Happy Thanksgiving! Amid an endless pandemic, supply-chain disruptions, and now grocery rationing, we can and should still give thanks. If you’re looking for one more thing to express gratitude for, look no further than…eyes.

They were quite the sudden, unanticipated gift in the history of life. Charles Darwin expected that eyes must have developed from simple forerunners through the usual (hypothesized) series of gradual steps. But at the Cambrian explosion some 530 million years ago, we find clear evidence of both compound (as in the trilobite pictured above) and camera eyes already in use by creatures among the first animals in the fossil record. BOOM: There they are.

We take our own eyes for granted. However, our ability to interact with the world through vision — its beauty, its marvels, the information all around us — is beyond remarkable. At the same time, the eyes are an evolutionary icon, in two senses. In a powerful short video written and directed by Rachel Adams, we consider the scientific evidence around the question of eye evolution:

To deal with and demote the exquisite sensitivity of our vision — the ability to detect a single photon — Darwinists claim that vertebrate eyes are built backwards in testimony to the haphazard ways of evolution. But as Discovery Institute biologist Jonathan Wells explains, evolutionists are working with outdated science. It’s not ID proponents, but entirely mainstream research, that increasingly reveals the optimal design of our eyes.

Don’t let the truth about life and its origins get locked down. If, like me, you are grateful for the courageous voices of Dr. Wells and other scientists with Discovery Institute’s Center for Science & Culture, please take a moment now to donate to keep Evolution News — the daily voice of the intelligent design movement — going strong in 2022!