Author’s note:

Publishing to a website is a daunting task for even many professionals.  One of the problems I have encountered here is that quotations, quotation marks, indentations, footnotes, etc., are often not the same in web publishing software as it in in Microsoft Word.  Consequently, it will likely be difficult for you to distinguish my text from the many quotations I have presented.  The message, however, is the same.  Cal

EVIDENCE OF INTELLIGENT DESIGN

IN HUMAN PHYSIOLOGY

By

Cal Hunter, DC, DRS

INTRODUCTION

Look not on the things which are seen,

but on the things which are not seen.  For the things which are seen

are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.

                                                                                    2 Corinthians 4:18

When I was a student at Oklahoma Baptist University, I knew God had called me to become a minister, but as I neared graduation, I became enamored with the study of psychology and decided I could fulfill my calling by becoming a psychologist to help people who were suffering from mental disorders.

            After graduating from OBU, I enrolled in Baylor University, where I spent two years in graduate studies of clinical psychology.  The study of psychology taught me to question many things I had never questioned before.  For instance, “Why shouldn’t I get on a merry-go-round at any age if I wanted to?”  After all, unfulfilled desires are often factors contributing to personality disorders.  Soon, however, I began to question why God had not done some things differently, and if He really meant all those things stated in the Bible.  In short, I lost my faith.

            While I came to doubt many things in the Bible, I never doubted that God exists and created all things, but I did come to doubt many basic tenets of Christianity that I had been taught all my life.  My doubts were not “intellectual topics” I wished to theorize and philosophize with others; instead, they were gnawing, inescapable doubts that produced a disturbing sense of futility and despair in the very core of my being.

            The best way I can illustrate the doubts and fears I experienced in the next fifteen years is to liken it to times when I have piloted an airplane in inclement weather, using flight instruments only.  Often, when one enters dark, ominous-appearing clouds, he encounters moderate to severe buffeting from turbulent air currents.  The clouds surrounding the plane are usually so dense that the pilot cannot see the ground or the horizon and were it not for is instruments, he could even be flying upside down and not know it.  In such conditions, the pilot must be well-trained to trust his instruments—not his instincts.

     A pilot always breathes a little easier when he breaks out of the dark, dense, turbulent clouds into the beautiful, calm sunlit atmosphere above the clouds.  After approximately fifteen years of living in the dark, dense, turbulent clouds of doubt, fear, and confusion, I finally broke out into the beautiful, calm, exhilarating sunshine of understanding that flooded my mind, my heart, and my soul.  An inexplicable and profound sense of peace flooded my soul, and a depth of understanding such as I had never known illuminated my mind.  One of the major lessons I learned was that I had to change my psychology—not my theology.

     I did not get to complete my Ph.D. at Baylor; Baylor was denied accreditation by the American Psychological Association.   As a result, I decided I would study to become a chiropractor, and I enrolled in a four-year course of study where I earned my DC degree.

     It was after I had spent eight years in clinical practice that I had this phenomenal, spiritual experience.  It was so powerful and compelling that I gave up my clinical practice and entered the ministry.  

     As a result of my own doubts, the study of Christian apologetics has been a life-long passion.  One of the greatest sources of compelling evidence for my theistic beliefs came from my medical studies.  As a student, I marveled at the beauty, the perfection of design, and the complexity of functions I observed in human anatomy and physiology.  I have also learned that the majority of physicians embrace a theistic worldview.  Personally, I find it incomprehensible that anyone who has studied human anatomy and physiology could believe otherwise.

            My fervent prayer, as I write this book, is that I may help others eliminate their doubts and fears, and that they may experience a deeper sense of the reality of God, and develop a greater understanding of the truthfulness of God’s Holy Word—the Bible.

            One word of caution: since this book was never intended to be a textbook in human physiology, certain elements are described in the simplest possible terms.  My objective is not to teach an understanding of essential physiological functions, but to demonstrate the incredibly complex essentials of physiological processes that reveal the handiwork of our Intelligent Designer—God.

Since 1932, radio astronomers have aimed giant antenna arrays into outer space in search for an increased understanding of complex phenomena emanating from a number of celestial objects. National Radio Astronomy Observatory reports, "Broadband continuum emissions throughout the radio-frequency spectrum is observed from a variety of stars (especially binary, X-ray, and other active stars), from supernova remnants, and from magnetic fields and relativistic electrons in the interstellar medium"

For a number of years, radio astronomers have been engaged in a search for

extra-terrestrial intelligence (SETI) using NRAO’s 140-foot radio telescope in Green Bank, West Virginia, a facility made possible through the efforts of Senator Robert C. Byrd. This study is focused on a search for non-random signals from outer space.

Non-random signals would present clear, irrefutable evidence of an intelligent source.

A good illustration of this principle is seen in Morse code. Three short signals, followed by three long signals, followed by three short signals again would communicate "SOS," the international distress call, whether it were communicated by visual or audio means. While many differing signals have been detected by NRAO and other researchers, not one non-random signal has ever been detected. The problem is, they are looking in the wrong cosmos.

While the macro-cosmos of outer space has proven non-productive, the micro-cosmos of human physiology provides an endless source of non-random information that strongly suggests intelligent design. Sources of non-randomness are best viewed on the cellular level of man’s being.

Molecular biologists today are exploring the long hidden mysteries of a newly discovered universe—the universe inside the cell. They are discovering things heretofore believed impossible, such things as molecular factories and machinery, computers, storage facilities, and a language all its own.

The human body is an organism of organisms—each organism functioning both independently and inter-dependently, and each organism being comprised of cells. The human cell is generally considered to be the smallest unit of matter that is viewed as

being alive. Michael Behe in his book Darwin’s Black Box states, "The real work of life does not happen at the level of the whole animal or organ; the most important parts of living things are too small to be seen. Life is lived in the details, and it is molecules that handle life’s details. Darwin’s idea might explain horse hoofs, but can it explain life’s foundations?"

The average human cell is incredibly small, approximately .001" inches in

diameter and is made up of approximately ten trillion atoms. In Darwin’s time, little was known or understood about the cell beyond that which could be viewed by microscopes of his day. Darwin would have been able to view cell boundaries and the small, round black dot—the nucleus—in the center of the cell, but he could not have seen the intricate structures within the cell. The introduction of the electron microscope has facilitated new and greater insights into the mysterious cellular construction and functions of the human cell. No doubt the most surprising thing for Darwin, if he could view the contents of the cell as we see it today, would be the intricate, complex structure and the fevered activity going on inside the cell. He would also have been shocked because in Darwin’s day, it was believed that the more scientists would be able to see, the simpler the cell would be.

Behe describes what Darwin would be able to see today:

The cell has specialized areas partitioned off for discrete tasks. These areas include the nucleus (where the DNA resides), the mitochondria (which produced the cell’s energy), the endoplasmic reticulum (which processes proteins), the Golgi apparatus (a way station for proteins that are being transported elsewhere), the lysosome (the cell’s garbage disposal unit, secretory vesicles (which store cargo before it’s sent out of the cell), and the peroxisome (which helps metabolize fats). Each compartment is sealed off from the rest of the cell by its own membrane, just as a room is separated from the rest of the house by walls and door. The membranes themselves can also be considered separate compartments, because the cell places material into membranes that is not found elsewhere.

Michael Denton provides a poignant illustration of the newly discovered complexities of the living cell in the following manner:

To grasp the reality of life as it has been revealed by molecular biology, we must magnify a cell a thousand million times until it is twenty kilometers in diameter and resembles a giant airship large enough to cover a great city like London or New York. What we would then see would be an object of unparalleled complexity and adaptive design. On the surface of the cell we would see millions of openings, like the port holes of a vast space ship, opening and closing to allow a continual stream of materials to flow in and out. If we were to enter one of these openings we would find ourselves in a world of supreme technology and bewildering complexity. We would see endless highly organized corridors and conduits branching in every direction away from the perimeter of the cell, some leading to the central memory bank in the nucleus and others to assembly plants and processing units. The nucleus itself would be a vast spherical chamber more than a kilometer in diameter, resembling a geodesic cone inside of which we would see all neatly stacked together in ordered arrays, the miles of coiled chains of the DNA molecules.

Scientists use descriptive terms such as factories, machines, and transport vehicles to describe cellular structures. Bruce Alberts, President, National Academy of Sciences, remarked, "Why do we call {them} machines? Precisely because, like machines invented by humans to deal efficiently with the macroscopic world, these protein assemblies contain highly coordinated moving parts."

In 1953, James Watson and Francis Crick announced to the world that they had been successful in unraveling the structure of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), which is located deep within the nucleus of our cells.

DNA is a long, ladder-like double helix of molecular composition. Doctors John F. Kalinich and Max Fogiel in their book The Essentials of Genetics: Unlocking the Mysteries of Life report, "The length of DNA present in one human being is 200 times greater than the distance from the earth to the sun."

DNA is reverently referred to as the "blueprint of life," in which all the instructions necessary to replicate the entire human body are stored in each cell.

These instructions are recorded in an unparalleled language, comprising approximately three billion genetic letters.

Inside the "ladder-like" helix extending from either side are what resemble rungs of the ladder. These are molecules, called "nucleotides" (bases), which are designated by the initials A, G, T, or C. All the information and instructions of life are contained in our DNA, which is written in a genetic code using these four molecules. A single instruction is written on a piece of DNA, called a "gene," which may be thousands of letters long. Kalinich and Fogiel report,

The instructions needed to specify an entire human being are six billion code letters long. Every cell in its nucleus contains all the information needed to produce a human being. This information is contained in many long strands of DNA, which themselves are separated into chromosomes. The DNA of a human is found in 23 pairs of chromosomes. Every organism that is living, or has lived, contains DNA which spells out that organism’s specific instructions for life.

Incredible as it may seem, the information stored in human DNA would fill twelve sets of the Encyclopedia Britannica, 384 volumes which would fill 48 feet of library shelves! When scientists completed the Human Genome Project, their research would have filled the equivalent of 75,490 pages of The New York Times. But in actual size, our DNA is only two millionths of a millimeter thick. Geneticist Francis S. Collins, who spearheaded the Human Genome Project, referred to DNA as "Our instruction book, previously known only to God."

Michael Denton says a teaspoon of DNA could contain all the information needed to build the proteins for every species of organisms that have ever lived on earth, and still there would be room enough to store all the information in every book that has ever been written. An astounding bit of information.

A recent development in information theory is that information cannot be considered in the same category as matter and energy. Matter and energy can only convey information, but they are not synonymous with information itself.

If the content of a book were spoken aloud or written on a tablet or communicated electronically, that information would not lose anything from the means used in transporting it.

Morse code uses only two units—dots and dashes—to communicate any message that can be expressed in human language. Norman Geisler, noted apologist, refers to the relatively new science of information theory, which was unheard of in Darwin’s age:

Information theory is indispensable to understanding what biology is all about—information storage and retrieval systems. These systems are analogous to the blueprints and instruction manuals that provide the know-how concerning the construction and operation of the mechanisms of life. They specify what to do and how to do it, just as software does for a computer.

In our DNA structure, nucleotides are connected together in various sequential order, similar to computer language which uses only a series of non-random 1s and 0s, such as 1100011010110, to convey specific messages.

When one considers that using only two units, Morse code and computer languages are each capable of communicating any message which can be formulated in human language, how much more information can a system using four units convey?

Geisler reports that Hubert P. Yockey, another writer, says,

Speaking about the genetic code as being the language of life is not merely an analogy. The indescribable significance of this discovery is that the cell has a language of its own, fully equipped with rules—equivalent to a written language—that governs how it communicates. In a more recent work, Yockey explains that information theory has demonstrated that there is a one-to-one correspondence, an isomorphism, between the logic system of the genetic text on the one hand, and communication systems, computers, and mathematical logic systems on the other.

The science of information theory and the science of molecular biology have confirmed that the genetic code in a human cell (A, T, C, and G) is identical to a written language. We can, therefore, view it as communicating intelligent messages in the same way messages are communicated using human languages. This form of highly developed information utilization has never been observed except from an intelligent source.

Protein molecules are the fundamental components of life. In viewing the cell as a factory, we can think of proteins as machines that are engaged in the necessary activities of the cell. Each protein, like a tiny machine, is so small that it requires magnification of a million times in order for the human eye to see it.

Since we know that all proteins are composed of amino acids, we understand that these microscopic machines are made up of long chain-like molecules, arranged in a linear sequence of amino acids. Amino acids consist of approximately ten to twenty atoms.

Hundreds of amino acids are known to exist, but only twenty specific amino acids are utilized in living tissue in the formulation of proteins. The arrangement of amino acids in a protein is considered to be a sentence, consisting of a lengthy combination of the twenty amino acid letters. Denton explains, "Just as different sentences are made up of different sequences of letters, so different proteins are made up of different sequences of amino acids. In most proteins, the amino acid chain is between one hundred and five hundred amino acids long."

While proteins may be viewed as working elements of a factory, the nucleic acid molecules can be seen as fulfilling the role of a library, or memory data bank, which provides all the information needed for the construction of those machines in the factory. We can also view the nucleic acids as blueprints that contain the specific instructions for the construction of a specific protein in the cell.

Each cell in the human body is capable of repairing or replacing itself. The DNA within the nucleus of the cell contains the blueprint for every facet of the cell with instructions on how to facilitate the repair; this information is imparted to the RNA (ribonucleic acid), which carries this information to every part of the cell where the particular proteins are manufactured. Denton says, "We can think of RNA as photocopies of the master blueprint DNA which are carried to the factory floor where the technicians and engineers convert the abstract information of the blueprint (RNA) into the concrete form of the machine (proteins)."

A human embryo poignantly illustrates the role of inherited DNA at work--a truly amazing process of cell differentiation where new cells are developed to fit into each DNA blueprint section as specified. For instance, in the embryonic development of a finger, newly formed cells arrive on location. Each of these cells is assigned to differentiate into skin, muscle, subcutaneous tissue, bone, blood vessels, nerve or bone tissue. Kalinich says,

The ability of cells to tell directions (right and left) is important to the formation of organ systems. It is also critical that cells can differentiate top from bottom, or head from tail. Each of the cells of the developing embryo contains the exact same genetic information, exactly the same instructions for making a complete organism. The question scientists ask themselves is, if each cell contains the same genetic information, how are they able to differentiate into functionally different cells?

It is the growth and development of living tissue according to the genetic code stored in the DNA that will dictate length of bones, color of skin and eyes, and all the other inherited characteristics of an individual.

Many scientists believe that since it is known that human DNA is similar in some ways to the DNA of other species, that is evidence to support their naturalistic theories that man evolved from earlier life forms. Stephen Meyers, however, sees a different origin of DNA. "…The origin of information in DNA—which is necessary for life to begin—is best explained by an intelligent cause rather than any of the types of naturalistic causes that scientists typically use to explain biological phenomena."

George Sim Johnson says, "Human DNA contains more organized information than the Encyclopedia Britannica. If the full text of the encyclopedia were to arrive in computer code from outer space, most people would regard this as proof of the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence, but when seen in nature, it is explained as the workings of random forces."

Behe uses the term "irreducible complexity" in referring to some biochemical systems. He defines irreducible complexity as the structure and function of a system where each part must perform its task precisely and completely, in the proper order, at the proper time, to produce the desired results. He illustrates this principle with a mouse-trap—a simple mechanism utilizing five components. All components must function perfectly, completely, and in perfect timing with the other components for the machine to work.

The ongoing debate between creationists and evolutionists continues to mount. Some are asking, "Can religion withstand the onslaught of science?" However, in recent days some are asking, "Can science withstand the onslaught of religion’s intelligent design movement?"

Time magazine recently sponsored a ninety-minute debate between Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion and The End of Faith, and Francis Collins, Director of the National Human Genome Research Institute since 1993, where he directs 2,400 scientists in mapping the three billion biochemical letters of our DNA blueprint.

Richard Dawkins summed up his belief by stating,

For centuries the most powerful argument for God’s existence from the physical world was the so-called argument from design…but Darwin provided a simpler explanation. His way is a gradual, incremental improvement starting from very simple beginnings and working up step by tiny incremental step to more complexity, more elegance, more adaptive perfection.

Francis Collins countered,

By being outside of nature, God is also outside of space and time. Hence, at the moment of the creation of the universe, God could also have activated evolution, with full knowledge of how it would turn out, perhaps even including our having this conversation.

Many top scientists today are becoming convinced that the irreducibly complex structure and functions of the human body obviates that man’s body was built according to an Intelligent design. Norman Geisler asks, "What kind of cause produces highly specified complexities?"

Psalms 139:13-15, reads

For thou didst form my inward parts; Thou didst weave me in my mother’s womb. I will give thanks to Thee, for I am fearfully and

wonderfully made; wonderful are Thy works, and my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from Thee, when I was made in secret, and skillfully wrought in the depths of the earth. (NAS)

The more I examine the universe and the details of its architecture, the more evidence I find that the universe in some sense must have known we were coming.  - Freeman Dyson

The brain is the human body’s control center. Though it is merely quart-sized and weighs, on the average, about three pounds, it presents the most concentrated matter in the universe, which holds the key to life. Though its mass represents only two percent of one's body weight, the brain consumes twenty percent of the oxygen we breathe in.

Our brains are divided into two separate halves. Each side is paralleled with the other in order to provide regulatory, sensory, visual, and auditory areas that are paired up, such as two eyes, two lungs and two kidneys. Our double brain facilitates a two-sided creature, and each side balances the other.

The human brain is considered to be the most complex structure in the universe.

Our brain has over 100 billion cells, each cell with more than 40,000 neuron connections to other brain cells, and it processes more than 100 million individual signals from the rest of the body every second. Carl Baugh cites a Moody Video Series suggesting, "If we learned something new each second of our lives, it would take three million years to

exhaust the capacity of the brain."

In describing the phenomenal number of cells in the human brain, Denton says,

Numbers in the order of 10^{15 are of course completely beyond comprehension. Imagine an area about half the size of the USA (one million square miles), covered in a forest of trees, containing ten thousand trees per square mile. If each tree contained one hundred thousand leaves, the total number of leaves in the forest would be 1015 , equivalent to the number of connections in the human brain.}

Donald DeYoung adds,

The brain is a video camera and library, a computer and communication center, all in one. And the more it is used the better it becomes…we see remarkable purpose and interdependence within the brain—every part works for the benefit of the whole. Such features are not totally understood; the brain is unable fully to understand itself.

The brain utilizes both digital and analog responses, and it has been estimated that on the average, only ten percent of the brain cells are firing at any given second, at a frequency of 100 hertz. This suggests a rate of 1015 computations per second, average. By way of comparison, the Cray-2 supercomputer’s speed is 109computations per second, with a storage capacity of 1011 bits of information. This indicates the storage capacity of the supercomputer is 1000 times less than the human brain.

In regard to memory capacity of the brain, DeYoung writes,

The potential brain capacity is estimated as at least equivalent to that of 25 million volumes, a 500-mile-long bookshelf! Clearly, the brain is far more advanced than any computer that has ever been produced. This computer analogy should not be carried too far, however, because brain organization is unlike anything else encountered.

Another interesting aspect in the physiological functioning of the brain is the fact that the brain is continually forming new connections (neurons), and each and every neuron "remembers" past events; these memories of the past are utilized in future events. Gillen says,

The human brain is a mysterious loom, weaving strands of 10 billion neuron into the fabric of thought…There is probably nothing else in the physical universe that is more complex than the human brain. The web of neurons defies description. The whole mental process consists of neurons transmitting specific chemical between each other across synapses or gaps. As a result, each cell can communicate with every other cell at lightning speed. In one cubic millimeter (mm3) of the brain, there are one billion connections among cells. This amounts to about 400 billion synaptic junctions in a gram of brain tissue. The brain’s total number of connections rivals the stars of the universe in number, yet the connections follow an orderly plan.

Gillen adds,

There are still many unknowns about the brain. In one sense, a whole person lies locked inside the cranium, protected, sealed away for managing the duties of the other 70-100 million cells in the body. The brain is the seat of mystery, wisdom, and unity, and it is the source of order for the rest of the body. All the body’s cells ultimately report to the brain. In one sense, other body cells are defined by their loyalty to the brain. They either obey the brain’s signals and thereby bring health to the body, or disobey and ultimately bring ruin to the rest of the body.

Denton writes, "Undoubtedly, the complexity of biological systems in terms of the sheer numbers of unique components is very impressive; and it raises the obvious question: Could any sort of purely random process ever have assembled such systems in the time available?"

When Albert Einstein died in 1955, pathologist Thomas Harvey performed an autopsy on Dr. Einstein’s body. Harvey removed Einstein’s brain and kept it for the next 40 years. On occasion, Harvey shared small samples of Einstein’s brain with fellow scientists who were doing research on the human brain.

One respected scientist with whom Dr. Harvey had shared sections of the brain was Marian C. Diamond of the University of California at Berkeley. Diamond observed nothing unusual about the size and number of nerve cells, but noticed in the associated cortex, which is responsible for high-level cognition, a surprisingly large number of non-neuronal cells called "glia cells," and these were inordinately of greater concentration than that seen in average human brains.

Scientists had historically thought that only neurons were directly connected, but new evidence suggests that glia cells play a vital role in the number and location of synapses a neuron can form.

Evidence continues to mount, suggesting that glia cells are far more involved in important roles than previously thought. Physiologists had long focused their studies on neurons as the brain’s chief communicators. Even though glia cells outnumber neurons by nine to one, they were believed to be only involved in a maintenance role for providing nutrients from blood vessels to neurons and transporting waste elimination. Douglas Fields reports,

Propped up by glia, neurons were free to communicate across tiny contact points called 'synapses,' and to establish a web of connections that allow us to think, remember and jump for joy…In the past several years, sensitive imaging tests have shown that neurons and glia engage in a two-way dialogue from embryonic development through old age. Glia influence the formation of synapses and help to determine which neural connection get stronger or weaker over time; such changes are essential to learning and to storing long-term memories. And the most recent work shows that glia also communicate among themselves, in a separate but parallel network to the neural network, influencing how well the brain performs.

Most people visualize our nervous system as a giant network of wires (neurons) that connect with each other. Each neuron has a long nerve fiber, called an "axon," that conducts electrical impulses on to the dendrites of the next neuron through a synaptic connection. Glia cells surround the neuron and axons in large numbers, and it is believed that these contribute to learning and memory processing. Fields writes,

The brain must have ways to establish fast communication between neuron circuits that are not wired together directly. If neurons are like telephone poles, communicating electrically through hardwired synaptic connections, astrocytes (a star-shaped cell, especially a neuroglial cell of nervous tissue) may be like cell phones, communicating with chemical signals that are broadcast widely, but which can be detected only by other astrocytes that have the appropriate receptors tuned to receive the message. If signals can travel extensively through astrocyte circuits, then glia at one site could activate distant glia to coordinate the firing of neural networks across regions of the brain.

Perhaps Gillen summarized it best when he said,

The nervous system has the highest number of connections and degrees of order, organization, and integration in the body. Only the number and organization of stars in the universe rival the complexity found in the nervous system. The colossal complexity found in the circuitry of our brains must be the fingerprint of an omniscient Creator!

Die-hard evolutionists continue to reject a theistic world-view, claiming that ultimately, science will discover answers to all the questions relating to life’s origins.

Lessons from Sightless Children

Neurosurgeons have always been of the opinion that if a child were born blind and sight was not restored during the formative years of brain development, it would be forever impossible to restore sight. In the formative period when a child learns from experiences, new neurons are added at an incredible rate, and if visual experiences are not facilitated at birth, those neurons that record visual experiences will be lacking. Therefore, it was believed that even if surgery were capable of repairing anatomical deficiencies in visual pathways, sight could never be restored. Carolyn Sayre, writing in Time Magazine, states, "If a child is born blind, for example, it’s pretty much over by age 6. You can fix the eyes, and they might be able to perceive light and dark. Without the right visual circuitry in place, though, there’s no way to form images—the essence of true sight."

Then researchers learned that when a thirty-two-year old, impoverished young lady in India who was born with severe cataracts had the cataracts removed when she was twelve years old, within a year’s time she was able to see. Since that time, fourteen other children have been studied following surgery and all showed significant improvement within a year’s time. Visual acuity is usually limited, but patients can determine objects and recognize people—a dramatic improvement.

Pawan Sinha, Associate Professor of Neuroscience at M.I.T., visited his native

India, where almost half a million children suffer from blindness. Dr. Sinha believes that many of these cases could have been prevented if they had received treatment earlier. Dr. Sinha says, "There is a critical period for perfect acuity…but there is not a critical period for learning to do complex visual tasks."

Brain Anomalies in Feral Children

There have been a number of cases reported from throughout the world of children who have been accidentally separated from their parents and have lost all human contact at an early age. When discovered, all the children were living with wild animals, and they acted like wild animals. For many years, scientists of different disciplines have studied these children.

All the feral children exhibited similar conditions when they were found. All were unable to speak, and all mimicked animal sounds and behavior such as walking on "all fours." Most children that were discovered in the wild never learned to speak, had difficulty learning, and lived only a few years after discovery.

National Geographic Society recently broadcast a televised program in which they presented a study of these feral children who supposedly were "raised" by animals. Cases of children from India, Russia, and Africa were examined. National Geographic’s first objective was to determine the facticity of these cases; and only two cases presented sufficient evidence to merit serious consideration

The one case with the strongest supporting evidence was the incident of a four-year-old boy who vanished from his African home. One year later, he was discovered and placed in a home for homeless children. The boy could not speak, and he had great difficulty understanding normal human relationships.

The family who managed the orphanage took the young lad into their home in an attempt to help him adjust to human society. When National Geographic learned that the boy was still alive and living with the same family who had taken him in to raise fourteen years earlier, they dispatched personnel to investigate his case.

They quickly learned that although he had made great strides in adjusting to human relationships, he was still unable to read or speak with any clarity. However, the young man was evidently happy, well-adjusted, and he excelled in all kinds of athletic activities.

The young man was examined by Dr. Charles Nelson, a Harvard pediatrics professor. Brain scans on the young man’s brain showed striking results. His brain was normal in all aspects except one: it indicated a large dark spot in the area of the brain, which is the center for speech and some learning processes. The brain scan indicated that his brain had developed normally in every way except in that area where his brain was not challenged by normal human contact.

Dr. Nelson explained that a child must be exposed to normal human identity and speech in the first four or five years of its life or forever lose it.

Our amazing brains continue to present us with startling new information on the irreducible complexity of the human brain and its abilities to perform ever-greater feats.

Incredible Idiot Savants 

            Our brains are so complex that they are incapable of comprehending themselves.  In spite of the many recent discoveries by neuroscientists, little is really understood about the scope and nature of cognition and the processes involved in thinking.  Equally enigmatic qualities of the human brain include a sense of moral values, aesthetic qualities, and the need for justice.

  Perhaps no greater example of the unfathomable nature of the brain exists than that which is evidenced in the mysterious phenomenon of idiot savants.   Idiot savants have subnormal mental abilities, yet they are blessed with exceptional talents that are impossible to explain.  

            Dr. J. Langdon Down, in 1887, was the first to describe savant syndrome.  He described a patient by the name of Edward Gibbons, who could recite The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire word for word.

            Another savant with phenomenal memory is a man named Kim Peek.  For example, Peek can pull a bit of information from memory about as fast as a computer can compute.  He read The Hunt for Red October by Tom Clancy in one hour and twenty-five minutes.  Four months later, he was able to give the name of the Russian radio operator, refer to page numbers involving the character, and to quote, verbatim, many passages in the book.  He reads a page in only eight to ten seconds and has memorized 9,000 books thus far.

            A much better known savant is Leslie Lemke.  In 1983, Lemke was featured on

60 Minutes.  He has also been seen on Walter Cronkite’s "Evening News" and Phil Donahue’s "That’s Incredible."  In addition, Lemke has performed in concerts throughout the United States, Japan, and by invitation for the Crown Prince and Princess in Norway.

          Born in Milwaukee in 1952, Lemke was given up for adoption at birth by his mother. As an infant, he had many insurmountable problems; however, adopted by a loving and devoted family, he received the best of care.  He suffered a retinal disease that required surgical removal of both eyes, and from serious brain damage. He had to be taught how to swallow his food and how to communicate by using various sounds.  Although he sings songs in four different languages, he never learned to talk

            Even as a child, Lemke was drawn to music and rhythm.  One time he was discovered under a bed, plucking the bed springs to produce a beautiful tune.  One morning his adoptive mother heard music and assumed the television had been left on.  When she investigated, however, she found Leslie sitting at the piano, playing from beginning to end, without a single error, Tchaikovsky’s "Piano Concerto No. 1."

            This young blind man who was mentally handicapped was brain damaged and had cerebral palsy was suddenly able to play flawlessly any tune he was privileged to hear one time; yet he never had a music lesson.   

Perhaps the most talented of all musical savants was a young black, blind,

severely retarded slave child by the name of Thomas Bethune, who grew up on a Georgia plantation owned by Colonel Bethune in the 1850s.

            Young Bethune was captivated by the piano playing of the colonel’s daughter.  One night the colonel was awakened by the sound of someone playing the piano.  When he investigated, he found four-year-old Tom playing flawlessly a Mozart sonata.  The

colonel cultivated young Bethune’s musical abilities, and when he was seven years old, the colonel took him on a concert tour, a tour which proved to be phenomenally successful.  Not only did Bethune know every piece of music that was available in that day, including Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Bach, Chopin, Verdi, Rossini, Donizetti, Gounod, and Meyerbeer, but he was also able to play any piece he heard only once.  

            Neuroscientists are at a loss for an explanation of the idiot savant syndrome.  The syndrome is a subject about which no theories are offered to explain such a mysterious function of the human mind. 

            How would Darwinists explain such a phenomenon when they argue that cognition and thinking processes are merely the result of electro-chemical functions in the brain?   How would they explain such a genius in one dimension who could function in no other?          

The Human Brain and Consciousness

A study of the mind incorporates all the disciplines of academia, including the

sciences, psychology, metaphysics and theology. The functions of the brain to produce a conscious sense of self and to comprehend the realities of our existence are at present beyond our understanding. Science and religion have variant explanations on the origin of our ability to sense reality.

According to Darwinian thinking, consciousness is merely a function of the brain which evolved in cognitive power over the eons of time. When it reached a certain level of development, man awakened to the consciousness of his existence, feelings, and needs.

Thomas Huxley argued, "Mind {or consciousness} is a function of matter, when that matter has attained a certain degree of organization." Darwinists reject any hint of a supernatural phenomenon attending man’s ability to sense reality and they insist that the mind is nothing more than a physical phenomenon.

One writer, Jeffrey Kurland, describes mankind as being "merely group-living

primates," and he argues that the mind is capable of being operationalized by the neurological functions of the brain to respond to some stimuli, while ignoring others, and to respond quickly when needed. "The mind prepares the organism for what will count in the world as stimulus, response, or reinforcement." This is a popular view held by humanistic scientists who agree with Kurland, "The nature of human beings is they have no nature."

Charles Darwin had many fears and doubts that his theory might not hold up to future scientific scrutiny. A. R. Wallace, a natural historian and an acquaintance of Charles Darwin, frequently exchanged letters with Darwin. Wallace tells how in a letter he wrote to Darwin in 1860 he made the statement, "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 was greatly distressed and wrote back, "I hope you have not murdered completely your own and my child." DeYoung states that Darwin had a great fear that his evolutionary theory would die because the human brain is vastly superior to that which he understood early man to have.

DeYoung also asks, "Why did the brain evolve with potential which never has been utilized to its fullest extent? This ‘murdered child’ threat greatly troubled Darwin in

his later years. Perplexed by what he observed, Darwin described the brain of even the lowly ant as the most remarkable speck of matter in the world."

Some creationists, such as Philip Hefner, hold firmly to their belief that the structure and functions of the brain reflect the nature and work of God. Hefner, however, quotes one writer who holds a different view: "Kurland’s conclusions are summarized in his succinct statement: ‘Darwin has eliminated the need for a God who created us. A creator is logically unnecessary because the Darwinian mechanism leaves nothing for such a God to do.’" In other words, man’s brain and consciousness are essentially one and the same—a product of evolution.

Many scientists, however, have expressed their belief in the separation of brain functions and mind functions. One scientist, Wilder Penfield, who is considered the father of modern neurosurgical procedures, explains why he changed his view of mind function as being strictly the result of neural activity, where neural synapses can fire up to ten million billion times a second. After performing surgery on more than a thousand patients with epilepsy, he discovered irrefutable evidence that the brain and mind are distinct from each other, although it is clear they react to each other. Another expert in neuroscience describes the studies of Penfield:

Penfield would stimulate electrically the proper motor cortex of conscious patients and challenge them to keep one hand from moving when the current was applied. The patient would seize this hand with the other hand and struggle to hold it still. Thus one hand under the control of the electrical current and the other hand under the control of the patient’s mind fought against each other. Penfield risked the explanation that the patient had not only a physical brain that was stimulated to action but also a nonphysical reality that interacted with the brain.

Some Darwinists not only assert their evolutionary views that mental processing is purely brain function, but they predict that science will eventually produce computers that will exceed the mental capabilities of the human brain. Ray Kurzweil, hailed as "the ultimate thinking machine" by Forbes magazine, suggests,

By 2019, a thousand-dollar computer will match the processing power of the human brain…By 2050, a thousand dollars of computer will equal the processing power of all human brains on Earth…Will these future machines be capable of having spiritual experiences? They certainly will claim to. They will claim to be people and to have the full range of emotional and spiritual experiences that people claim to have.

Our Human Soul

For hundreds of years, few people have doubted the biblical story of creation, but with the advance of humanistic philosophy and its naturalistic explanation for our existence, many have come to reject any consideration of the human soul as an immaterial entity. What is the soul? J.P. Mooreland is educated in both science and theology. He says that the soul is, "…the ego, the ‘I,’ or the self, and it contains our consciousness. It also animates our body. That’s why when the soul leaves the body, the body becomes a corpse. The soul is immaterial and distinct from the body." But Steven Pinker says, "The ‘soul’ is, in fact, the information processing activity of the brain. New imaging techniques have tied every thought and emotion to a neural activity."

William Dembski laments, "Virtually every discipline and endeavor is presently under a naturalistic pall." Daniel Dennett suggested that Darwinism is a 'universal acid' that has dramatically changed every aspect of Western civilization." Dembski says, "Dennet is right. Darwin gave us a creation story, one in which God was absent and undirected natural processes did all the work."

Recent advances in molecular biology have facilitated a greater understanding of human physiology on the cellular level, and much has been learned about the nature and function of our brain. President George Bush decreed that the 1990s be "the Decade of the Brain," and we have observed the fulfillment of that declaration ever since. The neurosciences are rapidly becoming known in more scientific circles. One prominent neuroscientist is Dr. James Ashbrook, who, with Carol Rausch Allbright, authored the book, The Humanizing Brain. Dr. Ashbrook’s studies of human consciousness have led him to see an ethereal reality in the psyche of man, which he calls "the human soul."

Ashbrook argues for his belief that our humanizing brains mediate between scientific causality and religious meaning. He sees our self-organization and complexity as relational to that which the entire universe seems to lead. That self-organizing system is a function both in our selves and in the universe. He writes,

The humanizing brain holds together scientific causality and religious meaning, working both bottom-up (linking the physical and the experiential) and top-down (beginning with the whole of things, or God). These processes we know as "mind" (experienced as intentionality, subjective consciousness, empathy, imagination, memory, adaptability)...the human brain is the most complex entity, for its size, that we know of in the universe, and for that reason we see it as a premiere expression of the central tendency toward complexification in our universe. We believe the explorations of the nature of our brain can help us better to understand "the ways things really are"—in our brain and in our world.

Ashbrook further postulates,

The concept of the humanizing brain offers a perspective for integrating notions of ourselves and our place in the universe. This perspective deals with nature as the context of life, history as the content of humanity, and God as the criterion of what matters in the life of humanity.

There are many phenomenal experiences associated with our consciousness that are difficult to explain or define. For centuries, people have reported instances of having a sense of the presence of a Supreme Being. Darrell R. Falk tells of his experience: "As a young person, I saw what seemed like the Presence of God in those around me, and I came to admire and love that Presence."

Evolutionists, however, deny any spiritual aspects of man’s physiological nature, insisting that over the eons of time man has evolved from lower species through a process of successive, random changes.

Stephen Meyers, Director and Senior Fellow of the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture in Seattle, emphasizes that, "Virtually all origin-of-life experts have utterly rejected that approach." There is no sound scientific data that proves that theory. In fact, quite the opposite is true; there is ample evidence to refute such beliefs. Henry Morris says, "Evolutionists now agree (with the Bible) that ‘God hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth’" (Acts 17:26).

Although many evolutionists are now in practically complete agreement that all present groups of men came originally from one single population of ancestral men, they are currently in complete disarray as to exactly what that lineage may have been.

Ashbrook’s studies have led him to see a strong relationship between man’s nature and the nature of the universe. He writes,

The new brain—the neocortex—seems to employ an ordering and organizing power that uncannily resembles the order in the universe. The pattern-making consciousness of the cognitive brain suggests God’s creative power in ordering a universe whose vastness exceeds our comprehension. Its linguistic ability interprets the 'Word of God.'

The Bible clearly states that everyone is born with an innate sense of the presence of God. Romans 1:19-20 says, "That which is known about God is evident within them (men). For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made…" (NAS).

This passage presents two basic, fundamental truths. First, God created man with an inherent sense of His existence. God put it there—in the heart of every individual, and it requires a resolute refusal to accept that inherent truth in order to deny the reality of God’s existence and creation.

Secondly, as Ashbrook suggests, God has given us visual evidence of his existence by that which is observed in creation. This enables us to see the invisible things of God as evidenced by the visible creation. With our eyes we observe the beauty, the reality, the orderliness and purposefulness of creation; with our minds we

rightly reason that these could never have happened by chance, but by divine plan and

purpose.

Psalms 19:1-4, reads,

The heavens are telling of the glory of God, and their expanse is declaring the work of His hands. Day to day pours forth speech, and night to night reveals knowledge. There is no speech (language), nor are there words; their voice is not heard. Their line has gone out through all the earth, and their utterances to the end of the world. In them He has placed a tent for the sun.

This passage from Psalms presents the fact that some aspects of God are seen in the broad expanse of our universe, which plainly shows the handiwork of God, and this message is broadcast to all the people, of every language, of every nation on earth.

James Nelson says, "There is a physical basis of religion in that the way the brain has evolved makes possible the religious meaning of human experience. The brain grows out of and reflects the universe. The brain is an icon of God."

The debate goes on. Most Darwinian scientists vehemently reject the possibility of any intelligent design in nature. They point to the capabilities of modern science to map and alter the nature of human experience by using brain imaging as indicating a physical seat for the will and passions. These challenge the religious community with their concept of a soul that is independent of human organ functions.

Unfortunately, many theistic thinkers attempt to harmonize traditional theological concepts with some so called "scientific truths" of evolution. One of the most influential books written on this subject is Body and Soul: Human Nature and the Crisis in Ethics by J.P. Moreland and Scott B. Rae. In J. Lanier Burns review of this book, he points out that Moreland's book is a:

Rigorous polemic against ‘the prevailing winds of secularity, scientism and physicalism’ (p. 345), as well as ‘the bandwagon fallacy’ among many Christian intellectuals of ‘taking a position against dualism in order to fit in with the majority of secular thinkers (p.23). Accordingly, many Christian scholars have supported ‘complementarity’ (The view that science and religion are noninteracting, complementary descriptions of reality,p.8"). These unwitting ‘friends’ of scientism are a primary target of the book.

Look not on the things which are seen,but on the things which are not seen. For the things which are seenare temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.2 Corinthians 4:18

Maintaining a healthy balance of the body calls for a multi-dimensional, interwoven network of several independent systems operating interdependently on a cellular level. Howard Glickman writes,

In order for the human body to sustain life, an adequate supply of blood must reach every cell in the body. Each cell must be continuously supplied with essential nutrients that are carried by the blood and at the same time waste products of metabolism must be removed from the cells. The body circulates about five liters of blood, which is continually flowing throughout the body by an extensive ne

twork of roughly 60,000 miles of blood vessels. This distance is equivalent to approximately two and a half times the distance around the earth.

Paul Brand suggests a metaphor that would help us understand the enormity of man’s circulatory system. He writes,

He explains that such a pipeline actually exists inside each of our human bodies. It is the broad, expansive network of blood vessels which serves the needs of "one hundred trillion cells in the human body."

Products that are constantly circulating through our "human pipeline" to every cell in our bodies include oxygen, nitrogen, sodium, calcium, potassium, magnesium, sugars, fats, cholesterols, and various hormones and enzymes. Additionally, the same pipeline that transports nutrients to cells carries away carbon dioxide, urea, and other waste products of metabolism. The central force behind our circulatory system is the heart. The heart is relatively a small organ—roughly the size of one’s fist. It is actually a double pump, or a dual-circuit system, for the heart is made up of two kinds of chambers: the atria and the ventricles. The two upper chambers of the heart (the atria) contract at the same time to force blood into the ventricles, which then contract simultaneously to propel the blood out into two different pathways—arteries and veins.

Gillen explains, "To prevent back-flow of blood in the heart, the Creator integrated a series of one-way valves into the heart that work flawlessly together to keep blood moving in the right direction, these valves, known collectively as the "A-V valves" (atrioventricular valves) separate the atria and the ventricles."

Gillen draws attention to the fact that the pulsating rhythm of the heart, as well as the resultant centrifugal flow of blood from the heart into the blood vessels, is under autonomic (involuntary) control of the brain. The heart propels approximately 2,000 gallons of blood every day, which adds up to 680,000 gallons in a year’s time.

The body’s circulatory system is comprised of three distinct parts: pulmonary circulation (lungs), coronary circulation (heart) and systemic circulation (the rest of the body). Blood is pumped from the heart through the pulmonary artery into the lungs where it takes on oxygen. The lungs contain narrow passageways, called "bronchioles," which transport air to the alveoli (air containing compartments), where oxygen is transferred through thousands of minute alveolar chambers into the blood. The blood is then returned to the heart via the pulmonary veins, where it is distributed to the heart muscles itself by way of a network of coronary arteries, and then forced on out through the aorta to be distributed throughout the rest of the body.

Additionally, from the top of the aortic arch, two arteries exit to carry blood to the brain and head. Another subsystem of circulatory vessels carries blood from the body through the kidneys. In the kidneys, the blood is circulated through a complex system of convoluted tubules that filter out various waste products of metabolism to be eliminated from the body through the execretory system.

Gillen says,

Arteries transport blood to all the cells of the body; veins carry blood from the cells. As the blood is being carried to the cells, it is rich in oxygen, which gives the blood its bright red color. As the blood is being carried from the cells, it is rendered a purplish color because the blood has expended its oxygen content and taken on carbon dioxide and other waste products from cells throughout the body.

One of the most astounding features in the structure of blood vessels that clearly demonstrates the handiwork of an Intelligent Designer was discovered by a British scientist at the Imperial College in London, England. He discovered that "the blood vessels pathways were designed with a spiraling effect built in. The gentle spiraling

makes the blood flow more evenly compared to straight vessels." Such a design has been found to reduce turbulence in the blood flow.

Oxygenation of Blood

Oxygen is carried to the cells of the body by way of  erythrocytes (red blood cells) that contain a substance called hemoglobin, which has an affinity for oxygen. A unique aspect of red blood cells is their unique shape—they have a biconcave structure. Gillen reports,

Enigmatic Blood Clotting

Blood clotting is an astonishingly complex process, one which Michael Behe refers to as being "irreducibly complex," a term which has gendered much consternation in the scientific community. Behe defines "irreducible complexity" as "a single system composed of several well-matched, interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, wherein the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning."

Behe uses the common household mousetrap to illustrate his point. He points out that a mousetrap has five parts: a platform, a hammer, a holding bar, a spring, and a catch.

Obviously the device could not function if all five parts were not in place and each performed its particular role in the proper sequence of order.

When a blood vessel is damaged, a chain of events begins to occur in order to stop the loss of blood. Glicksman describes the initial stages of the body’s autonomic response.

Platelets normally circulate in the bloodstream without interacting with each other or other blood components. However, when platelets are exposed to certain stimuli, such as an injury to a blood vessel, it becomes activated and begins to stick to other cells nearby to initiate the clotting process.

Following activation of the platelets’ emergency response, the multi-dimensional processes involved in blood clotting continue. Gillen notes,

In order to visualize the principles outlined above, let us suppose thirty dominoes, each standing on end, were carefully lined up and spaced where if one domino falls over, it will cause the next one to fall over, and so on until all the dominoes have been turned over. Now let us add to that imagined setup a further condition that requires a different chain of events for each of the thirty dominoes that must occur before that domino can fall. Each domino falls only after all the non-random chain of events has been successfully completed, allowing the next domino to initiate the next stage of the cascade, and so on, until all thirty dominoes have been turned over. This is a crude, over-simplified explanation, but it should serve to illustrate what Behe means by the term "irreducible complexity."

Another factor that plays a major role in the blood clotting process is thrombin, a substance secreted by the liver, which slices little pieces from fibrinogen, resulting in the formation of fibrin. Gillen says,

In the same manner that platelets must be activated by other stimuli and fibrinogen must be converted to fibrin by the activation of thrombin, many other similar factors must be activated in a multi-level, step-by-step process. Each step must occur in the proper sequence, at the proper time, and must be completed perfectly in order for the formation of a blood clot to plug the leak from damaged blood vessels.

It should be noted that if fibrinogen were not activated properly, at the precise time and in the proper sequence, all the blood in the body could clot, resulting in death. On the other hand, if the clot formed in the wrong place, it could also lead to disastrous results such as a heart attack. How could anyone believe that such perfection in design and function could have come about through an evolutionary process?

Glicksman argues it should be evident that the cascade of properly controlled processes in the body to stop bleeding, such as vasoconstriction, platelet role, and the activation of clotting factors, clearly demonstrate irreducible complexity. And also, within each one of these components exists an irreducibly complex system of proteins, receptors and other chemicals that are all absolutely necessary for each of these components to function adequately. The presence of similar systems in similar or even divergent organisms, although interesting to note, does not even begin to explain how they came into being, and just as importantly, how they were able to function adequately to allow for survival.

Our circulatory system is uniquely designed and finely tuned to provide a perfect distribution of substances needed by every cell in the human body, which enables every organ in the body to function in its life-sustaining role. Could such a system possibly have developed by a process of random changes over eons of time?