The sublime creation in nature continues to attract the attention of and inspire scientists. The latest research in this field concerned a modelling study conducted in order to understand the system in the bee eye. Scientists from University of California in the USA succeeded in placing an artificial eye imitating the bee eye and consisting of more than 8500 hexagonal lenses in an area the size of a pin head.
The sublime creation in nature continues to attract the attention of and inspire scientists. The latest research in this field concerned a modelling study conducted in order to understand the system in the bee eye. Scientists from University of California in the USA succeeded in placing an artificial eye imitating the bee eye and consisting of more than 8500 hexagonal lenses in an area the size of a pin head. The details of the research were reported on the BBC website on 27 April, 2006, under the heading "Insect eye inspires future vision" which in summary said the following:
Scientists hoping to develop artificial retinas for the blind began placing lenses that focus light onto the centre in a delicate arrangement like that in the fly eye. The researchers first prepared a semi-spherical mould that would comprise some 8700 lenses. This was then filled with an artificial resin that hardens by entering into a reaction on contact with ultraviolet light. Later, this material was removed from the mould by being gently heated, the result being an artificial compound eye the size of a pinhead.
The scientists selected this substance because of its various unique chemical properties. The study made it clear just what an accurate choice this had been. Coming into contact with light the substance changed its chemical structure and gradually established a conical channel that would carry light deeper down. The result was an interesting substance with small protrusions on its surface, used as lenses, and with the ability to transmit light to greater depths.
For the moment, this artificial eye is not linked to any imaging device. However, it may be connected to an image sensor like those used in digital cameras and turned into a device that can provide images of the digestive system, for example.
The researchers actually aim to go beyond this and dream of developing treatments that can help the blind by producing artificial retinas.
The success of this research in terms of the benefits it will bring cannot be disputed. On the other hand, it raises a question that needs to be answered: how did the bee eye design that the scientists replicated as a perfect system first come into being?
As the researchers state in their comments in the BBC report, "Even though insects start with just a single cell, they grow and create this beautiful optical system by themselves". If we accept, in the way the researchers say, that the bee constructed this unique optical system itself, then we also have to accept that the bee possesses a knowledge of the optical details of this engineering marvel, the mathematical formula with which to arrange these in a convex form, the requisite protein and nerve structure and the genetic sequence required to produce these. Yet it is perfectly obvious that the bee has no such ability.
Ever since beginning life as a single cell, the bee develops in the egg under conditions of perfect coordination. This process continues with the production of interconnected, sensitive parts (tissues) at the right time and in the right form. In this way, from the process that follows the division of a single cell there emerges a perfect living thing with antennae, eyes, wings, legs and many other complex systems, just like a perfect building emerging from a process beginning with a construction worker laying the first brick. It is a certain fact this insect that emerges in such a way as to perform such a complex function as flight and that develops in a manner that astonishes scientists did not produce all these of its own volition, but that it owes its existences to a sublime Creator.
There is no doubt that it is Almighty Allah Who creates the bee from nothing, together with all its other organs. In aiming at technological progress, scientists are in fact imitating creation, the work of Allah"s sublime might and knowledge.
The BBC"s evolution error
In its article, the BBC interprets the study as "helping to understand how such complex systems in insects evolved.[AT1] " This interpretation is the latest indication of how materialist philosophy blinds people to the truth. Because the compound eye structure that defines the eyes of present-day insects is one that definitively invalidates and refutes evolution rather than shedding light on it. This structure has 530 million years of natural history behind it and has remained unchanged since it first appeared in trilobites (a form of arthropod consisting of three sections) – in other words, it has never undergone evolution.
In addition, the compound eye structure emerged suddenly in a flawless form, with no evolutionary forerunner and in the blink of an eye in geological terms. This system was therefore not a "primitive" or "undeveloped" structure when it first emerged, but a "perfect" system that has contained the latest knowledge we possess about lens science right from the very outset.
Moreover, the examples in the trilobite eye possess perfect systems that optical scientists have been unable to surpass even with the most advanced technologies. Trilobite eyes have systems that optical scientists such as Descartes and Huygens developed independently of one another in the 17th century with the aim of producing lenses that focused light in the best possible manner. Descartes and Huygens were unaware that the lens systems they developed as the result of intense research had been used by trilobites 530 millions years previously. Research by the physicist Ricardo Levi-Setti in the 1980s revealed the existence in the trilobite eye of mathematical curves described by Descartes and Huygens, whose lens designs are still employed by opticians today.
The presence in the trilobite eye of lens systems developed by rational and conscious researchers developed in the light of an objective and produced using a knowledge of mathematics, optics and physics clearly reveals that the compound eye structure is the work of an immaculate creation. The fact that this system has survived for millions of years undergoing no change whatsoever right down to the present day increases its support for creation many times over.
The fact that scientists who study this evidence with the aim of developing improved imaging systems still insist on the subject of evolution is particularly thought-provoking. Materialists, who constantly investigate the proofs of creation but who are unable to appreciate that creation, are actually displaying serious "tunnel vision."
We advise the team that prepares the BBC website scientific reports to abandon the outdated theory of evolution and hope that they will see that the bee eye actually confirms creation.
