To clarify, flatfish begin their lives with cranial symmetry (i.e., their eyes are like normal fish—one on each side). Then, as it grows older, one eye migrates over to the other side, making it a flatfish, with both eyes on one side. This way, it can lay on the ocean floor as a camouflaged predator of other fish.
Response
The flatfish design is certainly odd and curious, but it is not bad design. A good artist incorporates unusual designs (somewhat of a “signature”) to demonstrate his personality, not just his mastery of engineering. God is not only a good Engineer, but He is a good Artist, too, and so He incorporates unusual designs to demonstrate His unique “signature.”
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Sources
Coyne, J. A. (2009). Why Evolution Is True. New York: Viking.
Notes
- Coyne, 2009, p. 133: “Plaice, sole and flounders have their history written all over them too, to the point of grotesqueness. No sane creator, setting out from scratch to design a flat-fish, would have conceived on his drawing board the absurd distortion of the head needed to bring both eyes round to one side. He’d surely, right from the start, have gone for the skate or ray design, the fish lying on the belly with the eyes symetrically placed on the top. Plaice and sole are all twisted around because of their history; because their ancestors lay down on one side.” ↩