Things in Nature that Make Me Believe in God

The complexity of eyes and the miracle of vision.

Eyes are amazing things.

I should know.  I lost my left one to ocular melanoma (eye cancer) a few years ago. Now I am considered a mono-ocularist (one-eyed) and wear a jaunty rattlesnake eye patch, sit in the back of a crowded room and frequently curse under my breath when I try to use a hammer.

When I was first lost my eye, friends would get into these morbid conversations about what body parts they would  be willing to trade.  Conversations like…”I’d rather lose hearing in both ears than lose sight in both eyes” or lose one hand before both legs etc.

Mostly I am just grateful to have beaten cancer.  Even with one eye, I can do almost everything I could do with two.  But I have lost all depth perception so some things are tougher like threading a needle, playing tennis, hitting a nail on the head (thus the cursing), or even walking downhill on an overcast day when there are no shadows give a sense of depth perception.

Are eyes proof of God?

Many creationists and proponents of intelligent design use the complexity of the eye as proof of God.  The irreducible complexity of the human eye is used since it is enormously complicated. According to Lawrence Richards in his book It couldn’t just happen

“The eye is an interrelated system including the retina, pupil, iris, cornea, lens and optic nerve. For instance, the retina has approximately 137 million special cells that respond to light and send messages to the brain. About 130 million of these cells look like rods and handle the black and white vision.

The other seven million are cone shaped and allow us to see in color. The retina cells receive light impressions, which are translated to electric pulses and sent to the brain via the optic nerve. A special section of the brain called the visual cortex interprets the pulses to color, contrast, depth, etc., which allows us to see "pictures" of our world. Incredibly, the eye, optic nerve and visual cortex are totally separate and distinct subsystems. Yet, together, they capture, deliver and interpret up to 1.5 million pulse messages a milli-second!

It would take dozens of Cray supercomputers programmed perfectly and operating together flawlessly to even get close to performing this task.

1 Lawrence O. Richards, It Couldn't Just Happen, Thomas Nelson, Inc., 1989, 139-140.

Eyes for each creature

Those things that nature denied to human sight, she revealed to the eyes of the soul.
-Ovid

Consider the eyes of a predator, like an owl, a cougar or even a house cat. They are in the front of their face to give them depth perception for attacking prey. Often, the pupils are vertical since they attack from above, leaping down upon their victim. If you have a pet cat or a dog and have taken a flash photo of them, you probably have seen a terrible case of red eye in your pictures. The red-eye is simply the extra  in the retina back of their eyes who allow them to hunt in the dark.

The eyes of prey animals like rabbits that are on the sides of their head with horizontal pupils. This allows them to scan for danger by looking on the horizon for any sign of peril. Some prey animals even have separated brains connected to their eyes so that they can look and react from both sides at once. Some horse trainers say you should train a horse from both sides to compensate from a divided brain.

The complexity of the eyes of each species reflect that they work uniquely for a specific ecosystem or needs for life.  The heat sensitive infrared eyes of a snake, which can spot a live target by detecting its body heat. Some rodents can pump blood into their tails so that from a snakes infrared perspective, they appear much larger. (I just love these nerdy facts – and have gleaned most of them from Wikipedia)

The large-aperture eyes of an owl who can see in the dark. Eagles need to see long distances with good resolution in order to hunt. They have closer sensor spacing than human eyes, so they are able to see more details at a given distance. Their image processing is carried out using a much smaller brain than that of humans. They can respond quickly to what they see, such as when they swoop down to pick up a small rodent. We have heard that eagles can see a fish at five miles, but they are probably seeing a  reflection of a fish jumping out of the water.

The very wide angle eyes of a dragonfly with 30,000 eye segments for increased field of view . Insects have even more different types of eyes and vision systems than the less advanced animals we've considered. Many insects need to see in three dimensions while flying at high speed. Indeed, winged insects have better vision than wingless ones. The variation of eye size, resolution, and overall optical design in insects is also great.

Many insects see a wider spectrum of colors than humans do. Their color vision spectrum may vary from ultraviolet, in the case of the bee, to near infrared, in the case of some butterflies, and beetles. Insects need to be able to see colors and shapes to find plants for food and protection, and to identify each other. Some plants are uniquely designed and colored to reflect UV light and other specific colors to attract suitable insects to carry out their significant role in pollinating flowers.

Since the giant squid is about 180 feet long, it has the largest biological eyes in the world. Its eyes are about 100 times as large as human eyes. Snorkeling in Papua New Guinea once, I looked a large cuttlefish in the eye for about 20 minutes. It seemed so filled with emotion and intelligence. When my son was in the Coast Guard, he wrote home that the eyes of seals coming to the edge of his boat would remind him of Maggie, our black lab, who has eyes filled with love and emotion.

Even one eye is a gift from God and lets me see what my spirit knows – that God made a good earth. Thank you God for our eyesight!

"He must pull out his own eyes, and see no creature, before he can say, he sees no God; He must be no man, and quench his reasonable soul, before he can say to himself, there is no God."
-John Donne