Archive for February, 2008

Sight to the Blind (Fish)

On February 04, 2008 in In the News, Science Related

Over the years, Evolutionists have offered example after example of poor-design in nature, and evidence that Creation is not really Creation, but merely the product of billions of years of trial-and-error.

One of the prides of Evolutionists have been Blind Cave fish. The story goes that a moderate population of fish swam down into a cave and got trapped. The fish might have often bumped their eyes on rocks, creating the opportunity for infection to rule, and kill them. Any mutation that halted, or completely did away with, the development of eyes would serve as a benefit in that environment, since no eyes could be bumped and torn in any way.

So in theory, millions of years passed, and the fish lost their eyes. They are still classified as the same species as their surface-dwelling kin. There’s absolutely no evidence that this transition took millions of years, but we are told to believe it anyway.

Eventually, the population switched from seeing-eyes, to visually-impaired. Or did it?

Today I strolled over to LiveScience where I found an article by the title “Blind Fish Still Able to ‘See’“. It’s a pretty interesting read, if anybody is bored. Basically, Scientists found that these fish were able to sense shadows (inadvertently demonstrating their ability to sense light). When a shadow passed over the top of the water, the fish instinctively swam up towards the surface.

Baffled by this, the Scientists began exploring the anatomy of the fish and found that they still contained their pineal gland. When this gland was removed from the fish, they failed to sense the shadows any longer. This gland is sensitive to light in amphibians and reptiles, but not in mammals - probably due to the fact that our skulls are thicker, and light couldn’t reach it anyway.

So the fish didn’t lose their sight altogether. The Scientists theorize that perhaps they retained the ability to sense light because caves are not always dark. But wasn’t it speculated that they lost their site because the caves were dark to begin with? Now they have it because the caves aren’t always dark? It could be that there wasn’t a large enough selective advantage to removing the pineal gland, and doing so may have been extremely detrimental seeing how melatonin (which is produced by the pineal gland) has possible ties to things like infertility, depression and cancer.

In another study by researchers at the University of Maryland, Scientists replaced the lenses of blind fish with their surface-dwelling kin. Eight days later the sightless-fish began developing eyes. The researchers go on to say, “After two months, the cave fish had grown a large restored eye with a distinct pupil, cornea and iris. In addition, the retina of the restored eye showed rod photoreceptor cells, which are rare in the degenerate cave fish eye.”

Dr. Carl Wieland of AnswersInGenesis concludes in ‘New eyes for blind cave fish?‘, “This indicates that the mutation by which the fish initially became ‘eyeless’ did not somehow ‘delete’ all of the ‘eye information’, but just interfered with the process leading to the eye’s development.”

To shed more light on the subject, Rachel Courtland wrote in Nature Magazine on January 7th, 2008 that “Two blind fish can make sighted offspring.” The paper, “Blind Cave Fish See The Light” goes on to describe research that demonstrated the ability to breed sighted-offspring from two distinct populations of blind fish. This indicates that the two populations lost their ability to see in different ways.

In the end, while this is a terrific demonstration of Natural Selection, it doesn’t however demonstrate a mechanism for microbes to become monkeys, mice, or magnolias.

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A Railroad Worker and His Son

On February 01, 2008 in Uncategorized

A railroad worker brought his son to work one day, to show him what his father did for a living. “See Son, pull this lever and the bridge goes up so the boats can pass. Push it so the bridge goes down so the trains can pass.” His son was excited about his dad’s job.Lunch came along and they were sitting and eating. All of a sudden the train-horn sounded, and it was time to lower the bridge. The little boy raced over to the stairs, and started climbing up to the lever. Losing his balance he fell and landed himself in the large gears beneath the stairs.

His father panicked and tried to reach his son. The train horn sounded yet again, and it was time to make a decision. Hundreds of people on that train are going to die, or his son is going to die. After a painful moment, he turned away from his son and reached for the lever. In tears he pushed the lever, and lowered the bridge. The scream of his own son filled the air.

As the train passed with the hundreds of people who were just saved on account of a horrifying sacrifice, the father screamed at the carts, “Don’t you see what happened! Don’t you see what I gave for you!” The people laughing, drinking, and carrying on to their own business didn’t even see the father screaming, or know of what he did for them.

The Father allowed his Son to be killed, for the many people passing by on the train.

God the Father allowed his Son to be brutally murdered in order to save us. Unfortunately, some of us refuse to believe we are in any form of danger - just as the passengers had no idea the bridge was up. Some of us cannot hear the Father crying out, because of other distractions.

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