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Though if it were really so bad, wouldn't evolution have gotten rid of it by now?

Nope, since it doesn't make a big enough difference to determine whether or not you see food/threats/mates/etc. Thus, natural selection is neutral toward it.

It is, however, a fatal objection to the theory that the eyes were desinged by a perfect intelligence, since such a designer would do the job so it was right, not "good enough for government work". (However, an intelligent design theory postulating a flawed designer -- perhaps the Earth was seeded by space aliens or something -- remains possible.)

It is, however, a fatal objection to the theory that the eyes were desinged by a perfect intelligence, since such a designer would do the job so it was right, not "good enough for government work".

This presumes that the designer did not deliberately create the retinas with the flaw. It is also possible that a 'perfectly-able designer' deliberately inserted the flaw for some unknown purpose.

Why do you think the job wasn't done right? Just because you would have done it differently, means exactly squat. God must think of the big picture, and His reasons cannot be quantified by those of limited existence. How do you know that He wasn't thinking of some perfectly excellent reason for making us have certain faults in our physical makeup? If we were all physically perfect, mankind would be a completely different species.

"Were it not for the existence of sin in the world, says Calvin, human beings would believe in God to the same degree and with the same natural spontaneity displayed in our belief in the existence of other persons, or an external world, or the past. This is the natural human condition; it is because of our presently unnatural sinful condition that many of us find belief in God difficult or absurd. The fact is, Calvin thinks, one who does not believe in God is in an epistemically defective position-rather like someone who does not believe that his wife exists, or thinks that she is a cleverly constructed robot that has no thoughts, feelings, or consciousness. Thus the believer reverses Freud and Marx, claiming that what they see as sickness is really health and what they see as health is really sickness."

"Obviously enough, the dispute here is ultimately ontological, or theological, or metaphysical; here we see the ontological and ultimately religious roots of epistemological discussions of rationality. What you take to be rational, at least in the sense in question, depends upon your metaphysical and religious stance. It depends upon your philosophical anthropology. Your view as to what sort of creature a human being is will determine, in whole or in part, your views as to what is rational or irrational for human beings to believe; this view will determine what you take to be natural, or normal, or healthy, with respect to belief. So the dispute as to who is rational and who is irrational here can't be settled just by attending to epistemological considerations; it is fundamentally not an epistemological dispute, but an ontological or theological dispute. How can we tell what it is healthy for human beings to believe unless we know or have some idea about what sort of creature a human being is? If you think he is created by God in the image of God, and created with a natural tendency to see God's hand in the world about us, a natural tendency to recognize that he has been created and is beholden to his creator, owing his worship and allegiance, then of course you will not think of belief in God as a manifestation of wishful thinking or as any kind of defect at all. It is then much more like sense perception or memory, though in some ways much more important. On the other hand, if you think of a human being as the product of blind evolutionary forces, if you think there is no God and that human beings are part of a godless universe, then you will be inclined to accept a view according to which belief in God is a sort of disease or dysfunction, due perhaps, to a sort of softening of the brain."

"So the dispute as to who is... healthy---and who diseased..."