OF ALL the marvelous things on earth, none is more
astounding than the human brain. For example, every second some
100 million bits (?) what size hard drive?)) of information pour into the brain from the
various senses. But how can it avoid being hopelessly buried by this avalanche?
If we can think about only one thing at a time, how does the mind cope with
these millions of simultaneous messages? Obviously, the mind not only survives
the barrage but handles it with ease.
Three weeks after conception brain cells start forming.
They grow in spurts, at times up to 250,000 cells a minute. After birth the
brain continues growing and forming its network of connections. The gulf
separating the human brain from that of any animal quickly manifests itself:
“The brain of the human infant, unlike that of any other animal, triples in
size during its first year,” states the book The Universe Within.2
In time, about 100 billion nerve cells, called neurons, as well as other
types of cells, are packed into a human brain, although it makes up only
2 percent of the body’s weight
The human brain is the most marvelous
and mysterious object in the whole universe.”—Anthropologist Henry
F. Osborna
“How does the brain produce thoughts? That is the central question and
we have still no answer to it.”—Physiologist Charles Sherringtonb
“In spite of the steady accumulation of detailed knowledge how the human
brain works is still profoundly mysterious.”—Biologist Francis Crickc
“Anyone who speaks of a computer as an ‘electronic brain’ has never seen
a brain.”—Science editor Dr. Irving S. Bengelsdorfd
“Our active memories hold several billion times more information
than a large contemporary research computer.”—Science writer Morton Hunte
“Since the brain is different and immeasurably more complicated than
anything else in the known universe, we may have to change some of our most
ardently held ideas before we’re able to fathom the brain’s mysterious
structure.”—Neurologist Richard M. Restakf
Regarding the huge gulf between humans and animals, Alfred
R. Wallace, the ‘co-discoverer of evolution,’ wrote to Darwin: “Natural
selection could only have endowed the savage with a brain a little superior to
that of the ape, whereas he possesses one very little inferior to that of an
average member of our learned society.” Darwin, upset by this admission,
replied: “I hope you have not murdered completely your own and my child”g
To say that the human brain evolved from that of any animal is to defy
reason and the facts. Far more logical is this conclusion: “I am left with no
choice but to acknowledge the existence of a Superior Intellect, responsible
for the design and development of the incredible brain-mind
relationship—something far beyond man’s capacity to understand. . . .
I have to believe all this had an intelligent beginning, that Someone made it
happen.”—Neurosurgeon Dr. Robert J. Whiteh
The science of mathematical probability offers striking
proof that the Genesis creation account must have come from a source with
knowledge of the events. The account lists 10 major stages in this order:
(1) a beginning; (2) a primitive earth in darkness and enshrouded in
heavy gases and water; (3) light; (4) an expanse or atmosphere;
(5) large areas of dry land; (6) land plants; (7) sun, moon and
stars discernible(observable) in the expanse, and seasons beginning;
(8) sea monsters and flying creatures; (9) wild and tame beasts,
mammals; (10) man. Science agrees that these stages occurred in this general
order. What are the chances that the writer of Genesis just guessed this order?
The same as if you picked at random the numbers 1 to 10 from a box, and drew
them in consecutive order. The chances of doing this on your first
try are 1 in 3,628,800! So, to say the writer just happened to list the
foregoing events in the right order without getting the facts from somewhere is
not realistic.
In 1953 Stanley Miller passed an electric spark through
an “atmosphere” of hydrogen, methane, ammonia and water vapor. This produced some
of the many amino acids that exist and that are the building blocks of
proteins. However, he got just 4 of the 20 amino acids needed for life to
exist. More than 30 years later, scientists were still unable experimentally to
produce all the 20 necessary amino acids under conditions that could be
considered plausible.
Miller assumed that earth’s primitive atmosphere was
similar to the one in his experimental flask. Why? Because, as he and a
co-worker later said: “The synthesis of compounds of biological interest takes
place only under reducing [no free oxygen in the atmosphere] conditions.”6
Yet other evolutionists theorize that oxygen was present. The dilemma this
creates for evolution is expressed by Hitching: “With oxygen in the air, the
first amino acid would never have got started; without oxygen, it would have
been wiped out by cosmic rays.
The proteins needed for life have very complex molecules.
What is the chance of even a simple protein molecule forming at random in an
organic soup? Evolutionists acknowledge it to be only one in 10113
(1 followed by 113 zeros). But any event that has one chance in just 1050
is dismissed by mathematicians as never happening. An idea of the odds, or
probability, involved is seen in the fact that the number 10113 is
larger than the estimated total number of all the atoms in the universe!
More difficult to obtain than these are nucleotides, the
structural units of DNA, which bears the genetic code. Five histones are
involved in DNA (histones are thought to be involved in governing the activity
of genes). The chance of forming even the simplest of these histones is said to
be one in 20100—another huge number “larger than the total of all
the atoms in all the stars and galaxies visible in the largest astronomical
telescopes
An
additional hurdle for evolutionary theory now arises. Somewhere along the line
the primitive cell had to devise something that revolutionized life on
earth—photosynthesis. This process, by which plants take in carbon dioxide and
give off oxygen, is not yet completely understood by scientists. It is, as
biologist F. W. Went states, “a process that no one has yet been able
to reproduce in a test tube.”22 Yet, by chance, a tiny simple cell
is thought to have originated it.
The
process of photosynthesis turned an atmosphere that contained no free oxygen
into one in which one molecule out of every five is oxygen. As a result,
animals could breathe oxygen and live, and an ozone layer could form to protect
all life from the damaging effects of ultraviolet radiation. Could this
remarkable array of circumstances be accounted for simply by random chance?
When confronted with the astronomical odds
against a living cell forming by chance, some evolutionists feel forced to back
away. For example, the authors of Evolution From Space
(Hoyle and Wickramasinghe) give up, saying: “These issues are too complex to
set numbers to.” They add: “There is no way . . . in which we can
simply get by with a bigger and better organic soup, as we ourselves hoped
might be possible a year or two ago. The numbers we calculated above are
essentially just as unfaceable for a universal soup as for a terrestrial one.”23
Hence, after acknowledging that intelligence
must somehow have been involved in bringing life into existence, the authors
continue: “Indeed, such a theory is so obvious that one wonders why it is not
widely accepted as being self-evident. The reasons are psychological rather
than scientific.”24 Thus an observer might conclude that a
“psychological” barrier is the only plausible explanation as to why most
evolutionists cling to a chance origin for life and reject any “design or
purpose or directedness,”25 as Dawkins expressed it. Indeed, even
Hoyle and Wickramasinghe, after acknowledging the need for intelligence, say
that they do not believe a personal Creator is responsible for the origin of
life.26 In their thinking, intelligence is mandatory, but a Creator
is unacceptable. Do you find that contradictory?
A living cell is enormously complex.
Biologist Francis Crick endeavors to describe its workings simply, but he
finally realizes that he can go only so far, “because it is so complicated the
reader should not attempt to struggle with all the details.”a
The instructions within the DNA of the cell, “if written out, would fill
a thousand 600-page books,” explains National Geographic. “Each
cell is a world brimming with as many as two hundred trillion tiny groups of
atoms called molecules. . . . Our 46 chromosome ‘threads’ linked
together would measure more than six feet. Yet the nucleus that contains them
is less than four ten-thousandths of an inch in diameter.”b
Newsweek magazine uses an illustration to give an idea of the
cell’s activities: “Each of those 100 trillion cells functions like a
walled city. Power plants generate the cell’s energy. Factories produce
proteins, vital units of chemical commerce. Complex transportation systems
guide specific chemicals from point to point within the cell and beyond.
Sentries at the barricades control the export and import markets, and monitor
the outside world for signs of danger. Disciplined biological armies stand ready
to grapple with invaders. A centralized genetic government maintains order.”c
“The hypothesis that life has
developed from inorganic matter is, at present, still an article of
faith.”—Mathematician J. W. N. Sullivand
“The probability of life originating from accident is comparable to the
probability of the unabridged dictionary resulting from an explosion in a
printing shop.”—Biologist Edwin Conkline
“One has only to contemplate the magnitude of this task to concede that
the spontaneous generation of a living organism is impossible.”—Biochemist
George Waldf
“An honest man, armed with all the knowledge available to us now, could
only state that in some sense, the origin of life appears at the moment to be
almost a miracle.”—Biologist Francis Crickg
“If one is not prejudiced either by social beliefs or by a scientific
training into the conviction that life originated [spontaneously] on the Earth,
this simple calculation [the mathematical odds against it] wipes the idea
entirely out of court.”—Astronomers Fred Hoyle and
N. C. Wickramasingheh
