Octopus Eye vs Human Eye: Powerful Evidence for Design - FAS2616

SPEAKER A Octopus intelligence has stunned scientists for decades. These creatures can solve puzzles, escape from tanks, and even recognize individual humans. But here's what's truly baffling: the octopus eye is nearly identical to the human eye, yet evolutionists claim we evolved completely separately. Same camera design, same lens, same retina structure, but with one crucial difference that makes the octopus eye Superior? How did two unrelated creatures develop the exact same complex eye through random chance? Today we're examining the octopus brain and eye design that challenges everything evolution teaches. Welcome to Faith and Science. I'm Kaysie Vokurka. Joining me to discuss this topic is Dr. John Ashton. Welcome to the program, Dr. John. SPEAKER B Hi, Kaysie. SPEAKER A Dr. John has written a book, The Big Argument: Does God Exist?. And in today's program, we'll be drawing on insights from this book, especially from Chapter 6 by Ariel Roth. And the first question I have for you is, you know, if octopuses and humans evolved separately, one's being a vertebrate, the other an invertebrate, completely different evolution, if you will use that word, why do we both have nearly identical camera-style eyes? And is convergent evolution a scientific explanation for this, or is it just a label for really an unexplained mystery? SPEAKER B Well, my view is that it's the latter. SPEAKER A Okay. SPEAKER B It's just a way out that, that somehow through all those little changes, random processes, coincidentally, it just happened to be that way. Because obviously octopuses, members of the mollusca family, they go back. We find nautiluses and so forth, you know, right down the bottom of the fossil chain there with these eyes. We're up the top. A lot of different pathways. So there's some, you know, major issues there, especially given the complexity of eyes and their structure. And the codes that respond to them, that they should end up so similar. But there are, there still are significant differences between the, you know, the human eye and the octopus. SPEAKER A Eye. SPEAKER B You know, we have a blind spot, the octopus eye doesn't have a blind spot. One of the things that fascinates me about the octopus eye is that the lens is spherical as well, quite spherical. Which would lead to a blurred image. But the image isn't blurred because the refractive index of the material making up the sphere changes as you move out through the sphere. Wow. So this means that the light coming through at the different parts of the sphere is bent different amounts. That actually compensates for the roundness of the sphere. Now this to me is pretty cool. SPEAKER A Yeah. Right? SPEAKER B That sounds pretty incredible. It's pretty cool. It's really advanced design. But how do you achieve this? And the way it is achieved is that there are successive layers within of different proteins. Oh, wow. So the lenses are made of special proteins, right? So we've got a very interesting problem here. If we look at, for example, the octopus eye, in that you have to, via random blind chemical mutations, change the code to make proteins that when they crystallize are going to have a range of refractive indexes. And they're going to also then be put in position so that they, when in these spherical concentric layers, they focus the image. Now to me, you know, it's absolutely impossible. That's sophisticated engineering design. You know, sophisticated physics has been involved there. SPEAKER A I don't think we've been able to reproduce that, have we, as humans? A spherical lens with those properties. SPEAKER B I'm not sure. It'd be very tricky. Yeah, of course. Particularly inorganic material. SPEAKER A Yeah, yeah, yeah. SPEAKER B Very complicated. Yeah. So this is something when, you know, when evolutionists say, oh, you know, we've got convergent evolution here and this sort of thing. It's very simple. These terms roll off the tongue and students sitting in a classroom, you know, believe this. Oh, wow. You know, sort of thing. The wow factor. When we drill down is, hang on, what's actually happening here? What is actually required here? We find that it's a very advanced, you know, optical engineering, very advanced optical engineering, so advanced that, you know, it's taken us until recently to sort of, you know, work out some of the chemistry involved in this. And there's, you know, a lot more. You have, you know, light-sensitive molecules like what is it, rhodopsin. For example, that changes its structure in the presence of light and catalyzes electrical impulses. You know, it's just so amazingly complex, and yet it's all brushed off, you know, ah, evolution. SPEAKER A Yeah. So I've got a question about this convergent evolution, which is basically describing how you can get similar things, similar, I guess, structures or functions, I guess, evolve in completely different creatures. How likely, if we're talking about random mutations here as being from an evolutionary perspective, the cause of how these different unique structures can develop, how likely is it for, in two completely different lines of species, very similar structures actually coming together when they're vastly different. Like, to me, when I think of randomness, I think of the likelihood of two things coming up exactly the same in completely different areas as being quite rare. What would you say about that? SPEAKER B Oh, yes, yes. And if you look at it from the mathematical statistics, again, it's, you know, absolutely impossible there. There aren't enough, well, you'd need almost an infinite number of universes where everything exists, which is meaningless anyway. So for that to happen. But I think one of the things that it points to is the same designer. So we have a classic example of this in we have Porsche cars and we have, you know, VW sort of cars. But we have the same engineer originally back there, but a vast difference in price. And performance. Yes. But the same engineers, the Porsche father and son team. And why are the designs similar? Because it was the same engineering. So instead of, you know, this whole evolution mentality that doesn't work, we— a couple of points that we need to recognize that there's no known mechanism at the present time how evolutionary processes can produce a new workable body part. This is actually recognized by high-level evolutionary biologists, right? This is something they're working on. It's not taught that way to students, but this is the reality of it. What it's pointing to though is a common designer for all these things. Said, "This is a good system. I'm gonna use this system in dun, dun, dun, dun, dun. And I'm going to vary it according to the needs of the particular—" environmental situation. That fits a super intelligent designer. The evidence, when we look at the design structure of the eye, the evidence is overwhelming of amazing optical engineering involved. And we've just talked about the lens so far. You know, there's all the muscles that control the focusing mechanism and move the lens in and out and so forth in the octopus eye. And the brain that controls the nerves that control the muscles that operate, you know, that operate and this, it all has to be coordinated. And again, all those have to arise from so-called random mutations of the genetic code to put the muscles just in the right place, just the right strength and so forth. You have a muscle that's too strong, it's gonna get everything out of balance, you know? SPEAKER A Yeah. Now that's really interesting. You mentioned before about how there is a difference between the human eye and the octopus eye in that the octopus doesn't have a blind spot, whereas humans do because of where the blood vessels— Optic nerve. Yeah, go over the retina. So obviously from an evolutionary perspective, a survival advantage, the creatures that are the most developed would, you would think, would have the most advanced abilities, but here we find an octopus having more— in a way, it seems to be more advanced than the human eye in that it can— there's no blind spot, though. You can see everything. Yeah, what are your thoughts about that in terms of this design? SPEAKER B Yeah, so from memory, I think there's about 2 I think it's 2.5 billion, you know, code pieces in the genetic code. From memory, I'm just going from memory, I think there's actually more code in, you know, code letters in the octopus and squid genome anyway. SPEAKER A Than humans? Yeah, yeah. Really? SPEAKER B Yeah, yeah, yeah. So this is something that we often, you know, don't realize is some plants have more bigger genetic codes than we have. But I think the important thing to come— that comes out of this is that all these different creatures have evidence of specific design. And when we drill down to the particular components that make up all the parts of the creature, they have so much evidence of specific design of all the different functions that are involved. For that particular organism to take place. You know, we're just focusing on octopus eyes. Squid eyes are similar. You know, one of the things that interests me is that the eyes in octopus are so big. Yes. But of course, when you think about it, they're a small, soft sort of animal, easy for, you know, little sharks to come along and bite them. So, you know, they've got to be pretty quick. They've They've got to have very good vision to be able to survive down there. And that's what they've, you know, and that's obviously the way they're made with their eyes. They're quite large for the size of the animal, really. SPEAKER A Now, it's also interesting, this aspect of the octopus's intelligence, because they're one of the most, I guess, intelligent invertebrates. You know, they can use tools, solve mazes. They have personalities that you can realize when you have them. People keep them as pets, but they have short lifespan. They don't pass on any of their intelligence, if you will, to their offspring. So how could such advanced intelligence evolve without the ability to teach the next generation? Because that just doesn't happen with the octopus. SPEAKER B Yeah, well, there's, there's lots of fascinating aspects to this. And again, this to me, this points to a supernatural creator that is outside. There's lots of things we don't understand. You know, how does the European cuckoo that's raised by another bird know to then get up and fly to South Africa and meet up with all the other cuckoos down there? And that's where its parents came from. You know, how does a monarch butterfly that the little grub was born in Canada, maybe the second generation, maybe even the third generation, know that it then has to fly down to Mexico to spend the winter. How does it navigate? And all these, you know, billions of butterflies congregate in this particular valley, I don't know, about 100 miles or so from Mexico City there in the, in the jungle. So There are things that we can't explain, but they point again to processes outside this mechanical worldview to know there's something more going on. We have a lot, in my view, a lot of examples of that that point to there's more than just the physical atoms and molecules. There is what we call, you know, this supernatural space or a spiritual space. And I think the design component is powerful evidence of that, yeah, the structures we see. SPEAKER A Yeah, explaining the things that we at this point don't, don't even understand, don't we? And yet we can see how it works amazingly in so many different examples like you mentioned. So very interesting to consider that question in relation to the octopus. Thank you for sharing. Have you ever struggled with doubts about God's existence or known someone who has? What helped you through it? Share your thoughts and stories in the comments. Your journey could inspire someone else who's searching for answers.