David Lee, John Prewett, et al. have posted here that organisms are too complex to have appeared without a master plan of an intelligent designer. In my latest issue of Technology Review (Feb/Mar 94), Kenneth Miller, Professor of Biology at Brown University and co-author of "Biology," a high-school textbook, argues that such seemingly perfect examples as the human eye and the genetic code actually display numerous mistakes and serendipity that could only reflect the opportunistic forces of natural selection. Either that, or else the Grand Designer was rather sloppy. In the human eye, light must pass through neural mass to reach the light-sensitive rods and cones. While the optic neurons are almost transparent, they still scatter and diffuse the light and produce a blind spot where all the neurons head for the brain. A much more efficient design would put the rods and cones in front of the neurons, and indeed squid and octopus eyes are designed this way. It would seem that an intelligent designer would have used the most efficient design everywhere. Evolution, which works by repeatedly modifying existing structures, can explain the inside-out nature of our eyes quite simply. Vertebrate retina evolved as a modification of the outer layer of the brain by making part of it more and more light- sensitive over time. Conversely, mollusk eyes are wired right- side-out because they evolved from skin cells, which retain their original orientation: the neural "wiring" is beneath the surface. The panda's opposing "thumb" is another illustration: it evolved from a wrist bone, rather than from one of the five digits (the panda has five regular "toes" as well as its thumb). A proponent of intelligent design must maintain that the absence of teeth in birds is because the designer equipped them with beaks and gizzards that are superior for lightweight flying organisms. But then why would the designer have chickens carry a gene for making nice pearly white teeth? They do. OTOH, evolution provides the simple explanation that birds descended from organisms that once had teeth; therefore they retain tooth genes, even if other genetic changes turn off their expression. "Birds thus have a genetic mark of their own history that no designed organism should ever possess." Another DNA example is the five genes for making beta-globin in the human blood when only two are required: one for adults and one for fetuses; the actual count is two and three. The fetus uses its tight-binding forms to draw oxygen from the mother's blood; adult forms need only draw oxygen from the atmosphere. Evolution can explain this combination by accidental duplication of ancestral genes. In addition there is a sixth beta-globin "pseudogene"; it became non-functional somewhere in evolution, but it is still carried along for the ride. To me, this means that the ULP god wrote the Ultimate Laws of Physics some 20 billion years ago (or maybe before), ignited the Big Bang, went off to do something else, and really doesn't care if we abort fetuses or not [last comment made only to keep this on topic B-)]. I really don't want to reignite the creationism/evolution argument (although I guess I have), and I reserve the right not to reply to any comments on this posting. My purpose in posting this is to say that if anyone net- mails, internets, or otherwise makes me aware of a snail-mail address, I'll be happy to send a copy of the article. Pat NETMAIL address: 1:161/42 Internet: patrick.spangler@intellisoft.com P.S. My spell-checker wanted to substitute "cretinism" for "creationism."