Odin wrote:
I find it funny how creationists claim that life must be designed by some divine engineer when living things are so jury-rigged it's funny. Evolution has no goal, it is merely the result of how changes in environments and ecosystems affect the genetics of populations, this is why organisms are so jury-rigged.
A good example of this evolutionary jury-rigging is the vertebrate eye. the retina's nerves and blood vessels are actually in front of the rod and cone cells that detect light (if you stare at a clear blue sky you may be able to see very faint fuzzy white dots zig-zagging around, these are your white blood cells in the blood vessels of the retina), this very odd arrangement stems from how the vertebrate brain and spinal cord originated, since the eyes are actually specialized outgrowths of the brain.
The worm-like ancestor of vertebrates probably had several simple nerve cords running along the back that developed in the embryo from ectoderm (embryonic skin) cells that migrated inward. At the front end of each cord there may have been a ganglion, a cluster of nerves that "analyze" data for the senses in a rudimentary way. Some of these ganglia would of had photo-receptor cells, precursors of the rods and cones in our eyes.
Our wormy ancestors then split into two lineages. One lineage stayed on the sea bottom, eventually becoming the echinoderms (starfish, sea urchins, etc). The other branch became swimming filter-feeders, and this put selectionary pressure for better senses and muscle coordination, which in turn required a better nervous system. The several nerve cords that developed from embryonic skin cells migrating inward became a single nerve cord that developed from embryonic skin that pinched off into a hollow tube. Instead of several ganglia there was a single brain segmented into 3 parts, the forebrain for smell, the midbrain for light information, and the hindbrain for vibrations (including sound waves), balance, and coordination.
The photo-receptor cells ended up on the inside of the brain. As long as out ancestors were tiny and transparent (like some tiny fish are today) this didn't matter, but as these proto-fish became larger extensions of the brain developed to keep the photo-receptor cells at the surface. These extensions of the brain became the eyes. Our rods and cones are still covered by a thin layer of brain, the nerves and blood vessels of the retina.
God is Alpha and Omega of jury-riggers. Masterful understanding of a thing by humans doesn't preclude divine origin.