The eyes see everything upside down. The image has to be turned the right way round in the brain.
This is pretty much the unavoidable consequence of how lenses work. But how masterful in design that our brain lets us see right side up ehh?
by nicolaou 106 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
The eyes see everything upside down. The image has to be turned the right way round in the brain.
This is pretty much the unavoidable consequence of how lenses work. But how masterful in design that our brain lets us see right side up ehh?
It is all just a big sieve. Some things fall out, some are kept.
HB
It seems absurd from a design point of view that the nerves that carry information from the light-sensitive cells of the vertebrate eye are in front of, rather than behind, the light-sensitive retinal cells, but this is a consequence of the way this part of the eye develops as an outgrowth of the central nervous system (the octopus eye resembles that of mammals, but has a better arrangement, with the light-sensitive cells in front of the nerves).
-'The Independent - Science Made Simple: Evolution' booklet.
If nature proves that there is a creator, and gives us insights into his personality - then it proves he is a sadistic monster.
Everything in nature is designed to kill, or try to avoid being killed. The complex ways creatures are equipped to murder each other is truly amazing. Don't say this changed because of sin - because the dinosours obviously did eat each other.
I can't remember where I read this now, but I agree -
The lion is well designed to catch antelopes, and the antelope is well designed to avoid capture. One has to wonder whose side God was on!
The design may be intelligent, but this does not answer questions about the nature of the intelligent designer. If one is to concede that evolution was not the sole driving force, there still is no answer to who the designer is. Is the designer a simple creative force that tends towards life - an impersonal Mother Nature? Is it alien? Is it a complex hierachy of Gods that create lower Gods, that created the God of our universe? Is there one God Almighty - if so was it Zeus, YHWH, Jesus or Brahman - and does he only listen to the person that gets the correct spelling of his name?
If God does not reveal himself regularly and dramatically in our everyday lives, then it is quite meaningless as to whether there is an intelligent designer or not. It does not seem sensible to have to worship an unknown force in the way prescribed by a religion based on the region of our birth, simply because an ancient text says that is what we must do in order to appease the creator and have hope of everlasting life.
To the man with a hammer designing mind, all things look like a nail designed.
Gopher (I think it was) not long ago cited a scientific exegesis that promoted "something" existing as more physically stable than "nothing" existing. This fit in with my experience of a predisposition toward a universe of complex things.
In that regard, I take what we see as the result of a natural process toward complexity. But I do not see a need for some entity to have designed it - to me that's anthropomorphism, reading in a designer because we ourselves design.
In my personal quest (which I feel is as valid as any other), I have often found the marionette - but we ourselves pulling the strings.
There is a magazine article (I'd have to hunt for it) that says that all of the animals were intended to eat vegetation and, in fact, this is what they did in the beginning. It made arguments that some animals predatory features were only adapted to be predatory but could have originally been used for other things (eating coconuts, climbing trees, writing poetry, etc). But what about things like venomous snakes and sharks. There entire bodies seem to have been designed to kill the hell out of things. Of course the magazine's response is "we don't know but we know they all ate dandelions before the flood and food became scarce".
Taken from Awake! 1/8 1983 p28 Question from Readers
I found your article convincing as concerns the principle that design requires a designer. But on page 11 you make the statement that features of animals that are used for maiming and killing have evolved by adaptation to the new situation in Eden. Can this be said of the poison that some snakes and spiders use to kill their prey? What of other ingenious instruments of various kinds of predators. How can they exist if not by creation?
D. K., Germany
We did not claim that certain features evolved by adaptation, but that existing features were put to a different use from what was originally purposed. We do not believe it is possible to establish for a certainty how things were in the distant past by observing the present. Conditions have changed. But we do have a clear statement from the past, namely Genesis 1:29, 30: “And God went on to say: ‘Here I have given to you all vegetation bearing seed which is on the surface of the whole earth and every tree on which there is the fruit of a tree bearing seed. To you let it serve as food. And to every wild beast of the earth and to every flying creature of the heavens and to everything moving upon the earth and in which there is life as a soul I have given all green vegetation for food.’” This does not mean that vegetation was merely the ultimate basis for food supply through a chain of animal life. Obviously it was not the case with humans because later when they were to begin to get some nourishment from animal flesh they had to be given a special concession. (Genesis 9:3) Further, during the Flood of Noah’s day, eight humans and ‘flying creatures and all moving animals of the ground’ were obliged to live on vegetable matter exclusively for more than a year. (Genesis 6:17-21) And the fact that Isaiah 11:6-9 and 65:25 specifically state that former predators will be at peace with other animals, and the lion will eat straw like the bull, would seem to confirm that animals and humans were meant to be vegetation eaters.
As for the many predators being suited for the chase and the kill, what about humans? They have shown an extremely efficient talent for attacking and killing their fellowman. Does that argue for humans’ being designed that way from the beginning? Admittedly, we cannot answer all questions that arise in this matter from what we can observe today, and the account in the Bible is quite brief. Yet, we believe that humankind and animal kind were originally designed to live at peace with one another and to get their nourishment from vegetation. That original purpose will be restored during the Messianic Kingdom. We will have to wait and see how those prophecies are fulfilled.—ED.
I believe there is the possiblity of intelligent design, but I do not believe it in the divine sense or the "God" sense. I think that we have about created explanations because we are unwilling to realize that we are just one of many other beings in this universe and beyond.
God is just a word, there are many "gods". Creator is just a word. There are many creators walking around today. People bow down and worship something they have never seen, create religion to make sense out of their life, when logical reasonable explanations for many things are out there.
But honestly, I don't think we truly know all the answers on how this world was created or by whom.