[shubi]

God didn't design the eye, natural selection did.

The human eye receptors do not face directly toward the image as hawks or eagles do. We have a bundle of nerves right in the middle of the retina that causes a blind spot that our brain learns to ignore.

The whole point of me mentioning this was to show you that it is ridiculous to accuse God of design flaws. I was not calling God stupid. Just the opposite. I respect God too much to think that He is not perfect.

[Theo]

Shubi. Please, please, please reconsider your opinion on the design of the human eye. Please consider the information I found on this page:

http://www.answersingenesis.org/pbs_nova/0924ep1.asp

You'll have to scroll down to the section that starts "Is there bad design?" Here are excerpts:

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The retina can detect a single photon of light, and it's impossible to improve on this sensitivity! More than that, it has a dynamic range of 10 billion (1010) to one; that is, it will still work well in an intensity of 10 billion photons.

Another amazing design feature of the retina is the signal processing that occurs even before the information is transmitted to the brain, in the retinal layers between the ganglion cells and the photoreceptors.

The idea that the eye is wired backward comes from a lack of knowledge of eye function and anatomy.

He explained that the nerves could not go behind the eye, because that space is reserved for the choroid, which provides the rich blood supply needed for the very metabolically active retinal pigment epithelium (RPE). This is necessary to regenerate the photoreceptors, and to absorb excess heat. So it is necessary for the nerves to go in front instead. The claim on the program that they interfere with the image is blatantly false, because the nerves are virtually transparent because of their small size and also having about the same refractive index as the surrounding vitreous humour. In fact, what limits the eye's resolution is the diffraction of light waves at the pupil (proportional to the wavelength and inversely proportional to the pupil's size); so alleged improvements of the retina would make no difference.

It's important to note that the 'superior' design of Miller with the (virtually transparent) nerves behind the photoreceptors would require either:

• The choroid in front of the retina—but the choroid is opaque because of all the red blood cells, so this design would be as useless as an eye with a hemorrhage!

• Photoreceptors not in contact with the RPE and choroid at all—but then it would probably take months before we could drive after we were photographed with a flashbulb.

Some evolutionists claim that the cephalopod eye is somehow 'right', i.e. with nerves behind the receptor, and the program showed photographs of these creatures (e.g. octopus, squid) during this segment. But no one who has actually bothered to study these eyes could make such claims with integrity. In fact, cephalopods don't see as well as humans, and the octopus eye structure is totally different and much simpler. It's more like 'a compound eye with a single lens'.

See also the detailed response by the ophthalmologist Peter Gurney to the question Is the inverted retina really 'bad design'? This article addresses the claim that the blind spot is bad design, by pointing out that the blind spot occupies only 0.25% of the visual field, and is far (15 degrees) from the visual axis so the visual acuity of the region is only about 15% of the foveola, the most sensitive area of the retina right on the visual axis. So the alleged defect is only theoretical, not practical. The blind spot is not considered handicap enough to stop a one-eyed person from driving a private motor vehicle. The main problem with only one eye is the lack of stereoscopic vision.