Saturday 21 January 2017

Our Smart Eyes Defy Dawkinsian Explanations

Image courtesy of Paul Savage, Creative Commons (CC BY 2.0).




Joel Kontinen

Richard Dawkins’ view of the human eye is badly outdated.

And it seems that each new discovery makes his case less credible.

The backward wired retina is actually an example of clever design.

Many experts will say that bad design is no longer a viable option.

Research shows us that our eyes are amazing. Superb design would be an apt description.

The design of our eyes has inspired engineers to develop more efficient cameras.

A new study published online in the journal Current Biology found an intelligent reason for why we blink.

It shows that blinking “prompts eye muscles to keep our vision in line.”

An article in Science Daily gives us some details:

Every few seconds, our eyelids automatically shutter and our eyeballs roll back in their sockets. So why doesn't blinking plunge us into intermittent darkness and light? New research led by the University of California, Berkeley, shows that the brain works extra hard to stabilize our vision despite our fluttering eyes.

Scientists at UC Berkeley, Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, Université Paris Descartes and Dartmouth College have found that blinking does more than lubricate dry eyes and protect them from irritants
.”

Science Daily discloses what else happens:

Our brain repositions our eyeballs so we can stay focused on what we're viewing…

When our eyeballs roll back in their sockets during a blink, they don't always return to the same spot when we reopen our eyes. This misalignment prompts the brain to activate the eye muscles to realign our vision, said study lead author Gerrit Maus, an assistant professor of psychology at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore
.”

Everything is done for a purpose. Intelligent communication prompts our eyes to make the necessary corrections so we continue seeing.

Without this “powerful oculomotor mechanism … our surroundings would appear shadowy, erratic and jittery.”

They don’t. This is powerful evidence for intelligent design.

Source:

University of California - Berkeley. 2017. Why the lights don't dim when we blink: Blinking prompts eye muscles to keep our vision in line. Science Daily. (19 January).