http://www.fcps.edu/islandcreekes/ecology/eastern_mole.htm
These critters have eyes that are covered in skin and fur. Explain the intelligence in that design.
I recommend these links for a well done all encompassing rebuttal of creationism
I think you will find that everything that has functional (proto-)eyes has nerves of some sort, though, and teh eyes connect to the network of nerves. Nerves show up pretty early in multicellular animal evolution, I think, as soon as you move from sessile things like sponges to simple free swimming organisms (things like jellyfish and comb jellies). These animals need a network of nerves, and the oscillatory patten of signals it can produce, in order to produce the rhythmic motions of swimming. Eyes (eye spots), and other sensory organs, are a later addition acquired by animals with simple nervous systems already in place, initially to enable effective, co-ordinated motion. (See my previous post.)
It’s a pretty good argument for further study.
But it doesn’t sound the same when they say it, does it?
It might be wise for you to eschew the word “creature”; its derivation from the word “create” could be interpreted as acceptance of the concept of “Creation.”
“Organism” would work. Or “life form.”
There was a great TV documentary about this. IIRC, it was narrated by Alan Alda. Perhaps someone can use those clues and help me remember the name. It was one of a series of shows on science, presented for the layman, and seemed to me to be very nicely done.
He presented the argument, “what use is part of an eye” and then showed numerous examples, both lab experiments and existing creatures, which beautifully illustrated a possible development scenario for the mammalian eye (which is indeed a marvel of complexity.) Either my google-fu is failing me, or my memory is tricking me and it wasn’t Alan Alda (probably the latter). It was probably a PBS series of some sort.
It’s an understandable question for a reasonable mind. Even Darwin was a bit dumbstruck when facing this question. Fortunately, today we have a lot more basic knowledge and can fill in the gaps that to him seemed nearly insurmountable (and yet he didn’t doubt that it must have happened.)
Or “critter” 
The only argument for creationism is “it makes me feel better, so why not?”
So if embracing creationism makes you feel better than embracing evolution (and, y’know, reason and logic), knock yourself out.
It was never necessary for vertebrate eyes to evolve to be connected to the brain. The vertebrate eye is actually part of the brain. It was connected before it was an eye.
They have some?
Sure love to see it. Along with a compelling reason for anyone else to actually call it “evidence.”*
*This is intended as a preemptive condition that should communicate that just because something appears in the Bible does not make it “evidence,” in the same sense that empirical data is considered “evidence” by the scientific community.
When you termed “believers in evolution” in your OP, that sounds like you are marking yourself as a non-believer in evolution. Which is silly, because it’s like saying you don’t believe in the Empire State Building. Evolution is an established fact. It is not an opinion. It’s just unfortunate that the term “theory” has stuck to it, but it is no longer a theory and has not been for a long time.
Indeed; to me, in the era of the internet, anyone that cheerfully uses it again is already demonstrating ignoranceX2.
This is because Creationists are also ignoring the levels of acceptance evolution has where it counts, and also how old is the research that dealt with those “cheerful” arguments.
Theory is, in fact, the proper term for a rigorously tested explanation of a particular phenomenon. An explanation that has not been tested is a hypothesis. Popular usage defines “theory” as, essentially, “wild-assed guess,” but that’s not how the term is used in scientific fields.
The “What use is half an eye” argument has been dealt with many, many, many times. Best popular treatment IMO is in Richard Dawkins’ Climbing Mount Improbable. He refers to an evolutionary computer model by Dan Nilsson and Susanne Pelger that show that evolving a human-style eye, given just 3 pre-existing biological tissues, is basically inevitable, and fucking fast - a few hundred thousand years, which is ahem an eyeblink in geological time.
“Creationists make it sound as though a ‘theory’ is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night.” - **Isaac Asimov
**
In a small organism with a transparent body, the light sensitive patch could actually just be a few cells on the surface of the brain* itself - no complicated connection apparatus required (that could arise as a subsequent step)
*‘Brain’ might not be the best possible term here - we could just be talking about a nerve cluster or something.
Not really. They don’t have to be advantageous. It’s just that the advantageous ones are more likely to get passed on to the next generation.
It’s easy to look at something complex and functional like an eye or an ear and think that it must have evolved with that end goal in mind. What you are seeing is the end result of trillions of iterations of trial and error, with the end result being the stuff that worked best.
Actually, you might find this graphic interesting.
Also, it should be pointed out that, even if it were a valid argument, which it is not, it would in no way constitute an “argument for creationisim”. It would be an argument against evolutionary theory, which is something completely different.
Creationists seem to be very fond of assuming that if they can just disprove one teeny tiny bit of evolution, then that means that they win by default. If one bit of evolution is wrong, then GOD DID IT!! But that’s not how it works. To show creationism, you need to have some evidence for it - some observation that can be explained only by God magically making it happen, and by no other way. Disproof of idea A is NOT proof of idea B.
I think this is an important point to dispel Astrid’s misconceptions and skepticism. Evolution of an eye in an otherwise complex and large organism without structures like nerves or a brain to start with would be extremely unlikely. No matter how useful, my descendants will never in a billion years develop eyes at the back of their head.
But if you start small, like Mangetout just wrote, or if you start with some useful structure, which came from something else that started small, you can have sensible development. Imagine a small worm with a nerve system, you can start with a mutation that changes the chemistry of a sensory nerve ending and makes it somewhat photo sensitive, and step, by step, by step, you can get an eye.
Astrid, when you stumble on a thought like “Even a light sensitive patch seems complex to have sprung from mutations-- with connection to the brain and whatnot” you are starting too big and with the wrong conditions. Yes, a light sensitive patch is unlikely to spring from mutations if not connected to a brain or having some way of affecting animal behaviour, but that’s not how evolution is thought to have resulted in vision. The evolutionary predecessors of the human eye probably are structures sensing light as far back as when our ancestors superficially resembled planaria and even further back.