Articles

The Eye, the Fly and I

By C. W.

Studying the enormous structural differences between the compound eyes of flies and the camera eyes of vertebrates has naturally led evolutionists to insist these eyes evolved quite independently.

Evolutionary phylogenies also add weight to this. Even where there are great similarities, such as between the eye of the squid (an invertebrate) and our own, this has been attributed to remarkable convergent (or parallel) evolution, rather than common ancestry.

In fact, “phylogentic studies of the structure and development of eyes led to the proposal that eyes have evolved independently many times (perhaps as many as three or four dozen).”1

A surprising gene has now been discovered in fruitflies. This Pax-6 gene is a remarkable homologue of the same gene in vertebrates, and both are key regulators in eye development.

Obviously, from an evolutionary point of view, “the finding of a highly homologous molecule functioning as a key regulator of eye morphogenesis in flies and vertebrates strongly argues for a common developmental origin.”

It appears as if more than one of the genes regulating early development patterns are the same in flies and vertebrates, too much for the evolutionists to pass off as “convergence”.

For the evolution model, the evidence now points to two different directions. Creationists can view this with ease as mounting evidence of a mosaic pattern of similar structures and mechanisms being used on a wide variety of creatures, that is, common design features not restricted to a pattern of distribution consistent with common ancestry (evolution).

It looks as if evolutionists will be forced to conclude that something as different as my eye, that of a fly, and that of a squid have evolved from a common ancestral “eye”.

1. Zuker, C. S., 1994. on the evolution of eyes: would you like it simple or compound? Science, 265:742-743

CEN Tech Journal, vol. 8, no. 2, 1994 pg. 128