The Human Eye

[JohnR7]

To suppose that the eye, with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree. Yet reason tells me, that if numerous gradations from a perfect and complex eye to one very imperfect and simple, each grade being useful to its possessor, can be shown to exist; if further, the eye does vary ever so slightly, and the variations be inherited, which is certainly the case; and if any variation or modification in the organ be ever useful to an animal under changing conditions of life, then the difficulty of believing that a perfect and complex eye could be formed by natural selection, though insuperable by our imagination, can hardly be considered real. How a nerve comes to be sensitive to light, hardly concerns us more than how life itself first originated; but I may remark that several facts make me suspect that any sensitive nerve may be rendered sensitive to light, and likewise to those coarser vibrations of the air which produce sound.

 

[Pete Harcoff]

http://talkorigins.org/faqs/origin.html

For anyone interested in reading the full text of Origin of the Species.

 

[chickenman]

I was almost certain this quote would stop at the words "absurd in the highest possible degree." - as it so often does around these parts

 

[MSBS]

For anyone actually interested in eyes, simple to complex, I found a neat link. Lots a nice pictures.

http://www.eyedesignbook.com/ch3/eyech3-b.html