For Christians (or anyone else) who deny Darwinian evolution.

[Succubus]

You don't need a Cray computer to perform basic arithmetic functions, and you don't need a massively complex neural system to invoke a reflex action to a stimulus. No doubt you will now ask 'how could they evolve together'?
The answer is; they almost certainly didn't. It is highly likely the first hundred trillion of these creatures with their proto eyes and proto nervous systems did not have the two synchronized, not to the benefit of the creatures survival that is.

It's highly likely this primitive arrangement at first resulted in the creature freezing when light hit its proto eye and gained no evolutionary advantage. Now fast forward a ~million? years. A handful of UV photons hits the light sensitive patch and whatever passes for a muscular system goes 'kick' and the thing darts off to one side.
What happened to the recalcitrants, the first group? They were eaten!
Evolution in action.

First, recognizing shapes and reacting to them is way way way more complicated then "moving toward the light". It would involve some sort of memory, some sort of if-then-else logic, and some way effect enough movement to make a difference. 

Correct. However, the first organisms did not have the ability to recognize shape, that came a ~million? years later.

You are positing two beneficial mutations that developed brand new functions simultaneously happening...eventually.

Asked and answered, the two mutations would be of no benefit until they were synchronized and that took ~millions? of years.

Then when the organism moved from just light sensing to shape sensing, two new beneficial mutations simultaneously happened as well (one in the "eye" and the other in the nervous system)--because neither the ability to "see" shapes nor the ability to process shapes had any survival benefit until the other was functioning.

Incorrect. From light sensing to shape sensing probably took a million mutations not two, and 999,999 of them failed. It appears you are asking for a mutation by mutation  account of the evolutionary process, no that can't be done.

But we still have a problem. Just sensing the light and processing the sensory information is not enough to confer a survival benefit.

I'm sure I covered this. If you are an amoeba like creature sitting under the sun in a warm pool and suddenly the light goes out, that means something just moved between you and the sunlight. Something bigger than you. Remain still and be eaten like a thousand trillion just like you.
Then something happened which unleashed the power of their imagination survival, they learned to move.

The organism must be able to do something about it.

It doesn't have to do any such fucking thing! You are still talking as though evolution has a goal, it doesn’t. A billion trillion of these things appeared and then disappeared  because they were not fit to survive the prevailing conditions.

Your description could be right. The point I have made 20 times already in this thread is that we really don't know how these things happened.

It's called natural selection, I think someone may have mentioned it in this thread.

If we don't know how, it cannot be a scientific fact. If it's not a scientific fact...

Begging the question.

...it is a philosophical claim that it happened.

 
The fact that you don't understand how it works doesn’t mean others don't, all it means is; you! don't understand.

[The Grand Nudger]

First, recognizing shapes and reacting to them is way way way more complicated then "moving toward the light". It would involve some sort of memory, some sort of if-then-else logic, and some way effect enough movement to make a difference. 

Memory, not so much...doesn't even require logic.  It can be machine implemented...and in fact, it is in living representatives in which light excites the photoreceptive cell... which directly provides both the impulse and the energy to move or effect change in some other structure. Cognition is wonderful, but probably not required for an organism (or machine) to present behaviors we would recognize as recognition. We would say, in the context of the simplest forms of light sensitive structures and organisms, that they recognize that they're in danger by a negative image...even though it;s not a truly cognitive type of recognition (or hey, maybe it is, but that's a whole different can of worms). Sometimes, the limitation is language.

Your description could be right. The point I have made 20 times already in this thread is that we really don't know how these things happened. If we don't know how, it cannot be a scientific fact. If it's not a scientific fact, it is a philosophical claim that it happened.

We -do- know that organisms inherit these structures.  We -do- know that mutations in dna alter these structures.  We -do- know that natural selection affects populations with these structures.  

The only inference now, with modern synth (see, genetics..the "synth" part.... turned alot of evolutionary theory into scientific fact), is that the processes which we still see happening today, happened yesterday, before we knew how to look or what we were looking for. We posit, further, that of all known factors that influence population genetics..and the subsequent structures dna builds...natural selection has been the broadest and most uniformly effective. We posit, further, that there is very little to nothing at all that this counldn't explain...that no other explanation is required. We posit..further, that this is the most efficient explanation. We posit, further, that the chance of modern synth being overturned, tommorrow, is vanishingly small. OTOH, all science is provisional, so maybe we'll learn something that modifies what we know. Maybe we'll learn, for example...that there was more atificial selection. You know..that your god played in the dirt with ameobas or somesuch.

That's the theory part, Steve.

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Fun times with science history.

When Darwin first proposed his idea of descent with modification, he was unaware of Mendels work.  It was a theory, because he could not demonstrate a mechanism by which those traits were passed on in the first place.  It very much seemed like they were, but how?  He could (and did) observe adaptive radiation...what he couldn't observe directly was allopatric speciation.

We're under no such handicap today.  

His most convincing argument was artificial selection.  At the time, breeding birds and dogs and roses was a widely popular hobby for his audience.  It's no coincidence that most of the objections to evolutionary biology come from a time when the best evidence for evolution was a directed breeding program, and from a time when what people now object to -was- a theory, as yet undemonstrated and undemonstrable.

We don't live in the late 1800's.

I say "we", but as surely as the sun goes down in the evening somebodies going to come along and present victorian objections to modern synth all over again.

[Amarok]

Count of fundies to always move the goalpost and insist "We don't know for a fact " which is just a gap they can try and shove god magic into.

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Fundies don't seem to get that eyes are a development from earlier sensory apparatus . Some of which can be seen even today .

[Pat Mustard]

Lol, "hard of thinking."  😂

It's a common expression out our way.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Fundies seem bent on proving you don't have to evolve.