How Does the Gecko Change its Color and its Texture?

Look at the picture on the left. There is a gecko sitting on the side of the tree. Can you see it? Now look at the picture on the right. It is the same picture but in black and white with enhanced contrast that shows the outline of the gecko.

"Chameleons can rapidly change color by adjusting a layer of special cells nestled within their skin, a new study finds."

http://www.livescience.com/50096-chameleons-color-change.html

In March of 2015, Nature Communications published a study describing how the chameleon changes the color of its skin.¹ The article states that the skin of a chameleon contains an organized array of guanine nanocrystals that refract light in different wavelengths much like a prism separates sunlight into its colors. None of these nanocrystals are visible by the naked eye; they are visible only under a microscope. The article shows that the chameleon changes the color of its skin by selectively stretching or relaxing its skin and causing the nanocrystals to tilt slightly one way or the other thereby refracting light of varying wavelengths and different colors. We see the same effect in the edge of a beveled window: as we move slightly, the colors refracted through a particular part of the bevel change from red to violet.

Here, combining microscopy, photometric videography and photonic band-gap modeling, we show that chameleons shift color through active tuning of a lattice of guanine nanocrystals within a superficial thick layer of dermal iridophores.

http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2015/150302/
ncomms7368/full/ncomms7368.html

The species of gecko in the photographs on this page is not the same species of gecko that was studied in the Teyssier study above. However, assuming that the method of camouflage in both geckos is the same, we conclude the following from the article and from what is common scientific knowledge:

There are thousands of guinine nanocrystals embedded in the chameleon's skin, all are aligned in the same direction, and all are affixed to the skin so that their angle and the color of the light refracted can be selectively and precisely controlled. The gecko changes the color by stretching or relaxing the skin just enough to change the angle of refraction and thereby render the desired color. The skin is stretched or relaxed by series of muscles or other organs. These organs receive instructions from the gecko's brain to tell them how to relax or contract to achieve the desired effect. These instructions are in the form of electrical impulses through nerves.

Initially, the gecko sees the pattern required for camouflage (in the photograph above it is the surface of a small tree trunk). The gecko's eyes transmit the picture to the brain in the conventional way: by means of a stream of electrical codes that, when processed, they precisely describe what has been seen. The code transmitted by the eyes is not simply an analog representation of the background (like a mirror) but instead, it is (as in humans) a digital code carried by electrical nerve impulses; and that code must be translated upon receipt. These impulses define thousands, if not millions, of colors. The codes for all of these colors are non-physical (pure logic) and they are pre-encoded into the brain, so the animal or human does not have to learn them. All he has to do is to "think" them.

The gecko's brain processes the code and determines what signals should be sent to the skin and where each signal must be sent in order to reproduce the background on the skin. These signals indicate exactly how much the skin will be stretched or relaxed in order to tilt the nanocrystals to the appropriate angle so that they refract the desired color and create the desired pattern on the surface of the gecko's skin. Since we are dealing with nanocrystals, the amount of actual motion of the crystals is extremely slight.

How does the brain of the gecko know which color goes with which degree of tilt because the gecko cannot see his back.? How does it know which nanocrystals to tilt? How does it know which nerve ending effects which nanocrystals?

Sunlight has only 7 colors, so in order to create an exact duplicate of the colors of the tree trunk in the picture above, the gecko has to mix the colors to achieve the perfect match that you see in the photo above. Where did the brain of the gecko in the photograph obtain the programming necessary to produce a brownish olive green, the exact color of the tree trunk?

Each color must have a different code attached to it because each color is different. Each color must be determined by a predetermined formula relating to how much of each basic color will be necessary and the tilt necessary to produce it. This is numbers, not material flesh. Where did the logic of these mathematics and encoding come from? After an early gecko received a genetic mutation that enabled it to tilt the nanocrystals in its skin, it would still have another one to enable it to send the signal to its back and another fortunate random alteration to program the correct signal for the correct color. Then all of these things would have to work in complete harmony before one could achieve a gecko that effectively disappears.

This is an immmensely difficult hurdle for Darwinism because all of the codes that carry the vision to the brain and the tilting instructions to the muscles are entirely non-physical. They are pure logic like the language expressed in the pixels on your computer screen. The language that you are reading is pure logic expressed through the letters on your screen.

As can be seen in the photograph above, the background is so perfectly reproduced that the skin of the gecko takes on all of the inconsistencies of the wood, including the appropriate distances between the inconsistencies, the patterns, the colors, the gradations of the particular shades of the wood, and at the same time it differentiates between the background and the foreground and excludes all of the foreground (green leaves).
The digital camera that took the picture on this page was constructed only after years of research, computer programming, color mixing, and camera construction. The gecko's brain is inconceivably more complex than any digital camera. But only the simple one was designed. The other came about by random chance and dying animals. No one ever created it. It simply occurred on its own and it is here only because all the chameleons that did not have a brain that contained the mathematics and code and processing power to mix a million colors died.

The argument for evolution is less than persuasive.

The evolution argument can be persuasive in one instance and in one instance only, and that is if the argument rests upon the inflexible presumption that the Creator is either non-existent or does not create. And indeed, evolution rests upon that very same inflexible presumption. Indeed, the engine that makes it go is the premise that all change occurs through random mutations of genetic structure. Intentional design is nowhere to be found in evolution.

Evolution's argument presumes its conclusion before it makes the argument. The conclusion of the evolution argument is that there is no Designer and therefore evolution created everything. But at the outset, evolution disregards any possibility of a Creator because a Creator cannot be measured. Evolution then argues that since there is no Creator, it is the only viable alternative to explain creation.

Evolution therefore presumes that its conclusion is true and then it bases its conclusion on its presumption. In short, evolution refuses to consider the existence of a Creator and then concludes that the Creator does not exist. That reasoning is circular.

¹ Jérémie Teyssier, Suzanne V. Saenko, Dirk van der Marel, Michel C. Milinkovitch, Nature Communications 6, Article number: 6368 | DOI:10.1038/ncomms7368. _____________________
Thanks to mongabay.com for the use of this photograph. This photograph is used pursuant to the consent published on the mongabay website. Mongabay is a fascinating website that contains numerous similar photographs