TAYA ~ Teens and Young Adults

The human eye, according to scientists, is considered to suboptimal. This means that our eye evolved in a greedy fashion, choosing a design that wasn’t the best, but would do. Basically, think of our eye as instant gratification, but if the evolution of our eye was patient, we could have had an optimal eye. Our eye is considered suboptimal for a few reasons but a couple are: There is a blind spot in our eye, and light has to travel through a couple layers of cells before it hits our photoreceptors, decreasing visual acuity.
Now this assumes a couple of things:
1.) Scientists know what the best eye is out of every possible combination and in every environment. Basically, what this boils down to is that science must know everything about everything in order to safely say that our eye is suboptimal. This is ridiculous, as science clearly doesn’t know everything about everything because the scientific method is being used still.
2.) This view doesn’t allow mutations and regressive adaptation to account for the differences in the eye. When we were created by God, we were perfect. After sin entered the world, how we functioned biologically began to break down very slow, mostly through the accumulation of mutations.
But, I know God is perfect, and creating a suboptimal eye would never happen, as God continually repeated after each day of creation that “It was good”. So how do we reconcile this?
1.) Maybe eyes, when we were first created were not used so much for seeing as we think of today, but more for perceiving. At creation, man was in constant communion with God. There is literally nothing more he could need. Perhaps eyes were there to literally see the glory of God. I have no idea what this would look like, but I imagine it would be more of a perception. Kind of like seeing the actual joy of a person. Like I said, communion with God is the most important thing, so everything else would be sub-par, and that would include acute vision. Genesis 3:7 then says that once Adam and Eve sinned, their eyes were opened. Why would they not be open before? They wouldn’t be open before if they weren’t needed for actual perception, because right after they were opened, they realized that they were naked. Shouldn’t they have known they were naked before? No, they were perceiving the glory of God, and the eyes they had then were perfectly made to do so.
2.) Once there was sin in the world, biological processes began to fail. Mutations began to accumulate in the genome, causing problems. And body parts that were perfectly suited for the pre-sin world are not so perfect anymore, namely eyes. I don’t believe that our eyes have changed much at all since we were first created. There might have been slight modifications, but nothing suggesting a complete rework. So there may have been mutations that might be advantageous in certain environments, but in today’s age, those mutations cause more problems for our eyes (like using a less efficient protein for some process). Also, there was a very severe population bottleneck with Noah’s flood, which effectively destroyed much of the variation we once had, only further compounding suboptimal eye problems.
Human eyes may be suboptimal based on our sinful world. But to suggest that because our eyes are suboptimal means there can’t be a creator is a bit of stretch, especially considering the people who say this won’t even allow a proper counter-argument due to its super-natural nature.

Eric

I am a 21 year old senior at the University of Michigan studying General Biology. After I graduate, I want to got o Pharmacy School to get my PharmD degree and one day own a retail pharmacy. I love to cycle, for pleasure, commuting and work. I also love almost anything relating to technology from news to repairing a computer. I joined TAYA to write apologetic-related blogs, as that is another core passion of mine. I got involved with apologetics my senior year in high school and it really confirmed my faith for me. It is also an area I think the majority of Christians are severely lacking in, so I always enjoy teaching other christians (and non-christians too) why their faith isn't blind! Sometimes the topics I write about aren't very clear, so don't be afraid to email me or ask me (via comment) to explain something more! There is no point in not understanding something because it is likely I didn't explain something well! See you around!