Inverted retina, bad design or brilliant?

So if the inverted retina of mammals is a good design --- does that mean that the uninverted retina of octopods is a bad design?

Incidentally, what is so "brilliant" about having a blind spot?
 
Yeah, who knew? The layer of cells through which light must pass to reach the photoreceptors in the human retina isn't opaque, as scientists wrongly believe! It's ingeniously designed to allow light to pass through!

It turns out we can see after all, despite what those silly "naturalists" and "Darwiniacs" claim!

Another Creationist straw man has been soundly defeated by Creationists! Huzzah!

(Note to those suffering from detached retinas: you still risk severe visual impairment or blindness. God apologizes; it's just the cost of such ingenious design.)

Respectfully,
Myriad
 
WRT the thread title...

...it's neither of the above - it's a good evidentiary example of how evolution is a non-directed process.

ETA: And one that occurs by the cumulative effect of small, random changes over time.
 
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Dembski's source article speaks of "lots of light reflecting in synaptic and nerve layers, but with regular patterns of empty holes with no scattering"; within the holes (actually, Müller cells), there is excellent transmission of light (with a funnel-shaped deally to increase the amount of light collected). They conservatively report that "the müller cells can capture and transmit as much light as possible" (that is, given that the retina is back-to-front, this organization allows light through the maze of nerve cells and blood vessels. Dembski, though, crows that "now we find inside the eye optic fibers that transmit 100% through the layers of “bad” stuff in front of the cones and rods." Either he is carefully phrasing it so that he is speaking only of the transmission through the Müller cells--and thus his comment omits any admission that there is, in fact, loss of information through the synaptic and nerve layer scattering, or he simply misunderstands his source article.

The source article is far more interesting than Dembski's.

The most interesting thing on the Dembski page itself is this. I must say, though, I don't quite understand the point of its presence there.
 
Mercutio said:
Dembski's source article speaks of "lots of light reflecting in synaptic and nerve layers, but with regular patterns of empty holes with no scattering"; within the holes (actually, Müller cells), there is excellent transmission of light (with a funnel-shaped deally to increase the amount of light collected). They conservatively report that "the müller cells can capture and transmit as much light as possible" (that is, given that the retina is back-to-front, this organization allows light through the maze of nerve cells and blood vessels. Dembski, though, crows that "now we find inside the eye optic fibers that transmit 100% through the layers of “bad” stuff in front of the cones and rods." Either he is carefully phrasing it so that he is speaking only of the transmission through the Müller cells--and thus his comment omits any admission that there is, in fact, loss of information through the synaptic and nerve layer scattering, or he simply misunderstands his source article.

The source article is far more interesting than Dembski's.

The most interesting thing on the Dembski page itself is this. I must say, though, I don't quite understand the point of its presence there.
Click to expand...

You don't suppose that the phrase "the müller cells can capture and transmit as much light as possible" means as much as possible given the screwy backwards "design" do you? ;)
 
Something I find interesting is the way that contrarian cultists of widely varying natures become fixated on ever narrower arguments, as if victory on this one specific point will turn around the whole war. Their resources become massively committed - Dembski is a pretty massive resource, and boy is he committed - while the mainstream bats their best efforts away without pausing. For climate denialists it's the Mann et al climate recounstruction, for 9/11'ists it's what chunks of landing-gear are hurled right through the building, for creationists it's the eye - which Darwin foresaw, sharp chap that he was.

It's a sign of defeat. They're just not making any headway. It must be terribly frustrating for them. I like to think so, anyway.
 
Incidentally, it doesn't matter if we humans think that a design is "good" or not: for that is merely a subjective judgment.
What matters most is the empirical evidence, and it seems to converge on the retina being a product of evolutionary process.


And, for the record, I wanted to mention that I like this response:
Wat Tyler said:
...it's neither of the above - it's a good evidentiary example of how evolution is a non-directed process.
Click to expand...
Pay attention to it, Tai Chi.
 
YEAH!!!!!

I missed the T'ai Chi "interesting" articles.
 
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