. How then does the electrical stimulus continue on its way?

At this point, another set of complex operations takes place. The electrical energy is transformed into chemical energy without any loss of the information being carried and in this way the information is transmitted from one nerve to the next. The chemical carriers located at the junction points of nerve cells successfully convey the information contained in the stimulus coming from the eye from one nerve to another. When transferred to the next nerve, the stimulus is again converted into an electrical signal and continues on its way until it reaches another junction point.

Making its way to the center of vision in the brain in this manner, the signal is compared to the information in the center of memory and the image is interpreted.

Finally, we see the bowl full of fruit, which we viewed before, by virtue of this perfect system made up of hundreds of small details.

All these amazing operations take place in a fraction of a second.

Moreover, since the act of seeing takes place continuously, the system repeats these steps over and over. For example, the molecules playing a part in the chain reaction in the eye are restored to their original state every time and the reaction starts all over again.

Of course at the same time, many other equally complex operations are taking place in other parts of the body. We may simultaneously hear the sound of the image we are viewing, and depending on circumstances, we may sense its odor and taste and feel its touch. Meanwhile, millions of other operations and reactions have to continue without interruption in our body if we are to go on living.

Black Box Confounds Darwinism


The primitive science of Darwin’s day was aware of none of this. Despite that however, even Darwin realized the extraordinary design in the eye and confessed his despair in a letter he wrote to Asa Grey on April 3rd 1860 in which he said,

“The very thought of the eye makes me cold all over.”

The biochemical properties of the eye that have been discovered by modern science dealt a greater blow to Darwinism than Darwin could ever have imagined.

The complete process of seeing that we have summarized in simple outline here is even more complex in its details. However even this summary is enough to show what a glorious system has been created in our body.

The reactions taking place in the eye are so complex and so finely tuned that it is quite unreasonable to think that these are a product of chance occurrences as the theory of evolution claims.

Michael Behe, a recognized professor of biochemistry, makes this comment on the chemistry of the eye and the theory of evolution in his book Darwin’s Black Box:

“Now that the black box of vision has been opened, it is longer enough for an evolutionary explanation of that power to consider only the anatomical structures of whole eyes, as Darwin did in the nineteenth century. Each of the anatomical steps and structures that Darwin thought were so simple actually involves staggeringly complicated biochemical processes that cannot be papered over with rhetoric.” (Michael J. Behe, Darwin’s Black Box, p. 22)

But as we have seen, the theory of evolution is unable to account for a single system in a single living cell, much less explain life as a whole.

Having utterly demolished the hypothesis that life is “simple”, science has demonstrated to humanity a very important fact.

Life is not the product of unplanned happenings. It is the result of a perfect creation.

The perfect creation of a superior Creator Who brought life into being, Who is God, the Lord of all the Worlds.

It is He Who created both humans and all other living beings. And man is responsible to his Lord Who created him.

God reminds man of this truth in the Qur’an:

“It is He Who has created hearing, sight and hearts for you. What little thanks you show!” (Surat al-Muminun: 78)

“They said, “Glory be to You!” We have no knowledge except what You have taught us. You are the All-Knowing, the All-Wise.” (Surat al-Baqara: 32)

The author, who writes under the pen-name Harun Yahya, was born in Ankara in 1956. He studied arts at Istanbul's Mimar Sinan University and philosophy at Istanbul University. Since the 1980s, the author has published many books on political, faith-related and scientific issues. Harun Yahya is well known as an author who has written very important works disclosing the imposture of evolutionists, the invalidity of their claims and the dark liaisons between Darwinism and bloody ideologies. Some of the books of the author have been translated into English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Albanian, Arabic, Polish, Russian, Bosnian, Indonesian, Turkish, Tatar, Urdu and Malay and published in the countries concerned.
 
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