Evolution of the Eye

150 years ago, Charles Darwin offered an explanation for the evolution of the eye in his book, On the Origin of Species by Natural Selection.

Nonetheless to this day those who oppose evolution argue that an organ as complex as the eye could not have evolved in small steps. In fact, they even quote Darwin saying that it seems difficult to explain the evolution of the eye and organs similarly complex:


Quoting someone in this way is called "quote mining." Anti-evolutionists quote Darwin as though he were admitting that the evolution of the eye was a problem to his theory. It wasn't. Here is how he continued:


So what Darwin was really saying is that even though the evolution of the eye seems exceptionally difficult to account for, it's really not. This is especially true for a naturalist like Darwin who was so familiar with life on this planet and thus so familiar with the eyes belonging to life on this planet.

That knowledge allowed him to write this very plausible scenario for the evolution of the eye of the human with all its complexities:

The Evolution of the Eye as Explained by Charles Darwin

The following explanation of the evolution of the eye is taken directly from Origin of Species, chapter 6.


Darwin goes on to give a quite interesting and easier-to-understand explanation of how the evolution of the eye could have produced these variations in the Articulata:


My attempt at Making Darwin's Words Easier

I'm not a scientist. I'm just a guy that loves to read about science and who is willing to take the time to really examine the claims of science and Christianity. So what I'm about to explain may not be perfect science, but it is a reasonable approximation of the real scientific explanation of the evolution of the eye.

Darwin had explained earlier that almost any nerve can become sensitive to light. So in order for an eye to evolve, one needs begin with only a nerve sensitive to light.

The outer layers of this nerve then adjust in density, thickness, and transparency, and even the distance from one layer to the next adjusts. This sort of thing is always happening in nature, and it only takes on organism with many descendants to produce millions of individuals with a specific slight mutation.

Natural selection then slightly favors each improvement. Over million of years, in this way, the Creator has formed many variations of eyes, some with lenses, some without, some with eyelids, some without, and I even recently saw a fish with a transparent head whose eyes were inside its head.

More Small Steps

Here's another picture of the evolution of the eye given to me by someone more modern than Darwin. He was just a guy on the internet, by the name of Bill Piper.

You begin with a light sensitive spot, common in nature. It becomes a depression, allowing it to catch more light. Transparent skin forms over it, and variations in thickness and shape allow that skin to become a lens. Muscles attached to that lens then allow it to focus. Similar mutations would produce first tear ducts, then an eyelid, then eyelashes to further filter contaminant particles, etc.

A lens is not as special a thing as you might think. It's just skin. Recently a woman had her sight restored literally "by the skin of her teeth."

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