How could highly complex organs such as the eye, lung and wings have emerged gradually during the evolutionary process? That is one of the greatest dilemmas facing evolutionists, who leave it unanswered. These interconnected structures, one of which serves no purpose in the absence of another, cannot emerge in stages, as evolutionists claim. Organs possessing such a characteristic, known as irreducible complexity in the scientific literature, will become functionless if any one of their components is missing.
The eye is made up around 40 essential components in the absence of any one of which the eye will fail to see at all. In order, therefore, for an eye to be able to see, it needs to form simultaneously with all these 40 organelles that make vision possible. This can come about only through creation.
The eye, for example, consists of some 40 different organelles and will be unable to see if any one of those 40—the retina, for instance—is absent. That being so, in order for an eye to function, all these 40 organelles must all come into being, together with the other systems that make sight possible—and that can only happen by way of creation.
Contrary to what evolutionists claim, it is impossible for the eye to have formed as the result of these organelles all emerging, one by one, over millions of years. Because in the absence of just one organelle, an eye that’s unable to see will, to use an evolutionist term, become vestigial and disappear before it even fully forms. This also applies to all other complex structures. Confronted by this scientific reality, evolutionists try to prevent the issue from being raised or else, as you shall see below, feel forced into making confessions on the subject.
Darwin himself was one of the first to realize this predicament, and admitted that even thinking about the eye and other complex organs gave him a “cold shudder”:
The eye to this day gives me a cold shudder, but when I think of the fine known gradations, my reason tells me I ought to conquer the cold shudder. 293
I remember well the time when the thought of the eye made me cold all over, but I have got over this stage of the complaint, and now small trifling particulars of structure often make me very uncomfortable. The sight of a feather in a peacock’s tail, whenever I gaze at it, makes me sick. 294
The recur to the eye. I really think it would have been dishonest, not to have faced the difficulty. 295
If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down. 296
Although we must be extremely cautious in concluding that any organ could not have been produced by successive, small, transitional gradations, yet undoubtedly serious cases of difficulty occur. One of the most serious is that of neuter insects, which are often differently constructed from either the males or fertile females; but this case will be treated of in the next chapter. The electric organs of fishes offer another case of special difficulty; for it is impossible to conceive by, what steps these wondrous organs have been produced. 297
Finally then, although in many cases it is most difficult even to conjecture by what transitions organs have arrived at their present state; yet, considering how small the proportion of living and known forms is to the extinct and unknown, I have been astonished how rarely an organ can be named, towards which no transitional grade is known to lead. It certainly is true, that new organs appearing as if created for some special purpose, rarely or never appear in any being;—as indeed is shown by that old,but somewhat exaggerated, canon in natural history of “Natura non facit saltum.” [Nature does not make leaps]. 298
How a nerve comes to be sensitive to light, hardly concerns us more than how life itself originated. 299
It is Almighty Allah Who creates the plumage of the peacock that so perplexed Darwin.
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 degree. . . . Reason tells me, that if numerous gradations from a simple and imperfect eye to one complex and perfect can be shown to exist, each grade being useful to its possessor, as is certainly the case; if further, the eye ever varies and the variations be inherited, as is likewise certainly the case and if such variations should be useful to any 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, should not be considered as subversive of the theory. How a nerve comes to be sensitive to light, hardly concerns us more than how life itself originated; but I may remark that, as some of the lowest organisms, in which nerves cannot be detected, are capable of perceiving light, it does not seem impossible that certain sensitive elements in their sarcode should become aggregated and developed into nerves, endowed with this special sensibility. 300
The common feature of eyes and wings is that they can perform their functions only when they are fully developed. To put it another way, sight is impossible with a deficient eye, and flight is impossible with half a wing. How these organs appeared is still one of those secrets of nature that have not yet been fully illuminated. 301
Hoimar Von Ditfurth is a German Professor of Neurology and a well-known evolutionist science writer:
The question of how the division of a fertilized egg leads to the birth of countless cells differentiated from each other in every possible respect heads the list of those that leave scientists scratching their heads. Although conceptual frameworks capable of giving a rough analysis of what is going on have been established, the phenomenon as a whole still represents a collection of unanswerable questions. 302
Richard Dawkins is a British zoologist and one of the leading contemporary evolutionists:
Evolution is very possibly not, in actual fact, always gradual. But it must be gradual when it is being used to explain the coming into existence of complicated, apparently designed objects, like eyes. For if it is not gradual in these cases, it ceases to have any explanatory power at all. Without gradualness in these cases, we are back to miracle, which is simply a synonym for the total absence of explanation. 303
Prof. Russell Doolittle is Professor of Biochemistry at the University of California at San Diego:
How in the world did this complex and delicately balanced process evolve? . . . The paradox was, if each protein depended on activation by another, how could the system ever have arisen? Of what use would any part of the scheme be without the whole ensemble? 304
From a letter that Sir Charles Lyell, a renowned geologist of the mid-nineteenth century, wrote to Darwin:
Pages would be required thus to state an objection and remove it. It would be better, as you wish to persuade, to say nothing. 305
A letter to Darwin from Asa Gray, American botanist of the 19th century, and one of his best friends:
Well, that seems to me the weakest point on the book is the attempt to account for the formation of organs, the making of eyes, &c., by natural selection. Some of this reads quite Lamarckian. 306
Hoimar Von Ditfurth:
When nature found an eye socket, it was confronted by the same dilemma. This eye, which emerged as a quite unexpected step with the successive accumulation of light- sensitive cells in the front part of the body due to very different causes, must have faced the threat of instant elimination because of the way it was a functionless mechanism. Because two totally opposing demands, illumination or clarity, could not have been met in its state at that time. We know that the eye overcame this dilemma by using a lens. Because no matter how large the aperture, no matter how much light enters the chamber, the lens still provides images with no lack of clarity by performing “net focusing.” But is the universe a physicist? Because only physicists know how the lens will overcome this difficulty, and we who read their words. 307
Frank B. Salisbury is Professor and Head of the Department of Plant Science at Utah State University:
Even something as complex as the eye has appeared several times; for example, in the squid, the vertebrates, and the arthropods. It’s bad enough accounting for the origin of such things once, but the thought of producing them several times according to the modern synthetic theory makes my head swim. 308
Professor Ali Demirsoy is a biologist at Hacettepe University and specializes in zoogeography:
It is rather hard to reply to a third objection. How was it possible for a complicated organ to come about suddenly even though it brought benefits with it? For instance, how did the lens, retina, optic nerve, and all the other parts in vertebrates that play a role in seeing suddenly come about? Because natural selection cannot choose separately between the visual nerve and the retina. The emergence of the lens has no meaning in the absence of a retina. The simultaneous development of all the structures for sight is unavoidable. Since parts that develop separately cannot be used, they will all be meaningless, and also perhaps disappear with time. At the same time, their development all together requires the coming together of unimaginably small probabilities. 309
Prof. Cemal Yıldırım, a Turkish evolutionist, is Professor of Philosophy at Middle East Technical University:
In order to see, there is a need for a large number of mechanisms to cooperate: we may speak of links between the eye and its internal mechanisms and between the eye and the special center in the brain. How did this complex structure come about?
According to biologists, during the process of evolution the first step in the formation of the eye was taken with the formation of a small, light-sensitive region in the skins of certain primitive creatures. However, what evolutionary advantage could such a small occurrence bestow on an organism all by itself? Together with that region, a nerve network connecting it to a visual center in the brain would also need to be constructed.
Unless these rather complex mechanisms are linked together, we cannot expect the phenomenon we know as “sight” to emerge. Darwin believed that variations emerged at random. If that were so, would it not be a mysterious puzzle how the great number of variations necessary for sight all came together and cooperated at the same time in various different parts of the organism's body? . . . The fact is that a string of complementary changes—all of which must work together—are necessary for sight. . . . .
Some mollusks' eyes have retina, cornea, and a lens just like ours. How can we account for this construction in two species on such very different evolutionary levels solely in terms of natural selection? . . . It is a matter for debate whether Darwinists can supply a satisfactory answer to that question. . . .310
Ernst Mayr is one of the 20th century's leading evolutionary biologists:
It is a considerable strain on one’s credulity to assume that finely balanced systems such as certain sense organs (the eye of vertebrates, or the bird’s feather) could be improved by random mutations. 311
293 Francis Darwin, The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Vol. II, p. 67.
294 Ibid., p. 90.
295 Ibid., p. 84.
296 Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, Chapter VI. “Difficulties of the Theory.”
299 Charles Darwin, Origin of Species, New York: New York University Press, p. 151.
300 Ibid., p. 198.
301 Engin Korur, “Gozlerin ve Kanatlarin Sirri” [“The Secret of Eyes and Wings”], Bilim ve Teknik, No. 203, October 1984, p. 25.
302 Hoimar Von Ditfurth, Dinozorların Sessiz Gecesi 2 [“The Silent Nights of the Dinosaurs 2”], p. 126.
303 Richard Dawkins, River Out of Eden, New York: Basic Books, 1995, p. 83.
304 Michael Behe, Darwin’s Black Box, Free Press; 2nd Rev. Ed edition (March 7, 2006), p. 91.
305 Francis Darwin, The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Vol. II, p. 3.
306 Ibid., p. 66.
307 Hoimar Von Ditfurth, Dinozorların Sessiz Gecesi 3, [“The Silent Nights of the Dinosaurs 3”], p. 165.
308 Frank Salisbury, “Doubts About the Modern Synthetic Theory of Evolution,” American Biology Teacher, September 1971, p. 338.
309 Prof. Dr. Ali Demirsoy, Kalitim ve Evrim [“Inheritance and Evolution”], p. 475.
310 Cemal Yildirim, Evrim Kurami ve Bagnazlik [“The Theory of Evolution and Bigotry”], pp. 58-59.
311 Ernst Mayr, Systematics and the Origin of Species, New York: Dove Press, 1964, p. 296.
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