Tag Archives: Intelligent Design

The Blue Whale

Science, ,

The blue whale is the largest creature to ever live. They are overwhelming. Some weigh 200 tons – 400,000 pounds, or as big as 30 large African elephants – and reach 100 feet in length. There may have been slightly longer dinosaurs, but there never has been a more massive creature.

I remember in school listening to the Darwinian fable of how whales and other air-breathing sea creatures (seals, dolphins, porpoises, etc.) supposedly came to be. The fable begins in some ancient shallow sea, where some fish (who just happened to have legs, go figure!) “pushed themselves out of the swamp and began to walk on land.” That’s an actual quote from the website of the Smithsonian Institution. Really? What happened, real estate in the ocean got too expensive and they had to move? Couldn’t stand the neighbors? How convenient that the fish already had legs, wouldn’t you say? Pretty amazing in fact, since legs are a serious drag in the ocean, and even if they miraculously formed natural selection would not preserve them.

Think about what’s involved here, to change an animal that lives in the sea to one that lives on land. You need legs, muscles, tendons, and a nervous system to control them all. You need to be able to take oxygen out of the air instead of out of the water. You need eyes that can see on land, and a new skin. Keep in mind that getting a single piece of new biological technology (a new limb or feature) by chance – by random mutations – is mathematically ridiculous (see my earlier post on The DMS Epidemic). We are supposed to believe the fable that all of this occurred without a designer?

I remember being puzzled, but I was a kid and the books all said it was true, so I didn’t protest. But when you think about it as an adult, it’s a more fantastic “just-so” story than anything ever written by Rudyard Kipling. I mean, seriously, Kipling’s “How the leopard got his spots” makes about as much scientific sense as “one day this fish starts breathing, grows legs and walks on dry land.” And that’s only part of the Darwinian nonsense. The second act of the fable is that some descendant of this once-fish-now-on-land creature decides he wants to live back in the water, so he loses the legs but keeps the ability to breathe air through lungs. I mean, really??? What happened there, got tired of the new digs after all those years and decided to move back home? And the skin, eyes, etc. all just miraculously changed again? Sure, totally believable and extremely “scientific” theory, right? Ha!!!

Blue whales have special lungs that gradually collapse as the whale dives and the water pressure increases. This makes the whale less buoyant, so the whale can easily dive deep. Blue whales have been recorded at depths of 1,600 feet. Without gradually collapsing lungs, they couldn’t dive deep. For you and me, and probably all land mammals, the lungs would suddenly and totally collapse at some point, causing death.

Blue whales sing complex songs with repeating patterns. We don’t understand how or why they are communicating, but the intelligence behind the songs is undeniable. Then there is the sheer power of the songs. They are fantastically loud – one source says 190 decibels. That’s 10,000 times as powerful as the roar of a large jet engine. It’s a billion times as loud as a lawn mower (but, perhaps fortunately for us, blue whale songs are mostly below the range of human hearing). Whale songs travel through hundreds of miles of ocean water. How did the blue whale get that power? How did the blue whale learn to sing those songs, and what do they mean?

Blue whales eat massive amounts of tiny creatures; mostly krill, a sort of shrimp that is about two inches long. The mouth of an adult blue whale can hold 100 tons of seawater, and the tongue weighs two tons. Instead of teeth, they have special plates.

Blue whales have hips, and it was strongly argued that this somehow “proves” Darwin was correct, and Darwinian evolution is true, because the hips were thought of as a “vestigial” feature, a feature no longer necessary but left over from ancient ancestors on land. Science has recently shown that argument is totally false. Long story short, without whale hips you don’t get baby whales.

Either God created the blue whale, or you are stuck with the Darwinian fable. The Bible predicts many will prefer the fable:

For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers; and they will turn their ears away from the truth, and be turned aside to fables. 2 Timothy 4: 3-4

The blue whale is one of God’s most magnificent creatures. The proof of design is overwhelming. There may only be about 10,000 left. Fortunately, their numbers seem to be growing. Let us pray they will survive in our increasingly careless world.

Thanks for reading and Happy New Year! Please spread the good news that true science proves the existence of God. Together we can change the world.

The Star of Bethlehem

Science, , ,

One of the most beautiful images at Christmas is the Star, leading the Magi to Jesus at Bethlehem. But was there really a star? Many believers claim it was a supernatural act of God, and reject scientific explanations. Of course, Atheists claim it’s all a myth (despite the overwhelming scientific evidence for God and the historical fact of Jesus!) In this post I’ll suggest a way to harmonize science, modern computers, the Bible, and history. It’s a stellar example of modern science supporting belief in God and the truth of the Bible.

In our modern search for the Star, we have two advantages. One is computers. Computers can reproduce how the sky looked from any point on Earth at any time in history. Second is the 1998 discovery that Herod the Great died in 1 BC, not 4 BC as had been believed. (It was discovered that there was a copying error in later manuscripts of the Jewish historian Josephus.) When we examine the skies of the Middle East for the years 3 BC and 2 BC, astonishing events appear.

Below is a spectacular theory that supports every claim in the Bible. I have come to believe it is true. To shorten this, I’ll give you the events in chronological order, and you can go back yourself to check how these match up exactly with the Biblical statements in the second chapter of the Gospel of Matthew, and with dozens of other Biblical references and historical facts. I am indebted to Rick Larson and his excellent video The Star of Bethlehem, and to Gerald Culley and his extremely well-researched article The Star of Bethlehem in Bible and Spade magazine.

September, 3 BC – Jupiter begins a 7-month triple conjunction with Regulus. Babylonian astronomers, quite possibly the best in the world at that time, who may be of Jewish descent (remnants of the Babylonian captivity, during which time Daniel was their leader), witness a spectacular triple conjunction of Jupiter (known to the ancients as the “King Planet”) and the star Regulus. The Babylonians called this star “Sharru,” meaning “the King,” and Regulus was also known as the “King” star by the Romans. Jupiter passes Regulus three times, and traces a crown above it. Regulus is the brightest star in the constellation of Leo the lion. The Bible in different places compares the Israelite Tribe of Judah, the tribe of King David and Jesus, with a lion. This triple conjunction of the two kings happens only twice in every 83 years.

September 11, 2 BC – As the triple conjunction begins, the Sun rises with behind it (an experienced astronomer would know this) the womb of the virgin in the constellation Virgo. At the foot of the Sun is a slim crescent moon. The Sun appears here only one day every year, and the moon has this shape one day each lunar cycle (29 days), so this combination is a very rare event. The signs point to the birth of a King in Judah. This could be the date of Christ’s conception, where the Angel Gabriel appears to Mary. Remember that planets in those days were thought of as wandering stars, because they appeared to move around the heavens. Compare this also to John’s vision in Revelation 12:1-2:

And a great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars. She was pregnant and was crying out in birth pains and the agony of giving birth.

February 5, 2 BC – The Roman Senate orders an empire-wide census. Joseph and Mary go to Bethlehem, the town of King David, to be counted.

June 17, 2 BC – Nine months after the Jupiter/Regulus conjunction, the King Planet Jupiter joins the planet Venus, universally associated with femininity, in conjunction. The planets are so close that they appear to the naked eye to be touching. It is the brightest “star” anyone alive has ever seen. It is visible for about an hour after sunset. Such an event has only occurred three times in the 2,000 years since, and the other occasions were not visible in the Middle East. This conjunction takes place in the constellation of Virgo the Virgin. Jesus is born. The sacrificial “lamb of God” is born in Bethlehem, which is where sacrificial lambs were bred and born for the Temple at Jerusalem. Jesus is born in the late spring, not winter, and the shepherds who cared for those lambs were out in the warmer weather sleeping with the flocks during birthing season.

Late December 2 BC – The Babylonian astronomers, known as “Magi” or wise men, arrive with their entourage in Jerusalem. It’s been a long and difficult journey, and there was doubtless time needed to prepare. Marco Polo wrote in his travels that he visited the tombs of the Magi in Saveh, Persia, and that the Magi also left from that city when they set off to find Jesus. The Magi travel about 600 miles by camel and as they travel Jupiter stays ahead of them. The Magi ask Herod “Where is he who has been born king of the Jews? For we have seen his star [rising] in the East, and have come to worship him.” Herod doesn’t have a clue. (This shows the star was not a comet or supernova.) Herod asks his priests where the Messiah is to be born, and they quote him the Old Testament prediction of Bethlehem. Herod tells the Magi to go and report back.

December 25, 2 BC – The Magi leave Jerusalem and head south to Bethlehem, only five miles away. Jupiter is directly south on this date as they walk out of Jerusalem, and they get to Bethlehem by following the “Star.” On this exact date Jupiter goes into retrograde motion, it appears to “stop” its wandering among the stars. The Magi would know that Jupiter had stopped its motion. The Magi bring gifts; it is the first Christmas. Jesus is no longer a newborn infant; the original Greek refers to him as a toddler at this point. I also find it interesting that a good argument can be made that 2 BC was the high point of the Roman Empire.

The heavens operate like clockwork. For these cosmic events to have accompanied the birth of Jesus, God had to have known the exact dates when the universe was created.

Merry Christmas!

The DMS Epidemic

Science, ,

There’s an epidemic in our world. It’s widespread in the United States, and worse in Europe. I call it “DMS,” short for deliberate mathematical stupidity.

I’m not talking about people who are not skilled in math, or just don’t like math. I’m talking about educated people, proficient in math, who choose, deliberately, to ignore obvious mathematical facts.

Obvious facts like you can’t get new technology by accident. For the technology of life, the functional parts are generally proteins made up of linked chains of 20 different types of amino acids. The odds of getting a comparatively short chain of 150 amino acids to fold into any sort of useful protein, any sort of remotely possible useable part in the machinery of life, is about one in a number with 74 zeros. In the real world, those are impossible odds to overcome. It’s not clear there have been that many mutations in the entire history of all life on Earth, even if you assume that life has existed for billions of years. And that’s just one protein. To get any sort of new technology you need dozens or hundreds of new proteins coordinated to fit together and work together just right. The odds of doing that are less than one in a number with a thousand or so zeros, like the odds of winning a powerball lottery more than a hundred times in a row. And life has millions of different systems, technology that supposedly was created by accident, by the Darwinian process of keeping the best mistakes.

There has never been a random collection of words that formed a useful book. There has never been a working machine created by a tornado ripping through a junkyard. There has never been a useful computer program designed by entering gibberish. In the entire history of human existence, it takes a mind to write a book, build a machine, or design a computer program.

The Darwinian delusion is you can get around this math problem by taking little steps. You invent a series of smaller steps to get where you want to go, note that each of those steps could perhaps occur, and then imagine that they can easily be combined. That’s mathematical nonsense, it doesn’t change the impossibly low probability that it will all work out right.

Another Darwinian delusion is that while you are waiting for one new piece of technology to supposedly arise by mutations, all the other systems of the organism are unaffected. That really is deliberate stupidity. If there are mutations affecting one system in an organism, all of the machinery/code of that organism is subjection to mutation. We humans have millions of systems in our body. We are devolving, not evolving. The Darwinian pretension that systems generally improve through mutations, errors, makes no sense.

DMS is not harmless. A common complication is belief in Darwinism, that we are chemical scum, and that life has no purpose. DMS leads to racism (my mistakes are better than yours), depression, suicide, and mass murder. One of the killers at the Columbine massacre in Colorado in 1999 wore a “Natural Selection” T-shirt, and both made a video stating that they were helping natural selection eliminate the weak among humankind (facts suppressed by our “popular” media).

The good news is DMS can be cured. It doesn’t take drugs, it takes an open mind and a willingness to actually look, look very hard with total honesty, at the mathematics of getting technology by chance. If you have friends or family who suffer from DMS please ask them to do that. Chapter 12 of my book, Counting To God, may be helpful.

Thanks for reading. Please spread the good news that science proves the existence of God. Together we can change the world.

Smile – You’re Human!

Science, ,

I’m not sure I would want to live in a world without smiles. The smile of a friend or loved one warms my heart. Sometimes even a smile from a stranger walking by on the street, a person I will never see again, brightens my day and makes me smile in return. Smiling often makes you feel happy and content. “You’re never fully dressed without a smile.”

How did we get the ability to smile? Did we just get a modified version of what chimpanzees and the great apes can do? No! These creatures, these animals that an evolutionist would say are related to us, cannot smile. It’s the opposite. “In almost all other species, baring one’s teeth is a threat or a show of potential force.”

Human facial expressions are controlled by 55 muscles. About 20 are designed exclusively to produce facial expressions. These 20 muscles are part of our unique human heritage – no other animal comes close. One expert has estimated that humans can make and discern 10,000 different facial expressions. Many of these are universal across all human cultures. Another expert wrote that “all members of the human species share the same expressions for signaling the basic human emotions,” and that “the expressions of the face are in large measure universal and innate.”

From where did we get all these extra facial muscles not present in any other species? From where did we get the instinctive ability to coordinate and control these muscles? Just like the spider is born knowing how to spin webs, humans are born knowing how to smile, and how to communicate emotions in thousands of ways without speech. Plainly, there is no answer to these questions within Darwin’s theory of evolution. How could keeping the best mutations, the best mistakes, give us extra facial muscles in just the right places? How could keeping the best mutations give us not only those muscles but also the innate ability to control them to make thousands of commonly recognized expressions? There is no “evolutionary advantage” in the smile; you can’t use a smile to kill prey or ward off a predator. In the Darwinian worldwide, the smile is excess baggage, it shouldn’t exist.

But it does. It’s a wonderful part of being human.

The human face is unique. “It does not resemble those of apes or any other animal.” You are not related to pond scum, or even to primates. Your ability to smile and make facial expressions proves you were designed by God. Darwin’s theory is nonsense.

I hope that makes you smile. “We shall never know all the good that a simple smile can do.”

Thanks for reading. Please share the good news of true science, and save your friends and family from the depressing Atheist mindset of hopelessness. Together we can change the world.

Spiders, Poison Dart Frogs, and Desert Scorpions

Science, ,

Spiders, poison dart frogs, and desert scorpions are not my favorite creatures. But when you look closely at them, you find undeniable evidence of God.

Start with spiders. Spiders get around very well on eight legs. How did that happen? You might think, “well, there once was a two-legged spider, and then there was a mutation that doubled those to make four legs, and then a second mutation doubled that to make eight legs.” That Darwinian fantasy collapses when you realize that, in addition to more legs, you need a wholly new nervous and balance system to control and coordinate them. Ask any engineer whether a simple error or two in code will turn an operating system for two legs into one that will balance, control, and coordinate four or eight legs. They will laugh at you.

Then there’s spider silk. Spiders make their webs out of something called “dragline silk.” Black spider dragline silk is ten times tougher than Kevlar, the material bulletproof vests are made of (in other words, this type of spider silk can absorb ten times as much energy before breaking).

Spiders are born with the machinery to manufacture different kinds of silk (some spiders have up to seven different kinds for different purposes), the machinery to stretch it out and cut it up, and the knowledge to create fantastically intricate and beautiful webs. How did that happen? Spiders don’t go to the store to buy the equipment, and they don’t go to school. They are born with all this. That is undeniable evidence they were designed by God, undeniable evidence of intelligent design. No error-based system of natural selection, of keeping the best random mutations, could produce both the equipment and the knowledge of how to use it.

Spider silk is amazing. Human beings can’t manufacture it. Scientists are trying, because the materials have fantastic qualities. But spiders aren’t easy to domesticate, and we can’t make spider silk in the laboratory.

Each poison dart frog has enough poison to kill about ten people. The poison is very deadly; it docks “with a specific module of a sodium gate protein found on the outer surfaces of nerve and muscle cells” (yes, life is that complicated). In plain English, it freezes muscle cells and the heart. But poison dart frogs are immune to their own poison. That “module” of a sodium gate protein is made up of 1,836 amino acids, “each precisely in its place like so many miniature engine components.” It turns out that, in the 1,584th amino acid position, poison dart frogs have a different amino acid, and so the poison doesn’t “dock” with their module.

So which came first, the poison or this amazing ability to survive the poison? Poison dart frogs have both this engineered poison, which fits exactly right into a three-dimensional lock, and the ability to survive the poison. They were created.

North African desert scorpions survive in sandstorms that strip paint from steel. Their outer coating is covered by tiny dome-shaped granules. These bumps deflect the airflow, and reduce the erosion rate by up to 50%. Scientists are looking to use this technology to build better helicopter rotors and similar parts, but they can’t do it as well as the scorpion does. The North African desert scorpion was designed by God.

In all of these creatures we find technology far more advanced than similar human technology. We also find, most clearly in the spider, technology that has no Darwinian explanation. How could random mutations result in technology that can manufacture spider silk? It’s not a simple material; humans can’t make it. How could random mutations result in spiders instinctively knowing how to make webs?

The evidence is there, plain as can be. Darwin’s theory is nonsense. It doesn’t matter how many “educated” people claim it is true. Spider webs are proof that Darwin’s theory is nonsense.

Why did God create these creatures? I don’t know. But God is not our cosmic butler. Just as God’s technology is above human technology, God’s purposes are above human purposes. “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.” Isaiah 55:9.

Thanks for reading. Please share the good news of true science. Together we can change the world.

Rethinking the Big Bang

Science, ,

I used to think the Big Bang theory was supported by multiple lines of scientific evidence, and impossible to challenge. When you watch anything related to astronomy on TV, it will probably be based on the Big Bang theory. In Counting To God I argued that the creation of all time, space, and matter from nothing was evidence of God.

The evidence of God is still there, stronger than ever, but the support for gradual cosmic evolution disappears when you look behind the curtain. The latest evidence does not agree with the Big Bang theory, and the theory is now rejected by many scientists, including many Atheists. In this post I’ll describe the Big Bang theory, and then the science. To me, science now points to an even more miraculous creation, the creation described in Genesis. As usual, you decide.

According to the Big Bang theory, a one-time, supernatural event took place 13.8 billion years ago. That event was the instantaneous creation of space, time, and all of the matter and energy that ever has existed and ever will exist. The theory is that an ultra-hot and ultra-dense fireball gradually expanded and cooled, and gravity slowly pulled the matter together over billions of years to form stars, planets, and galaxies. As generations of stars burned and exploded, the extreme heat and pressure created heavy elements – elements heavier than helium in the periodic table (oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, and so on) – that are critical for life.

That’s the theory. Let’s look at facts (sorry the list is so long, but the subject fascinates me):

Mature Distant Galaxies. This shocked me. Galaxies far away are receding from us, and the speed with which they are receding is generally proportional to their distance from us. (Hubble’s Law). According to secular Big Bang models, this means that when we look at distant galaxies we are looking back in time. According to the Big Bang theory, the galaxies farthest away were formed shortly after the Big Bang. The models generally predict that it takes billions of years to form a mature galaxy with billions of stars, and that the heavy elements gradually increase as stars explode.

We have found distant galaxies that are fully mature. One team of astronomers found 15 distant galaxies that (according to their models) are 12 billion light years away on average. In other words, they believed they were looking back in time 12 billion years, to less than two billion years after the Big Bang. These galaxies are fully mature in shape; they are massive, with a hundred billion stars or more each; and they are filled with heavy elements. Another team discovered a galaxy supposedly 560 million years old with ratios of heavy elements similar to nearby galaxies.

Mature distant galaxies contradict the Big Bang model. They fit the biblical model, where God “stretches out the heavens like a curtain…” Isaiah 40:22. The Bible states in 10 places that God stretched out the heavens.

Blue Stars. Blue stars are the most massive stars. Stars with more mass are hotter and burn much quicker. Rigel (the star in Orion that is the “foot” on the right) is estimated by secular astronomers to be around 8 million years old and at the end of its life. A star like our sun, which itself is bigger than 95% of all stars, will burn for a thousand times longer than a typical blue star. If the universe is billions of years old, blue stars should be long gone, and any new ones formed should be fantastically rare. Yet blue stars are all over our galaxy. I love to look at magnificent bands of blue stars in other spiral galaxies. (It’s easy to do, just google “spiral galaxies” and click on “images”). The abundance of blue stars, both in our galaxy and in other galaxies, contradicts the Big Bang model.

Arms in Spiral Galaxies. While you’re admiring those spiral galaxies, notice the “arms” of tens of billions of stars stretching out from the center. Our Earth is in the Orion arm of the Milky Way. According to secular astronomers, our galaxy has made about 20 complete rotations in its roughly 12 billion year life.

Nice theory. But, if it were true, the stars wouldn’t still be in the spiral arms. Over time the stars would have wandered and filled in the disks of the galaxies. Those sharply defined arms disprove the Big Bang theory.

Double Stars. Stars like our Sun are typically found in groups of two or three. Double stars, also called binary stars, are very common. New research shows that most double star systems will spiral into collapse – the stars will run into each other – in less than one hundred thousand years. This contradicts the Big Bang model of double star systems existing for billions of years.

No Exotic Particles. The ultra-hot and ultra-dense fireball of the Big Bang should have produced exotic particles. We don’t find any. When energy “condenses” into matter, it creates equal amounts of matter and anti-matter. We don’t find anti-matter in the universe. Under the Big Bang theory, one of the most common particles in the universe should be a magnetic monopole, a particle with a single net magnetic charge. Magnetic monopoles have been created in the laboratory. They have never been observed in space.

The Horizon Problem. When we look deep into space, all areas are almost exactly the same temperature. The Big Bang theory predicts cold spots and hot spots. Since light could not have traveled between regions on opposite sides of the universe, they should not have the same temperature; they haven’t been able to exchange energy. To get around this, many secular astronomers believe the universe went through a brief period of massive “inflation.” Inflation is really a philosophical belief, and not science, since it can never be reproduced or observed. Some mathematical models of inflation did make predictions, and all of those predictions have been proven false.

Stars and Planets from Clumps? According to computer simulations, gravity won’t hold grains of dust together until the ball is at least a kilometer in diameter. In other words, you need planets to get planets, and stars to get stars. Secular scientists brush over this problem, but have yet to show how planets and stars can be formed by gravity.

Magnetic Fields. Planets that are billions or even millions of years old shouldn’t have magnetic fields. The total electric energy “stored” in the Earth’s magnetic field has decreased by 14% since its first careful measurement in 1829. This decay fits creation models, which attribute the decay to electrical resistance in the core of the Earth.

Dr. Russell Humphreys has done incredible work in this area. In 1984 he proposed an alternative magnetic model involving God aligning water molecules during the creation week. It accurately predicted the magnetic field strengths of Uranus, and Neptune, as well as the decay rate of Mercury’s magnetic field. Even more impressive, a number of his predictions were made in advance, and then confirmed by satellite measurements.

Comets. Comets have finite life spans; they gradually burn up or collide with the Sun or a planet. They can’t have existed for billions of years, and in most cases not for millions. Secular astronomers imagine an “Oort Cloud” containing a trillion or so potential comets, at the far outer reaches of our Solar System, to replenish the supply. However, as even Atheist Carl Sagan admitted, there is not one shred of scientific evidence for the existence of the Oort Cloud.

* * *

I am not an expert in all of these areas, and it is certainly possibly that I have gotten some things wrong, or that later research will change the statements above. Nevertheless, I think the verdict is in. I am now convinced the Big Bang theory, the prevailing model of gradual cosmological evolution, has fatal flaws. It’s not as ridiculous as Darwin’s theory of biological evolution (how could any sane person believe the human brain “evolved” by chance?) but it has huge problems that most people don’t know about. In Counting To God I noted the 1965 discovery of cosmic microwave background radiation, faint radiation coming from everywhere, and suggested it was overwhelming evidence of the validity of the Big Bang theory. I didn’t know about these problems (and many problems not listed here), and I didn’t know the background radiation can also be explained as the limiting temperature of space, as starlight being reflected off space dust.

The universe can’t have existed forever. (Second law of thermodynamics, look it up.) Like models of gradual biological evolution, models of gradual cosmological evolution don’t fit the facts. We are left with a magnificent creation, a universe of enormous complexity, beauty, and size. The facts suggest it was all created just thousands of years ago, exactly as described in the Bible:

“I made the earth and created man on it; it was my hands that stretched out the heavens, and I commanded all their host…” Isaiah 45:12.

The Bible is true, right from the first page. In a later post I’ll show how important that is for Christianity.

Thanks for reading. Please share the good news of true science. Together we can change the world.

The Human Brain

Science, ,

I commute long distance. On Monday’s flight, I read two interesting articles on the human brain.

The first was in Monday’s New York Times. Researchers developed technology you control using thought. You put on a headset with virtual reality goggles and sensors that read brain waves, and move virtual objects. The article said researchers “want to build ways of performing nearly any computing task with the mind.” That, I thought, would be totally cool! How advanced!

Then I thought, wait a minute. Much more advanced technology already exists. With your brain, you can control, to an astonishing degree, each of over 600 skeletal muscles in your body. You can perform coordinated feats, like standing upright. (It’s not so easy; it took you about a year to get it right.) With your brain, you can access memory banks of your life and what you have learned. The sophistication of the human brain is dazzling. I love watching and hearing concert pianists play impossibly difficult and breathtakingly beautiful pieces from memory. My college roommate, a chess grandmaster at 13, could and still can crush me in chess without ever looking at the chess board. He visualizes the entire board and all possible moves in his head.

Next I picked up the September issue of Acts and Facts. (It is one of my favorite magazines, and you can get a free subscription by going to this page: http://www.icr.org/icr-magazines ) Dr. Jeffrey Tompkins authored an article entitled: “The Human Brain is ‘Beyond Belief’.” The article reviews recent brain research, and cites 15 scientific papers. Highlights:

  • An average healthy human brain contains some 200 billion nerve cells connected to one another through hundreds of trillions of synapses. (About as many cells as stars in our galaxy, and synapses as stars in a thousand galaxies.)
  • A single human brain has more information processing units than all the computers, routers, and Internet connections on Earth.
  • The neural units in our brain are perfectly placed to minimize “connection costs” among components.
  • The brain’s memory capacity is “at least” a petabyte, in the same ballpark as the entire World Wide Web.
  • The brain is amazingly energy efficient; human circuits of similar complexity would require at least 1,000 times more energy.
  • The cells of the brain communicate with light as well as electrical impulses.
  • The brain is a quantum computer.
  • The brain creates complex structures to solve problems.

That last bullet is a reference to a June 2017 paper in the Journal of Computational Neuroscience. (Not a journal I’m recommending, but go knock yourself out.) Researchers found our brains build fantastic structures, with fantastic geometries, to solve problems. Here’s one of the researchers:

The neurons in the network react to stimuli in an extremely organized manner. …. We found a world we never imagined. There are tens of millions of these objects even in a small speck of the brain, up through seven dimensions. In some networks, we even found structures with up to eleven dimensions.

The mathematics of this article, with concepts from Algebraic Geometry (yes I took that course in college but don’t ask me any questions) are beyond belief. Not much I understood. I will just note that when the researcher refers to “dimensions,” he is really talking about degrees of connectivity. So when seven neurons create a structure where they are each connected to each other, he is calling that a seven dimensional structure.

When it comes to the architecture and technology of the human brain, we are like primitives with stone tools trying to understand a spaceship. As hard as we try, and thousands of very smart people are trying very hard, we are only a vague idea of how the brain works. We think we are smart to say the frontal cortex performs executive functions. That’s like the primitive saying the back of the spaceship has something to do with movement. Exactly how is it your brain processes signals from your eyes to recognize these letters and words, to make sense of them, and to ponder their meaning? Tell me, if you can, how that works.

So new research says the brain builds structures to solve problems? How could any rational person believe the human brain “evolved” from a Darwinian process of keeping the best errors? That is preposterously absurd, totally idiotic, and without a fig leaf shred of believability! No way ultra technology arose by chance. I would also point you to page 165 of Counting To God, where I note that the human brain has at least 54 “orphan” brain genes, 54 sections of DNA code that no other species has that build the fantastic nanotechnology we use to think and reason.

I can be sarcastic. Maybe next time someone tells me belief in God is not scientific, I’ll respond — “so you’re one of those ‘scientific’ people who believe the human brain arose by chance?”

Thanks for reading. Please tell others, and spread the good news of true science. Together we can change the world, and free it from this pathetically depressing Atheist paradigm of a meaningless universe. God is real. Govern yourself accordingly.

Origin of Life

Science, ,

How did life get started? Could life have arisen by purely “natural” means, without a designer? The universe is a big place, with trillions times trillions of stars. Newspapers report “earth-like” planets; some must have liquid water. Is life inevitable, given enough time and sunshine?

Well, maybe not. The origin of life is an unsolved riddle, and one of the greatest challenges to materialism.

The problem is that all life, even what we might think of as “simple” life, is enormously complex, and has technology far beyond anything built by human beings. All life makes copies of itself atom-by-atom. No machine built by man can do that. All life contains digital code (DNA), and 3-D printers that read the code and “print” out needed parts, by snapping together chains of basic atomic building blocks, called “amino acids.”

A 1953 experiment found that a few of these amino acids could be produced from electricity and inorganic chemical compounds. This experiment, called the Miller-Urey experiment, has led some people to believe that life did arise by chance. Many high school textbooks note the experiment. But the textbooks are outdated. Both Stanley Miller and Harold Urey admitted the mere existence of amino acids does not yield life. It’s not just that the experiment got the starting conditions wrong (which it did), or that it also produced reactive chemicals that would have destroyed life (like hydrogen cyanide and formaldehyde). It’s not just that it takes energy to “snap” together amino acids. The necessary components for life are not favored thermodynamically or kinetically.

It’s the information problem. Even if somehow you had all the right parts, all of these fantastically complex components, how on Earth (pun intended) could they ever get in the right order? How did all the pieces get put together right in three dimensional space?

All life has DNA code millions of units, millions of “letters,” long. (Those chemical units, those nucleotides, are impossibly unlikely to form by chance.) All life has copying machines and 3-D printers of astonishing accuracy and reliability. All life has machines to transfer energy. To have life, you not only have to start with all of this (and more), but the code has to be in exactly the right order so the machines can make copies of themselves. It’s a nightmare chicken-and-the-egg problem. To have life, you’ve got to start with all the machines and all the units of code, and the code has to be in the right order to specify the instructions for building the machines.

In 1964, a Yale professor calculated the odds of life arising by chance as one in a number with one hundred billion zeros. That’s at any time in any place in the history of the universe. The number of planets in the universe may be a number with 24 zeros. To go from a length so small it cannot be measured, to the distance across the known universe, you need about 60 zeros (multiply by ten about 60 times). Overcoming odds of one in a number with one hundred billion zeros is staggeringly impossible. You are more likely to win a Powerball lottery ten billion times in a row.

Life forming accidentally is like a tornado ripping through a massive junkyard and leaving behind a 747 jet, with all systems functional and ready to take off. Except it’s worse. The tornado would also have to leave behind a complete set of blueprints for building the jet and an operating manual.

Charles Darwin knew his theory couldn’t explain the origin of life. Before you can have natural selection, you must first have a means of preserving traits across generations. Inorganic matter has only chemical and physical properties; it has no way of preserving traits across generations.

You might think further effort will solve the riddle. Harvard University attempted that in 2006, when it launched an “Origins of Life Initiative,” and handed out research money. But at a conference they sponsored in 2009, the recurring theme was “we just don’t know.” Harvard has essentially abandoned the initiative.

How did life get started? Here’s a 2011 status report from Eugene Koonin, a senior investigator at the National Center for Biotechnology Information, National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health, and a recognized expert in the field of evolutionary and computational biology:

Despite many interesting results to its credit, when judged by the straightforward criterion of reaching (or even approaching) the ultimate goal, the origin of life field is a failure—we still do not have even a plausible coherent model, let alone a validated scenario, for the emergence of life on Earth. Certainly, this is due not to a lack of experimental and theoretical effort, but to the extraordinary intrinsic difficulty and complexity of the problem. A succession of exceedingly unlikely steps is essential for the origin of life, from the synthesis and accumulation of nucleotides to the origin of translation; through the multiplication of probabilities, these make the final outcome seem almost like a miracle.

The origin of life seems like a miracle.

There is no materialist explanation for the origin of life. Our most brilliant scientists can’t come up with a mildly plausible scenario. When decades of intense scientific effort leave us with the statement that the origin of life seems like a miracle, we are forced to consider the possibility that it really was a miracle, a supernatural event, and that life was designed.

Thanks for reading. Please share the good news of science.

Does Science Prove God?

Science

I’ve been having a friendly debate with a distinguished scientist. She believes there is a God, but argues science cannot prove the existence of God. I argue science has proved God.

What does it mean to “prove” something. I look to math. Math has theorems, logical arguments, that prove or disprove statements. But all mathematics rests on certain unprovable assumptions – sometimes called “axioms” or “postulates”. You start by assuming some things are true, and then you prove other things are true. What you can prove rests on, depends on, your starting truths. Your starting truths are the foundation you build on.

Geometry is an example (please skip this paragraph if high school geometry was not your favorite). Euclid began with five starting truths – five postulates. His fifth postulate was that parallel lines never meet. With these starting truths he created the elegant field of Euclidean geometry, where the sum of the angles of a triangle is 180 degrees. There are other systems of geometry with different starting truths. If you take the first four of Euclid’s postulates, and add the assumption that parallel lines always meet, you get the geometry of the surface of a ball, where the sum of the angles of a triangle is always greater than 180 degrees.

OK, technical discourse over. The point is, before you can “prove” anything, you have to start with certain unprovable truths. Here’s my starting truths:

Truth One: There is an objective reality.

There are real things apart from us and our minds. We are not beings in some sort of computer simulation.

Truth Two: We can generally trust what our senses are clearing telling us.

We can be confused, or deceived. But I think we all pretty much assume as true clear messages from our senses. If we run into a stone wall, we say that “proves” both that the wall exists, and that it is hard. If scientists around the world find that all living creatures contain coded groups of atoms we call DNA, we say that “proves” the existence of DNA code.

Truth Three: If something exists that, in all human history and all of science, has only on. . explanation, one cause, then that explanation is true and that cause exists.

We have found fantastic technology in every living creature. Plants have sensors that detect detailed variations in light and temperature. Some birds, fish, turtles, and even butterflies have sensors that detect both the direction and intensity of the Earth’s magnetic field, coupled with navigation systems that allow them to travel thousands of miles and return to the same field, stream, beach, or tree. This technology is complex almost beyond imagination – it is far more advanced than anything humans have ever created. We are only beginning to understand how DNA code works, with overlapping layers of information.

In all of human history and experience, only an intelligent being can create new technology. In all of science, there is no other known explanation. Chance is pathetically inadequate. No one has ever seen new technology created by accident, and the odds against it ever happening by chance are fantastic, even in a trillion trillion universes.

With these starting truths, my proof of God is this. Scientists have found fantastically complex technology in thousands of different kinds of living creatures. In all of human history, technology has only been created by a mind. There is no scientific explanation for the existence of technology without a designer. Therefore the technology of life was designed, and that designer is God.

The difference between this scientist and I is that she won’t make that third assumption. As a scientist, she has been trained to always question, to always need new explanations. I admire that spirit, but we must seek the truth in what we know. I think that, deep down, everyone agrees with my three starting truths. If you climb a mountain and come to the edge of a cliff thousands of feet high, you would (1) conclude there is such a thing as a cliff, (2) trust your eyes that the cliff is high, and (3) believe that gravity will pull you down if you step off.

Yet our society is in denial over God. We have climbed the mountain of science, and see fantastic technology in living creatures. This technology is confirmed in multiple scientific articles every week. Yet people close their eyes and step off the cliff, into the spiritual and moral abyss of Atheism.

Thanks for reading. Please spread the good news of science.

Plant Sensors

Science, ,

Intelligent design predicts we will continue to find complex systems in living creatures. This prediction is affirmed almost daily in scientific papers around the world. I’ve highlighted a few of these, such as the systems that allow reef squid to communicate by writing on their own bodies. For this post, let’s look at plants.

Plants generally get their energy from light; through an amazingly engineered process we call photosynthesis. Sensors help them capture and process the light. Here’s Jeffrey Thompkins, Ph.D.:

One of the key factors in a plant’s life cycle is processing sunlight in the form of duration (day length), light quality (wavelength), and light intensity. All of these interconnected light-related factors are monitored within the plant’s leaf cells by a family of sensor proteins called phytochromes. When the red to far-red region of the visible light spectrum changes during the day, or because of shade from neighboring plants, the conformation (3-D shape) of the phytochrome proteins becomes altered and they act like genetic switches. They turn on and off a whole host of genes that modify plant metabolism, physiology, growth, and development. Phytochromes also help set the plant’s circadian rhythm (day/night clock) in addition to telling the plant what time of year it is, when it should flower and make seeds, or go dormant for the winter.

This has been known for some time. What’s new is that scientists have now found that these same sensors also measure temperature. The sensors are already fantastic machines in measuring and responding to light, so no one expected they would also be respond to temperature. But they do. Tompkins again:

This temperature-sensing capacity and seamless integration with the light sensory function is so finely tuned that it enables the plant to make a wide variety of adjustments in growth and development both during the night and during photosynthesis in daylight.

Wow! In other words plants, life that you might think is relatively simple, has complex, engineered systems far beyond human technology. We’re talking nanotechnology, engineering at the atomic level, that works perfectly for that dandelion in your yard. All life is more complex than we can possibly imagine.

So ask your Darwinist friends how they explain this. You might get, “well obviously it ‘evolved’ because it’s good for the plants.” Don’t let them get away with that nonsense. You can’t mathematically get any technology by chance, much less an integrated system that can sense and respond to both light and temperature.

And speaking of integrated systems, what about the human brain? How can anyone possibly believe the human brain – with its ability to process information from each of our senses and combine that with analytic reasoning, memory, spatial perception, image recognition, and so so much more – arose from a chance-based process? The truth is plainly obvious, and it always has been, notwithstanding the nonsense we hear from Atheists. Human beings were designed.

Thanks for reading. And please, please, spread the good news of science.