The night has a thousand eyes

I've got a few comments from a story in Creation/Evolution Headlines. (My favorite website on the Origins issue, and one I recommend highly.)

Quotes and comments;

1. 'You have a biological version of Photoshop in your eyes. That’s what Richard Robinson said in PLoS Biology.
"The eye is not a camera, and the retina is not a piece of film. Indeed, the retina might be better likened to a computer running Photoshop, given the extent of image processing that it performs before passing visual information along to the brain.'' [1.]

- So much for the 'idea' of Dawkins that the eye is a badly designed camera. What we see is that materialists always (always) underestimate the complexity of things. This is an unfailing rule; it's been true as long as the materialists have been giving us pronouncements (let's say several centuries, or more)

Believing that inert matter is the creator of all things, they necessarily believed that all things would be simple; and they've been proven wrong a million times. (Not that it's given them any humility; which is a story in itself, as you wonder how this is possible, how any creature could be so thick, so obtuse.)

The creationist on the other hand believes that an infinitely wise God created all things, and therefore is not surprised to see how complex things are (not that he's not astounded, not that he could have predicted the complexity in its details).

Over and over we see that biological organisms are not like machines but like software. This means that they were created by code not by mechanical application of physical laws working on matter; it means the source of all things is intelligence, not matter in motion, not random chance.

It takes intelligence to see, to produce vision; not mere mechanics. Matter couldn't build an eye because it has no intelligence and no foresight; has no goals. It takes intelligence to create code; as software is developed with a particular purpose in mind.

While it's a great feat to produce a Photoshop like piece of software (to run on a computer) it's orders of magnitude greater to produce 'Photoshop' in a living organism. By any reasonable analogy we should expect a greater intelligence was behind it, and that if it takes intelligence to operate Photoshop it takes intelligence to make eyesight possible, to write the code that makes it all happen automatically. (Despite what materialists say, the ID deduction is a sound one.)

This doesn't prove ID, but it makes any other explanation far more unlikely.

Dawkins was so impatient to dump on creation that he denounced the eye long before he had a clue what was involved in the process of human vision. The man has made a career of jumping to conclusions; to false conclusions that is. What sense does it make to critique something you don't understand? (But then, he's made a career out of doing just that.)

2. 'Robinson was discussing a new find from UC Berkeley that the retina employs both positive feedback and negative feedback systems to improve imaging, something that researchers had missed before in 50 years of study. [1.]

- And what else have they missed?
Every day the materialist has more and more 'miracles' to explain; explain by the process of blind chance and chemical reactions. Every day he sinks deeper into the quicksand. When his head finally goes under he'll realize how little of life he ever saw correctly.

Feedback systems are all the evidence anyone needs to junk the idea of undirected materialism having created the biosphere. There are no feedback systems in inert matter; feedback systems have to be designed and built.

3. “The human eye long ago solved a problem common to both digital and film cameras: how to get good contrast in an image while also capturing faint detail,” the article said, with the headline announcing that the eye does the better job. [1.]

- Matter doesn't (cannot) solve problems, because it has none. What problems could a rock possibly have? How to pay the taxes :=}

Only personal agents solve problems; only intelligent agents solve difficult problems. If the eye works better than any digital camera, it's because it had a designer more intelligent than man. If RD can't see that, it's because he doesn't want to. (Maybe the eye only 'appears' to work better than a camera, maybe it only 'appears' to work like software, maybe it only appears to make the critique of dawkins obsolete and fallacious. Yes, that must be it; it only 'appears' that RD is wrong about things.

4. 'Speaking of vision, eyesight has been found where biologists might have least expected it – in sea urchins... European scientists publishing in PNAS show that the spines transmit light to the animal, making these pincushion-critters like big eyeballs on the seafloor; “we suggest a model in which the entire sea urchin, deploying its skeleton as PRC [photoreceptor cell] screening device, functions as a huge compound eye,” the authors said.

Warning; Speculation ahead;
- The eyes of God are upon us; not figuratively, but literally. ('The night has a thousand eyes' might well be the name of a hymn.)
"Shall he who made the eye not see?" wrote the Psalmist. Every ear and every eye belongs to God; how could he not see or hear?
"By every word you have spoken, shall you be judged." (If all is connected, and matter once created cannot be destroyed, no information is ever lost, and all is available to God.)

M. Johnson

Notes;
The Eyes Have It: Pro Software Creation/Evolution Headlines 05/05/2011
May 05, 2011 — You have a biological version of Photoshop in your eyes. That’s what Richard Robinson, a freelance science writer from Massachusetts, said in PLoS Biology.
2. When I say creationist, unless otherwise noted, I mean biblical creationist.

Self repair as evidence of design

Self-repair is only a capacity of living organisms. Rocks that fall and break apart don't have a mechanism that puts them back together again. I don't see that self-repair would be predicted from physics. I see it as the product of intelligence.

Quotes and comments;

1. 'Some 10 times a day in a given cell, your DNA breaks on both strands. This is an emergency. Unless repaired quickly, serious diseases, like cancer, can develop. But no fear: the first responder is an octopus-shaped protein complex that rushes to the rescue, wraps around the damaged site, and brings in all the parts needed to fix it. [1.]

- This strikes me as a system designed to prevent evolution. Such a system would seem to be predicted by the creation model. e.g. it would seem likely care was taken to make sure man didn't die out, and that he didn't change (evolve) into something else entirely. Measures would have to be taken to ensure the ongoing viability of the the organism. (I'm referring to macro evolution)

2. 'How a set of proteins can sense damage, migrate to a repair site, assess the extent of the break and select the correct repair option, link up to other tools, bring in parts, and put everything back together again is surely one of the wonders of biology coming to light with new observing techniques. [1.]

- I don't know how such systems could evolve; they seem to be the opposite of evolution. The more we know about the biological self the more amazing it is any of are alive, that we can survive 70 years or more. Great care had to have been taken to provide self-repair mechanisms to allow our continued existence.

''The abstract did not mention evolution except to say that the parts are “conserved” (unevolved) across all living things.' [1.]

- Maybe I'm missing something, but I see 'conserved mechanisms' as evidence against evolution. If all is evolution, if nothing in biology makes sense apart from evolution, why are so many factors conserved? i.e. why don't they evolve? To me this means designs are in place to work against evolution.

- The language here is interesting.
Conserve;
'late 14c., from O.Fr. conserver (9c.), from L. conservare "to keep, preserve, keep intact, guard," from com-, intensive prefix (see com-), + servare "keep watch, maintain"

- It seems to me that designs are in place to preserve, keep intact and guard important entities. We know that there are mechanisms within the cell that do indeed keep watch (to spot if things go wrong). This speaks clearly of design to me.

We know that viable machinery sent into space, and thus cut off from sources of human repair, must be able to repair themselves. Systems need to be in place that constantly monitor the functioning of the machine, and there must be mechanisms in place that can repair damage when it's spotted. We know from our own experience in designing (and imagining) space craft what to expect from any entity that has been designed for independent existence.

As space craft design gets more sophisticated we see that engineers are designing into these craft many of the features we see within the cell. In a way we could say that the cell is the ideal model for a space craft. If we could build a space craft that had all the same systems as the cell it could possibly explore the universe for millions or even billions of years.

Notes;
1. Your DNA Repairman Is Handy as an Octopus Creation/Evolution Headlines 03/27/2011