You seem to be presenting these two citations as if they originate from the same author; they don’t. The second is from R.L. Gregory’s Eye and Brain: The Physiology of seeing. Whether this is because you forgot or whether it is because you simply cut and pasted them from another website that didn’t know (or chose not to explain this is order to create a misleading impression), in any of these cases the juxtaposition of these quotes makes it seem that they originate from the same source and that the one follows directly from the other and that they are therefore contextually relevant.
If you look carefully at the quotes I made, you will observe that they are set in two different sets of quote marks.
You are really sinking fast if that’s all you can pick on!!
Regardless of this, however, the references only tell a part of the story. For example, evidence from fossil trilobites shows that their visual sense varied amongst different species (some were quite blind) and that among those animals with eyes there was a wide variety of structures.
We are discussing this particular specimen with the compound eyes I have described. Your problem is to account for the origin and existence of those. So account already.
This conclusion does not follow from your references and nor have you shown that the trilobite’s eye was ‘advanced’ (whatever ‘advanced’ is supposed to mean in this context – your sources simply say that the design is ‘optimal’). I would also point out that trilobites have been extinct for millions of years and therefore the ‘eye structure’ of these animals exists ‘virtually unchanged’ only in other organisms
As I clearly pointed out, the trilobite eye was able to focus on near and distant objects at the same time, and function as a kind of night vision goggles. Wide angle lenses in cameras are among the most difficult to construct on the planet - yet these creatures managed it.
As for 'advanced' I thought that would be obvious to a keen intellect such as yours. Wide angle camera lenses were among the last to be invented, because of the spherical aberration that had to be overcome. Leitz managed it, using glasses with degrees of curvature invented by professor Max Berek, and with different secret chemical compositions.
All that points out quite clearly that the trilobite eye, inserted as it is into a living organism and not a mechanical device, was designed by a far greater Designer. If you don't believe that, you might like to try it some time.
Incidentally, I was given to understand (by David Attenborough) that calcium sulphate crystals were the only substance in the universe which had the required refractive index to make the necessary correction in the trilobite eye. And guess what? Calcium sulphate is the substance used!
Now, did 'evolution' manage to figure that one out brainlessly, or did a designer do the job perfectly?
Evolutionary theory does not posit that any biological structure will axiomatically change dramatically over time, only that changes that offer advantages to organisms will prevail in populations through natural selection. Thus again your conclusion does not follow, and certainly not from the bald quotes you have provided. ‘The unchanging structure’ could be equally regarded on the evidence you have presented (i.e. very little) as ‘direct testimony’ to the effect that this ‘eye structure’ has evolved to an largely optimum point for the animals that express it.
You keep begging the question. You keep on assuming that they 'evolved' somehow. That, I remind you, is what you have to establish, and have signally failed to do.
Let me touch the most vulnerable point about all this (from your POV).
Let me grant you that this magnificent structure evolved somehow. The predecessor of the trilobite didn't have an eye (one supposes), and now suddenly (or gradually, if you prefer) here is one with an eye.
The eye works perfectly, focussing clearly on distant and near objects. The messages reaching the creature's 'brain' are all perfect.
Unfortunately, the required instincts, which will interpret the signals being received, do not exist.
Extinction of the species/group follows immediately, because it doesn't know what's on the starboard quarter.
But the animals existed for millions of years (and I've not the slightest doubt that they'll find some in the ocean somewhere - remember the coelacanth!!! - because nobody's told them they are extinct). Successfully.
Therefore, they knew how to use the eyes when they got them. Where did that information come from? And how did it get into their genome?
Over to you.
.
Let us grant your ‘design’ premise: you have yet to show that ‘design’ cannot occur through naturalistic processes, in other words the evolutionary algorithm – modify, repeat if successful, otherwise discard – is not a ‘design’ process.
You're struggling against the facts, LK.
Evolution is not a design process. It depends on random mutations, occurring in random parts of the chromosomes or genes.
You can argue that natural selection in non-random. But the material on which that selection has to work, is generated randomly: worse, those mutations, as many studies have shown, are all neutral or deleterious.
To use Dembski's line of argument, intelligent design is demonstrated by the existence of 3 elements:
1 It is a very complex structure, not a simple one that may have just happened.
This eye just happens to be one of the most complex ever to appear on the planet, as we’ve shown.
2 It has a specific function, which it fulfils well – and we know that because the eye has persisted unchanged for millions of years.
3 It makes use of information – which blind mutations cannot do. The high quality of the information has been shown already.
Your limited references have not shown the ‘eye structure’ of the particular trilobites referred to ‘just happened’’; at best they show that the ‘eye structure’ has been retained by many other animals. This is not evidence against evolution. The existence of different species of trilobites with different types and complexity of eyes demonstrates wide variation in the Class, itself prima facie evidence for evolution.
Please let me remind you: the problem facing you is that the eyes DO EXIST. What happened from then on is a side issue. You have to account for the
origin of that eye, and of the powering instincts.
That is what we’re all waiting for with bated breath. I’m afraid we’ll die of asphyxiation or old age ere long, at this rate.
Given that the eye has only ‘persisted unchanged for millions of years’ in many species that were not actually in existence ‘millions of years’ ago, what conclusion might you draw from this and why?
The conclusion is that it is such a perfect design that it needed no alteration, and was therefore placed in those organisms.
Evolution cannot show how they could have evolved in such diverse groups. And please, spare me the usual nonsense about ‘convergent evolution’ which I again point out, is begging the question.
How is it ‘clear evidence of specificity of the design’? It seems to be no more than ‘clear evidence’ of how the lens functions. That it functions in a manner similar to cameras is not evidence that just because cameras were made by intelligent agents, animal eyes must be also.
You’re on very thin ice here, LK, and I’m certain that you know it.
We see the existence of a highly complex, brilliantly designed wide angle lens with night vision built in. Those are facts.
We have before us, two possibilities:
1 They just happened (by evolutionary, random processes – see above)
2 They were designed by a very intelligent designer.
As Newton said:
Was the Eye contrived without Skill in Opticks?
It saddens me that you reject possibility 2 in favour of the totally absurd possibility 1. P1 flies in the face of everything intelligent people know, and have ever experienced.
Why don’t you join the rest of the human race who would undoubtedly see that P2 is the only sensible one?
