quote:
So the presence of a very good optic system in a creature who doesn't need it is proof of intelligent design?
Well, to be fair, it is known that one potential falsification for evolution by natural selection would be a feature or trait that can be shown to be impossible to arrive at through small, incremental steps of increasingly "better" stages. If an eye was "better" than the animal needs in order to survive, then there would be no way for natural selection to produce it.
Of course, I don't know what would be "better" than needed. It would seem that if sight is useful at all for a creature, then better sight would always be more useful. In theory, there should be no limit as to how good a creature's eye sight is.
In real life, every animal's eyesight is very limited. Either because the design itself ends up in some sort of "dead-end" where it would be impossible for an incrementally better feature to arise, or because the metabolic cost of developing and maintaining the organ would weigh more than the benefits of a better organ.
"Intellectually, scientifically, even artistically, fundamentalism -- biblical literalism -- is a road to nowhere, because it insists on fidelity to revealed truths that are not true." -- Katha Pollitt