The Incredible Irreducible Eye

Dr. Michael Behe is the biochemist who coined the term irreducible complexity. The idea is simple. If evolution asserts small gradual changes over time then what would explain the incredibly complex systems of interdependent mechanisms that cannot exist without a dozen other incredibly complex systems. If you can’t build it piece by piece then how did blind chance build it?

This argument sparked off a fury of rebuttals. And rebuttals to the rebuttals. And..well more rebuttals. But I’ll give a single example best exemplified by the eye. Behe insisted that the eye was a perfectly designed machine with thousands of interdependent working parts. Dawkins immediately asserted that the eye was not only flawed (blind spot) but teamed with PBS to make a documentary on just how it evolved. (See YouTube). I.D.ists shot back that the eye’s flaws are not flaws at all and benefit the eye.

http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/the-blind-leading-the-blind/

This is where it gets interesting. PBS’s video became gospel. Wikipedia, TV, and radio embraced the simple and easy to understand explanation for the long debated “eye problem”. Darwin starts off with some light sensitive cells, and adds a dimple with a little concave giving some directional capability. Soon we’re lucky to evolve some gel and a simple lens to protect the fortuitous gel and viola! It’s all so simple. I could draw it for you on a sheet of paper. The problem is it’s a lie for people like you and me to gobble up and regurgitate when one of those pesky Intelligent Designers starts talking about the “amazing eye”.
It’s a lie and Dawkins knows it’s a lie. Here’s why.

(Takes a deep breath)

Let’s start with those handy light sensitive cells in the beginning. You could imagine those on the earliest and simplest of life forms. Simple light and darkness recognition to regulate biorhythms. Probably evolved over the weekend. Here’s how it works.

First, a photon enters the light sensitive cell and interacts with the necessary rhodopsin protein (which luckily is nice and neat right there for us). You see this protein is special it contains organic dyes that absorb energy from the photon causing the protein to change shape.
The reconfigured protein rhodospin is now able to bind to another protein called transducin. However this leads to an remarkable instability that forces a part to drop to make room for a GTP molecule which stabilizes the structure. This megamolecule is now able to bind to a molecule of photodiesterase which is fixed on the wall of the cell’s outer membrane.
The cell wall has a series of ports which open and close to allow charged ions such as sodium and calcium to cross in and out of the cell. These ports are controlled by a membrane molecule called cGMP. More cGMP keeps the ports closed, less allows the ports to open. When the megamolecule (officially called GTP-Transducin-metarhodopsin II) binds to the photodiesterase on the cell wall, so now some of the cGMP is displaced, thus lowering the cGMP concentration.
This allows some of the ion ports to open up, which in turn allows positively charged sodium ions to enter the cell. Since the ions carry an electrical charge, this induces a charge imbalance across the cell wall, which results in a voltage being established across the membrane. The voltage naturally seeks equilibrium by propagating along the cell membrane, until it gets to the neighbor cell and jumps the gap to begin the propagation of an electrical signal, from one cell to the next.

And that is the process required to explain the simplest part of the very first step in Dawkin’s evolution of the eye scheme.

I think I liked Youtube’s version better. (Exhales)

And this is the problem with the debate today. It’s too easy to lie because no one understands anything. A website gives a version of its “facts” and we lap it up because we’re too ignorant to say “well are you sure that the GTP molecule effectively stabilizes the Rhodospin/Transducin combination?”

So the common debate becomes “What are you an idiot? Eyes evolved easy! Read Wikipedia moron”

Even though I have a simple 2 year college level of Biology (though I got a B and an A :) I do know is there are far more politics involved in the evolution debate than facts.

And if you get to view an actual debate like last week’s http://www.apologeticsreview.com/?p=335
Facing the critics panel, you’d see that 80% of what gets put out on the web doesn’t fly in a real debate because everyone is too smart to cite Youtube.