John Clayton
The covering of our eyes called the cornea is an incredible example
of complex design. The material of which the cornea is made has
to be perfectly clear to allow light to pass through it so that
we can see. It is exposed to the air with all of the bad things
air contains--pollen, dust, chemicals, etc. It has to be able
to withstand blows and fit to a curving surface full of a fluid
which maintains the pressure of the eye.
Recently we received a note from Marty Gilliam, a mechanical engineer
from Athens, Alabama, about how the cornea is designed so that,
if it gets scratched, it can heal without obstructing our vision.
A quote from his letter:
If you cut your skin, the cut heals from the bottom up, thereby
scar tissue is formed. Not so with the eye. When the cornea
experiences a scratch, the cells of the separated walls move toward
one another, and close the scratch or cut, therefore no scar tissue
is formed. If scar tissue formed every time we scratched our
corneas, by the time we were middle-aged we would be looking through
many cloudy lines. Another dandy design from the Designer!
This article taken from: Does God Exist?, July/Aug 1996
|