"the so called backward wiring is the optimal engineered design for sight."

Tosh. The eyes of some invertebrates are far superior to our own. Check out the Mantis Shrimp for example, and cephalopod eyes are superior to most tetrapod eyes as they have the blood vessels running behind the retina and can see plane polarised light. They evolved convergently though and are living proof eyes have evolved more than once. If you were to actually design an eye it wouldn't be hard to improve on the design.

Your god is a rubbish designer Pete, he's left us tetrapods with a blind spot and them pesky red-light absorbing blood vessels mentioned above. Human eyes are really quite rubbish, as we only see a tiny part of the light spectrum and our eyes are rubbish in the dark too; ever wonder why nocturnal animals rely on hearing and/or smell?


" it don't even explain how it got off the starting block!"

We'll know one day, be assured. Just because we don't understand something now doesn't mean god was involved - why would it?