The Human Eye – Evolution’s Worst Nightmare

Could the human eye have evolved? Based on Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution – the answer would be yes. But as I plan to show based on common scientific sense – the answer would be no. Let’s examine some of the evidence and see which explanation – evolution or creation – makes more sense.

The next time you open your eyes, try to imagine how sight works. The first thing that may come to mind is that sight functions on autopilot. You see without thinking or doing anything. If you have some knowledge of science you probably are aware that engineering, chemistry, and information processing functions are all occurring simultaneously. Another thought is that seeing involves light, color, motion and perspective. In reality the human eye is far more sophisticated than any human camera ever invented.

Not only that but the human eye is made up of protein molecules that in turn form all of the complex structures that we are all familiar with. The cornea, iris, retina, optic nerve, and many other complex sub-structures make up the human eye.  

In Addition, there are an amazing amount of complicated bio-chemical and electrical processes that need to take place for sight to occur. The point is that the human eye is absolutely useless unless it is complete. All the parts must be in the exact right position and all there or else there would be no sight. It is therefore, irreducibly complex.  It could not have gradually evolved since a part of an eye would have no beneficial function and natural selection would eliminate any partially formed eye parts. 

But just what is irreducible complexity? Biochemist Michael Behe in his groundbreaking book, Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution, introduces us to the concept of irreducible complexity.  Behe convincingly makes the case that there are certain organs, systems and processes in life, like the eye, that could not have come into existence through natural selection since they are irreducibly complex, that is “composed of several well-matched, interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, wherein the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning.”^[1]

Darwin, however, suggested that we observe in nature creatures with very simple eyes and that these incomplete eyes might confer benefits and thereby survive for further evolutionary refinement. According to Behe, “Darwin didn’t try to discover a real pathway that evolution might have used to make the eye. Rather, he pointed to modern animals with different kinds of eyes (ranging from the simple to the complex) and suggested that the evolution of the human eye might have involved similar organs as intermediaries.”[2] Biology textbooks typically arrange the eye in a sequence starting with the simplest and moving to the most complex and say that this demonstrates evolution. In Darwin’s day when the cell was thought of as a simple blob of protoplasm his theory seems quite plausible.  

The only problem with this line of reasoning is that even the simple light sensitive spot that Darwin thought was the first precursor leading up to the human eye is incredibly complex and requires many sophisticated biochemical processes in order for it to just sense the difference between light and dark.  In addition, according to Sarfati the sequencing notion is not a valid argument: “It is also fallacious to point to a series of more complex eyes in nature, and then argue that this presents an evolutionary sequence. This is like arranging a number of different types of aircraft in order of complexity, then claiming that the simple aircraft evolved into complex ones, as opposed to being designed.”[3] If a simple cluster of photoreceptors require all of its molecular biochemical parts to be in the right place and time to function at even the simplest level (sensing light from dark) imagine, if we can extrapolate, what must happen to produce the exquisite sight we humans possess.

While Darwin cleverly convinced many of his contemporaries that this simple to complex ordering in nature helped explain how a human eye evolved, he failed to even attempt to explain several critical factors in his evolutionary theory.  First he didn’t even try to explain where the simple eyespot came from. According to Darwin, “How a nerve comes to be sensitive to light, hardly concerns us more than how life itself first originated.”[4] And second the human eye must have the necessary complex machinery (in concert with the brain) needed to decode the fantastic amount of information coming in from the outside in order for vision to occur. So not only is the eye irreducibly complex but so is the decoding machinery.   

Finally we get to Darwin’s worst nightmare for he once remarked: “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 possible degree.”^[5]

[1] Michael J. Behe, Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution. (New York:

The Free Press, 1996), p. 39.

[2] Michael J. Behe, Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution. p.16. 

[3] Jonathan Sarfati and Michael Matthews, Refuting Evolution 2-Chapter 10, Creation Ministries International website: http://creation.com/refuting-evolution-2-chapter-10-argument-irreducible-complexity

[4] Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species By Means of Natural Selection. 1859. Reprint, (New York: Bantam Books, 1999), 156.

[5] Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species By Means of Natural Selection. p. 155.

[6] Ibid., p. 158