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HOH is a proudly
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The
Created Eye There has been much debate on the "created eye," even in Charles Darwin’s time. The creationists and neo-creationists have stated that it is too complex to have evolved. The iris is controlled by a muscle. The nerve that controls the function of this muscle originates in the hypothalamus of the brain. This nerve goes by a circuitous route. The other nerves from the eye go much as we would expect for CN (cranial nerve). They go through the small hole in the cranium at the back of the eye and are then into the cranium where they go each to their specialized areas of the brain. As stated above, the iris nerve is different. It starts at the hypothalamus and goes through the foramen magnus and into the spinal cord area. It continues down the spinal cord through the cervical (neck) spine to the T1/T2 (T denotes a thorasic, or chest area, spinal bone) joint. There it exits with other nerves into the sympathetic nervous system (before it was still CNS, Central Nervous System). It enters the pre-ganglion sympathetic fiber and then goes to the post synaptic superior cervical ganglion (at C1/C2). That is, it travels back up outside the spine to the first neck joint of the spine, but back into the CNS, only to the ganglion that is outside all of the spinal joints. It continues through the perivascular plexus of the carotid system (the nerves surrounding the artery that goes from the heart to the brain) and through the tympatic cavity (ear) into the cavernous sinus and enters through the superior orbital tissue. Briefly, instead of going with its fellow eye nerves through hole at the back of the eye socket directly into the brain, this nerve comes out of the upper part of the eye, through the upper sinus cavity, through the ear opening down along side the main veins from the heart to the brain to a neck area ganglion (cluster of nerves and nerve tissue that would normally then enter the spinal cord through an opening (foramen) but instead continues down to the first full chest opening ganglion and then into the spinal cord where it goes back up and enters the cranium at the main opening for the nerves that control all but the head and then to its origin in the hypothalamus. The other nerves take a direct path of some 25 -50 mm (1 - 2 in), but this one goes some 700 mm (2 feet)! The others are almost immediately protected by the cranium, but this one wanders around in the sympathetic system mostly unprotected. This is the eye that had to be created by an Intelligent Designer because it is too intricate to have evolved blindly (so to speak). I am a licensed engineer. I have seen many designs, both good and bad. Most of our designs are good. We use a peer review system. This nerve carries electrical impulses and to me looks like an electrical design, so I will use that analogy. A designer draws up the control scheme, which wires (nerves) will be needed to activate which devices (muscles, retina), That is, a one-line diagram. This gets reviewed by all of the relevant disciplines to be sure that all the controls are there and accounted. This peer review will include the process group, are all the required control functions represented: by the mechanical group, do all of the equipment (muscles) have power to them and the right kind; the controls group; are the control devices wired in, piping; is the routing OK, civil/structural: is the conduit or cable tray properly supported? Each gets to review it for their discipline’s functional requirements. Then there is a conduit or routing diagram. This is reviewed again to be sure that the wires (are routed correctly). Each wire is numbered and will have a tag at both ends so that there is no mistake in the connections, including connection points in junction boxes. The only time that I have seen routing jobs where the wire does not go straight and with the other wires, is when we do rework jobs. We already have a wire that goes from here to there but through a different junction box (it goes down the spinal cord and is already at a ganglion (junction box). Sometimes it is just easier to pick it up there than to try to reroute it or pull a new wire. Things get messy when you are doing rework on top of rework on rework. The wire goes to junction box A (T1/T2 ganglion), but in a rework it was taken to junction box B (cervical ganglion), now we have it in a different part of the plant (sympathetic nervous system). At this point in design a good design says just strip it out or abandon it in place and pull the new wire from the source to the use point. Bad design or expedient design says just run the wire however you can so we can get the thing running again. Just lay a wire in there somewhere from pull box B and get it to the user (up a major vein and in through the ear). It is the latter, that is the nerve to the eye, expedient design. It is obvious to a designer that the nerve was routed originally for a chest (thoracic, T1/T2) job. Later it was run up to the neck for a new job (cervical). Now it is run up to the eye for control of the light getting into the retina. Perhaps there was an ear job or a nose job there, too. This is NOT intelligent design. It is simply "make do design." It is just what you would expect in a plant design that evolved over several projects and without close control of the work. And is just exactly what you would expect if the use of that nerve evolved from one use to another, to another, to another, etc. As I stated above, this is not intelligent design. If I saw a designer starting with a clean slate and was running wires helter-skelter because he forgot them in the on-line, or was otherwise just doing sloppy work, he would be off my job. He would have proved himself to be a "not so intelligent designer." And now I am left to wonder, where did this design come from? How did it evolve? What was its purpose back at junction box B, at junction box A? I would think that most or all mammals have this situation, but do they? How far back in evolution does this routing go? What was the animal like at junction box B design? at pull junction box A design? I am sure that there is a doctoral thesis here. Are there any takers? ========== Wilfred Lyon (Rusty), was born in Traverse City, Michigan and attended public schools there. He graduated from the University of Michigan with a BS in Physics, where he came to his naturalist beliefs. He went on to Rutgers in New Brunswick, NJ as a teaching fellow and later moved to Houston, TX in 1970. He eventually found his way to doing engineering work, earning his Professional Engineer license in 1985. He spent 21 years in Greenville, SC, where he was a founding member of the Upstate Carolina Secular Humanists and the Greenville Coalition for Choice (in reproductive rights). He was also a member of several other progressive organizations: Americans United for Separation of Church and State, American Civil Liberties Union, and a volunteer in several such organizations. He describes himself as a "recovering Republican". He has two grown children in South Carolina and has remarried, with two children in Mexico. He lives in Mexico, works in Texas, and has a permanent USA address in Michigan.
The Origin of Species, by Charles Darwin [pp. 81-83] On the evolution of the eye and why it argues against intelligent design, see Michael Shermer, Why Darwin Matters, the Case Against Intelligent Design, (New York: Times Books 2006), p. 17. The emphasis is original. Climbing Mount Improbable, by Richard Dawkins (New York: W.W. Norton, 1996), pp 138-197. God is Not GREAT, How Religion Poisons Everything, Christopher Hitchens, New York Hatchette Book Group, 2007, p 289. Neuroanatomy, by James D. Fix [LINK].
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