101 Proofs For God

The Next Book On Your Reading List

2018-02-11T12:06:00.004-08:00

Greetings.

I would like to share with you a wonderful book which I finished reading recently. It brought tears to my eyes on several occasions. These are amazing and inspirational stories.

It is called Physician's Untold Stories by Dr. Scott Kolbaba. Here is the link to the website.

https://www.physiciansuntoldstories.com/

Dr. Kolbaba experienced several miraculous events in his own practice. Speaking quietly with other doctors, he realized that many of them had other miraculous experiences as well, but nobody could talk about them openly for fear of being called crazy.

He set about collecting stories from courageous doctors in all medical fields, doctors who had the highest credibility in their fields.

That became his book Physicians' Untold Stories.

Add this to the growing list of Proofs for God. Please buy this book and share it with others.

Get the word out. Don't keep it a secret.

Also, talk to your doctor about God. We'll all be better off if our doctors are praying for us and listening to God as demonstrated in this book.

Remember, there has to be God.

Book will be in stock at Amazon on Dec. 25th.

2016-12-21T16:47:00.000-08:00

Christmas Greetings,

Amazon is saying on my book page that 101 Proofs for God will be back in stock on Dec. 25th.

http://amzn.to/2ht50e1

If you don't want to wait, you can order it directly from the Publisher (BookBaby) at:

https://store.bookbaby.com/book/101_Proofs_for_God

Thanks a lot. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

Jim

Ebook, Kindle Book, now available on Amazon

2016-12-21T16:36:00.000-08:00

Hi everyone,

Just a few days ago I finished all the formatting changes needed to be able to publish my book as a Kindle book, an ebook.

They say you can read it on any device.

You can buy it on Amazon for just $9.99.

If you are an Amazon Prime subscriber (like me), you can read it for free.

http://amzn.to/2hV0nui

2016-11-29T16:26:00.000-08:00

Hi all,

MONEY BACK GUARANTEE (see below).

My book is already on backorder at Amazon. They didn't buy enough from the publisher in their original order to meet the demand...at least I'll believe that.

It's selling at the discounted price of $13.49, down from $19.99.

So far there are 2 reviews. Both gave the book 5 stars.

It is also available on Barnes and Noble and other online retailers of books.

Here is the link to the Amazon sales page:

http://amzn.to/2g3DfrS

MONEY BACK GUARANTEE. Here is my guarantee. Buy the book and if you don't like it, then mail it to me and I'll reimburse you for the book and shipping. Just contact me at 101ProofsForGod@gmail.com for return details.

Buy my book. (please)

2016-10-09T05:01:00.001-07:00

After 7 months of starts and stops, changing directions, hours and hours of investment in details and editing, and getting my education on how book publishing works, MY BOOK IS NOW AVAILABLE.

Hard to believe that this day has actually come.

Pre-orders are being taken now at the publisher for shipping in November.
https://store.bookbaby.com/book/101_Proofs_for_God

Then it will also be on sale at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, etc.

More details are at www.101ProofsForGod.com.

I have 100 copies here at home. You can email me through the contact form at the right and I'll ship you one for $19.99 plus $4 postage.

A new adventure begins. I'm going to develop a Powerpoint and begin public speaking in churches, libraries, community groups, home-school organizations, whoever will have me.

Wish me luck.

#101 The Messiah

2016-02-28T14:27:00.000-08:00

As I was getting closer and closer to my goal of 101 Proofs for God, I began thinking a lot about what should be the concluding Proof for God, number 101. I wanted it to be a more universal one, something more of the heart than the head.

I thought about “good and evil” and “morality” which have been classic proofs for God because they cannot originate inside of the materialistic world. I thought about “free will” and “faith” because those are very real things, but they are definitely not of this material world. No materialistic explanation of our existence (i.e. evolution) can explain their existence.

As I sat down and prayed about it, “The Messiah” came to my mind. That was very satisfying and totally appropriate. After all, what’s life and proofs for God all about right now anyway?

The Messiah is the essential crux of human history. For believers, this one person, Jesus of Nazareth, leads us to being able to explain who is God, how the world got messed up, what the solution is, and what kind of world we should be looking forward to.

Just think about the effect that one almost totally obscure man has had on the world since he lived. He lived in a pretty obscure, little country for only 33 years and shared his ideas for only three years. Not only has he had an effect on billions of people for the last 2,000 years, but even today there are billions of people being affected by his life. His ideas affected the founding of our nation, its constitution, and government. Freedom and responsibility have led to the greatest advances in science, medicine, technology, art, and commerce that the world has ever seen.

How do you explain that type of phenomenon from three years of a man’s life? He was tapping into something way beyond ordinary lives. Something very supernatural must be going on.

Now, I’m not going to try to convert anybody to anything here. I just want to put forth some facts that might bring a new perspective or two for you.

Let’s take a look at the Bible from the perspective of it being just a book and compare it to other books. The Bible is the bestselling book of all time with over 5 billion sold. (To be accurate, Quotations from Chairman Mao claims over 6 billion in print, but does not claim they were all purchased. Also, the Qur'an claims billions, but there are not enough accurate records.) [1]

The next best seller at 150 million is Lord of the Rings. [2] The Bible outsells it by 30 to 1.

Back in 2001, records show the number of new Bibles distributed (sold or given away) in the United States was about 168,000 per day. [3]

Could the Bible possibly be just a lie and really worthless to all those people? Are they really that stupid? Could they just be deluding themselves? Could they just be fantasizing their experiences with the God of the Bible?

There is totally overwhelming evidence that God really does exist everywhere you look. See 101 Proofs for God. Furthermore and most importantly, you can have a relationship with Him if you decide to. But there is the real catch, you have to decide to on your own.

Before this one I’ve put together 100 Proofs for God and if you read all of those and are still not sure if God exists or not, your next step actually is to take a “leap of faith”. There’s plenty more I could write about. I could keep going for another 40 years and get up to 1001 Proofs for God.

However, faith in God is actually a gift that comes to you once you accept that God exists and decide to believe in Him. Only after you have received the gift of faith, then you start to build your relationship with God. That’s the place you want to get to. That’s the part that is wonderful. That’s the goal.

Think of people like St. Francis of Assisi or Mother Teresa. They had an amazing personal relationship with Jesus. They had many deep experiences with him as have millions of others down through the years. As you probably know, St. Francis was the first to receive the stigmata, where the palms of his hands, his feet, and his side shed blood in the same place as Jesus’ crucifixion. It lasted for two years prior to his death. [4] The stigmata came upon him during a 40-Day fast when he was 43 years old.

This paragraph is from his biographer.

“His wrists and feet seemed to be pierced by nails, with the heads of the nails appearing on his wrists and on the upper sides of his feet, the points appearing on the other side. The marks were round on the palm of each hand but elongated on the other side, and small pieces of flesh jutting out from the rest took on the appearance of the nail-ends, bent and driven back. In the same way the marks of nails were impressed on his feet and projected beyond the rest of the flesh. Moreover, his right side had a large wound as if it had been pierced with a spear, and it often bled so that his tunic and trousers were soaked with his sacred blood." [5]

Many people have received stigmata over the years. But modern science cannot explain it. So what do they conclude?

Some modern research has indicated stigmata are of hysterical origin, or linked to dissociative identity disorders, especially the link between dietary constriction by self-starvation, dissociative mental states and self-mutilation, in the context of a religious belief. [6]

In essence, they are crazy people. Is that what you want to believe about St. Francis? How about Mother Teresa? You’d have to be a crazy person to spend your life among lepers like she did, right?

Some people may say that the historical Jesus did not exist. (That might be an even better proof for God if somehow all the miracles for 2,000 years have been done by God without an earthly Jesus.) But he actually did exist. The evidence for his life is far more substantial than evidence for other ancient figures that everybody accepts as having existed without doubt, e.g. Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Homer, and others.

Go to this type of resource for a thorough analysis of proof for Jesus: Is The New Testament Reliable As An Historical Record? [7] It lays out three tests to apply to historical documents: (1) The Bibliographical test, (2) The Internal evidence test, and (3) The External evidence test. The life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth pass with high flying colors.

There are some 24,000 copies of the New Testament in existence (5,600 in Greek, 10,000 in Latin, and 9,000 in other languages from wide ranges all over the Middle East.) This compares to “The Iliad” by Homer which is in second place with 643 copies. [8] There are about 250 known manuscripts for Plato. [9]

“We have 114 fragments of the New Testament dating back to 50-100 A.D., and 5366 Greek copies of parts of the New Testament, and over 19,000 manuscripts in other languages, including 250 books containing most of the N.T and 325 complete New Testaments within 225 years of their writing and less than 300 years from Christ’s Resurrection.” [10]

A surprisingly huge number of the New Testament fragments and copies are very close in time frame to their original documents, increasing the likelihood that they are accurate. But for Plato who lived around 400BC, we do not have any copy of his work that was made until 1200 to 1300 years later. So there could be a lot of errors in the copy. For Homer, our existing copies were made 500 years after his originals.

Further evidence for the real life of Jesus is that many people living at his time or shortly thereafter wrote about him and his followers and the New Testament. Writings of later church fathers contain 19,368 citations referring to texts from just the Four Gospels alone.[11]

Another point is, “What’s the whole big deal about a Messiah, anyway?” For non-believers, Jesus is not a big deal. However, people with a religious inclination know in their hearts there is something wrong with this world. Human nature has good and evil. It’s different when compared to the harmony in all of Nature. Somehow we are separated from the goodness and happiness that we long for in our hearts. If there is a Messiah, a person who saves us from this situation, then there is an explanation for our plight and a solution to return to the original ideal. There is hope. Also, the existence of the Messiah is proof there is a God acting behind the scenes who loves us and sends the Messiah for us.

There could never be The Messiah if there were no God. In fact, The Messiah necessitates a loving, long-suffering God who is trying to bring home His “lost sheep”, His lost children. That is exactly the Heavenly Father that Jesus taught us about. No one else in history taught us that God is our Heavenly Father and forgives us.

Certainly, Jesus believed in God. If there ever was an “expert” that we could trust, he’s the one. Maybe you think that you know “the truth” better than anyone else. If that were true, then we should call you “god”, shouldn’t we?

One day everyone will find the truth, whether it is in this life or the next. Deep inside every person is the inerasable quest for truth. That is the guarantee that we will all keep searching until we find our source.

There must be God.

_________________________________________________________

[1] List of best-selling single-volume books, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_books

[2] List of best-selling single-volume books, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_books

[3] About the Bible, ChristianAnswers.net, http://www.christiananswers.net/bible/about.html

[4] “Francis of Assisi”, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_of_Assisi

[5] “Stigmata”, Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stigmata

[6] “Stigmata”, Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stigmata

[7] “Is The New Testament Reliable As A Historical Record?”, Know What You believe.Com, http://knowwhatyoubelieve.com/believe/evidence/bible_reliability.htm

[8] “Is The New Testament Reliable?”, Know What You believe.Com, http://knowwhatyoubelieve.com/believe/evidence/bibliographical_test.htm

[9] Wikipedia, “Plato: Textual sources and history”, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plato

[10] “Did Plato Really Exist?”, http://www.dakotavoice.com/2008/03/did-plato-really-exist/

[11] “Manuscript Evidence for the Bible: An Outline”, http://www.faithfacts.org/search-for-truth/maps/manuscript-evidence

#100 Quality Control and Error Correction

2016-02-18T14:52:00.002-08:00

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry for 2015 was given jointly to three scientists who discovered repair mechanisms in our DNA.

“The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2015 is awarded to Tomas Lindahl, Paul Modrich and Aziz Sancar for having mapped, at a molecular level, how cells repair damaged DNA and safeguard the genetic information. Their work has provided fundamental knowledge of how a living cell functions and is, for instance, used for the development of new cancer treatments.” [1, also links to illustrations below]

“Damages occur to your DNA every day.” Sara Snogerup Linse is the chair of the Nobel Committee for chemistry. ‘In fact, right here, right now, if all those errors were left uncorrected, your genetic material would have very little resemblance to the original chromosomes in your very first cell. Life as we know it today is totally dependent on DNA repair mechanisms, as have been revealed in molecular detail by this year’s chemistry laureates.’” [2]

Think about what Nobel Prize Chemists are actually saying. This is totally anti-evolution. Our DNA repairs itself. Maybe that seems like it is not important, or perfectly natural, unless you think about it for a few minutes. What is DNA repairing itself from? Why mutations of course. DNA does not like mutations and actually has at least three different ways of fighting against mutation, and trying to stop mutation, and repairing against it when it does happens (which is often).

Now evolutionists will have an even more difficult time explaining that their mechanism for developing new species is even remotely possible. Scientists have shown that mutation cannot really be the process for change.

Here is what the Nobel Academy said about Dr. Paul Modrich’s discovery of the “mismatch repair mechanism”.

"This mechanism, mismatch repair, reduces the error frequency during DNA replication by about a thousand fold," the academy said. [3]

The Nobel Prize was given to a man who made evolution about a thousand times more difficult. Imagine what science will finally discover in the future if they keep going.

This quote is from a CNN article about the Nobel Prize for Chemistry.

Tomas Lindahl, Paul Modrich and Aziz Sancar won "for having mapped, at a molecular level, how cells repair damaged DNA and safeguard the genetic information."

The organization (prize committee) tweeted graphics explaining the scientists' work. [1]

Lindahl, a Swedish scientist, showed that "DNA decays at a rate that ought to have made the development of life on Earth impossible," the academy said.

"This insight led him to discover a molecular machinery, base excision repair, which constantly counteracts the collapse of our DNA."

Modrich, an American, showed how a cell corrects errors that occur when DNA is replicated during cell division.

"This mechanism, mismatch repair, reduces the error frequency during DNA replication by about a thousand fold," the academy said.

Sancar, a U.S. and Turkish citizen, mapped nucleotide excision repair -- the mechanism that cells use to repair UV damage to DNA, the academy said.

"People born with defects in this repair system will develop skin cancer if they are exposed to sunlight, it said. [4]

Here is another important statement.

“Paul Modrich showed how cells correct errors that take place during DNA replication, every time a cell divides. This mismatch repair fixes some 99.9 percent of the errors that take place.” [5]

That means almost 100% of DNA errors are repaired, which makes evolution virtually impossible. Here is another amazing statement in a report.

“Towards the end of the 1960s, many scientists considered DNA to be incredibly stable. But working at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Dr. Lindahl worked out that there must be thousands of potentially damaging attacks on the genome every day – an onslaught that would make human life impossible.” [6]

The Nobel Prize Committee admitted that human life should be impossible because DNA is so fragile. Dr. Lindahl, way back in 1974 (42 years ago) proposed a mechanism to explain how we could even exist despite the fact that our DNA is so unstable. (Note, we shouldn’t be here. We are a miracle.)

Here are some more statements in the report by The Guardian and some more from the Nobel Committee.

“From the moment an egg is fertilized it begins to divide. Two cells become four, four cells become eight. After one week a human embryo consists of 128 cells, each with its own set of genetic material. Unravel all that DNA and it would stretch for 300 meters.

“But many billions more divisions take place on the path to adulthood, until we carry enough DNA in our trillions of cells to reach 250 times to the sun and back. The most remarkable feat is how the genetic information is copied so faithfully. ‘From a chemical perspective, this ought to be impossible,’ the Nobel committee said.

“‘All chemical processes are prone to random errors. Additionally, your DNA is subjected on a daily basis to damaging radiation and reactive molecules. In fact, you ought to have been a chemical chaos long before you even developed into a fetus,’ they added.” [7]

The chemists admitted that “from a chemical perspective” it is impossible. Obviously, something beyond chemistry must be at work here.

Here’s the truth that evolutionists must now face. Their theory about a slow and gradual step by step process for species development must now overcome the newly established chemistry of DNA repair mechanisms. How can evolution claim that mutation is their operating process when it is being reversed 99.9% of the time by these Nobel Prize winning repair mechanisms?

Have you ever tried to go someplace by taking two steps forward and two steps back? The Theory of Evolution starts from very simple organisms and ends up after a long climb at millions of extremely complicated structures. But evolution can never even get started without DNA. Now we find that DNA basically won’t mutate because it already has inside itself an anti-mutant mechanism in place.

DNA repair mechanisms are like “quality control” in a manufacturing plant. Here is a definition:

"’Quality control’ is a system for verifying and maintaining a desired level of quality in an existing product or service by careful planning, use of proper equipment, continued inspection, and corrective action as required.” [8]

In order for this DNA repair system to function, I can name at least six separate actions that are required. You have to be able to (1) inspect the DNA replications for errors, (2) recognize when there is a copying error or failure and exactly where it is, (3) turn on a repair mechanism, (4) fix the error, (5) turn off the repair mechanism, and (6) check to see if the repair was successful. Sounds a lot like intelligence was required at a very highly sophisticated level that human beings can only imagine.

There must be God.

___________________________________________________________

[1] The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Press Release, October 7, 2015, http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/2015/press.html

Illustration - DNA Structure (pdf 650 kB) http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/2015/fig_ke_en_15_dnastructure.pdf

Illustration - Base excision repair (pdf 495 kB) http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/2015/fig_ke_en_15_baseexcisionrepair.pdf

Illustration - Mismatch repair (pdf 1,5 Mb) http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/2015/fig_ke_en_15_mismatchrepair.pdf

Illustration - Nucleotide excision repair (pdf 537 kB) http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/2015/fig_ke_en_15_nucleotideexcisionrepair.pdf

[2] Scientific American.Com, "2015 Nobel Prize in Chemistry", By Steve Mirsky on October 7, 2015, http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode/2015-nobel-prize-in-chemistry/

[3] CNN.Com, "Nobel Prize for chemistry awarded to 3 scientists for DNA repair studies", By Holly Yan and Don Melvin, CNN Updated 9:32 AM ET, Wed October 7, 2015, http://www.cnn.com/2015/10/07/world/europe/nobel-prize-chemistry/

[4] CNN.Com, "Nobel Prize for chemistry awarded to 3 scientists for DNA repair studies", By Holly Yan and Don Melvin, CNN Updated 9:32 AM ET, Wed October 7, 2015, http://www.cnn.com/2015/10/07/world/europe/nobel-prize-chemistry/

[5] Scientific American.Com, "2015 Nobel Prize in Chemistry", By Steve Mirsky on October 7, 2015, http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode/2015-nobel-prize-in-chemistry/

[6] The Guardian.Com, "Nobel prize for chemistry: Lindahl, Modrich and Sancar win for DNA research", by Ian Sample and James Randerson, October 7, 2015, https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/oct/07/lindahl-modrich-and-sancar-win-nobel-chemistry-prize-for-dna-research

[7] The Guardian.Com, "Nobel prize for chemistry: Lindahl, Modrich and Sancar win for DNA research", by Ian Sample and James Randerson, October 7, 2015, https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/oct/07/lindahl-modrich-and-sancar-win-nobel-chemistry-prize-for-dna-research

[8] “Quality Control”, http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/quality-control

#99 Complexity, Equilibrium, and Energy Costs

2016-01-20T19:52:00.000-08:00

I’m sure you remember the phrase from physics class that a body in motion tends to stay in motion and a body at rest tends to stay at rest. This is known as Newton’s First Law of Motion.

This has an interesting application to recent research on evolution. As you can imagine, it takes a certain amount of energy to produce something new and different. And mutating new systems is the essence of how evolution creates new species.

If forces are in a state of equilibrium, then generally there will not be change. Darwinism requires that there be change over time and therefore there must be an input of energy.

Here is the definition of equilibrium.

A condition in which all influences acting cancel each other, so that a static or balanced situation results. In physics, equilibrium results from the cancellation of forces acting on an object. In chemistry, it occurs when chemical reactions are proceeding in such a way that the amount of each substance in a system remains the same. [1]

In a July, 2014, peer reviewed article in the journal Complexity, researchers Snoke, Cox, and Petcher have realized that the Theory of Evolution has a major problem. [2] Their conclusion was this.

The bottom line seems to be that whatever cause generated the biological features we observe, unguided Darwinian evolution is not it. [3]

They used a computational model to simulate the processes that must take place for evolution to be true. The Theory of Evolution says that Natural Selection chooses one from among many variations in a survival of the fittest process. The essential point to discuss here is that there must first exist the many variations for Natural Selection to be able to act on something.

If you don’t have many variations already existing, then the odds of Natural Selection working successfully become totally impossible.

In order to get many variations, there is necessarily an energy requirement. The researchers chose a certain level of energy as the amount needed to make a new variation and then tested to see what the results would be.

[T]here is an additional energy cost to increased complexity. ... In real systems, building new systems is costly, and the cost of carrying along useless or redundant systems is one of the arguments for the efficiency of existing living systems, as excess baggage is dropped as too costly. [4]

So in other words, once a good design exists, it tends to be in equilibrium and it will continue. It will not develop other systems because of the extra energy required to develop them. Adding new variations onto an already functioning and efficient system would require extra energy that the organism would tend to select against.

As an example, how do you evolve a human pelvis from a monkey pelvis? The orientation, structure, and strength points are very different because a human walks upright. The monkey pelvis works fine for the monkey. Why would a partially human pelvis and a partially monkey pelvis be remotely a good idea from an efficiency perspective?

You could make the same argument for legs, feet, arms, hands, and on and on, trying to develop a monkey into a human.

The model showed that in most cases, no changes would take place in a working system. It also showed another problem.

If you plug a number into the model that would represent a low cost of energy in order to make a new variation, then you would indeed get lots of variations. This is necessary for Natural Selection to be able to operate. However, many variations when the energy cost is low would also be carried forward even if they did not have a functional purpose. This ultimately caused the organism to fail from the burden of useless vestigial systems.

In order for Natural Selection to function, the theory says there have to be a lot of systems to choose from. But the modeling based on energy costs demonstrates that in reality too many of those various systems would not be discarded. The organism would eventually have to fail from the burden.

There was no stable energy cost point for getting to the scenario where Natural Selection could work its magic. They either got no evolution or too much useless evolution which Natural Selection could not deal with.

The analysis of the energy cost of producing variations showed this:

There are two competing processes. On one hand, the energy cost of carrying vestigial systems makes them weakly deleterious, not neutral, which tends to reduce their number. Conversely, without stabs in the dark, that is, new systems which might eventually obtain new function but as yet have none, no novelty can ever occur, and no increase of complexity. Thus, if the energy cost of vestigial systems is too high, no evolution will occur. [5]

So here is the big problem. The tendency it turns out is to stay in equilibrium once an efficient system is attained. From there, no evolution occurs. The energy cost of many variations is too high. Thus no new systems tend to develop and no further evolution takes place.

When researchers tested what would happen if only a small amount of energy cost was needed to produce lots of variations. They found that this would produce the many new systems that are needed, however, this would also lead to many left over systems that are useless. Over time more and more useless systems would accumulate. Eventually that would cause the organism to die out from lack of efficiency.

But trying lots of new things mean you cannot weed out slightly deleterious traits. Over time unhelpful traits accumulate. Eventually such mutations pile up to an extent that the population reaches a crisis point, and crashes. The junk has become an unbearable burden. The organisms go extinct. [6]

I like this new phrase “arrival of the fittest” in the next quote. Before there can ever be “survival of the fittest”, there has to be “arrival of the fittest” on the scene. Science is now having a problem identifying how systems could even “arrive”, let alone be in a position to be selected.

Many scientists now recognize the insufficiency of the classic Darwinian story to account for the appearance of new features or innovations in the history of life. They focus on other theories to account for remarkable differences between genomes, the appearance of novel body plans, and genuine innovations like the bat's wing, the mammalian placenta, the vertebrate eye, or insect flight, for example. They realize that the traditional story of population genetics (changes in allele [7] frequencies in populations due to mutation, selection, and drift) cannot account for "the arrival of the fittest" and not just the "survival of the fittest." [8]

Let me repeat the conclusion of that peer-reviewed article. Please pass it on to others so that they too will be aware of what researchers themselves are more and more aware of.

The bottom line seems to be that whatever cause generated the biological features we observe, unguided Darwinian evolution is not it. [9]

As research continues, even stubborn believers are going to have to give up on Darwinian unguided evolution. The end has to come sooner or later and it will be scientists who pull the plug on Darwinian Evolution.

There must have been some intelligence far greater than ours to engineer the world around us.

There must be God.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

[2] Snoke, David W.; Cox, Jeffrey; and Petcher, Donald, "Suboptimality and complexity in evolution", Complexity Journal, Volume 21, Issue 1, http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/cplx.21566/abstract

[3] Luskin, Casey, "Peer-Reviewed Paper Reveals Darwin's Unavoidable Catch-22 Problem", December 27, 2015, http://www.evolutionnews.org/2015/12/6_of_our_top_st101881.html

[4] Snoke, David W.; Cox, Jeffrey; and Petcher, Donald, "Suboptimality and complexity in evolution", Complexity Journal, Volume 21, Issue 1, http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/cplx.21566/abstract

[5] Snoke, David W.; Cox, Jeffrey; and Petcher, Donald, "Suboptimality and complexity in evolution", Complexity Journal, Volume 21, Issue 1, http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/cplx.21566/abstract

[6] Luskin, Casey, "Peer-Reviewed Paper Reveals Darwin's Unavoidable Catch-22 Problem", December 27, 2015, http://www.evolutionnews.org/2015/12/6_of_our_top_st101881.html

[7] Allele: one of two or more alternative forms of a gene that arise by mutation and are found at the same place on a chromosome.

[8] Gauger, Ann, "Waiting for Mutations: Why Darwinism Won't Work", Sept. 23, 2015, http://www.evolutionnews.org/2015/09/waiting_for_mut099631.html

[9] Luskin, Casey, "Peer-Reviewed Paper Reveals Darwin's Unavoidable Catch-22 Problem", December 27, 2015, http://www.evolutionnews.org/2015/12/6_of_our_top_st101881.html

#98 Acacia Trees and Ants

2016-01-05T18:17:00.001-08:00

Gardening is thought of as a skill that requires pretty advanced intelligence. Humans in the whole history of evolution did not start to garden until about 10,000BC. [1]

This Proof for God is about the symbiotic relationship between certain trees and certain types of ants. In particular I want to talk about the Central and South American Bull-Horn Acacia tree and the Pseudomyrmex ant, which is a genus of stinging, wasp-like ants.

“Many species of acacia tress that are deficient in chemical defenses have developed a mutualistic relationship with stinging ants in which protection is exchanged for nutrients and a home. Acacia trees and their symbiotic partner can be found all over the world in temperate, desert, and tropical regions, especially since some species of acacia trees are highly invasive. They reach sexual maturity typically three years after germination, and the adult trees can be used for industrial or decorative purposes. During development, the acacia trees form symbiotic relationships with ants to promote healthy growth for both the ant and the tree. Not only are the trees vigorously protected, but they also provide ants and their larvae a ready home and available nutrients.” [2]

“Ant-plant mutualism is not rare with at least 100 other species of plants and ants exhibiting this relationship.” [3].

Note that the author of the above quote talks about the plant and ants as if they are intelligently discussing with each other how they are going to form a mutually beneficial partnership. How come we humans can’t form a relationship with a plant if an ant can do it? Or how come we can’t form a nice relationship with a bunch of ants if a plant can do it?

As I explain below what amazing things scientists have discovered about this relationship, you will see that the Theory of Evolution has no plausible explanation for its existence. Even if one such implausible relationship could have evolved, how could 100 totally distinct and unique types of plant to ant relationships evolve without any connection to each other?

An important point to make in the beginning is that the Bull-Horn Acacia tree cannot survive without the help of the ants. In experiments where the ants were taken off the tree, the tree died within two to fifteen months. “In studying this amazing relationship, researchers removed the ants from some of these trees. Within two to fifteen months the tree was dead. Without the ants' care, animals eat off all the leaves and surrounding plants overrun it.” [4]

So without help from the ants, there could not be any Bull-Horn Acacia trees. So how could the trees ever have evolved without the ants already there to take care of them? But how did the ants learn how to take care of these particular trees before the trees existed? Gardening the trees would have to have evolved too. It would take a long process of learning for the ants, if ants can even learn like that. Taking care of the Acacia trees is very, very complicated as we shall see.

If you have two minutes, check out this National Geographic video about a similar Acacia tree and its ants. I think you will be amazed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xm2qdxVVRm4

In this symbiotic relationship, let’s look first at what the Acacia tree does for the ants. There is a lot of the trademark of intelligence here and if you don’t accept that there is a God, then you have to think it is the tree that has intelligence or else it is just some accidental process.

“The mutualistic relationship is established when a newly mated queen is attracted to a tree by its odor and starts nesting inside the large, hollow acacia thorns. She lays 15-20 eggs to produce the first generation of workers. As the colony grows, more thorns become inhabited, and when the colony reaches around 400 individuals, the ants start to protect the plant.” [5]

Scientists know that the queen ant can smell an Acacia tree. Think of all the evolution that would have to go into an ant being able to smell, let alone being able to recognize a particular tree as the one that would provide a good place to start a nest.

The Acacia tree provides a wonderful place for ants to build their nests. The ants can drill a hole into the horns of the plant that are hollow inside and this makes a perfect place for a nest. Since the horns are fairly small, the ants will make nests in the horns all over the tree.

The Acacia tree actually has special glands on their stems which secrete a carbohydrate-rich, sweet nectar that is very nutritious for the ants. If that gland evolved through a slow and gradual process and the nectar that is secreted then also had to evolve by a slow and gradual process, don’t you think the ants would find a different source of nutrition instead of waiting around? Evolutionists have amazing imaginations, but I’d like to see them point out any actual plant that has ever evolved something like this on its own in the thousands of years that humans have been watching plants. It’s never been seen, but still they believe in evolution.

The Acacia tree also produces what are called “Beltian bodies” on the tips of its leaflets. These Beltian bodies are made of a protein-lipid which doesn’t seem to have any other use or value except for the ants to feed their larvae. [6] The Beltian bodies seem to be perfect for that single purpose. Look at the picture below of Beltian bodies and imagine the evolution that had to take place for the tree to produce such a “fruit”. Trees live a long time. They would have to produce seeds, which grow up, and then produce new seeds. How many generations would it take in a slow and gradual process of tree after tree until the Beltian bodies were perfected. Remember that the Beltian bodies give no benefit at all to the tree except to attract the ants by providing the perfect nutrients for their larvae. Remember that without the ants, the trees mostly die so getting many generations of trees to evolve implies that the ants were always there.

That’s already too incredible for evolution. But now let’s take a look at what the ants do for the tree.

If a plant eating animal or insect comes along that will harm the Acacia tree, the ants release a pheromone which is a nasty odor and it sounds the alarm. All of them rush out to attack. They will bite and sting any intruder very severely, usually driving them away.

However, the ants are uniquely selective. If a Praying Mantis or a spider comes along, which actually can benefit the Acacia by eating insect pests, the ants leave them alone. Now how could they have ever evolved that type of selectivity? Ants also will not bother the bees that pollinate the tree.

Another thing that the ants do for the tree is keep away vines and other plants. The ants will chew through any vines that come on their tree or its leaves, thus getting rid of any threat. The ants seem to even know that the tree needs sunlight and will remove leaves of other trees that are obstructing the sunlight.

"According to Daniel Janzen, livestock can apparently smell the pheromone and avoid these acacias day and night. Getting stung in the mouth and tongue is an effective deterrent to browsing on the tender foliage. In addition to protecting V. conigera (Acacia) from leaf-cutting ants and other unwanted herbivores, the ants also clear away invasive seedlings around the base of the tree that might overgrow it and block out vital sunlight." [7]

And here is a very amazing fact that was discovered recently, the ants actually help prevent bacteria problems on the leaf surfaces. Scientists have found that it is likely something on the legs of the ants that yields the antibacterial benefit. Evolutionists are going to have a problem explaining how something like that evolved.

"Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology in Jena, Germany, have now found that ants also keep harmful leaf pathogens in check. The presence of ants greatly reduces bacterial abundance on surfaces of leaves and has a visibly positive effect on plant health...

"Detailed analysis of the bacterial composition on the surfaces of the leaves suggested that the presence of mutualistic ants changed the bacterial populations and reduced harmful pathogens.

"How antimicrobial protection is transferred from ants to plant is still unclear." [8]

Is that convincing enough that this relationship was designed and not evolved? How about one more point. Researchers have discovered that the tree secrets some repellent, probably from its pollen, that keeps the ants away. This maximizes the reproduction of the seeds of the tree because the ants don’t run over them and disturb their growth. But the secretion eventually wears off about the time that the fertilization has already taken place. So now the ants will come around and they will perform their duty of protecting the leaves and tree again. [9]

No human being could design something with this chemical and biological sophistication.

There must be God.

--------------------------------------------------------------

[1] History of Farming, http://quatr.us/economy/farming/

[2] Themes of Parasitology: Relationship Advice: Acacia Trees and Ants http://bio390parasitology.blogspot.com/2012/03/relationship-advice-acacia-trees-and.html

[3] Piper, Ross. Extraordinary Animals: An Encyclopedia of Curious and Unusual Animals. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2007. 1-3. Print.

[4] Bartz, Paul, "Ants who garden", http://www.creationmoments.com/content/ants-who-garden

[5] Themes of Parasitology: Relationship Advice: Acacia Trees and Ants http://bio390parasitology.blogspot.com/2012/03/relationship-advice-acacia-trees-and.html

[6] Marietta College, "Acacia Ants", http://w3.marietta.edu/~biol/costa_rica/animals/acacia_ants.htm

[7] Wikipedia, "Vachellia cornigera", (Bullhorn Acacia), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vachellia_cornigera

[8] Wikipedia, "Vachellia cornigera", (Bullhorn Acacia), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vachellia_cornigera

[9] McDaniel College, "Ant-acacia mutualism", http://www2.mcdaniel.edu/Biology/eco/mut/mutualism.html

#97 The Retina

2015-12-19T11:24:00.000-08:00

In doing research for my next proof for God, I came across a quote that blew me away. I had never heard any detail like this about the retina of your eye, even though I had already written one Proof for God about the Eye (#45) [a]

As you know, the retina of your eye is the part that allows you to be able to see this page or anything else. It is full of nerve cells that convert light into electrical and chemical signals that are sent to the brain down the optic nerve.

Your retina is thinner than Saran Wrap, by the way.

I find what it does really hard to imagine. Here is the quote:

"To simulate 10 milliseconds of the complete processing of even a single nerve cell from the retina would require the solution of about 500 simultaneous non-linear differential equations one hundred times and would take at least several minutes of processing time on a Cray supercomputer. Keeping in mind there are 10 million or more such cells interacting with each other in complex ways, it would take a minimum of a hundred years of Cray time to simulate what takes place in your eye many times every second." [b]

You could quibble and say that this is an old quote, which it is, from about 1985. But even given that computers are a lot faster now, it would still take a super computer (like big in size and needing lots of power) to do what your tiny little retina is doing every second, in each eye of course.

Researchers at UC Berkeley discovered that our retinas form a stack of 10 to 12 different image representations of what we view by using "cross-talk" between different layers of cells in the retina. The images are not very good quality. But they are all sent to the brain and the brain assembles them into the wonderful images we experience. [c]

No person in their right mind who knows what a computer chip is would ever proclaim that it could have evolved. Yet some very sane people refuse to see that there was any super intelligence behind the formation of a retina that is vastly superior to any computer chip. And retinas have been around for millions of years.

“The retinal rods and cones are composed of various layers. The human rods have a dynamic range of about 10 billion-to-one. In other words, when fine-tuned for high gain amplification (as when you are out on a dark night and there is only starlight), your photoreceptors can pick up a single photon. Phenomenal sensitivity! Of course the retina does a number of processing tricks on that just to make sure it is not picking up noise, so you don't see static; it really wants at least six receptors in the same area to pick up the same signal before it "believes" that it is true and sends it to the brain. In bright daylight the retina bleaches out and the volume control turns way down for, again, admirable performance.” [d]

Take note that your retina can pick up a single photon of light. That’s how sensitive it is. But just to be sure there are no mistaken electrical impulses sent to the brain, the retina makes sure by checking around and only sending a signal if six photoreceptors all pick up the same thing.

A retina that sensitive if exposed to sunlight would get totally bleached out and you wouldn’t be able to see anything. However, your retina is able to adjust to major changes in the amount of light. Imagine how that could possibly evolve. And remember, all this ability is contained in something thinner than Saran Wrap. Note also that the retina is transparent (you can see right through it).

That’s just the tip of the iceberg. Just about everything about your retina is a profound miracle.

Think some more about a computer chip when compared to your retina. Remember that the computer chip was absolutely designed by some very smart people. The retina only occupies 0.0003 cubic inches of space and the power consumption of the retina is about 0.001 watts. The retina has a resolution of about 10,000 by 10,000 pixels. It has about 25 billion equivalent "gates" in it that are like the transistors in a computer chip.

Other parts of the retina are equally miraculous. There are three layers of cells on the back of the retina: the Retinal Pigment Epithelium, the choroid, and the sclera. The Retinal Pigment Epithelium is a multifunctional and indispensable structure. The RPE is a single-cell-thick tissue layer consisting of relatively uniform polygonal-shaped cells. These cells touch the extremities of the rods and the cones (the photoreceptors) with dense microvilli and basal membrane infoldings.

Posterior to the RPE is the vascular choroid layer which is filled with blood vessels that supply oxygen and nutrition, and remove waste.

“The structure of the choroid is generally divided into four layers (classified in order of furthest away from the retina to closest):

1. Haller's layer - outermost layer of the choroid consisting of larger diameter blood vessels.

2. Sattler's layer - layer of medium diameter blood vessels.

3. Choriocapillaris - layer of capillaries.

4. Bruch's membrane - innermost layer of the choroid.” [e]

So your retina has small blood vessels, medium sized, and also larger blood vessels. These are all necessary for the correct functioning of the eye. It’s incomprehensible that this emerged by evolution in a slow and gradual process. The fossil record constantly shows only animals that have fully formed eyes.

Posterior to that is another layer of connective tissue known as the sclera.

Evolutionists like Richard Dawkins, Kenneth Miller, Daniel Dennett, and others have claimed that Evolution is proved because the retina of the eye is backwards. They say this is a “poor design” because the rods and cones are facing away from the direction where light comes from. The retina was even called “functionally stupid”. Their “proof” is that they know better how the retina should be correctly designed and we would have better vision if our eyes were like squid eyes. Since it’s a “poor design”, it must have evolved because they know if there were a God, He would not have done it that way. He would have done it their way.

A “flawed design” is their evidence against a creator God and an argument for a random process of mutation.

So, what if scientists, upon further research, can prove it is not a flawed design but actually the best possible engineering? Could we then proclaim that there is a God? Would the atheists be forced to change their minds?

Well, as it turns out many researchers have discovered that the design of the retina is actually the best design and that there is no evidence that the Evolutionists’ idea of the “best” design would even work at all.

I’m not going to spend a lot more time on this, but I want to point you to a fantastic technical paper that goes into all the details of why the design we have is perfect. If you are interested, read the article: “Why the Inverted Human Retina Is a Superior Design” by Jerry Bergman and Joseph Calkins. [f]

Here is a short list of some of the reasons why the design of our human retina is actually the best design and was clearly designed by an all knowing intelligence.

1. Rods and Cones need a lot of blood. Rods and cones require a greater blood supply than any other bodily tissue. They require close contact with blood in order to receive oxygen and nutrients. Waste products need to be carried away. Vision actually happens because chemical reactions are taking place and sending signals to the brain. Heat is being generated that needs to be cooled by the blood. Photopigments constantly have to be replaced and recycled. Rods and cones (photoreceptors) get used up and have to replace themselves about every 7 days or so. [g]

2. Best location of blood supply. If the retina were designed in the opposite way, where would the blood supply be? You can’t put it in front of the rods and cones. If you put it along the sides, it would take up too much space and reduce the number of rods and cones. That would cause poorer vision.

3. Need opaque layer to absorb excess light. The rods and cones need to be close to a dark surface to absorb stray light. Otherwise, reflecting light would distort our vision. The Retinal Pigment Epithelium provides that dark surface.

4. Retinal Pigment Epithelium needed. This layer of cells produces critical enzymes for vision. It also stores Vitamin A for regeneration. The RPE also helps maintain water and ion flow between the neural retina and the choroid, protects against free radical damage, and regulates retinoid metabolism. It is also a barrier to protect the inner parts of the eye.

5. Retina should not be more sensitive than it is. As I mentioned above, the retina can recognize a single photon of light. You cannot get any better than that. Our retina works better than any other design. If there were somehow greater sensitivity, you might see “too much” and get blinded. It might be helpful at night, but not at all during the day. It would cause more eye damage too. Why do you think people wear sunglasses?

6. Müller cells. Recent research has discovered Müller cells in the retina. They are actually like funnels that help carry the light through the retina so it is less distorted. They have the perfect index of refraction to transmit the light with minimum loss and distortion. It’s like God invented fiber optic cables thousands of years ago. How about that for design?

7. Light does not get blocked. Amazingly, very little light is actually blocked by the part of the retina the light encounters first. This is the transparent layer of many nerve cells leading to the optic nerve and then the brain. Normal nerve cells are covered with a substance called myelin. But the nerve cells in the retina do not have this covering which would have blocked some of the light. Also the larger blood vessels and nerves inside the eye travel around but not over the area where your focused vision takes place. What a good design.

8. Waste must be carried away. There are waste products from the chemical reactions as well as the dying rods and cones. If the rods and cones faced the front, all the garbage would accumulate inside your eye. The result of that is obvious.

9. Fast recycle time. You know if you drive at night and look into the oncoming headlights you are temporarily blinded. The close blood supply allows a relatively fast recycle time. If your rods and cones faced the other way, you’d be temporarily blinded much longer.

10. Color and much greater detail than squid eyes. Research on squid eyes shows they can perceive shape, light intensity, and texture, but any details are seriously lacking. Squid have only 20 million receptor cells in their retina, whereas humans have 126 million. Squid have only rods, whereas humans have rods and three types of cones, allowing us to see the whole color spectrum. [h]

11. Momentary shadows are a good thing. It turns out that the light having to pass through various cells before getting to the rods and cones is a good thing. Constant light would bleach out the rods and cones, but the momentary darkness gives them a break and allows them to regenerate. Think again about sun glasses.

So we can now conclude that there is no “poor design” here at all. In fact, the design is so magnificent it is beyond our understanding.

There must be God.

--------------------------------------------------------------------

[a] Stephens, James, Proof for God #45 The EYE, http://101proofsforgod.blogspot.com/2013/11/45-eye.html

[b] Stevens, John K., Associate Professor of physiology and biomedical engineering, “Reverse Engineering the Brain,” Byte, April 1985, p. 287. http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=3384

[c] Sanders, Robert, Media Relations, UC Berkeley, March 2001, "Eye strips images of all but bare essentials before sending visual information to brain", http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2001/03/28_wers1.html

[d] Calkins, Joseph, “Design in the Human Eye”, http://www.creationmoments.com/content/design-human-eye

[e] Wikipedia, "Choroid", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choroid

[f] Bergman, Jerry and Calkins, Joseph, Creation Research Society Quarterly, "Why the Inverted Human Retina Is a Superior Design", https://www.creationresearch.org/crsq/articles/45/45_3/CRSQ%20Winter%2009%20Retina.pdf

[g] Bergman, Jerry and Calkins, Joseph, Creation Research Society Quarterly, "Why the Inverted Human Retina Is a Superior Design", https://www.creationresearch.org/crsq/articles/45/45_3/CRSQ%20Winter%2009%20Retina.pdf

[h] Bergman, Jerry and Calkins, Joseph, Creation Research Society Quarterly, "Why the Inverted Human Retina Is a Superior Design", https://www.creationresearch.org/crsq/articles/45/45_3/CRSQ%20Winter%2009%20Retina.pdf

#96 Blood

2015-11-22T07:51:00.002-08:00

I have been reading numerous scientific articles about blood. This information is astounding. There is only one rational conclusion, your body is a walking miracle.

I recommend that those who believe that random chance and "survival of the fittest" can result in such a miracle need to take a step back and examine their motivations. They might ask themselves honestly why they want so badly that evolution be true.

The best current estimate of scientists is that there are 37.2 trillion cells in your body, not counting all the microbes. [1] Inside each and every one of those cells there are approximately 10 million chemical reactions taking place every second of your life. [2] Every chemical reaction requires oxygen and fuel, and then removal of any waste. Let’s thank God for our blood, otherwise every cell that does not come in contact with it would die.

And just how does blood get near enough to every cell. It travels through an incredible network of capillaries. Capillaries are so thin that about 40 of them equals the width of a human hair. If you lined up all the capillaries in your body, it would reach 60,000 miles, ¼ of the way to the Moon. [3]

If you believe that life developed slowly and gradually over many generations, which came first blood or capillaries. If blood developed first, was it just sitting there in a pool? If capillaries developed first, what was their purpose if there was no blood to circulate?

The story of blood is phenomenal. About two weeks after a sperm fertilizes an egg, the zygote has gotten so big that the growing number of cells cannot survive. They need a transport system to get oxygen and nutrients. Perfectly on time, some of the developing cells form into tubes that start pumping. (See Proof for God #79 The Heart) Simultaneously, capillaries start forming as well as blood.

Red Blood Cells start forming in a temporary “blood forming sac” that grows on the outside of the embryo. By the middle of month two, RBC production will now be taken over by the fetal liver and spleen. By month number five, RBC production is now taking place in the bone marrow of the fetal upper legs and shins. It continues to be made there in children, but eventually it moves again. In adults, most RBCs are produced in the bone marrow of the pelvis, cranium, vertebrae, and sternum.

The fine-tuning of this whole process screams out that it was intelligently designed. Even the few things that I have pointed out so far could not have developed in a slow and linear process over many generations. The organism would never survive.

And this is just the beginning.

Men on average have about a gallon and a half of blood and women a little over a gallon. It is about 45 percent blood cells (nearly half) and 55 percent plasma. Blood makes up about 7 to 8 percent of your weight. [4]

“The liquid component of blood is called plasma, a mixture of water, sugar, fat, protein, and salts. The main job of the plasma is to transport blood cells throughout your body along with nutrients, waste products, antibodies, clotting proteins, chemical messengers such as hormones, and proteins that help maintain the body's fluid balance.” [5]

If you think that is complicated, we are just scratching the surface. But stop and think how a slow and gradual process based on mutation and natural selection over many generations could produce all of those absolutely essential functions of blood one by one and not have the organism die off somewhere along the way, probably at the very beginning. There are too many limiting factors that kill a cell if all those processes are not in place from the beginning. These are mind-boggling chemical reactions. For just a taste, read Proof for God #74 Proteins.

Now we’ll start to get extremely complicated. There are three more basic components in blood that I want to discuss briefly (if possible).

1. Red Blood Cells (also called erythrocytes or RBCs) which carry oxygen to the tissues.

2. White Blood Cells (also called leukocytes) which fight infections.
3. Platelets (also called thrombocytes), smaller cells that help blood to clot. [6]

Red Blood Cells

RBCs are produced in bone marrow and develop from a generic type of cell (pluripotential hematopoietic stem cells) that could also have become a White Blood Cell or even Platelets. It is very difficult to imagine how complicated this is. There are sensors in the body that turn on or off switches that control how much of each type of cell is made. There is a hormone (called erythropoietin) which comes primarily from the kidneys and that is what controls the production of Red Blood Cells. Think about that. A hormone from the kidneys controls production of RBCs in the bone marrow. How many generations does it take to “evolve” that process?

RBCs are really, really unique. They have no nucleus because the cell loses it during growth along with other organelles. [7] They are shaped somewhat like a donut which just happens to be the best design of surface area for absorbing a full load of oxygen in a fraction of a second. They are made from five very specialized proteins that are very flexible. This is vitally important because they are about twice as big as a capillary and need to bend nearly in half to travel down the capillary and then spring back into shape on their way back to the heart.

RBCs are loaded with a protein called hemoglobin that is a fantastic carrier of oxygen and carbon dioxide. There are 250 million hemoglobin molecules in each of your billions of RBCs. [8]

Your body makes about 2 million RBCs every second to replace those that die off. [9] In men, there are an average of 5,200,000 RBCs per cubic millimeter and in women there are an average of 4,600,000 RBCs per cubic millimeter. The ratio of cells in normal blood is 600 RBCs to 1 White Blood Cell and 40 platelets.

Amazingly, RBCs do not eat up any of the oxygen themselves as they carry it out to all your cells. Special enzymes provide the power they need. This is another process that precludes evolution and necessitates a master designer.

Thankfully, the RBCs also remove Carbon Dioxide from our cells. The RBCs carry a certain enzyme (called carbonic anhydrase) which processes most of the CO₂(70%) and takes it back to the lungs for elimination. [10] That sure looks like a designed plan also. Enzymes don’t form by accident and even if they did, you would still have to get the exact right one in the right place.

White Blood Cells

These are the amazing cells that circulate throughout our bodies to fight disease. They are made in the bone marrow from the same original cells as the Red Blood Cells. WBCs come in the following six main types, with their average percentages:

• Neutrophils - 58 percent. Have faintly blue-pink granules with digestive enzymes to eat bacteria.

• Eosinophils - 2 percent. Have orange-red granules. They kill parasites and have a role in allergic reactions..

• Basophils - 1 percent. Have purple granules. They are not well understood, but they release histamine.

• Bands - 3 percent. These are immature Neutrophils.

• Monocytes - 4 percent. They kill bacteria and also destroy old, damaged and dead cells in the body.

• Lymphocytes - 4 percent.

“Neutrophils and monocytes use several mechanisms to get to and kill invading organisms. They can squeeze through openings in blood vessels by a process called diapedesis. They move around using ameboid motion. They are attracted to certain chemicals produced by the immune system or by bacteria and migrate toward areas of higher concentrations of these chemicals. This is called chemotaxis. They kill bacteria by a process called phagocytosis, in which they completely surround the bacteria and digest them with digestive enzymes.” [11]

Our disease fighting immune system is phenomenal, to say the least. The smartest scientists can't come close to copying it, let alone making a better one.

When the WBCs release the granules into the blood stream to fight disease, they last for about 4 to 8 hours before being absorbed into body tissues and sticking around another 4 or 5 days. What an amazing system for fighting disease for you. How can anyone conceptualize how this could have evolved?

Platelets

When you cut yourself, your blood will clot and form a scab. Did you ever ask yourself why your blood does not clot inside your body and turn you into a statue? The smooth inner surface of the blood vessels and a finely tuned balance of chemicals or “clotting factors” keeps that from happening. [12] Evolutionists must believe that we are really lucky that blood clotting worked perfectly the very first time. Otherwise we would have bled out completely on the ground or else frozen solid from internal clotting.

“…platelets are not actually cells but rather small fragments of cells. Platelets help the blood clotting process (or coagulation) by gathering at the site of an injury, sticking to the lining of the injured blood vessel, and forming a platform on which blood coagulation can occur. This results in the formation of a fibrin clot, which covers the wound and prevents blood from leaking out. Fibrin also forms the initial scaffolding upon which new tissue forms, thus promoting healing.” [13]

The number of platelets also has to have a controlling chemical process so there is just the right number in your body. Too many platelets and people would be getting strokes and heart attacks. Too few and we’d lose a lot of blood to excessive bleeding. Here again it looks like there must have been a very intelligent designer.

Okay, I’m sure you are getting the idea and are probably tired of reading so I’m going to wrap it up now.

There are different types of Platelets: T-cells and B-cells. The T-cells come in 4 types: (1) Helper T cells, (2) Cytotoxic T cells, (3) Memory T cells, and (4) Suppressor T cells. Each of them has their own unique chemicals and very complex purposes.

And I haven’t even talked about the Plasma, which makes up 55% of your blood.

In conclusion, there must be God.

___________________________________

[1] Smithsonian.com, "There are 37.2 Trillion Cells in Your Body", http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/there-are-372-trillion-cells-in-your-body-4941473/?no-ist

[2] Guliuzza, Randy J., "Life-Giving Blood", http://www.icr.org/article/4823

[3] Guliuzza, Randy J., "Life-Giving Blood", http://www.icr.org/article/4823

[4] American Society of Hematology, "Blood Basics", http://www.hematology.org/Patients/Basics/

(Excellent 52 sec video: https://youtu.be/R-sKZWqsUpw )

[5] American Society of Hematology, "Blood Basics", http://www.hematology.org/Patients/Basics/

[6] WebMD article, “Heart Health Center”, http://www.webmd.com/heart/anatomy-picture-of-blood

[7] Bianco, Carl, "How Blood Works", http://health.howstuffworks.com/human-body/systems/circulatory/blood.htm/printable

[8] Guliuzza, Randy J., "Life-Giving Blood", http://www.icr.org/article/4823

[9] U. S. National Library of Medicine, "Red blood cell production",

https://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/anatomyvideos/000104.htm

[10] Bianco, Carl, "How Blood Works", http://health.howstuffworks.com/human-body/systems/circulatory/blood.htm/printable

[11] Bianco, Carl, "How Blood Works", http://health.howstuffworks.com/human-body/systems/circulatory/blood.htm/printable

[12] WebMD article, “Heart Health Center”, http://www.webmd.com/heart/anatomy-picture-of-blood

[13] American Society of Hematology, "Blood Basics", http://www.hematology.org/Patients/Basics/

#95 Archaea

2015-11-14T14:02:00.001-08:00

Probably most of you have never heard of Archaea. I had never heard of them either until just recently. In fact, the world had never heard of them until they were discovered in 1977.

The Archaea constitute a domain or kingdom of single-celled microorganisms. These microbes are prokaryotes, meaning that they have no cell nucleus or any other membrane-bound organelles in their cells.

Classification is difficult because the majority have not been studied in the laboratory and have only been detected by analysis of their nucleic acids in samples from their environment. [1]

Before 1977 they had always been considered a type of bacteria. But then microbiologist Carl Woese was able to recognize that they were very different from bacteria.

"He had stumbled on a brave new world of microbes that looked like bacteria to our eyes, but were in fact so unique biochemically and physically that they have ultimately proved to be more closely related to us than to them. He had stumbled on an entirely new form of life, right here on Earth." [2]

Being a believer in the Theory of Evolution, he concluded that back at the beginning of Darwin’s Tree of Life, there must have been an early split. Bacteria went one way and Archaea and all other life went the other way. Of course Archaea was so primitive, not even having a cell nuclei, it had to have branched off from the Tree of Life itself at the very beginning.

So Woese came up with an all new branch and thus there are now three major branches off of Darwin’s Tree of Life. Evolutionists don’t really give an explanation for whatever it was that came before these three branches.

To get a better idea of some of the differences between Archaea and bacteria, one good website is WiseGeek. Here is just one point of many.

“Archaea and bacteria are both single-celled microorganisms known as prokaryotes but this is one of the few things they have in common. Even though they both look vaguely similar when viewed through a microscope, each represents a completely different group of creatures. In fact, archaea differ from bacteria as much as humans do, in terms of their biochemistry and genetic structure. Archaea and bacteria have different cell membranes and cell structures, and archaea are found in extreme environments where most bacteria could not survive.” [3]

It turns out that Archaea are totally everywhere on the earth. In fact they make up as much as 20% of the biomass of all living things even though they are microscopic in size. “Archaea are particularly numerous in the oceans, and the archaea in plankton may be one of the most abundant groups of organisms on the planet.” [4]

They come in all shapes and sizes. Some are totally different from each other and do the exact opposite thing biochemically. Here is an example.

“Archaea carry out many steps in the nitrogen cycle. This includes both reactions that remove nitrogen from ecosystems (such as nitrate-based respiration and denitrification) as well as processes that introduce nitrogen (such as nitrate assimilation and nitrogen fixation).” [5]

See my Proof for God #48 Nitrogen Cycle for more information on that.

"To our surprise, we have found super-sized filamentous archaea almost big enough to see with the naked eye living on mangrove roots. We have found methanogenic archaea that interact with protozoa in the guts of cows and termites to help these organisms break cellulose down for energy. We've even found an archaeon that lives symbiotically with -- of all things -- a sponge." [6]

Here are four excerpts from Wikipedia that show the extremely important roles that Archaea play in maintaining all life on earth.

“Researchers recently discovered Archaean involvement in ammonia oxidation reactions. These reactions are particularly important in the oceans.

“The archaea also appear crucial for ammonia oxidation in soils. They produce nitrite, which other microbes then oxidize to nitrate. Plants and other organisms consume the latter.

“In the carbon cycle, methanogen archaea remove hydrogen and play an important role in the decay of organic matter by the populations of microorganisms that act as decomposers in anaerobic ecosystems, such as sediments, marshes and sewage-treatment works.

“In the sulfur cycle, archaea that grow by oxidizing sulfur compounds release this element from rocks, making it available to other organisms.” [7]

Some researchers believe that we would never have been able to come to exist on the earth without Archaea. Millions of years ago, the earth was covered with methane gas. They think it was the type of Archaea that digests methane that ate it all up or we could never have come along. Even today some scientists estimate that Archaea convert 300 million tons of methane per year into more life friendly chemicals.

"Scientists have discovered a methane metabolizing Archea in the extreme pressures of deep sea sediments. It is estimated that these bacteria-like organisms consume 300 million tons of methane each year, which prevent the Earth from turning into a furnace. According to Kai-Uwe Hinrichs, a biogeochemist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts and one of the authors of the study, 'If they hadn't been established at some point in Earth's history, we probably wouldn't be here.'" [8]

A tremendous amount is NOT known about Archaea. “Current knowledge on genetic diversity is fragmentary and the total number of archaeal species cannot be estimated with any accuracy. Estimates of the number of phyla range from 18 to 23, of which only 8 have representatives that have been cultured and studied directly.” [9] Here is another such statement. "Consequently, our understanding of the role of archaea in ocean ecology is rudimentary, so their full influence on global biogeochemical cycles remains largely unexplored." [10]

But scientists have been able to learn some things about their internal makeup, replication, and the biochemical processes they exhibit.

Let’s note here that they do not reproduce sexually. There are no male and female so it is hard to apply the Theory of Evolution. They do not have “parents” to give them two different sets of DNA.

So let’s look at some of the questions that Evolutionists are not going to be able to answer.

If you have read any of my Proofs for God such as #40 Chirality, #21 DNA, #27 The Truth about Mutation, or #35 Natural Selection, then you are probably already asking yourself some good questions.

In the very beginning for Evolutionists, somehow DNA came to exist. In the opinion of many scientists, it would be impossible to come into existence without super-intelligence involved because there is so much order, information, and design to DNA. But let’s skip over that discussion for this proof.

Evolutionists were forced to put Archaea and bacteria and the very bottom of the Tree of Life because they are so primitive. But they are so different it is impossible to explain that one was the ancestor of the other, so they don’t. They make separate branches of the tree and leave the beginning a mystery.

"Molecular handedness -- chirality in chemistry-speak -- is not a thing changed easily by evolution. For instance, the vast majority of protein building blocks called amino acids used by life on Earth are exclusively "left-handed". Why? No one really knows, although some have guesses. Once lefty amino acids took over, though, there was no going back biochemically -- the enzymes were set up a certain way and that was that. Thus, that archaeal and bacterial enzymes use glycerols with opposite handedness implies that bacteria and archaea parted ways long, long ago." [11]

To mutate from bacteria to Archaea or any other living thing is impossible to conceive of based on the different handedness of their enzymes. Remember DNA is a long, long chain of millions, if not billions, of individual amino acids.

Evolutionists have to believe that enzymes of both left-handedness and right-handedness somehow developed, once to produce Archaea and the plant/animal branch and another time to produce bacteria. The odds are astronomical against an enzyme coming to exist by Evolution even one time. But two independent times is not even conceivable. And then another miracle has to happen to produce the third branch of the Tree of Life (plants and animals).

We could stop there, but let’s keep going. Once one Archaea somehow exists as a fully functioning cell, it has to already contain all the necessary DNA to be able to replicate itself. (Please read Proof for God #41 The First Living Cell to learn how difficult that is.)

"The majority of its genes related to energy production, cell division, and metabolism were found to be most similar to those found in bacteria, while those related to transcription, translation, and replication were found to be most similar to those found in eukaryota." [12]

Here’s something else. Archaea hold all the records for being able to survive in the most extreme environments like hot, cold, acidic, or salty.

Then from that one very first Archaea, how do you explain such an extreme diversity of Archaea living in every environment on the earth? They are single celled organisms so when they multiply they do not have two parents from which to inherit different DNA. Their DNA somehow makes a copy of itself and then the cell splits into two “daughter cells” having exactly the same DNA.

"Archaea replicate asexually in a process known as binary fission. Archaea achieve a swimming motility via one or more tail-like flagellae." [13]

They just make a copy of themselves according to their existing DNA. I will concede that there might be some mutations during copying, but this is not a process that leads anywhere toward species development. See my Proof for God # Copying Degradation and my Proof for God # The Truth about Mutation.

Mutation is very rarely beneficial. It usually leads to death. There’s no hope there for growth and development of many different phyla.

Archaea live in many such extreme environments that they could not have evolved there. There are Archaea that are living at 130°C on the ocean floor next to an active volcano.

"Strain 121 can survive at temperatures up to 130C and experiments suggest there may be archaeal species that can tolerate temperatures of 140 to 150C. Lest you forget, water boils at 100C." [14]

There is no oxygen there and the heat destroys all other living things. How did they get there in the first place and not get destroyed on the way? How could they adapt to the heat in that environment without being killed first? If the heat didn’t kill them, how did they get oxygen and energy? They would have had to evolve the ability to convert compounds in the environment into oxygen and energy after they arrived there. It’s pretty clear that they had to be able to survive in that environment before they ever got there not after they arrived. Survival of the Fittest is totally out of the realm of possibility.

How about the type of Archaea that can thrive in a totally acidic environment of pH 0 (zero), comparable to sulfuric acid? All plants and animals die in acid. Since Evolutionists put Archaea on the Tree of Life, how do they explain that some type “adapted” into being able to do this? They could not have adapted once they were in the strong acid environment, no survival of the fittest because there are no survivors. Even bacteria which Evolutionists say came earlier on the Tree of Life are killed by acid.

Different types of Archaea also live in extremely alkaline environments. Some can live in extremely cold environments. Others live in the soil, the ocean, marshlands, even sewage.

There are even Archaea that live in your stomachs that help you digest certain types of molecules. We are really lucky that they are there or we might not survive. That’s a very acidic environment which dissolves almost everything that comes into it. But not your very own Archaea.

“Methogens such as M. Smithii, the most abundant methanogenic archaeon in the human gut is an important player in the digestion of polysaccharides (complex sugars). Methangenic archaea help to remove excess hydrogen.” [15]

Here’s a neat little sentence with gigantic implications. “Like bacteria, archaea cell membranes are usually bounded by a cell wall and they swim using one or more flagella.” [16] How can evolutionists explain one or more working flagellum on an archaea? That means they have a working tail that motors them around. A tail takes a lot of engineering. A half evolved tail does not work. Evolution cannot explain in slow, gradual steps how you get a flagellum.

Archaea are so tiny that we can’t see them and yet there are so many that they make up 20% of living things on the planet. There are so many different kinds of them and they all seem to provide extremely essential chemical processes for our survival. We’d die without them.

There’s still a lot more to be learned about them, but just knowing what we know already makes it impossible to believe that they occurred by random chance or natural selection.

No evolutionary explanation suffices. There must be God.

_________________________

[1] Wikipedia, “Archaea”, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaea

[2] Frazer, Jennifer, Scientific American, "Archaea Are More Wonderful Than You Know", January 12, 2013, http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/artful-amoeba/archaea-are-more-wonderful-than-you-know/

[3] WiseGeek, "What Are the Differences between Archaea and Bacteria?", http://www.wisegeek.org/what-are-the-differences-between-archaea-and-bacteria.htm#didyouknowout

[4] Wikipedia, “Archaea”, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaea

[5] Frazer, Jennifer, Scientific American, "Archaea Are More Wonderful Than You Know", January 12, 2013, http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/artful-amoeba/archaea-are-more-wonderful-than-you-know/

[6] Frazer, Jennifer, Scientific American, "Archaea Are More Wonderful Than You Know", January 12, 2013, http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/artful-amoeba/archaea-are-more-wonderful-than-you-know/

[7] Wikipedia, “Archaea”, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaea

[8] Deem, Rich, "The Incredible Design of the Earth and Our Solar System",

http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/designss.html

[9] Wikipedia, “Archaea”, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaea

[10] Wikipedia, “Archaea”, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaea

[11] Frazer, Jennifer, Scientific American, "Archaea Are More Wonderful Than You Know", January 12, 2013, http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/artful-amoeba/archaea-are-more-wonderful-than-you-know/

[12] New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science, "Archaea", http://treeoflife.nmnaturalhistory.org/archaea.html

[13] Encyclopedia of Life, "What are Archaea?", http://eol.org/info/457

[14] Frazer, Jennifer, Scientific American, "Archaea Are More Wonderful Than You Know", January 12, 2013, http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/artful-amoeba/archaea-are-more-wonderful-than-you-know/

[15] New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science, "Archaea", http://treeoflife.nmnaturalhistory.org/archaea.html

[16] Wikipedia, “Archaea”, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaea

#94 Whales

2015-10-24T17:36:00.001-07:00

Everybody is familiar with whales and we have all been astounded at how big they are. The Blue Whale can get up to 112 feet long and weigh 200 tons, as much as 33 elephants. [1]

But do you know that whales are mammals? That means that they are warm blooded and they breathe air. Their babies are born alive and are fed milk. There are at least 40 different known species of whales. [2]

So if you are a faithful believer in Evolution, you somehow have to find a way to believe that whales started out on land and not water. You already believe life started out in the ocean and then evolved by emerging onto the land and evolving into mammals.

Somehow those highly evolved mammals ended up going back into the ocean and becoming the largest animals on earth.

Darwin thought it was the bear that evolved into a whale because he saw them swim a lot. Over the years, evolutionists have come up with other mammals that are the ancestor of whales. Their religious faith in evolution requires that some animal evolved into a whale. Even though there is no known ancestor in the fossil record of the whale, evolutionists claim there are lots of relatives along the family tree, and that’s enough proof for them.

Notice on this chart that the space is blank in every case where there should be a direct ancestor to a whale (the pink vertical lines). All the chart shows are species that supposedly branched off from the main line that leads to whales. If we have fossils of all the animals shown, why is there not one single fossil in the direct ancestral line to the whale? [3]

The current animal getting the most credit for becoming a whale is called Pakicetus and was a wolf-like animal of about that same size, 5 or 6 feet long. Their proof seems to be all wrapped up in the similarity between the teeth and ear bones of the two species.

Look at the two wolf-like animals at the top, Indohyus and Pakicetus. From those two it is a huge, huge leap to the new body plan of the third one down, Ambolucetus, which I’ll mention more in a minute.

The Smithsonian Institute has an article titled “How Did Whales Evolve?” which I thought might provide some good answers. [4] It’s a very long article and makes some sweeping claims about evolution. But, if you pay attention, you’ll see they have to admit that they still don’t have any ancestors of whales. The article takes a long time going into the history of fossil discoveries but never answers “How Did Whales Evolve?” which you would have expected from the title. At one point they tell the truth and then lie about what it means. "Though not a series of direct ancestors and descendants, each genus represents a particular stage of whale evolution. Together they illustrate how the entire transition took place." [5]

Sure, we know, “It might have happened.” That’s not science.

They even admit later that analysis of genes and amino acids refutes this ancestry line and indicates whales are related to hippos. The title and the article are pure propaganda.

Here is another example of an article that is even worse, "How Whales' Ancestors Left Land Behind" from LiveScience.com. This is their explanation for “How Whale’s Ancestors Left Land Behind.” What a joke!

"The 'first whale,' a creature whose lifestyle (living on land but eating fish from the nearby sea) represented the early stage of this transition into the water, was a wolf-size fish eater...Whereas this creature had a body clearly adapted for land, its relatives began acquiring features better suited to life in the water, such as webbed feet and a more streamlined, hairless shape." [6]

In their religious zeal for evolution, lots of imagination is allowed. Here is an example of the actual bones discover for the Pakicetus. In Part 1 of this picture you can see that fragments of a skull bone were discovered. Only the grayed areas of the skull and several teeth were actually discovered. In Part 2 is the somehow fully developed artist’s drawing of Pakicetus. You can see that he really looks like the ancestor of the whale as he plays in the water eating fish. But, the story is not over. As you can see in Part 3, more bones were discovered. The real bones forced the artists to come up with a totally new drawing, shown in Part 4.

The moral of this story is that you should always ask to see the actual bones that have been found and not the artist drawing. (See also Proof for God #64, Missing Links, the sections on hoaxes and “Lucy”.) [7]

So what do we really have?

Pakicetus (wolf-like) -> Missing Link -> Missing Link -> Missing Link -> Missing Link -> Missing Link -> Missing Link -> Whale. Just stop for a minute and think about the monumental indoctrination that has to be perpetrated for you to believe something like that. Where’s the proof? There is no fossil record that is even claimed to be a direct ancestor at any stage. There are just artist’s drawings.

Another animal often named as a side lineage of the ancestral lines of whales is called Ambulocetus. This is another case of evolutionist’s great imagination. Compare the actual fossil bones that were found to the artist’s drawing. Note that no pelvis bones were discovered so they could not be sure if it walked or swam.

In a lot of the drawings on whale evolution you will also see a Basilosaurus. But they often leave out the fact that it was 10 times bigger than Ambulocetus and “the serpentine form of the body and the peculiar shape of the cheek teeth make it plain that Basilosaurus could not possibly have been the ancestor of modern whales.” [8]

Here is another totally unscientific quote from American Museum of Natural History under the title of “Whale Evolution.” It is followed by a drawing like above.

"One group of hoofed mammals spent more and more time in the water, living on the abundant food there. Eventually they left land altogether—evolving into the fully aquatic whales. Take a look at a few of these early extinct whales below." [9]

As anyone can easily see, for a wolf-like animal to evolve into a whale, there have to be some tremendous, even unbelievable, changes. Let’s ask one of the obvious questions. Why? Evolutionists will say that Natural Selection chooses the fittest to survive. So a wolf, being a carnivore, is trying to catch fish. He would be better adapted if he had web feet, so he grew them. Then he would be better adapted if his tail grew and became useful for swimming and he developed bigger lungs to stay underwater longer.

Which wolf is more likely to survive in your opinion, a wolf that is trying to catch fish or a wolf that tries to catch a rabbit? Even a wolf that is half way to evolving webfeet is worse off at catching rabbits and only very slightly better at catching fish. Since evolution takes many generations, which wolf is going to survive?

No wolf if he gets really hungry trying to catch fish is going to evolve web feet. He is going to go catch a rabbit.

The same argument applies continuously. A wolf is so absolutely unfit for swimming and living in water that any wolf that tried it would die long before it could reproduce. The fittest to survive are clearly the other wolves out catching rabbits.

Now let me just share a few of the amazing characteristics of a whale. If you are an evolutionist, you would have to come up with some explanation for how each one of these features could evolve slowly and gradually through many generations. Nearly all of the intermediate stages in a slow process are poorly adapted for survival.

The Tail. For whales, this is their primary source of power for swimming. There are “flukes” on the end that go out sideways which add more driving force and maneuverability. A mammal tail swings mostly side to side, not up and down, and has very little of the strength needed for propulsion.

Skin. Mammals have hair and sweat glands. Whales do not. Whale skin has lots of extra fat or blubber.

Blubber. Whales have huge amounts of fat deposits called blubber, up to 11 inches thick. This serves as insulation in cold water and also protection for the very deep dives that they do.

Lungs. Whales have a huge lung capacity that allows them to stay underwater for long periods of time. They also can slow down their metabolism to increase their dive time. "...a humpback whale's lungs can hold about 5,000 liters of air." [10] By comparison, human lungs hold about 6 liters of air.

"Whales are adapted for diving to great depths. In addition to their streamlined bodies, they can slow their heart rate to conserve oxygen; blood is rerouted from tissue tolerant of water pressure to the heart and brain among other organs; haemoglobin and myoglobin store oxygen in body tissue; and they have twice the concentration of myoglobin than haemoglobin." [11]

Eyes. Whale eyes are specially adapted to be able to see in water which has a far higher refractive index than air. Their eyes also have to be able to withstand the tremendous pressure down deep in the ocean.

Sonar and Hearing. Many types of whales have sonar. This means they can make a sound which goes through the water and bounces back when it hits an object. They have the ability to receive the sound, send signals to their brains, and interpret what it means. It is similar to what bats can do, however they have to do it in water using the fatty lipids in their heads. This is very different from doing it in air. (See my Proof for God #42, Bats and Echolocation. [12])

"...they have teeth and only one blowhole. They rely on their well-developed sonar to find their way in the water. Toothed whales send out ultrasonic clicks using the melon. Sound waves travel through the water. Upon striking an object in the water, the sound waves bounce back at the whale. These vibrations are received through fatty tissues in the jaw, which is then rerouted into the ear-bone and into the brain where the vibrations are interpreted." [13]

Does there exist a good explanation about how this echolocation ability could arise slowly over many generations? All the parts have to be there from the beginning or the system doesn’t work.

"Instead of sound passing through the outer ear to the middle ear, whales receive sound through the throat, from which it passes through a low-impedance fat-filled cavity to the inner ear. The whale ear is acoustically isolated from the skull by air-filled sinus pockets, which allow for greater directional hearing underwater." [14]

So here is another dramatic change from a land animal. Whales have a very different process of hearing.

Blowholes. All known terrestrial mammals have nostrils on the front of their faces. Whales have either one or two blowholes in the top of their heads. Think about all the changes that would be required for your nostrils to migrate to the top of your head. It’s not just the hole in your skull that has to move, but all of the muscles, sensory nerves, air passages, nerve channels that connect to the brain, and probably a lot more. All have to change and change drastically. Not only that, your lungs have to change tremendously as well because you would need a gigantic lung capacity to stay underwater for a long time. Changing the size of your lungs requires changes in your ribs and spine and probably your heart and other internal organs.

Flippers. Clearly whales have fins on the sides instead of legs and feet going downward like mammals. How do legs turn into fins? The skin is different. The muscles are different and used differently. This requires rewiring to the brain as well.

Special Rib Cage. What about the bones? Changing from a wolf-like animal would require almost a complete makeover of the skeleton. The pelvis in land mammals cannot be found in whales. How does a transitional species with half a pelvis manage to either walk or swim well?

"These animals rely on their well-developed flippers and tail fin to propel themselves through the water; they swim by moving their fore-flippers and tail fin up and down. Whale ribs loosely articulate with their thoracic vertebrae at the proximal end, but do not form a rigid rib cage. This adaptation allows their chest to compress during deep dives as the pressure increases with depth." [15]

"Balaenids are the right whales. These animals have very large heads, which can make up as much as 40% of their body mass, and much of the head is the mouth. This allows them to take in large amounts of water into their mouths, letting them feed more effectively." [16]

Reproduction. Whales somehow have to do it all in the water. Like other mammals, males have a penis and females have a vagina. If they really evolved from wolves, then both the male and female would have to evolve their respective sexual parts at the same time and in the same vicinity in the ocean to each other so they could mate. There are videos on YouTube of whale sex. Somehow I have trouble imagining that could come about accidentally. And that’s not all the problems they need to solve in order to reproduce.

Here is a fun fact. The penis on the Blue Whale is about 8 to 10 feet long and weighs in at over 400 pounds.

"Since they are unable to go onto land to calve, they deliver the baby with the fetus positioned for tail-first delivery. This prevents the baby from drowning either upon or during delivery. (It will need air. JLS.) To feed the new-born, (mother) whales, being aquatic, must squirt the milk into the mouth of the calf. Being mammals, they, of course, have mammary glands used for nursing calves; they are weaned off at about 11 months of age. This milk contains high amounts of fat which is meant to hasten the development of blubber; it contains so much fat that it has the consistency of toothpaste." [17]

Baleen Whales. One of the types of whales has huge bristle-like walls in their mouth that act like sieves. Look at pictures of these whales and the structures in their mouth. Think about all the changes in their head size and shape, body, nervous system, eating habits, and much more that would have had to evolve separately over many generations. If their land-mammal ancestors were successful, why make all the minor changes that would be less advantageous to develop this.

"Baleen whales were named for the long plates of baleen which hang in a row (like the teeth of a comb) from their upper jaws. Baleen plates are strong and flexible; they are made of a protein similar to human fingernails. Baleen plates are broad at the base (gumline) and taper into a fringe which forms a curtain or mat inside the whale's mouth. Baleen whales strain huge volumes of ocean water through their baleen plates to capture food: tons of krill, other zooplankton, crustaceans, and small fish." [18]

Sleeping. Here is something you probably don’t know about whales. Try to imagine how this could have possibly evolved.

"Unlike most animals, whales are conscious breathers. All mammals sleep, but whales cannot afford to become unconscious for long because they may drown. While knowledge of sleep in wild cetaceans is limited, toothed cetaceans in captivity have been recorded to sleep with one side of their brain at a time, so that they may swim, breathe consciously, and avoid both predators and social contact during their period of rest." [19]

By the Theory of Evolution, every one of these adaptations would have had to evolve over many generations. So try to imagine having 5% of a tail, 10%, 20%, etc. Or how about evolving so half your brain can go to sleep while the other half stays awake. Think over all of the other amazing features listed above one by one. How can any one of these if only partially completed be selected for by Natural Selection? You’d have ridiculous looking deformed beasts that would die out in one generation because they are so poorly suited for the environment they are supposed to live in. Whales are an all or nothing proposition.

There has to be God.
_______________________________________________________

[1] World Wide Life, “Whales”, http://www.worldwildlife.org/species/whale

[2] Wikipedia, "Whale", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whale

[3] Biowebpagevdl Wiki, "Whales Evolution", http://biowebpagevdl.wikia.com/wiki/Whales_evolution

[4] Switek, Brian, Smithsonian.com, "How Did Whales Evolve?", December 1, 2010, http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/how-did-whales-evolve-73276956/?no-ist

[5] Switek, Brian, Smithsonian.com, "How Did Whales Evolve?", December 1, 2010, http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/how-did-whales-evolve-73276956/?no-ist

[p6] Parry, Wynne, LiveScience.com, "How Whales' Ancestors Left Land Behind", http://www.livescience.com/28075-how-whales-ancestors-left-land.html

[7] Stephens, Jim, “Proof for God #64, Missing Links”, http://101proofsforgod.blogspot.com/2014/07/64-missing-links.html

[8] Sarfati, Jonathan, "Refuting Evolution—Chapter 5", http://creation.com/refuting-evolution-chapter-5-whale-evolution

[9] American Museum of Natural History, "Whale Evolution", http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/past-exhibitions/whales-giants-of-the-deep/whale-evolution

[10] Wikipedia, "Whale", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whale

[11] Wikipedia, "Whale", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whale

[12] Stephens, Jim, “Proof for God #42, Bats and Echolocation”, http://101proofsforgod.blogspot.com/2013/08/42-bats-and-echolocation.html

[13] Wikipedia, "Whale", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whale

[14] Wikipedia, "Whale", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whale

[15] Wikipedia, "Whale", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whale

[16] Wikipedia, "Whale", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whale

[17] Wikipedia, "Whale", https://en.ttwikipedia.org/wiki/Whale

[18] National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, National Marine Mammal Laboratory, "How were baleen whales named?", http://www.afsc.noaa.gov/nmml/education/cetaceans/baleen1.php

[19] Wikipedia, "Whale", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whale

#93 Camels

2015-10-07T16:32:00.001-07:00

Just as the Emperor Penguin (Proof #92) could never have evolved in the frigid and desolate Antarctica without dying before evolving, there is an animal specifically adapted by God for the harsh climates in the desert. I’m sure you know that animal is the camel. However, you will be amazed to learn the details about the camel.

For evolution to be true and a camel to evolve all the special adaptations that it has for the desert, it would need to be living in the desert most of the time, otherwise the adaptations are useless so would not be selected slowly and gradually over generations by Natural Selection. But if you think about it, the camel could not be living in the desert in the first place UNLESS it already has its special adaptations.

“A camel can go a week or more without water, and it can last for several months without food. It can survive a 40 percent weight loss and then drink up to 32 gallons (145 liters) of water in one drinking session!” [1]

If the camel did not live in the desert, there is no advantage to developing the special adaptations that it has. So Natural Selection would never develop a camel outside of the desert.

Camels have been domesticated for at least 3,500 years. [2] This means that they have been very, very helpful to humans living in the desert areas of the world.

"Humans have used camels for their wool, milk, meat, leather, and even dung that can be used for fuel. Camel milk is an important food of the desert nomadic tribes. A camel can provide a large amount of meat for these people also. The camel’s hump is considered a delicacy in these cultures." [2]

You could easily recognize that this might have been designed because they were so perfect for the job. They even got the nickname “ship of the desert” because they can carry 200 or more pounds about 20 miles a day. They can reach 7 feet tall at the hump(s) and weigh 1,500 pounds. [3] They can run 40 miles per hour for short distances and average 25 mph for long distances. [4]

Camels have two rows of thick eye lashes to provide great protection against sands and winds. They have an inner eyelid which is actually transparent and allows the camel to see though it while protecting the eye. [2] This third eyelid has the special ability to wipe sand and dust out of the camel’s eye.

“Camels have three eyelids. Two of the eyelids have lashes and the third eyelid comes from the corner of the eye. The eyes are protected by a double row of long curly eyelashes which help keep out the sand and dust. Thick bushy eyebrows shield the eyes from the desert sun.” [5]

The Camel’s nostrils are unique. They can be closed at will to prevent sand and dust from entering. They also have a unique lining which captures the moisture out of the air when the camel breathes out. This allows the Camels to preserve moisture in their bodies. [4]

Camels have small ears and lots of hair over their ears to keep out the sand.

Camels have very unique lips. The upper lip is split in the middle and each side can be controlled independently. Each half is tough but flexible. This allows the Camel to put its mouth down close to the ground sideways and chew off low lying vegetation.

The Camel has a very leathery surface inside its mouth. This allows it to eat thistle bushes and cactus and other sharp and strong plants that grow in the desert.

Camel humps do not store water, but they do store fat, up to 80 pounds of fat. This allows Camels to go for weeks and even months on very little food. The fat when metabolized produces energy and also actually releases more than a gallon of water for each gallon of fat. So it is actually a wonderful mechanism for storing water. [2]

"When there is little food and water, the camel's hump fat releases water; 9.3 grams of fat releases 1.13 grams of water, according to research by the University of Singapore." [6]

Another advantage of storing fat in their hump is that camels don’t have to store it throughout the rest of their body which would tend to make them hotter in the summer because of the insulating effect of fat. [7]

Camels have very thick coats that reflect sunlight and help keep them from overheating. Their long legs keep them farther from the hot sand. [2]

Camels have an amazing ability to absorb and maintain water in their bodies. Their kidneys and intestines are excellent at holding water. [2] Various sources say they can drink between 30 [6] and 53 [4] gallons of water in a single session. That’s twice the amount of liquid that would fit in your car’s gasoline tank. That’s three times the amount in a normal tall kitchen garbage can (13 gal.).

Scientists do not know where all the water goes. Any other animal that drank that much compared to its size would die.

Conversely Camels can still function if they are dehydrated way past the point where other animals would die.

“Camels can survive without food and water a long period of time. Most mammals would die if they lose 15% of their water (critical loss of water is called dehydration), but a camel can lose 20-25% water without becoming dehydrated.” [5]

Camels are unique among all mammals because their red blood cells are oval instead of round. This allows their blood to continue to circulate in their capillaries even when the blood gets thicker due to less and less water content. [8]

Camels can even conserve water by concentrating their urine into a thick syrup. They also extract all the moisture from their feces so that it is almost completely dry. It can be burned as fuel from the moment it is released.

Camels have another totally unique ability. Almost all mammals maintain a constant body temperature and this takes energy. Humans keep a body temperature of about 98.6 degrees. Camels can allow their body temperatures to go down to 93.2 degrees at night or up as high as 105.8 degrees before they begin to perspire. [8] Humans would die at those extremes. Camels can survive temperatures down to -20 degrees in winter and up to 120 degrees in summer. How do they do it? Scientists don’t know, nor do they know how it could have evolved in a slow and gradual process.

“Maintaining the brain temperature within certain limits is critical for animals; to assist this, camels have a rete mirabile, a complex of arteries and veins lying very close to each other which utilizes countercurrent blood flow to cool blood flowing to the brain.” [4]

Tell me how something like their cooling system for the brain could possibly evolve by a slow and gradual process over generations. Their brains would be fried by the sun.

Camel feet are specially adapted to walking on sand because they have two large pads on each foot that expand when stepping down and then close up as they are being lifted for the next step. When Camels walk, they walk differently than most animals. Both feet on one side move at the same time so it looks very unnatural. If you’ve ever seen them run, it looks very funny.

Camels have special kidneys and intestines. They have special immune systems. But I’ve gone on long enough.

A person who believes in evolution might be able to imagine how a camel could evolve a couple of these special adaptations, but there are way, way too many of them to be explained like that. Fortunate accidents may happen once in a while, but not repeatedly.

It is therefore clear to me that the Camel was designed and not evolved. Hence, there must be God.

----------------------------------------------------------

[1] San Diego Zoo, "Ships of the desert", http://animals.sandiegozoo.org/animals/camel

[2] Camel Facts, https://kidskonnect.com/animals/camel/

[3] SoftSchools.com, "Camel Facts", http://www.softschools.com/facts/animals/camel_facts/38/

[4] Wikipedia.org, “Camel”, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camel

[5] British Llama Society, "All about Camels", www.britishllamasociety.org/camelids/camels/camels.html

[6] Alina Bradford, "Camels: Facts, Types & Pictures", http://www.livescience.com/27503-camels.html

[7] “Facts about camels”, http://www.onekind.org/be_inspired/animals_a_z/camel/

[8] Michele Collet, "20 Amazing Facts About Camels", http://scribol.com/environment/20-amazing-facts-about-camels/3

#92 Emperor Penguins

2015-09-30T16:16:00.000-07:00

One of the most amazing documentaries I have ever watched is called “March of the Penguins.” I saw it five or six years ago with my family and to this day whenever I think about that movie and Emperor Penguins, the word that comes to mind is “unbelievable”. The movie is narrated by Morgan Freeman and is kind of slow moving, but you just cannot stop watching it. I checked Amazon and you can download it for $3.99. I highly recommend you put it at or near the top of your list of movies to see next.

Emperor Penguins are the largest of all penguins standing an average of around four feet tall and weighing around 50 to 100 pounds. They live in Antarctica and when winter starts coming, all of the other penguins start heading north for warmer waters. The Emperor Penguins do the opposite. They march right into the teeth of the worst of winter. Then they breed, incubate the egg through the coldest winter, and even hatch it before spring comes. They are the only Antarctic bird that breeds in the winter. [2]

“They breed during the depths of the Antarctic winter and in some of the most desolate, coldest, windiest and downright grim places on the planet during the season of 24 hour darkness.” [3]

How can evolution explain such behavior? It takes many special adaptations for them to survive which would never be necessary if they just went north to warmer water. They are certainly good survivors, but this is not the easiest way to survive and in fact only about 19% of their chicks do survive. [1]

This article is about the amazing abilities they have in order to survive in the coldest place on earth. Surely you will be able to see that they could never develop these abilities slowly and gradually over many generations in minus 40 degrees F. They would all die in the very first generation without having all these abilities present in the beginning and endowed by their designer.

Emperor Penguins breed in the winter in Antarctica where the temperatures average minus 4 degrees F during the day and reaching minus 40 or 50 degrees F at night. [1] (Another source says minus 80 degrees F. [2]) The wind can blow up to 89 miles per hour or 120 miles per hour [1] depending on your source. Think of the “wind chill factor” in that wind. The females will lay one egg, but they cannot let it touch the ice or be exposed to the outside air temperature. In two minutes it would be dead. They lay the egg on top of their feet and keep it protected by a special fold of skin and feathers called a “brood pouch”.

Soon after that, the females very carefully pass the egg to their mate trying not to let it touch the ice. If it does, it is lost. The male keeps the egg on top of his feet for the next three of four months and protects it with his special “brood pouch”. The male does not eat during this whole time.

The female walks for the 30 to 75 miles to get to the ocean. She eats a lot of food and stores up as much as she can to take back to regurgitate for her baby chick. The egg will hatch in about 63 or 64 days of sitting on the male’s feet. Hatching can take two or three days because the shell of the egg is unusually thick.

She walks all the way back to her mate. This trip takes an average of 115 days round trip. [c] When she gets back to the flock, there are hundreds and hundreds of males. How does she find her mate?

“As the species has no fixed nest sites that individuals can use to locate their own partner or chick, Emperor Penguins must rely on vocal calls alone for identification. They use a complex set of calls that are critical to individual recognition between parents, offspring, and mates, displaying the widest variation in individual calls of all penguins. Vocalizing Emperor Penguins use two frequency bands simultaneously. Chicks use a frequency-modulated whistle to beg for food and to contact parents.” [1]

The chicks are carefully passed from the male to the female. Then the males, now weighing about 26 pounds less than when their mate left, take off walking the many miles to the sea to get something to eat.

To think that Emperor Penguins evolved is preposterous. They could not have evolved the ability to survive in these harsh winters someplace else and then moved there. What individual or group would go into the cold in the first place if walking the other way would be warmer and safer? How could the female and male learn to cooperate like they do? If an egg touches the ice, the embryo dies, first time and every time. No way it could evolve over generations. The male and female both have special “brood pouches” to protect the egg and chick. Where did those come from? How did they develop the special vocalization abilities they have to locate their mates among hundreds or thousands of others?

I can't even cover all of the unbelievable things that they are able to do. They have special feathers and a special layer of fat (up to 3cm) to protect them from the cold. They could not survive without it. It would not “evolve” unnecessarily in a warmer climate and it could not evolve slowly in frigid temperatures because the penguins would die before breeding. It would not need to evolve in the border between cold and warmer climates because the penguin could just walk to a warmer area. All other penguins breed in the spring when warm weather is coming. How could Emperor Penguins “evolve” to breed at the beginning of winter, totally different timing? The answer is that they didn’t, evolution is not a plausible explanation.

“Its stiff feathers are short, lanceolate (spear-shaped), and densely packed over the entire skin surface. With around 100 feathers covering one square inch (15 feathers per cm2), it has the highest feather density of any bird species. An extra layer of insulation is formed by separate shafts of downy filaments between feathers and skin. Muscles allow the feathers to be held erect on land, reducing heat loss by trapping a layer of air next to the skin. Conversely, the plumage is flattened in water, thus waterproofing the skin and the downy under layer.” [1]

Or check this out.

“"The Emperor Penguin is able to thermoregulate (maintain its core body temperature) without altering its metabolism, over a wide range of temperatures. Known as the thermoneutral range, this extends from -10 to 20 °C (14 to 68 °F). Below this temperature range, its metabolic rate increases significantly, although an individual can maintain its core temperature from 38.0 °C (100.4 °F) down to -47 °C (-53 °F). Movement by swimming, walking, and shivering are three mechanisms for increasing metabolism; a fourth process involves an increase in the breakdown of fats by enzymes, which is induced by the hormone glucagon." [1]

And check this out.

“A penguin's normal resting heart-beat is about 60-70 beats per minute (bpm), this goes up to 180-200 bpm before a dive as they load up with oxygen, then as they hit the water, the rate drops to 100 bpm immediately slowing to only 20 bpm during most of the dive so they use the stored oxygen in blood and muscles to the maximum effect. On returning to the surface again, the heart rate goes back to 200 bpm probably to pay back the "oxygen debt" they have incurred during the dive.” [3]

“The American physiologist Gerry Kooyman revolutionized the study of penguin foraging behaviour in 1971 when he published his results from attaching automatic dive-recording devices to Emperor Penguins. He found that the species reaches depths of 265m (869 ft), with dive periods of up to 18 minutes. Later research revealed a small female had dived to a depth of 535 m (1,755 ft) near McMurdo Sound.” [1]

“In addition to the cold, the emperor penguin encounters another stressful condition on deep dives—markedly increased pressure of up to 40 times that of the surface, which in most other terrestrial organisms would cause barotrauma. The bones of the penguin are solid rather than air-filled, which eliminates the risk of mechanical barotrauma.” [1]

How could they evolve such bones? Here’s another fact extremely hard to explain by evolution.

"Eventually, the female returns across the sea ice. This usually coincides with the hatching of the chick. Sometimes the chick will hatch before the female returns. If this happens, it will be fed with a secretion of protein and fat produced by the male from its esophagus, a sort of penguin 'milk'".[3]

Milk produced by the male of the species!!! All right, here’s one last one. Just exactly how could the following coordinated action of the group evolve over many generations? They would all have died before they were successful at it.

“As a defense against the cold, a colony of emperor penguins forms a compact huddle (also known as the turtle formation) ranging in size from ten to several hundred birds, with each bird leaning forward on a neighbor. As the wind chill is the least severe in the center of the colony, all the juveniles are usually huddled there. Those on the outside upwind tend to shuffle slowly around the edge of the formation and add themselves to its leeward edge, producing a slow churning action, and giving each bird a turn on the inside and on the outside.” [1]

"They survive by huddling together for warmth, very unusual behavior for adults of other penguin species which are usually aggressively territorial. They also take turns to occupy the coldest most exposed outside positions. Without this huddling behavior, they would be unable to endure the combined conditions of fasting, bitter cold, and hurricane force winds and would not be able to live and breed in the way they do. Even though they are close together during these huddles, they have been recently shown to be not quite touching. If they touched and squashed the puffed out feather down it would reduce the insulating value and make them colder, so they really fine-tune the process." [3]

Again I suggest you watch “March of the Penguins” DVD to get a real impactful understanding of the life of the Emperor Penguins.

Fact after fact after fact about Emperor Penguins defies any slow and gradual mutation/natural selection scenario. Evolution of an Emperor Penguin is impossible.

You’ll see. There has to be God.

NOTE: HERE IS A LINK TO ALL MY OTHER PROOFS FOR GOD: http://101proofsforgod.com/

----------------------------------------------------

[1] Wikipedia.org, “Emperor penguin”, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emperor_penguin

[2] Emperor Penguin (Aptenodytes Forsteri) http://antarcticconnection.com/information/emperor-penguin-aptenodytes-forsteri/

[3] “Emperor Penguins Facts” http://www.coolantarctica.com/Antarctica%20fact%20file/wildlife/Emperor-penguins.php

#91 Spider Webs

2015-09-26T18:59:00.000-07:00

I’m sure you must be familiar with spider webs. Every one of us has seen them and most of us have gotten tangled in one from time to time. Most of us would be just fine if we never had anything to do with a spider or its web again.

We try to avoid encountering them or even thinking about them, but a spider’s web is an engineering marvel that most of us could not begin to figure out how to create even if we had the resources. Scientists don’t even know how they do it.

Most spiders have three different “spinnerets” that are organs in their bodies to produce the three different types of silk that go into making a spider web. They have both sticky and non-sticky silk. Most of the silk threads in a spider web are the “sticky” type which catches insects for them to eat.

As you have probably heard, the silk of spider webs is stronger than steel for its size, but it is way more elastic.

Did you ever wonder why spiders don’t get all caught up in their own webs? They have special legs, claws, feet, and hairs that help them not get stuck. They also spin the type of silk that is “non-sticky”. When they run across their web, they stay mostly on the non-sticky silk threads.

Reading about spider webs is a fascinating education.

There are so many elements that come together to create a spider web that most rational people who study about the details have to conclude that it is a total miracle if it happened by mutation and natural selection through slow and gradual changes as predicted by the Theory of Evolution. However, it’s so much simpler and more elegant to imagine a super-intellect designing it all, as I do.

I want to go through the article in Wikipedia.Org [1] on Spider Webs and point out some questions that you should ask yourself if you have any doubt about God.

“When spiders moved from the water to the land in the Early Devonian period, they started making silk to protect their bodies and their eggs.” [1]

The writer says that spiders just “started making silk.” Now if you imagine what they are really doing, you'll see this is a miraculous performance. It’s not like they decided to put on a jacket or something. Spiders somehow developed a special organ in their bodies that they never had before. This brand new organ actually makes a long continuous strand of silk that is stronger than steel for its size. Somehow they realized that this string coming out of themselves would be good to wrap themselves or their eggs in for protection.

That’s a miracle or it’s a design.

“Spiders gradually started using silk for hunting purposes, first as guide lines and signal lines, then as ground or bush webs, and eventually as the aerial webs that are familiar today.” [1]

Each sentence is taking one or more gigantic leaps by assumption. The kind of silk that was produced to wrap themselves or their eggs must have been the “non-sticky” silk. Otherwise, they’d be in a total mess. So in order to use any silk for hunting purposes, they would need the “sticky” type of silk. This is not produced in the same bodily organ, or spinneret. They need a totally different type of spinneret to produce the “sticky” silk. So they have to grow a whole new organ.

Next, you might also ask yourself, “How did they learn to hunt with sticky silk?” Imagine that you grow an organ to produce sticky silk and it starts oozing from your abdomen. How do you figure out what to do with it? Since it is sticky, it will get all over you, sort of like duct tape gone wild. Remember it is stronger than steel at your level of size. Somehow you have to learn to turn it on and off. Then next, over many generations of getting all stuck to yourself, you evolve special hairy arms and hands with special cells so you can deal with the sticky silk.

Remember the concept of Natural Selection says that every slow and gradual step along the way was an advantage to survival so it was preserved. I’m having a hard time imagining myself wrapped in duct tape and thinking I could survive better that way.

Ok, let’s skip ahead. You’ve got this long strand of sticky silk emerging from your body that you have managed to get under control. How does it become useful for hunting? The author claims it must have been used “first as guidelines and signal lines”. I guess the spiders must have laid it out across the ground and realized that if food got stuck to it, then they could reel it in like on a fishing line. That seems like a possibility until you think of getting some double-sided duct tape and laying it out across the ground. You’re not going to catch anything but dirt. Even if you laid it up the side of a tree, you’re probably only going to catch tree bark.

Maybe they hung upside down from a tree branch and dangled the sticky silk strand in the air. They might accidentally catch a bug for dinner. Odds are not so good. They also might catch a bird and get carried away. I just don’t see this as an improvement on survival abilities. There are more bugs on the ground to eat than they could catch in the air.

“Spiders produce silk from their spinneret glands located at the tip of their abdomen. Each gland produces a thread for a special purpose – for example a trailed safety line, sticky silk for trapping prey or fine silk for wrapping it. Spiders use different gland types to produce different silks, and some spiders are capable of producing up to 8 different silks during their lifetime.

“Most spiders have three pairs of spinnerets, each having its own function – there are also spiders with just one pair and others with as many as four pairs.” [1]

So most spiders have several glands for producing each a different type of silk thread. Some spiders may have up to 8 different glands. Obviously, each type of gland is unique and so there had to be a lot of DNA changes in a spider’s sperm AND egg for those changes to first occur and then be perpetuated from one generation to the next. If only the female or male spider mutates, then a trait is not likely to get passed to the next generation.

“Webs allow a spider to catch prey without having to expend energy by running it down. Thus it is an efficient method of gathering food. However, constructing the web is in itself an energetically costly process because of the large amount of protein required, in the form of silk. In addition, after a time the silk will lose its stickiness and thus become inefficient at capturing prey. It is common for spiders to eat their own web daily to recoup some of the energy used in spinning. The silk proteins are thus recycled.” [1]

I am skeptical that this statement can be arguing in favor of evolution. How much energy does a spider actually expend to run down an insect as opposed to creating a huge spider web? Which strategy is more likely to lead to survival of the fittest? Seems to me that a spider that runs down some food gets to eat it right away as contrasted to the one that builds a huge nest and waits and hopes. Which one will survive better to reproduce, the spider on the ground chasing prey or the one that is taking many generations to learn how to make a spider web and use it?

“The tensile strength of spider silk is greater than the same weight of steel and has much greater elasticity. Its microstructure is under investigation for potential applications in industry, including bullet-proof vests and artificial tendons.” [1]

This is incredible information. A spider can produce from a gland on its body a thread stronger than steel (relatively), which has much greater elasticity. It has taken human beings with intelligence thousands and thousands of years to produce steel, yet evolutionists believe that spiders accidentally stumbled on the way to produce it from developing an organ in their own bodies from scratch, step-by-step, gradually over many generations. Really?

Here’s another issue. Scientists know that a spider web is a mixture of sticky and non-sticky silk which allows the spider to walk over his/her own spider web and not get stuck to it. Just how in the process of figuring out how to build a spider web did the spider learn to make a pattern of non-sticky silk to walk on and avoid the sticky silk. Do you think it was trial and error? Going back to the duct tape analogy, the spider would get stuck in his own web many, many times before learning how to engineer the non-sticky silk that he/she could walk on. The strands would have to be in a certain pattern and distance between them so the spider could get anywhere in the web that an insect might get stuck. The spider legs must be able to reach across the gap.

“During the process of making an orb web, the spider will use its own body for measurements.” [1]

I find this an amazing statement, that a spider takes measurements like an intelligent construction worker planning his next move.

Next we need to spend a little time with the phenomenal way a spider actually goes about spinning a web and ask ourselves lots of questions of how can this rationally be explained without a master designer.

“Many webs span gaps between objects which the spider could not cross by crawling. This is done by first producing a fine adhesive thread to drift on a faint breeze across a gap. When it sticks to a surface at the far end, the spider feels the change in the vibration. The spider reels in and tightens the first strand, then carefully walks along it and strengthens it with a second thread. This process is repeated until the thread is strong enough to support the rest of the web.” [1]

Think about this for a little while. It’s talking about a spider up in the air letting a silk drift in the breeze. (Remember to think about duct tape.) However, the Wikipedia author previously said that webs were created on the ground first. So spiders were merrily making spider webs on the ground until they realized they needed to make them in the air and then they somehow figured out that they should go up high and dangle a sticky silk to blow in the wind. If it dangles around for a while and doesn’t stick on anything, then they should let out some more silk.

Once it sticks to something, they carefully reel it in and try to make it tight. Then they travel down the sticky silk (remember duct tape) without getting stuck in it and without breaking it and falling. They drag some other sticky silk behind them without getting stuck in that and attach it to the end point. Now they have two strands across the gap. But still they repeat this process again to make the sure it can support the whole future web. How they know when they have enough strands, that is a mystery. With each additional strand of sticky silk (remember think double-sided duct tape) they manage to go back and forth across without getting stuck. How many generations did it take them to learn how not to get stuck.

“After strengthening the first thread, the spider continues to make a Y-shaped netting. The first three radials of the web are now constructed. More radials are added, making sure that the distance between each radial and the next is small enough to cross. This means that the number of radials in a web directly depends on the size of the spider plus the size of the web. It is common for a web to be about 20 times the size of the spider building it.” [1]

“The spider easily grips the thin threads with special serrated claws, a smooth hook and a series of barbed hairs on the end of its legs. As it walks along the initial structural threads, it lays more frame threads between various anchor points. Then it starts laying out radius threads from the center of the web to the frames. The spider does not coat the frame and radius threads with sticky material, since it needs to walk across them to get around the web.

“After building all the radius threads, the spider lays more nonstick silk to form an auxiliary spiral, extending from the center of the web to the outer edge of the web. The spider then spirals in on the web, laying out sticky thread and using the auxiliary spiral as a reference. The spider eats up the auxiliary spiral as it lays out the sticky spiral, resulting in a web with non-sticky radius threads, for getting around, and a sticky spiral for catching bugs.” [2]

About all I can say to this is WOW. I am daily watching a construction crew put a new wing on the building where I work. Each day is awesome as the scaffolding goes up in a precise and coordinated way, step-by-step. It takes a lot of brains to figure out an engineering feat like the lowly spider is accomplishing.

Lastly there is the spider’s ability to sense by touching a silk thread that it has caught something. Its brain can tell the difference between the wind blowing or a leaf and true prey stuck in the spider web by touching a silk strand with its claw.

“The spider might also leave the web, to retreat to a separate nest, while monitoring the web via a connected signal line.” [2]

There is no way that all these different types of spiders learned to create different types of webs using several different materials from different organs in their own bodies in a slow and gradual process.

There must be God.

______________________________________

[1] Wikepedia.Org article, Spider Webs, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spider_web

[2] HowStuffWorks.Com, A Typical Spider Web, http://animals.howstuffworks.com/arachnids/spider5.htm

#90 Copying Degradation

2015-08-30T16:51:00.000-07:00

Most of you who have ever worked in an office are probably aware that when you make a photocopy, it is not an exact copy of the original. If you then make a photocopy of the photocopy, and you continue to repeat this process always making a copy of the last copy, then pretty soon you will be able to really notice the difference between the very original sheet and the latest copy. The discrepancies become really obvious after a while.

There is always a slight degradation with each new generation of copying. This is what I mean by “Copying Degradation.”

In my office we have a tremendous copy machine that does color copies, double-sided, folded, stapled, and even hole-punched copies. It cost over $20,000. But it cannot make a perfect copy and is subject to the same rule as above. Every once in a while, we have to call the technician to repair it and re-calibrate it.

If you talk to computer hardware people, you will also learn that the same is true for digital copying inside a computer. The computer is based on the binary system, meaning all information is stored as “0’s” and “1’s”. Computers are, of course, vastly more accurate at copying, but sooner or later there is a mistake. You know this because sometimes your computer locks up for no reason and you have to restart it to make it work. Every modem and Wi-Fi system has a built in error correction system or “protocol” that checks constantly to be sure the data being transmitted and received is identical.

So if Copying Degradation is a universal truth in the real world, what is the result that it yields? Do we ever end up with something that is better than the original? We know we never end up with a photocopy that is better than the original, especially after many generations. For data copying in computer programs, an error in copying data, or worse yet the program software, is most likely to cause a malfunction and very, very, very unlikely to result in a better program.

Let’s think about DNA. Rather than a binary system like computers, it is based on four possible “base pairs” and two are used on any given rung of the ladder. What do you think keeps happening as the DNA gets copied over and over? This is a question that scientists can now investigate.

The Theory of Evolution predicts that given time and many small incremental and accidental changes to the DNA coding, along with some natural selection, the end result is a totally new species that is fully functioning. Evolution predicts that DNA copying has made copying mistakes millions upon millions of times and that has successfully increased functioning complexity. Starting out with something akin to an amoeba, we have advanced all the way to the millions of varied species and to the human body and brain.

According to my Google search, the latest scientific estimate is that there are approximately 8,700,000 different species on the earth. The Theory of Evolution says that all 8.7 million species started out from a single cell with DNA. By repeatedly copying that DNA over and over, mutations occurred so that the 8.7 million new species eventually arose.

That’s a phenomenally huge statement of faith if you ask me.

Those who believe in God have many varied ideas of how God did it, but it’s still a very big mystery. They do however admit that their beliefs are based on faith.

However, there is some agreement among the believers who are also scientists that God created according to “kinds”. This means that God created an original model or body plan of a species and then there was tremendous variation from that original. Take for example the “dog kind”. God somehow created the original male and female dog and then all the different breeds eventually could emerge by natural selection or mankind’s active intervening in the process.

Dogs actually have 78 chromosomes in their genome which allows for tremendous variations. By comparison, chimpanzees have 48 chromosomes and humans have only 46 chromosomes.

These facts seem to show the opposite from the Theory of Evolution model. More complicated life has less chromosomes. Evolution starts with a very simple set of DNA that branches into more and more complicated forms of life. Creation theories start with a very complicated original “kind” and predict that over time DNA changes lead to loss (not gain) of DNA complexity and the differences and variations within a species are the result of the loss of information in the DNA code.

So here we have two profoundly opposite predictions and we should be able to do scientific experiments to observe which of these two processes is taking place in nature.

If evolution is true, then we should see the DNA of species getting more and more complicated and gradual improvements in the code which eventually can lead to a new species. After all, that’s how they believe we got the 8.7 million species.

But if the DNA copying from one generation to the next shows that there is copying degradation, then our scientific conclusion will have to be that evolution is false. That will only leave us with one of the alternative theories that involves a Creator being.

Well, folks, the scientific research has been done. The results are in. There is in fact copying degradation at the DNA level which is taking place. DNA degrades over time. It does not get more complex. Is this surprising, not really? It’s the same in life everywhere you look.

“My own work with 35 protein families suggests that the rate of destruction is, at minimum, 8 times the rate of neutral or beneficial mutations...Simply put, the digital information of life is being destroyed much faster than it can be repaired or improved. New functions may evolve, but the overall loss of functional information in other areas of the genome will, on average, be significantly greater. The net result is that the digital information of life is running down.” [1]

It is statistically impossible for evolution to be taking place because it could not overcome the disadvantage of 8 harmful errors to every one possibly beneficial or neutral error.

Durston, author of the above quote, goes much further, even saying the human genome is running down.

“First, the digital information for the bacterial world is slowly eroding away due to a net deletional bias [2] in mutations involving insertions and deletions. A second example is the fruit fly, one of the most studied life forms in evolutionary biology. It, too, shows an ongoing, genome-wide loss of DNA [3] across the entire genus.

“Finally, humans are not exempt. As biologist Michael Lynch points out in a paper in PNAS, "Rate, molecular spectrum, and consequences of human mutation" [4]:

“ ‘[A] consideration of the long-term consequences of current human behaviour for deleterious-mutation accumulation leads to the conclusion that a substantial reduction in human fitness can be expected over the next few centuries in industrialized societies unless novel means of genetic intervention are developed.’

“We continue to discover more examples of DNA loss [5], suggesting that the biological world is slowly running down. Microevolution is good at fine-tuning existing forms within their information limits and occasionally getting something right, but the steady accumulation of deleterious mutations on the larger scale suggests that mutation-driven evolution is actually destroying biological life, not creating it.” [6]

Another important fact, scientists have discovered that there are as many as three processes within a cell that actually repair DNA when there is a mutation. [7] Cells do not like copying mistakes. Another name for mutation in cells is cancer.

"Replication also contains built-in error checking. The frequency of errors is about 1 per 100 million bonds (1 x 10-8). Over the entire human genome, that works out to roughly 30 errors every single time the genome replicates. BUT! There are really only around three errors per replication because of DNA repair. If a repair enzyme finds a mistake, it can fix it, and it can tell which strand is wrong because it can tell which strand is the newly synthesized strand by the extent of cytosine methylation.” [8]

“As a major defense against environmental damage to cells, DNA repair is present in all organisms examined including bacteria, yeast, drosophila, fish, amphibians, rodents and humans. DNA repair is involved in processes that minimize cell killing, mutations, replication errors, persistence of DNA damage and genomic instability. Abnormalities in these processes have been implicated in cancer and aging. [9]

As far back as scientists have known about DNA, there is no known example of a new species arising out of another species. Believe me, they have been trying to find one. As mentioned above and in my Proof for God # 27 The Truth About Mutation [10], scientists have tried unsuccessfully to mutate fruit flies for 40 years and could never produce a new species.

If you have a theory and you derive logical predictions from that theory, but those predictions are totally false, then the only conclusion is that the theory is false and worthless for further study. That’s where we stand today if we accept the scientific evidence.

The Theory of Evolution is scientifically falsifiable.

As we have seen throughout history, faiths and beliefs die slowly even after they are proven false. But rest assured, the Theory of Evolution is dying. Many don’t know it yet, but scientific evidence will put the nail in its coffin.

Therefore, there must be God.

______________________________

[1] Kirk Durston, "An Essential Prediction of Darwinian Theory Is Falsified by Information Degradation", http://www.evolutionnews.org/2015/07/an_essential_pr097521.html

[2] Alex Mira, Howard Ochmanemail, Nancy A. Moran, Dept of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Arizona, "Deletional bias and the evolution of bacterial genomes", http://www.cell.com/trends/genetics/abstract/S0168-9525(01)02447-7?_returnURL=http%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS0168952501024477%3Fshowall%3Dtrue

[3] Dmitri A. Petrov1 and Daniel L. Hartl, Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, "High Rate of DNA Loss in the Drosophila melanogaster and Drosophila virilis Species Groups", http://petrov.stanford.edu/pdfs/11.pdf

[4] Michael Lynch, Department of Biology, Indiana University, "Rate, molecular spectrum, and consequences of human mutation", http://www.pnas.org/content/107/3/961.full.pdf+html

[5] Sun, López Arriaza, and Mueller, National Institutes of Health, "Slow DNA loss in the gigantic genomes of salamanders",

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23175715

[6] Kirk Durston, "An Essential Prediction of Darwinian Theory Is Falsified by Information Degradation", http://www.evolutionnews.org/2015/07/an_essential_pr097521.html

[7] Beth A. Montelone, Kansas State University, "Mutation, Mutagens, and DNA Repair" http://www-personal.k-state.edu/~bethmont/mutdes.html

[8] Leigh Eisenman and Kevan Higgins, Edited Notes, "Chromosomes, Chromatin, DNA Replication and Repair" http://www.dartmouth.edu/~cbbc/courses/bio4/bio4-1997/03-DNA&Chromosomes.html

[9] National Institutes of Health, "What is DNA Repair?" http://www.nih.gov/sigs/dna-rep/whatis.html

[10] Stephens, Jim, “Proof for God #27, The Truth About Mutation”, http://101proofsforgod.blogspot.com/2013/02/27-truth-about-mutation.html

#89 Earthworms

2015-08-16T15:59:00.002-07:00

Did you ever stop to think that we might not be around if not for worms? At least we would not be as healthy as we are.

“In 1881 Charles Darwin wrote: ‘It may be doubted whether there are many other animals which have played so important a part in the history of the world, as have these lowly organized creatures.’” [1]

“They are the main contributors to enriching and improving soil for plants, animals and even humans. Earthworms create tunnels in the soil by burrowing, which aerates the soil to allow air, water and nutrients to reach deep within the soil. Earthworms eat the soil which has organic matter such as decaying vegetation or leaves. Plants cannot use this organic matter directly. After organic matter is digested, the earthworm releases waste from their bodies called castings. Castings contain many nutrients that the plant can use. Some people even use earthworm castings as garden fertilizer.” [2]

I’m sure you have at least a passing encounter with worms. Maybe you dissected one in middle school biology class or you went catching nightcrawlers for fishing.

Earthworms range in size from one millimeter to over six feet long in Australia. [3] The world record is 22 feet long from South Africa. Most worms live in the upper one meter of the earth, but have been known to exist as deep as five meters (16.5 feet). [4]

It is estimated that there are between 250,000 and 1,750,000 worms per acre (i.e. between 62 to 432 per square meter). The mass of all the worms actually outweighs the animal life on the surface. [5]

This amazing creature makes it very hard to believe in Evolution. Clearly they benefit insects, birds, amphibians, plants, and humans, but what good are they for their own benefit? What explains why Natural Selection or survival of the fittest would choose worms to prosper and not die out?

If a bird eats a worm, the bird survives, but not the worm. Clearly the bird is the fittest to survive. If the worm eats dirt and dead leaves and poops a nice nitrogen fertilizer for plants, that’s good for the plants, but what does the worm get out of it?

Wikipedia states "earthworm casts are five times richer in available nitrogen, seven times richer in available phosphates, and 11 times richer in available potassium than the surrounding upper 6 inches (150 mm) of soil. In conditions where humus is plentiful, the weight of casts produced may be greater than 4.5 kg (10 lb) per worm per year." [6] Wow!

Worms also use chemicals for digestion called drilodefensins.

“Without the drilodefensins, the fallen leaves would stay on the ground for a long period, building up and becoming a thick layer, which would make the countryside unrecognizable and disrupt the entire carbon cycling system, said researchers.” [7]

There are 6,000 to 7,000 different species of worms. Remember now that the definition of a species is that members of the species can successfully inter-breed. So if two worms are from a different species of worms, they cannot inter-breed. Unless there is breeding, there is no Evolution. So each worm has to find another one of its own species before it can breed. It would seem pretty hard to find a mate if you are living and burrowing underground most of the time.

Worms have no eyes, another problem in finding themselves a mate. But they don’t need eyes if they are in a dark hole anyway. Luckily for worms, they are hermaphrodites. This means they have both male and female genitals. But they can’t fertilize themselves, so they must encounter another worm of the same species.

“Special ventral setae are used to anchor mating earthworms by their penetration into the bodies of their mates.” [8]

When two worms meet and copulate, both worms get "pregnant" and each produces an egg cocoon which will contain between one and 20 eggs. [9] The babies when they hatch look just like the parents but very tiny and will grow to full size in about 12 months.

Let’s think for a minute about the problem that Evolution would have trying to explain hermaphrodites. What came just before the first worm? Was there an original worm with both genders within itself? Then we would have to explain how the male and female parts differentiated into separate organs in separate locations on the worm. Did it suddenly mutate both male and female parts in the same generation? That’s extremely unlikely. Remember that Evolution is slow and gradual. But if the female part develops first without the male part, no fertilization or reproduction can take place.

Even if you suddenly had one worm that mutated with both male and female genitals, you’d still need a second one to fertilize it. Maybe we could imagine that two worms from the same cocoon both had the mutation. But they have to grow up for months before they can mate and then they have to find each other to do it. But instant genitals which are male and female couldn't be called evolution, slow and gradual.

Worms are all over the world. They are mostly all the same, so they had to have originated with one “Adam/Eve worm” whose descendants have spread all over the world. Where are all the precursors of this first ancestor worm if it really did evolve? (See my Proof for God #64 Missing Links) They must have all died out because there is no evidence of them. If any intermediary worm type beings before the first ancestor worm existed and they had descendants, then all those descendants died out without a trace.

If we theorize that in the beginning there were male worms and female worms, we need to inquire how they originated by mutation and evolved separately. Did the male worm evolve one day from an egg of some non-worm animal? That doesn’t work if there is no female nearby. He would die without reproducing. Male and female would have had to evolve simultaneously and within the same dirt pile, within a few feet from each other.

Hermaphrodite reproduction by worms is very, very interesting and complicated. Slow and gradual evolution is impossible to explain it. After mating, a worm makes a slime tube and fills it with fluid. It then crawls out of the slime tube depositing eggs and sperm into the tube as it passes by. The tube then becomes an egg cocoon. Baby worms emerge in two to four weeks.

“The earthworm will move forward out of the slime tube. As the earthworm passes through the slime tube, the tube will pass over the female pore picking up eggs. The tube will continue to move down the earthworm and pass over the male pore called the spermatheca which has the stored sperm called the spermatozoa. The eggs will fertilize and the slime tube will close off as the worm moves completely out of the tube. The slime tube will form an “egg cocoon” and be put into the soil.” [10]

Let’s turn to other thoughts about the “first worm”. Could it have evolved under the ground where they live now? That’s not likely. It must have developed from an above ground animal.

If the “first worm” mutated into existence above ground, what would lead it to start eating dirt? The whole system front to back has to be in place before it can eat dirt. The mouth has to be there along with the stomach, the circulatory system, even the excretory system.

Also, the earthworm has special adaptations so that it can live underground. It either slithers through soft dirt and dead leaves, pushing with a force ten times its body weight, or else it eats its way through hard ground. But how did it evolve the ability to move its various segments in order to slither. That takes major coordination so a brain and nerves are necessary. A worm also has tiny hairs sticking out of its sides that help hold one part in place while another part creeps forward. How does mutation explain the existence of tiny hairs all over a worm’s body?

“The earthworm is made of about 100-150 segments. The segmented body parts provide important structural functions. Segmentation can help the earthworm move. Each segment or section has muscles and bristles called setae. The bristles or setae help anchor and control the worm when moving through soil. The bristles hold a section of the worm firmly into the ground while the other part of the body protrudes forward. The earthworm uses segments to either contract or relax independently to cause the body to lengthen in one area or contract in other areas. Segmentation helps the worm to be flexible and strong in its movement.” [11]

Circumferential and longitudinal muscles on the periphery of each segment enable the worm to move. Similar sets of muscles line the gut, and their actions move the digesting food toward the worm's anus. [12]

It’s a fact that the excrement from worms is a fertilizer for plants. How could that be a random mutation that gets selected by survival of the fittest? The worm has a highly developed digestive system that creates usable nitrogen and other elements for the plants. It even uses tiny grains of sand to help grind up the dirt. That would take hundreds, if not thousands, of mutations of a worm’s DNA to produce.

“Food enters the mouth. The pharynx acts as a suction pump; its muscular walls draw in food. In the pharynx, the pharyngeal glands secrete mucus. Food moves into the esophagus, where calcium (from the blood and ingested from previous meals) is pumped in to maintain proper blood calcium levels in the blood and food pH. From there the food passes into the crop and gizzard. In the gizzard, strong muscular contractions grind the food with the help of mineral particles ingested along with the food. Once through the gizzard, food continues through the intestine for digestion. The intestine secretes pepsin to digest proteins, amylase to digest polysaccharides, cellulase to digest cellulose, and lipase to digest fats. Instead of being coiled like a mammalian intestine, an earthworm's intestine increases surface area to increase nutrient absorption by having many folds running along its length. The intestine has its own pair of muscle layers like the body, but in reverse order—an inner circular layer within an outer longitudinal layer.” [13]

Scientists believe that worms have a sense of touch and taste. That takes an amazing nervous system.

Worms have blood and a circulatory system. How could that evolve and what keeps the blood moving?

“The aortic arches function like a human heart. There are five pairs of aortic arches, which have the responsibility of pumping blood into the dorsal and ventral blood vessels. The dorsal blood vessels are responsible for carrying blood to the front of the earthworm’s body. The ventral blood vessels are responsible for carrying blood to the back of the earthworm’s body.” [14]

Earthworms are very unique creatures. They are amazingly adapted to do what they do, burrowing through dirt and leaving fertilizer, air and water passages for plant growth behind them. They have a brain, digestive and excretory system, nervous system, movement ability, reproductive system, touch and light sensitivity. All this is proof of design and purpose.

There must be God.

------------------------------------------------

[1] Wikipedia, “Earthworm”, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthworm

[2] University of Pennsylvania, “Earthworms”, http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~rlenet/Earthworms.html

[3] World's Largest Worm, https://www.allaboutworms.com/worlds-largest-worm

[4] University of Michigan, BioKids, "Oligochaeta", http://www.biokids.umich.edu/critters/Oligochaeta/

[5] Wikipedia, “Earthworm”, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthworm

[6] Wikipedia, “Earthworm”, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthworm

[7] Anicettion, David, "Secret of Earthworms Eating Leaves Discovered", TimesGazette, Aug. 5, 2015, http://www.thetimesgazette.com/secret-of-earthwormss-eating-leaves-discovered/5986/

[8] Wikipedia, “Earthworm”, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthworm

[9] Biology Junction, "We Love Worms", http://www.biologyjunction.com/earthworm%20facts.htm#hatch

[10] University of Pennsylvania, “Earthworms”, http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~rlenet/Earthworms.html

[11] University of Pennsylvania, “Earthworms”, http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~rlenet/Earthworms.html

[12] Wikipedia, “Earthworm”, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthworm

[13] Wikipedia, “Earthworm”, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthworm

[14] University of Pennsylvania, “Earthworms”, http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~rlenet/Earthworms.html

#88 The Waggle Dance of Honeybees

2015-07-29T15:40:00.001-07:00

I think you are probably familiar with the game of Charades where one person tries to act out a phrase while other members of his/her team try to guess the meaning.

Let’s suppose that the message you are given to act out is the exact location of tonight’s dinner for everyone which it so happens is a couple of miles away.

Remember, you cannot speak and you cannot write. It’s pretty important that you can convey this information or you might all go hungry and eventually die.

Oh, and just to make it a little more tricky, let’s just say that we shrink your communication ability down to the level of a honeybee and similarly for those receiving the message.

Sounds really, really difficult, right? Well, just how do bees do it successfully all the time?

Please watch this National Geographic video (less than 2 minutes) to see a great summation of how they accomplish it. [1] As you might have guessed from the title, they do a little dance.

The Theory of Evolution might say that given millions of years and thousands of generations, the precise method to communicate where the food is located had to (1) accidentally get acted out one day by one honeybee in some way that was (2) correctly understood by another bee. The second one who understood the message, (3) flew off in the right direction and (4) to the right distance and found food. Somehow this accidental communication of information (5) was passed on to other bees in the hive and then (6) passed on to the next generation and ultimately (7) to all honeybees in the world.

I’m having a little trouble imagining that this could happen (sarcasm intended).

Around 40 years ago a scientist, named Karl von Frisch, a professor of zoology at the University of Munich in Germany, discovered the communication technique of honeybees. He set up a very ingenious experiment. He created two honeybee feeders and set them in totally different directions and distances from the hive. Then when bees eventually arrived at the feeders, he painted little spots on them so he knew which ones visited that feeder. He was able to film their actions inside the hive. That is when he discovered what has been named the Honeybee Waggle Dance. He was later given the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1973 for his work.

Wikipedia says, “Waggle dance is a term used in beekeeping and ethology for a particular figure-eight dance of the honey bee. By performing this dance, successful foragers can share, with other members of the colony, information about the direction and distance to patches of flowers yielding nectar and pollen, to water sources, or to new nest-site locations.” [2]

Von Frisch discovered that the honeybee will do a short wiggling dance in a straight line, then stop wiggling. It will swing around to the right and circle back to its original starting point for the dance and then do it all over again. However, the second time when it gets to the end, it will swing around to the left and circle back to the beginning point.

Von Frisch was able to determine that the precise axis the bee is traveling during the dance section tells the other bees the direction to fly in. He also discovered that the number of waggles during the dance was communicating the distance that they should fly.

“While running the straight-line course of the dance, the bee’s body, especially the abdomen, wags vigorously from side to side. This vibration of the body produces a tail-wagging motion. At the same time, the bee emits a buzzing sound, produced by wingbeats at a low audio frequency of 250 to 300 hertz or cycles per second.” [3]

But it is much more amazing than you might first think, although this is totally amazing already. The bee hive is usually built vertically. However, the direction that the bees have to fly will be a horizontal direction. Somehow the bee doing the dance has to be able to take the horizontal direction and distance information and convert it in her brain before she does the dance on a vertical surface. Also, the bees receiving the information have to be able to convert it in their brains back into the original information horizontally.

Von Frisch discovered that the dance being done on the vertical hive surface was using gravity as a reference point and that straight up represented the location of the sun and straight down represented 180 degrees away from the sun.

Here is an outstanding animated video from Georgia Tech College of Computing (7.5 minutes) that illustrates the experiments of Karl von Frisch and demonstrates how bees communicate. [4]

If the axis of the waggle dance was 30 degrees off of the vertical to the right, then the other bees were able to understand that they should take the position of the sun and then fly exactly 30 degrees to the right. Amazing that they can know the exact angle, right?

“The distance between hive and recruitment target is encoded in the duration of the waggle runs. The farther the target, the longer the waggle phase. The more excited the bee is about the location, the more rapidly it will waggle, so it will grab the attention of the observing bees, and try to convince them. If multiple bees are doing the waggle dance, it's a competition to convince the observing bees to follow their lead, and competing bees may even disrupt other bees' dances or fight each other off.” [5]

Now you must be smart enough to realize a big problem…namely the sun keeps moving all day long. Even more challenging is that the arc of the sun is not the same every day but changes in the sky according to the seasons. If the bees live south of the equator, you have to flip things over.

Not only does the sun moving in the sky make it difficult, but sometimes it is so cloudy that we can’t see the sun. Astoundingly, the bees are able to see ultraviolet light, which penetrates the cloud cover.

So they can see the sun at all times. Not only that, but even more bewildering for a non-believer is that the honeybee’s eyes polarize the sunlight like polarized sunglasses. That means they can even more accurately identify the exact direction of the sun.

The bees have a finely tuned internal clock (Where did they get that?) so a dancing bee who has been in the darkness of the nest for a while somehow calculates where the sun is going to be when their fellow bees head off from the hive. The axis of its dance has to change because the sun moved in the sky. Not only that of course, but those leaving the hive are going to be continually calculating changes to the direction they should fly according to the amount of time that has elapsed and the change in position of the sun.

Here is another video. This one is loaded with film footage of bees at work and what their eyes are really seeing. (5min, 18sec.) [6]

The bee also communicates a second very important piece of information…the distance to fly to get to the food source. This is done by either the number of waggles or the length of time waggling. Researchers now estimate that one second of waggling equals one kilometer of distance. If the food source is close, there is no waggling at all, but just a circling around motion.

"While several variables of the waggle dance relate to distance (such as dance “tempo” or the duration of buzzing sounds), the duration of the straight-run portion of the dance, measured in seconds, is the simplest and most reliable indicator of distance. As the distance to the food source increases, the duration of the waggling portion of the dance (the “waggle run”) also increases. The relationship is roughly linear. For example, a forager that performs a waggle run that lasts 2.5 seconds is recruiting for a food source located about 2,625 meters away." [7]

But note that scientists have observed that if there is a strong headwind coming from the direction of the food source, the bee will have to fly a longer time to reach the destination. The waggle dance will last longer. This leads scientists to believe that the bees are not measuring the distance to fly but the amount of energy it takes to get to the food source.

The forager bees who do the waggle dance also bring back on their legs and abdomen some of the food source that has been discovered. So the other bees are able to sample what their goal is at the distant location. So smell may also be a strong component of the communication.

Scientists know the waggle dance is real, so bees really in fact can do this. However there is controversy about how much it is effectively used by other bees, with estimates as low as 10% of other bees actually using the data.

The simplest and most elegant explanation for the waggle dance is that it was designed by the Creator of the Universe, an unimaginably superior intelligence. If you decide against there being a Creator, then you have to posit some other explanation which must be based on pure accident and random happenstance coming together in a fortuitous way. Then another random accident brings another fortuitous result. This pattern repeats itself again and again, thousands or more accurately millions of times. Notwithstanding that this violates the laws of nature and probability, you must imagine and try to believe that’s how it happened because, voila, the truth is that scientists have now discovered these facts of how bees communicate using the waggle dance.

I’ll stick with, there must be a God.

________________________________________

[1] National Geographic video, World’s Weirdest: Honeybee Dance Moves, http://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/weirdest-bees-dance

[2] Wikipedia, “Waggle Dance”, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waggle_dance

[3] N.C. State University, The Honey Bee Dance Language, http://www.cals.ncsu.edu/entomology/apiculture/pdfs/1.11%20copy.pdf

[4] Georgia Tech College of Computing, Video: The Waggle Dance of the Honeybee, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFDGPgXtK-U

[5] Wikipedia, “Waggle Dance”, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waggle_dance

[6] wgbhstocksales Video: Bee Waggle Dance, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jc-mtUs-eis

[7] N.C. State University, The Honey Bee Dance Language, http://www.cals.ncsu.edu/entomology/apiculture/pdfs/1.11%20copy.pdf

#87 Pain

2015-07-25T07:49:00.000-07:00

Thank God for pain...nobody ever said.

However, you are about to learn why we can in fact recognize that a loving God created us because we have the incredible ability that allows us to feel pain.

There are about 20 documented cases of American children born with a genetic defect called “congenital insensitivity to pain.” It makes them unable to feel pain. One parent called it a “living hell”.

“Congenital insensitivity to pain (CIP), also known as congenital analgesia, is one or more rare conditions in which a person cannot feel (and has never felt) physical pain. ... Despite sounding beneficial, it is actually an extremely dangerous condition.” [1]

Here is a link to the video of a little girl on Oprah’s show. “She poked out her own eye, chewed her skin raw and bit her tongue until it bled. Five-year-old Gabby Gingras feels no pain. As someone who has no nerves to carry the pain signal from her skin to her brain, she's one of the rarest little girls in the country.” [2]

There is also Ashlyn Blocker. “Ashlyn walked over and put her hands on the muffler. When she lifted them up the skin was seared away. There was one story about the fire ants that swarmed her in the backyard, biting her over a hundred times while she looked at them and yelled: “Bugs! Bugs!” There was the time she broke her ankle and ran around on it for two days before her parents realized something was wrong.” [3]

Here is a link to the story of Isaac Brown. [4] He broke his pelvis and did not know it. One day he was found pounding on a door with a piece of broken glass. No pain. He once put his hand on a hot stove burner. No pain. He had to be taught that “blood is bad”.

Dr. Stephen Waxman, a leading researcher on this condition, blames the problem on mutation and says that probably just one gene out of 30,000 has been messed up. [5] Evolutionists should listen to themselves if they say a mutation is what causes this horrendous problem. And then watch them try to say with total belief in Evolution that mutation is the miraculous process that gave us all good things.

At the beginning of May of this year, I hurt a vertebrae in my spine and was in bed for two and a half weeks with excruciating pain. During that time, I was not thanking God actually. But I did think a lot about pain. You would think that with two and half weeks in bed that I could get a lot of reading and such done. Not actually. I could only think in a straight line for a few seconds at a time. Then the pain would return and the only thing I could think of was how to adjust my body to alleviate some of the pain. I spent most of the time thinking about how to get out of pain. When you are in pain, it overrules everything else.

Our ability to feel pain is phenomenal in its complexity. It is unbelievable in its accuracy. The sensitivity to the damage, vicinity, and seriousness of an injury is way better than you could imagine if you designed it yourself.

There are several different pain receptors, but they, in fact, work together to report the intensity and severity of the damage that has been done. “Every square centimeter of your skin contains around 200 pain receptors but only 15 receptors for pressure, 6 for cold and 1 for warmth.” [6]

Think about that…200 receptors for pain in a square centimeter. Each one of them connected to your brain.

There are two different types of nerve cells lined up end to end that report pain to your brain. They even use completely different types of pathways to get to your brain. Two different centers in your brain do the interpretation of the pain signals.

“The conscious perception of pain probably takes place in the thalamus and lower centers; interpretation of the quality of pain is probably the role of the cerebral cortex.”[7]

In other words you have more than one system in your body for reporting pain. Think about how two systems to accomplish the same function could have possibly evolved separately and accidentally.

“Pain travels through redundant pathways, ensuring to inform the subject: “Get out of this situation immediately.” Without these attributes, the organism has no means to prevent or minimize tissue injury.” [8]

“Pain from the skin is transmitted through two types of nerve fibers. A-delta fibers relay sharp, pricking types of pain, while C fibers carry dull aches and burning sensations. Pain impulses are relayed to the spinal cord, where they interact with special neurons that transmit signals to the thalamus and other areas of the brain.” [9]

Wikipedia writers believe in Evolution and make this statement in their article, “human awareness of painful stimuli is an evolutionary necessity to avoid injury and death.” Well, duh.

But just exactly HOW does the Theory of Evolution describe the development of your pain recognition system? I did not find any answers to my question, only a lot of descriptions of the history of pain research. Evolution says there must have been a slow and gradual process of random mutations that were beneficial. So somehow a receptor for pain accidentally mutated into existence and that was beneficial enough to spread all over our bodies and then be inherited to all mankind.

Although, think about this, it must have taken millions of more mutations before the nerve chain (of hundreds or thousands of nerves) developed to get the signal to our brains which then somehow learned to recognize the signal as pain.

How could pain receptors somehow mutate everywhere, completely covering our bodies? But somehow they did not cover our bodies equally since certain areas have more receptors than others. Luckily the most pain receptors are in exactly the places where we need them most.

But the story is much more complicated. There are actually four different types of pain receptors in the skin. How could that evolve?

“Skin nociceptors (i.e. pain) may be divided into four categories based on function.

The first type is termed high threshold mechanonociceptors or specific nociceptors. These nociceptors respond only to intense mechanical stimulation such as pinching, cutting or stretching.

The second type is the thermal nociceptors, which respond to the above stimuli as well as to thermal stimuli. (i.e. hot or cold)

The third type is chemical nociceptors, which respond only to chemical substances.

A fourth type is known as polymodal nociceptors, which respond to high intensity stimuli such as mechanical, thermal and to chemical substances like the previous three types.” [10]

There is a great amount of research and information available if you want to continue to study about pain. For example, scientists have been able to distinguish 22 degrees of “Just Noticeable Differences” in applying heat to our skin. This article, as you can see is just scratching the surface.

Also it’s a fact your body has pain receptors everywhere, not only on your skin, but also in all of your joints, your arteries, and inside your body connected to all your various organs. There are different types of pain sensors in these areas as well. Did all this evolve slowly and gradually? Not likely.

"The distribution of pain receptors in the gastrointestinal mucosa apparently is similar to that in the skin; thus, the mucosa is quite sensitive to irritation and other painful stimuli. Although the parenchyma of the liver and the alveoli of the lungs are almost entirely insensitive to pain, the liver and bile ducts are extremely sensitive, as are the bronchi and parietal pleura." [11]

Let me highlight one more amazing ability we have which defies Evolution, our reflexes. If you put your hand on a hot surface, you will pull it off immediately, even before the signal gets to your brain. Similar reflexes exist connected to all of our pain receptors. The neurons from our pain receptors to our brains all go through our spinal cord. But there is a short circuit process if the pain is intense. There are nerves directly from the spine to our muscles that make them pull away from any pain source. Our brain is bypassed. Is there really a way for this to evolve slowly and gradually?

Nobody likes pain, but what an incredible blessing it is that we have the ability to feel it. If not, we would be constantly injuring ourselves in terrible ways and have really shortened lives. When we experience pain, we are strongly driven to do something about it and to get it to stop. Looking at the whole pain perceiving ability, it totally testifies to having been designed.

For a related study, read my Proof for God #70 Healing [12]. The process of healing is another total miracle that had to be designed.

There must be God.

----------------------------------------

[1] Wikipedia, Congenital insensitivity to pain, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congenital_insensitivity_to_pain

[2] The Oprah Winfrey Show, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqRcngt0-h0

[3] Heckertnov, Justin, The Hazards of Growing Up Painlessly, The New York Times Magazine. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/18/magazine/ashlyn-blocker-feels-no-pain.html?_r=0

[4] Mohney, Gillian, Good Morning America, Meet the Child Who Feels No Pain, Oct. 25, 2013,

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/meet-toddler-feels-pain/story?id=20658484

[5] Mohney, Gillian, Good Morning America, Meet the Child Who Feels No Pain, Oct. 25, 2013,

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/meet-toddler-feels-pain/story?id=20658484

[6] How Many Pain Receptors, http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/body/factfiles/touch/touch.shtml

[7] Pain, http://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Pain+receptors

[8] Dafny, Nachum, Department of Neurobiology and Anatomy, The UT Medical School at Houston, "Pain Principles", http://neuroscience.uth.tmc.edu/s2/chapter06.html

[9] Touch, Article, http://psychology.jrank.org/pages/634/Touch.html

[10] Dafny, Nachum, Department of Neurobiology and Anatomy, The UT Medical School at Houston, "Pain Principles", http://neuroscience.uth.tmc.edu/s2/chapter06.html

[11] Pain, http://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Pain+receptors

[12] Stephens, Jim, Proof for God #70 Healing, http://101proofsforgod.blogspot.com/2014/10/70-healing.html

#86 The Tongue

2015-06-25T19:04:00.001-07:00

One of the most amazing and powerful muscles in the human body is the tongue. Without it we would hardly be able to speak and communicate, let alone something like singing.

Besides that, our tongue greatly facilitates our ability to eat because it moves the food around in our mouths while chewing. Try eating without using your tongue sometime.

It also just so happens that our tongue contains all of our taste buds which send signals to our brain letting us know if our food is sweet, sour, salty, bitter, or umami (now being intensely studied). Imagine your life without your taste buds every day at every meal and every snack in between.

Evolutionists do not have an explanation for the origin of the tongue. They also have a hard time explaining how a somewhat similar organ accidentally developed in many, many totally unrelated species on the so-called “tree of life”. Reptiles have long tongues for snatching their next meal out of the air. Snakes have a forked tongue that also allows them to smell. Butterflies have a proboscis that unfurls and gets inserted into flowers to suck up nectar. The Blue Whale has the biggest tongue, weighing in at almost 6,000 pounds. [1] It certainly looks like there was some intelligent planning going on.

The human tongue is composed of eight different muscles. How wonderful that they decided to work together in harmony. If you refer back to my Proof for God #61 Muscles [2], you will read that scientists have no explanation for where muscles could have originated. Muscles are that unique.

Four of the eight muscles are attached to bones. They are called “extrinsic” [3]. These muscles allow you to move your tongue out and then back in, and side to side and back again to the middle. It certainly is a wonderful accident (for atheists) that we developed a muscle that pulls the tongue back in after we stick it out. Otherwise we’d be stuck with our tongue out all day. I’m sure the muscle that pulls the tongue in must have evolved second. If the tongue never sticks out, there would be no benefit for developing a muscle to pull it back in.

The other four muscles in the tongue are called “intrinsic”. “These muscles alter the shape of the tongue by: lengthening and shortening it, curling and uncurling its apex and edges, and flattening and rounding its surface. This provides shape, and helps facilitate speech, swallowing, and eating.” [4]

The astounding property of these muscles is that there are no other muscles like them in the human body. Scientists don’t know where they came from and don’t know much about how they work either. The only similar muscles like them are found in the legs of an octopus.

"The human tongue is a very different muscular system than the rest of the human body," Khalil Iskarous, an assistant professor of linguistics at the University of Southern California who is helping to lead the research, said in a prepared statement. "Our bodies are vertebrate mechanisms that operate by muscle working on bone to move. The tongue is in a different muscular family, much like an invertebrate. It's entirely muscle — it's muscle moving muscle." Both move by compressing fluid in one section of a muscle, creating movement in another part. But we know little about exactly how that movement is initiated and so finely controlled.” [5]

If you look at the underside of someone’s tongue, you will see lots of blood vessels. These are needed to constantly supply the muscles of the tongue because it is always working. Even when you are sleeping your tongue is working. You wouldn’t have a tongue without those blood vessels, so how do evolutionists explain the accidental mutations that had to evolve both the muscles and blood vessels simultaneously.

“When we swallow, we stop breathing, and a stiff little flap attached to the back of our tongue covers the top of the trachea, so that food slides down and into our stomachs and not into our lungs. That flap is called the epiglottis.” [6] Can evolutionists explain the process of slow and gradual development of the epiglottis? If you don’t have the whole thing in place from the beginning, you would constantly be choking on your food.

You have of course heard of fingerprints. Well, you also have a “tongue-print” that is totally unique to you among all human beings. [7]

“Your mouth is the home of 600 different types of bacteria and a single saliva drop contains 1 million of those bacteria.” [8]

I imagine that atheists must feel very grateful for the extremely long series of fortuitous accidents that allows them to be able to talk. In an astounding coincidence to the evolution of a tongue, we also evolved the larynx right at the top of the tube going to our lungs where air could be exhaled over it to make various sounds. The mouth also evolved into a very convenient shape that allows the three working together to make a tremendous variation of sounds. Those sounds get accidentally heard by the ears of other humans, who luckily evolved ears.

All those variations of sounds could be repeated and repeated until the other person began to figure out that they actually meant something intelligent. Atheists refuse to see any intelligent planning behind all this. They insist that for every small incremental and accidental mutation at the DNA level there must have been some benefit to the new DNA so that it was “selected” by a natural (i.e. godless) law. It won out over all other DNA patterns until the next slight change. Either the larynx, tongue, and mouth developed simultaneously or they developed sequentially, but in the end we could talk and others could listen.

As you can probably tell, I’m having trouble taking the theory of evolution seriously.

What is the explanation for how taste buds evolved? They are so small you can’t even see them.

“Each taste bud is made up of taste cells, which have sensitive, microscopic hairs called microvilli. Those tiny hairs send messages to the brain, which interprets the signals and identifies the taste for you.” [9]

The average tongue has between 2,000 and 10,000 taste buds. Each taste bud has about 15 receptacles that send the signals about taste to your brain. Every 10 to 14 days, your taste buds die off and are replaced with new ones. [10] Thank God or cosmic accidents for that DNA mutation!

It’s really wonderful that taste buds accidentally would evolve on your tongue rather than your toe, or your fingertip, or your elbow. In fact, they are mostly found on the top side of your tongue with a few others underneath your tongue, on your lips, or in your cheeks. [11] There are five different kinds of taste buds. Now how did that evolve? And miraculously they all happen to be on or around your tongue. How great is that?

None of your taste buds work unless they are in a moist environment. That’s a nice coincidence too because your mouth is a moist environment. In fact, the tongue is covered with a mucous membrane and even has saliva glands to keep the tongue moist. By doing just a little research on the chemical process that happens between the chemicals in our food and their stimulation of our taste buds, we find that the whole process inside the receptors is incredibly complex. I think evolutionists have a problem explaining this too.

If you put something sweet in your mouth, the taste receptor for sweet gets triggered and sends an electrical signal all the way to a specific location in your brain. Luckily there is a really, really long chain of nerves that accidentally connects your taste receptor to your brain. It’s really lucky or we would never know what sweet is.

I’m guessing that sweet taste buds would have had to be the first to evolve because they are our favorite. Then after tens of thousands of years there was an accidental mutation and another and another and finally we had a new taste, maybe “salty” or “sour”. I’m pretty sure “bitter” would come last. Then it happened again, and again, and again until there are finally five different tastes. Wow. Is that believable?

How wonderful and amazingly lucky that we have all those taste buds or else eating would be mighty, mighty dull. Also it’s a fantastic coincidence (for atheists) that it just so happens that the food that evolved out there in the world just happens to trigger the taste buds that evolved and we end up with delicious tastes. Not only delicious but nutritious too. If the food out there tasted terrible and wasn’t healthy for us, we would never eat it and hence never have energy to keep on living and evolve. Then we wouldn’t be here.

This is just too many lucky accidents for me to believe in.

There must be God.

----------------------------------------------------

[1] Fun Tongue Facts for Kids, http://www.sciencekids.co.nz/sciencefacts/humanbody/tongue.html

[2] Jim Stephens, Proof for God #61 Muscles, http://101proofsforgod.blogspot.com/2014/05/61-muscles.html

[3] Wikipedia, Tongue, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tongue

[4] Wikipedia, Tongue, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tongue

[5] Katherine Harmon Courage, Octopus Arms, Human Tongues Intertwine for Science, Scientific American, http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/octopus-chronicles/octopus-arms-human-tongues-intertwine-for-science/

[6] Health Topics for Kids, Introducing Your Tongue, http://www.cyh.com/HealthTopics/HealthTopicDetailsKids.aspx?p=335&np=152&id=1832

[7] Sankalan Baidya, 20 Interesting Human Tongue Facts, http://factslegend.org/20-interesting-human-tongue-facts/

[8] Sankalan Baidya, 20 Interesting Human Tongue Facts, http://factslegend.org/20-interesting-human-tongue-facts/

[9] Steven Dowshen, Your Tongue, http://kidshealth.org/kid/htbw/tongue.html

[10] Sarah Klein, 8 Things You Probably Didn't Know About Your Tongue, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/11/tongue-facts-health-info_n_5952850.html

[11] Sankalan Baidya, 20 Interesting Human Tongue Facts, http://factslegend.org/20-interesting-human-tongue-facts/

#85 Spontaneous Generation

2015-06-08T17:53:00.002-07:00

It’s funny that I remember learning about Spontaneous Generation way back in grade school or middle school because I don’t remember much else from those days. But I remember the teacher saying that people used to believe that if you put an old shirt outside with some seeds in it that in a few weeks you would spontaneously create mice out of the shirt and seeds. How foolish they were. I was laughing inside that we are so much smarter these days.

As a matter of fact, Spontaneous Generation is known to have been believed as far back as the 4^th century BC and up until the middle 1800’s. It was famously explained by Aristotle.

“So with animals, some spring from parent animals according to their kind, whilst others grow spontaneously and not from kindred stock; and of these instances of spontaneous generation some come from putrefying earth or vegetable matter, as is the case with a number of insects, while others are spontaneously generated in the inside of animals out of the secretions of their several organs.”

—Aristotle, History of Animals, Book V, Part 1 [1]

Spontaneous Generation is the belief that life can be created in a very short period of time, almost spontaneously, if given the right conditions. Here are some examples.

“For example, a seventeenth century recipe for the spontaneous production of mice required placing sweaty underwear and husks of wheat in an open-mouthed jar, then waiting for about 21 days, during which time it was alleged that the sweat from the underwear would penetrate the husks of wheat, changing them into mice. Although such a concept may seem laughable today, it is consistent with the other widely held cultural and religious beliefs of the time.” [2]

“Many believed in spontaneous generation because it explained such occurrences as the appearance of maggots on decaying meat.” [3]

“Crucial to this doctrine is the idea that life comes from non-life, with the conditions, and that no causal agent is needed (i.e. Parent). Such hypothetical processes sometimes are referred to as abiogenesis, in which life routinely emerges from non-living matter on a time scale of anything from minutes to weeks, or perhaps a season or so.” [4]

It was not until 1859 because of an ingenious experiment by Louis Pasteur that science began to realize that life does not occur by Spontaneous Generation. In 1864 Pasteur came up with his declaration that “all life is from life”. It has become known as the Law of Biogenesis.

“The law of biogenesis, attributed to Louis Pasteur, is the observation that living things come only from other living things, by reproduction (e.g. a spider lays eggs, which develop into spiders). That is, life does not arise from non-living material, which was the position held by spontaneous generation. This is summarized in the phrase "all life [is] from life." A related statement is "all cells [are] from cells;" this observation is one of the central statements of cell theory.” [5]

“For more than one hundred years, biologists have taught that spontaneous generation of life from non-living matter was disproven by the work of Redi, Spallanzani, and ultimately Pasteur. This work was so conclusive; that biology codified the "Law of Biogenesis," which states that life only comes from previously existing life. Although, this doesn't prove absolutely that life couldn't ever have generated itself from non-living matter because it is impossible to prove a universal negative. However, the Law of Biogenesis is just as solid as the Law of Gravity. (emphasis added. Ed.) Even though we accept the law of gravity, we cannot prove that if you continued to drop apples forever, that at one point, one apple may not fall.” [6]

“Spontaneous generation is the incorrect hypothesis that nonliving things are capable of producing life.” [7]

Well, well, we seem to have a dilemma. Evolutionists want us to believe, as they do, that a long time ago, life suddenly and spontaneously sprang from chemicals. That would seem to contradict the Law of Biogenesis and all established science since the 1850’s.

Atheists and Evolutionists are clever folks of course and they know they have a problem, namely there is no such thing as Spontaneous Generation, even on the bacterial level. So what do they conclude when all scientific evidence is against them? They conclude there really was Spontaneous Generation a long time ago and Pasteur didn’t really disprove it. Besides that, Darwin wasn’t really talking about the origin of life. Others have taken care of that argument, or not, sort of.

“So we must ask - what did Pasteur prove? Did he prove that no life can ever come from non-living things? No, he didn't, and this is because you cannot disprove something like that experimentally, only theoretically, and he had no theory of molecular biology to establish this claim. What he showed was that it was highly unlikely that modern living organisms arose from non-living organic material. This is a much more restricted claim than that primitive life once arose from non-living non-organic material.” [8]

“1. Pasteur did not disprove the origin of life by natural means, and the saying "all cells from cells" was not intended to cover the initial period of life on earth. Darwin did not propose a theory of the origin of life in the beginning.

2. Evolutionary theory was not proposed to account for the origins of living beings, only the process of change once life exists. However, many have thought that the theory of evolution logically requires a beginning of life, which is true. Of those, many have thought that a natural account of the origin of life is necessary, and some have proposed models which have borne up or not as research proceeds.” [9]

So what did Darwin really "prove", huh, using this reasoning? Did rocks come alive? The Theory of Evolution does require a beginning of life and it does not provide an explanation. In fact no scientific experiment has ever shown that one species can evolve into a different one

Scientists say there is no Spontaneous Generation. “All life is from life.” I say so too. God is alive and God generated life. It didn’t happen accidentally from chemicals or non-living matter.

There must be God.

----------------------------------------------------

[1] Wikipedia, "Spontaneous generation", http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spontaneous_generation

[2] Russell Levine and Chris Evers, "The Slow Death of Spontaneous Generation", http://www.accessexcellence.org/RC/AB/BC/Spontaneous_Generation.php

[3] Spontaneous Generation, Encyclopaedia Britannica, http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/560859/spontaneous-generation

[4] Wikipedia, "Spontaneous generation", http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spontaneous_generation

[5] Wikipedia, “Biogenesis”, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biogenesis

[6] What is Spontaneous Generation, http://www.allaboutscience.org/what-is-spontaneous-generation-faq.htm

[7] Origin of Life, Spontaneous Generation, http://www.infoplease.com/cig/biology/spontaneous-generation.html

[8] John S. Wilkins, "Spontaneous Generation and the Origin of Life", http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/abioprob/spontaneous-generation.html

[9] John S. Wilkins, "Spontaneous Generation and the Origin of Life", http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/abioprob/spontaneous-generation.html

#84 Homing Pigeons

2015-05-23T18:14:00.000-07:00

I’ve always felt a fascination with the concept of a homing pigeon. There is something somehow very noble about “returning to your home.” One of the most famous movie lines is “ET, go home!”

We all somewhere deep in our hearts have a yearning to “go home.” Buried deep in our souls, the essence of our being, something is flickering. We want to “return home.” What is that? For me it means returning to the God who created me. I believe we have all been separated from our source, or original love.

So this proof, #84, is about Homing Pigeons. I’m sure you have heard of them. Maybe you don’t know that they are a huge worldwide sport. Millions of people train them and have big races with them for big prizes.

"Pigeons are incredibly complex and intelligent animals. They are one of only a small number of species to pass the ‘mirror test’ – a test of self-recognition. They can also recognize each letter of the human alphabet, differentiate between photographs, and even distinguish different humans within a photograph." [1]

"Researchers in England devised incredibly complex devices to test the intelligence of all types of birds. Pigeons came out on top." [2]

"Pigeons have strong muscles used for flying. They can fly at the altitude of 6,000 feet. Pigeons can move their wings ten times per second and maintain heartbeats at the rate of 600 times per minute, during a period of 16 hours. Pigeons can fly at the speed of 50 to 60 miles per hour. The fastest known pigeon managed to reach a speed on 92 miles per hour. Because of their incredible speed and endurance, pigeons are used for racing. The Winner of a 400 miles long race can earn a million dollars." [3] About 5 such races are held each year somewhere in the world.

“In modern times the pigeon has been used to great effect during wartime. In both the First and Second World Wars the pigeon saved hundreds of thousands of human lives by carrying messages across enemy lines.” [4] Pigeons have been carrying messages for humans as far back as 500BC. New evidence suggests they were domesticated by Egyptians some 12,000 years ago. [5]

Pigeons trained for racing often fly about 700 miles in a day. [6] The longest distance ever recorded was in the late 1800’s for a homing pigeon that flew over 7,000 miles back home, going from Africa to England, taking over 55 days.

How can the Theory of Evolution (or any other theory without God) explain the development of this ability of a simple bird to find its way home? Even more so, how could this have developed over a slow and gradual process taking generations and generations of mutations and natural selection?

Birds have to find food each day to survive regardless of where they happen to be. Why not just stay there? How does natural selection choose a place far, far away as more beneficial? What’s the benefit? Especially if they have never been to that other place before, it could not be selected. And if they started out in the other place, how did they get so lost?

Travel over a long distance is dangerous and risky. It’s not likely to be a choice of some unintelligent law of natural selection when compared to staying in one place if there is food. What other criteria could exist for unintelligent selection, perhaps shelter or reproduction? Neither is likely to cause the “homing” ability we are discussing to be able to develop.

Another issue is concerning the exact mechanism that allows them to be able to “go home.” Various theories exist but no one really knows for sure! Not yet anyway.

Researchers originally thought they had some “map” in their brains and they relied on the magnetic fields of the earth. But scientists have been able to design ways to shield them from the magnetic fields and also to disable the parts of their brains that are sensitive to it. Still they could “go home.” So that may be a dead end.

"Although magnetic effects on pigeon orientation, provide indirect evidence for a magnetic ‘map’, numerous conditioning experiments have failed to demonstrate reproducible responses to magnetic fields by pigeons." [7]

The latest approach is focused on their ability to smell their way home. No kidding. I have a hard time comprehending the ability of a bird to smell its way for hundreds, if not thousands, of miles. I believe God can create some amazing creatures, but they didn’t come into existence by accident.

“The researchers saddled a group of homing pigeons with GPS tracking devices, placed a rubber plug in either their right or left nostrils, and released them 25 miles outside of their home in Pisa, Italy. Pigeons with their left nostrils blocked had a little more trouble navigating than clear-nosed pigeons, but eventually made it home. Birds with their right nostrils blocked made it back, too, but they stopped more often and took an even more circular route than the others. The researchers believe that the birds needed time to gather more smells and construct a map based on odors in the wind. And the finding that the right nostril is the better sniffer suggests that the right and left hemispheres of bird brains have different functions.” [8]

Other scientists believe pigeons have ears that can hear the sound of wind over mountains hundreds of miles away. This may be of help in guiding them. Research shows they do actually hear sounds 11 octaves below middle C which is in the range to detect earthquakes and electrical storms.[9]

To believe that pigeons accidentally evolved such a homing mechanism which is so complicated that research scientists cannot understand it takes astounding faith. Think about what is going on in that pigeon’s brain for a few minutes. (Recommended reading for more understanding: “For Everything a Reason: Why Ants Walk Crooked and Pigeons Circle Around” [10]). If a pigeon brain is using smells or hearing or the earth’s magnetic fields, it must be able to #1 differentiate very tiny, tiny variations. And it must be able to #2 assign meaning to the differences. Then it must be able to #3 make a decision how to prioritize the data. Then finally the pigeon brain must be able to #4 initiate its own actions based on its analysis. Wow.

All the above arguments should be convincing enough that God created pigeons, but I have one last, and I think, best argument. Think about this: Pigeons in the wild never use a long distance “homing” ability. They never get lost.

They don’t need this ability in the wild. Why not? They live, eat, grow old, and die in the areas where they are born. Natural selection cannot explain the development of an ability that is never used and has no survival value.

Homing pigeons don’t get lost hundreds of miles from home and then have to search for home. This only happens because of interference by men and women. Amazingly, homing pigeons somehow have incredible capability that they would never normally use in the wild. They only use it when they receive training from people who have learned how to train them.

Homing pigeons must be trained step by step. [11] You first have to train them by acclimating them to the desired “home” or roost. You must keep them locked up for at least 4 weeks. Then gradually take them farther and farther away and see if they can make it back home. Some do, some don’t. If you attach a GPS tracker and let them go at the same distant location many times, you will see that they take many different routes home, but gradually get better and better at it.

Pigeons in the wild never needed to develop the ability to “go home” by natural selection or mutation or any other reason because they were always already home. So how could they ever develop an ability that was never put to use in any way. There is no survival value in it. Pigeons in the wild don’t ever wander hundreds of miles from their home AND GET LOST. The ability is useless to them in the wild, but nonetheless they have this ability. That it would or could develop by evolution does not make any sense.

Natural selection requires that an ability get passed from generation to generation because of being selected by survival of the fittest. If the “go home” ability is never used, how could it get passed from generation to generation by natural selection? There is no survival value.

The homing ability of the pigeon is a creation of God that is a teaching tool for us. It shows us what we have in our own souls. We have an innate, undeniable, un-erasable desire to “go home.” Where is home? It is back to God.

There must be God. God is our home and we are all going there.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

[1] Facts about pigeons, OneKind.Org, http://www.onekind.org/be_inspired/animals_a_z/pigeon/ * Only 6 species can pass the mirror test, all mammals except for the pigeon.

[2] Answers to the Urban Wildlife Society's Gee Whiz Animal Quiz, http://www.urbanwildlifesociety.org/UWS/GeeWhizQuizAnswers.htm

[3] Pigeon Facts, Softschools.com, http://www.softschools.com/facts/animals/pigeon_facts/589/

[4] 21 Amazing Facts About Pigeons, Pigeon Control Resource Centre, http://www.pigeoncontrolresourcecentre.org/html/amazing-pigeon-facts.html

[5] Answers to the Urban Wildlife Society's Gee Whiz Animal Quiz, http://www.urbanwildlifesociety.org/UWS/GeeWhizQuizAnswers.htm

[6] Pigeon Facts: Did You Know???, http://www.fbipigeons.com/PIGEON%20FACTS.htm

[7] Mora, Davison, Wild, & Walker, "Magnetoreception and its trigeminal mediation in the homing pigeon", Nature: International weekly journal of science, October, 2004, http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v432/n7016/full/nature03077.html

[8] Reardon, Sara, Staff Writer: ScienceShot: Homing Pigeons Follow Their Noses, January 2011, http://news.sciencemag.org/2011/01/scienceshot-homing-pigeons-follow-their-noses

[9] Pigeon Facts: Did You Know???, http://www.fbipigeons.com/PIGEON%20FACTS.htm

[10] For Everything a Reason: Why Ants Walk Crooked and Pigeons Circle Around,

Evolution News & Views, December 13, 2013, http://www.evolutionnews.org/2013/12/for_everything080121.html#sthash.vGlgPO81.dpuf

[11] How To Train a Homing Pigeon, Wikihow, http://www.wikihow.com/Train-a-Homing-Pigeon

#83 RAS (Reticular Activating System)

2015-05-10T12:55:00.000-07:00

This proof is about one of the most important parts of your brain. It may be the answer to the question of why some people cannot accept that there is a God while for others it is as plain as the nose on your face.

In a previous article I wrote about how miraculous and astounding our brains are [1]. This article is about just one part of the brain which is about the size of your finger. It is located at the top of the spinal column at the base of the brain stem.

Its job is like a gatekeeper for the signals that are coming in to your brain. As you can imagine, you have millions upon millions of nerve cells that are reporting every second to your brain about sounds, smells, tastes, touches, or sights from whatever they are connected to, like your fingertips, your stomach, your leg muscles, your bladder, well…everything.

Your conscious brain can only handle about 130 messages per second [2] in any meaningful way, so it absolutely needs some way to sort out what is important and prioritize those millions of messages coming from your body. Your RAS is what limits the messages down to the manageable flow.

That’s the purpose of the RAS, the Reticular Activating System. Most nerves run through the RAS and then get sent out to various other parts of the brain for the interpretation of their signals.

"The ability to filter out information from external sources and focus on one particular fact, detail, or thought is controlled by this brain region. If it weren't for this circuitry, our consciousness would be overwhelmed and flooded with all sensory information, leading to an inability to make decisions." [3]

As a simple example of how the RAS prioritizes, think about when you get pain. It immediately gets sent to the front of the consciousness so it can be analyzed and responded to.

But that’s not all the RAS does. It is able to learn from the conscious mind what to look for in the environment. Look at this picture and see how quickly you can find one of the two letter “L's” in this diagram.

Probably you did not have to look at every single letter one by one. Also, have you ever looked for your spouse or child in a huge crowd of people? You found them quickly by scanning which is what the RAS does.

Thus the RAS it turns out is the major goal seeking mechanism in our brains. We can tell it what to look for and it will help us find it. In fact once your RAS is instructed what to look for, whether told consciously or even unconsciously, your RAS will be seeking without you even knowing it.

I’m sure you have heard of the “Law of Attraction”. The RAS is the brain mechanism that allows it to work. It sorts through all the inputs from your environment and brings to your attention what you are looking for.

You’ve also heard of a “Self Fulfilling Prophecy”. What you are looking for is what you will get because you unconsciously programmed your RAS to find it.

The other thing the RAS does, which we are usually unconscious of, is ignore information and input that we don’t want. We think we are seeing “objective truth”, but it is already filtered before it gets to our conscious brain. The RAS prevents you from “seeing” information that you don’t want to see.

Hence, an evolutionist has set his RAS to reject any information that supports creationism and only perceive “facts” that support evolution. He doesn’t even see evidence contrary to his beliefs because he has told his RAS that he doesn’t want to see it. It becomes a “blind spot”.

One additional comment I want to add, but there is a lot more, is that some researchers believe that whether you are an introvert or an extrovert depends largely on the amount of nerve fibers which are developed in your RAS. [4]

I encourage you to learn more on your own about this amazing part of your brain, the RAS.

So back to the purpose of this article. Is it possible for the RAS to have evolved, or is it clearly evidence of design by God?

According to the Theory of Evolution, in some ancient low level species, totally by random accident, a mechanism developed that could sort out differences between incoming signals from nerves. This mechanism gets passed from generation to generation until another random mutation occurs. This mutation allows the mechanism to recognize a certain signal as really important for survival, i.e. pain for example. And then it somehow is able to prioritize that signal over any others.

This is good so natural selection keeps it going for generation after generation. Then another random mutation somehow recognizes a different nerve signal as hunger. It randomly figures out how to prioritize pain as more important than hunger. This beneficial mutation gets passed down generation after generation.

Eventually this mechanism is able to differentiate millions of nerve signals into which ones are really urgent, which have high priority, and so forth down to low priority. Note that there are about 100 billion neurons in the brain and each one has about 10,000 connections to other neurons. Also each neuron fires about 5 to 50 times per second. [5] Then, the mechanism randomly mutates again, and again, and again so that it lets only 130 signals pass each second.

Then all the other organisms that don’t have this ability die out so that this is the only one that keeps reproducing. Since we all have RAS in our brains, we have to assume we all came from the original ancestor species (even an original couple) that first mutated a fully functioning RAS.

In fact, since most animal species have this RAS ability, the mutations effected all “branches” of the tree of evolution.

Bunk.

No process of mutation over generations has ever produced a viable new species [6], let alone a complex development of differentiation and prioritization of nerve impulses that could result in the RAS.

There must be God.

_______________________________

[1] Jim Stephens, Proof for God #16, Your Brain, http://101proofsforgod.blogspot.com/2012/08/16-your-brain.html

[2] Reticular Activating System, Posted on January 26, 2015, http://www.reticularactivatingsystem.org/

[3] Omkar Phatak, Reticular Activating System, March 3, 2014, http://www.buzzle.com/articles/reticular-activating-system.html

[4] Living on Purpose, https://www.crgleader.com/ezine/livingonpurpose/LOP151.html

[5] Neurons & Synapses, http://www.human-memory.net/brain_neurons.html

[6] Jim Stephens, Proof for God #27, The Truth About Mutation, http://101proofsforgod.blogspot.com/2013/02/27-truth-about-mutation.html

[extra] What Is the Reticular Activating System? http://www.wisegeek.org/what-is-the-reticular-activating-system.htm

#82 The Chicken Or The Egg

2015-04-06T14:56:00.001-07:00

You have probably heard the question before about, “What came first, the chicken or the egg?” Everybody knows that chickens come from eggs, but we also know that you don’t get eggs unless you have chickens first.

So we have a puzzle that goes around and around trying to figure out the origin of life question. In fact Wikipedia says the chicken versus the egg question goes way back in history to ancient philosophers, even including the writings of Aristotle 350 years before Christ.

Evolutionists would probably follow Wikipedia in saying that the egg came first because mutations would occur in the reproductive process of some other species and the resulting egg when hatched became a modern day chicken.

That’s not very satisfactory to me since I see quite a few more chicken or the egg issues that are hiding inside consecutive layers inside of other layers of the chicken and the egg question.

If you have read my Proof for God #27 on Mutation [1], then you know that decades of scientific research on mutation has never been shown to produce any viable new species. That’s just one challenge.

Think about another fact. No chicken hatches from an egg if the egg is not fertilized by a rooster. So there is another important half of the egg to consider, the male input. Scientists now know that the fertilization takes place way inside the hen and that the egg forms from a protein that is not found in any other animal.

Suppose the impossible could happen and there is actually a mutation of the pre-chicken species that evolutionists claim led up to the chicken. Did the mutation take place before, during, or after fertilization by a necessary type of male component?

Let’s designate the female parent’s sex chromosomes as the standard XX and the male parent’s sex chromosomes as XY. Then the egg will have one X chromosome. The male parent contributes either an X or a Y. If there is a mutation in the X chromosome, call it X, what you are going to get in the next generation is either XX or XY, neither of which is really a chicken. The odds in random mutations are that it won’t survive to reproduce, but if it did, the odds are only 50-50 that the X would be passed to the next generation.

Can you recognize that there also has to be a “chicken-mutation”, if you will, from the rooster side. That’s also impossible by our definition. (See Proof #81 Definition of Impossible [2]) Even if it occurred somewhere on the earth, you’d still have to get a successful mating of the two individuals with mutated chromosomes.

Even if you somehow got a mutation that lead to XX which could be a hen (female chicken), you are still a long, long way from an XY chromosome set in order to get a rooster (the male chicken). Until you have a female and a male, there will never be a new species.

The odds of any one such mutation occurring are already impossible (again see [2]), but it is even more impossible that both mutations occur within the same generation and those two individuals mate with each other.

As I think about it, almost every aspect of an animal’s body poses more chicken or the egg problems. Here are some examples:

Which came first, the heart or the arteries and veins to circulate the blood it is pumping?

Which came first, the heart or the lungs to oxygenate the blood that the heart pumps?

Which came first, the muscles throughout the body or the nerves connecting them to the brain to make the muscles work at all?

Which came first, the eyeball or the optic nerve connecting the signals to the brain for interpretation?

Which came first on birds, the wings or the feathers?

What came first, the stomach or the mouth it is attached to?

What came first, the left leg or the right leg?

Which eye came first, the right eye or the left eye?

What came first, the arm or the hand on the end?

Which came first, the male or the female? What about the sperm and the egg? They both had to emerge simultaneously it seems to me. One or the other all alone doesn’t make any sense.

The Theory of Evolution is all about slow, gradual, and incremental changes over many generations. So I think it is a very fair question to ask, “Which came first”?

If you allow for an intelligent designer, as I do, then there is no problem with what came first. Think about designing a car. What came first, the wheels or the axles? What came first, the axles or the drive shaft? What came first, the drive shaft or the steering wheel? You could ask hundreds of questions like that and in the mind of the designer there would be answers to what the thought process was. But all the designing was done in the mind. It was all invisible before any prototype was ever created.

Without the invisible design being created first, nothing ever happens in the material world. The material world is the world of effect, not the world of cause.

Once something has been brought into existence in the material world, then further modifications can be made on it.

This, in fact, pretty accurately describes the fossil record. (See my Proof #58 The Cambrian Explosion [3] and Proof #64 Missing Links [4] for more elaboration.) Most species that appear in the fossil record will appear suddenly and they will be fully formed when they do.

The Theory of Evolution cannot adequately explain the fossil record, cannot show scientific examples of any species mutating into another species, and cannot explain where the very first life came from to name just three of its major flaws.

We are all very familiar with the process of creating something. It first starts in the mind where it is invisible. The artist does not put blob after blob of paint on the canvas randomly and end up with a recognizable image of anything. The artist starts with an invisible image in his/her mind as the goal or end product. Then energy, information, and forces are added to bring it into existence.

That’s how the world works. That’s how the world was created.

There must be God.

----------------------------------------------------

[1] Stephens, Jim, Proof for God #27, The Truth about Mutation, http://101proofsforgod.blogspot.com/2013/02/27-truth-about-mutation.html

[2] Stephens, Jim, Proof for God #81, The Definition of Impossible, http://101proofsforgod.blogspot.com/2015/03/81-definition-of-impossible.html

[3] Stephens, Jim, Proof for God #58, The Cambrian Explosion, http://101proofsforgod.blogspot.com/2014/04/58-cambrian-explosion.html

[4] Stephens, Jim, Proof for God #64, Missing Links, http://101proofsforgod.blogspot.com/2014/07/64-missing-links.html