eye is a very complicated system consisting of the delicate
conjunction of some 40 separate components. Let us consider
just one of these components: for example, the lens. We do
not usually realize it, but the thing that enables us to see
things clearly is the constant automatic focusing of the lens.
If you wish, you can carry out a small experiment on this
subject: Hold your index finger up in the air. Then look at
the tip of your finger, then at the wall behind it. Every
time you look from your finger to the wall you will feel an
This adjustment is made by small muscles around
the lens. Every time we look at something, these muscles go
into action and enable us to see what we are looking at clearly
by changing the thickness of the lens and turning it at the
right angle to the light. The lens carries out this adjustment
every second of our lives, and makes no mistakes. Photographers
make the same adjustments in their cameras by hand, and sometimes
have to struggle for quite some time to get the right focus.
Within the last 10 to 15 years, modern technology has produced
cameras which focus automatically, but no camera can focus
as quickly and as well as the eye.
For an eye to be able to see, the 40 or so basic
components which make it up need to be present at the same
time and work together perfectly. The lens is only one of
these. If all the other components, such as the cornea, iris,
pupil, retina, and eye muscles, are all present and functioning
properly, but just the eyelid is missing, then the eye will
shortly incur serious damage and cease to carry out its function.
In the same way, if all the subsystems exist but tear production
ceases, then the eye will dry up and go blind within a few
The theory of evolution's claim of "reducibility"
loses all meaning in the face of the complicated structure
of the eye. The reason is that, in order for the eye to function,
all its parts need to be present at the same time. It is impossible,
of course, for the mechanisms of natural selection and mutation
to give rise to the eye's dozens of different subsystems when
they can confer no advantage right up until the last stage.
Professor Ali Demirsoy accepts the truth of this in these
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 both be meaningless, and also perhaps disappear with
time. At the same time, their development all together requires
the coming together of unimaginably small probabilities.350
What Professor Demirsoy really
means by "unimaginably small probabilities" is basically an
"impossibility." It is clearly an impossibility for the eye
to be the product of chance. Darwin also had a great difficulty
in the face of this, and in a letter he even admitted, "I
remember well the time when the thought of the eye made me
cold all over."351
The human eye works by some 40 different parts functioning
together. If just one of these is not present, the eye
will serve no purpose. Each of these 40 parts has its
own individual complex structure. For instance, the retina,
at the back of the eye, is made up of 11 strata (above
right), each of which has a different function. The theory
of evolution is unable to account for the development
of such a complex organ.
In The Origin of Species, Darwin experienced a serious
difficulty in the face of the eye's complex design. The only
solution he found was in pointing to the simpler eye structure
found in some creatures as the origin of the more complex
eyes found in others. He hypothesized that more complex eyes
evolved from simpler ones. However, this claim does not reflect
the truth. Paleontology shows that living things emerged in
the world with their exceedingly complex structures already
intact. The oldest known system of sight is the trilobite
eye. This 530-million-year-old compound eye structure, which
we touched on in an earlier chapter, is an "optical marvel"
which worked with a double lens system. This fact totally
invalidates Darwin's assumption that complex eyes evolved
from "primitive" eyes.
Dr. Ali Demirsoy, Kalitim ve Evrim (Inheritance and
Evolution), Meteksan Publications, Ankara, p. 475. (emphasis
351 Norman Macbeth, Darwin Retried:
An Appeal to Reason, Harvard Common Press, 1971, p. 131.