The Deceptive Eye

Psalm 139:14
“I will praise thee; for I am fearfully [and] wonderfully made: marvellous [are] thy works; and [that] my soul knoweth right well.”

Do your eyes ever play tricks on you? Our eyes regularly play tricks on us with the help of our brains.

Repeated research has shown that the images we see are not exactly what our eyes see. Our eyes and brains work together to construct the images we call sight. It’s not that our eyes are out to hoodwink us. Most of the time our eyes are working to help us. Working together, our brain and eyes add logical details to the images we see. Each of us has a blind spot in our vision because there are no vision cells where the optic nerve is. Instead of showing us a spot of nothing at the blind point in our field of vision, our brain invents an image from surrounding details. Your brain pulls the same trick on you when you proofread your completed manuscript. While others can still find typos, you may not. Your brain knows what you are saying and so it automatically shows you a repaired version, making many of your typing errors invisible.

Your pupils can reveal your thoughts. Studies show that when seeing unpleasant scenes the pupils retract. Pleasant or interesting scenes cause the pupils to open wider.

Charles Darwin wrote, “To suppose that the eye, with all of its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree.” We don’t often agree with Charles Darwin, but this time we do!

Prayer:
Father, I thank You that the excellence of Your work in making us is so noteworthy that even those who want to deny You cannot easily do it. Teach me how to use this to lead others to Christ. In His Name. Amen.

Notes:
McCutcheon, M. 1989. The Compass in Your Nose . . . . Los Angeles: Jeremy P. Tarcher.