Thank God for pain...nobody ever said.
However, you are about to learn why we can in fact recognize
that a loving God created us because we have the incredible ability that allows
us to feel pain.
There are about 20 documented cases of American children
born with a genetic defect called “congenital insensitivity to pain.” It makes
them unable to feel pain. One parent called it a “living hell”.
“Congenital insensitivity to pain
(CIP), also known as congenital analgesia, is one or more rare conditions in
which a person cannot feel (and has never felt) physical pain. ... Despite
sounding beneficial, it is actually an extremely dangerous condition.” [1]
Here is a link to the video of a little girl on Oprah’s show.
“She poked out her own eye, chewed her skin raw and bit her tongue until it
bled. Five-year-old Gabby Gingras feels no pain. As someone who has no nerves
to carry the pain signal from her skin to her brain, she's one of the rarest
little girls in the country.” [2]
There is also Ashlyn Blocker. “Ashlyn walked over and put
her hands on the muffler. When she lifted them up the skin was seared away.
There was one story about the fire ants that swarmed her in the backyard,
biting her over a hundred times while she looked at them and yelled: “Bugs!
Bugs!” There was the time she broke her ankle and ran around on it for two days
before her parents realized something was wrong.” [3]
Here is a link to the story of Isaac Brown. [4] He broke his
pelvis and did not know it. One day he was found pounding on a door with a
piece of broken glass. No pain. He once put his hand on a hot stove burner. No
pain. He had to be taught that “blood is bad”.
Dr. Stephen Waxman, a leading researcher on this condition,
blames the problem on mutation and says that probably just one gene out of
30,000 has been messed up. [5] Evolutionists should listen to themselves if
they say a mutation is what causes this horrendous problem. And then watch them
try to say with total belief in Evolution that mutation is the miraculous
process that gave us all good things.
At the beginning of May of this year, I hurt a vertebrae in
my spine and was in bed for two and a half weeks with excruciating pain. During
that time, I was not thanking God actually. But I did think a lot about pain. You
would think that with two and half weeks in bed that I could get a lot of
reading and such done. Not actually. I could only think in a straight line for
a few seconds at a time. Then the pain would return and the only thing I could
think of was how to adjust my body to alleviate some of the pain. I spent most
of the time thinking about how to get out of pain. When you are in pain, it overrules everything else.
Our ability to feel pain is phenomenal in its complexity. It
is unbelievable in its accuracy. The sensitivity to the damage, vicinity, and
seriousness of an injury is way better than you could imagine if you designed
it yourself.
There are several different pain receptors, but they, in
fact, work together to report the intensity and severity of the damage that has
been done. “Every square centimeter of your skin contains around 200 pain
receptors but only 15 receptors for pressure, 6 for cold and 1 for warmth.” [6]
Think about that…200 receptors for pain in a square
centimeter. Each one of them connected to your brain.
There are two different types of nerve cells lined up end to
end that report pain to your brain. They even use completely different types of
pathways to get to your brain. Two different centers in your brain do the
interpretation of the pain signals.
“The conscious perception of pain
probably takes place in the thalamus and lower centers; interpretation of the
quality of pain is probably the role of the cerebral cortex.”[7]
In other words you have more than one system in your body
for reporting pain. Think about how two systems to accomplish the same function
could have possibly evolved separately and accidentally.
“Pain travels through redundant pathways,
ensuring to inform the subject: “Get out of this situation immediately.”
Without these attributes, the organism has no means to prevent or minimize
tissue injury.” [8]
“Pain from the skin is transmitted
through two types of nerve fibers. A-delta fibers relay sharp, pricking types
of pain, while C fibers carry dull aches and burning sensations. Pain impulses
are relayed to the spinal cord, where they interact with special neurons that
transmit signals to the thalamus and other areas of the brain.” [9]
Wikipedia writers believe in Evolution and make this
statement in their article, “human awareness of painful stimuli is an
evolutionary necessity to avoid injury and death.” Well, duh.
But just exactly HOW does the Theory of Evolution describe
the development of your pain recognition system? I did not find any answers to
my question, only a lot of descriptions of the history of pain research.
Evolution says there must have been a slow and gradual process of random
mutations that were beneficial. So somehow a receptor for pain accidentally
mutated into existence and that was beneficial enough to spread all over our
bodies and then be inherited to all mankind.
Although, think about this, it must have taken millions of
more mutations before the nerve chain (of hundreds or thousands of nerves) developed
to get the signal to our brains which then somehow learned to recognize the
signal as pain.
How could pain receptors somehow mutate everywhere, completely
covering our bodies? But somehow they did not cover our bodies equally since
certain areas have more receptors than others. Luckily the most pain receptors
are in exactly the places where we need them most.
But the story is much more complicated. There are actually
four different types of pain receptors in the skin. How could that evolve?
“Skin nociceptors (i.e. pain) may be divided into four
categories based on function.
The first type is termed high threshold mechanonociceptors or specific nociceptors. These nociceptors
respond only to intense mechanical stimulation such as pinching, cutting or
stretching.
The second type is the thermal
nociceptors, which respond to the above stimuli as well as to thermal stimuli. (i.e.
hot or cold)
The third type is chemical
nociceptors, which respond only to chemical substances.
A fourth type is known as polymodal nociceptors, which respond to high intensity stimuli such
as mechanical, thermal and to chemical substances like the previous three
types.” [10]
There is a great amount of research and information
available if you want to continue to study about pain. For example, scientists
have been able to distinguish 22 degrees of “Just Noticeable Differences” in
applying heat to our skin. This article, as you can see is just scratching the
surface.
Also it’s a fact your body has pain receptors everywhere,
not only on your skin, but also in all of your joints, your arteries, and
inside your body connected to all your various organs. There are different
types of pain sensors in these areas as well. Did all this evolve slowly and
gradually? Not likely.
"The distribution of pain
receptors in the gastrointestinal mucosa apparently is similar to that in the
skin; thus, the mucosa is quite sensitive to irritation and other painful
stimuli. Although the parenchyma of the liver and the alveoli of the lungs are
almost entirely insensitive to pain, the liver and bile ducts are extremely
sensitive, as are the bronchi and parietal pleura." [11]
Let me highlight one more amazing ability we have which
defies Evolution, our reflexes. If you put your hand on a hot surface, you will
pull it off immediately, even before the signal gets to your brain. Similar
reflexes exist connected to all of our pain receptors. The neurons from our
pain receptors to our brains all go through our spinal cord. But there is a
short circuit process if the pain is intense. There are nerves directly from
the spine to our muscles that make them pull away from any pain source. Our
brain is bypassed. Is there really a way for this to evolve slowly and
gradually?
Nobody likes pain, but what an incredible blessing it is
that we have the ability to feel it. If not, we would be constantly injuring
ourselves in terrible ways and have really shortened lives. When we experience
pain, we are strongly driven to do something about it and to get it to stop.
Looking at the whole pain perceiving ability, it totally testifies to having
been designed.
For a related study, read my Proof for God #70 Healing [12].
The process of healing is another total miracle that had to be designed.
There must be God.
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[1] Wikipedia, Congenital insensitivity to pain, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congenital_insensitivity_to_pain
[2] The Oprah Winfrey Show, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqRcngt0-h0
[3] Heckertnov, Justin, The Hazards of Growing Up
Painlessly, The New York Times Magazine. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/18/magazine/ashlyn-blocker-feels-no-pain.html?_r=0
[4] Mohney, Gillian, Good Morning America, Meet the Child
Who Feels No Pain, Oct. 25, 2013,
[5] Mohney, Gillian, Good Morning America, Meet the Child
Who Feels No Pain, Oct. 25, 2013,
[6] How Many Pain Receptors, http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/body/factfiles/touch/touch.shtml
[8] Dafny, Nachum, Department of Neurobiology and Anatomy,
The UT Medical School at Houston, "Pain Principles", http://neuroscience.uth.tmc.edu/s2/chapter06.html
[9] Touch, Article, http://psychology.jrank.org/pages/634/Touch.html
[10] Dafny, Nachum, Department of Neurobiology and Anatomy,
The UT Medical School at Houston, "Pain Principles", http://neuroscience.uth.tmc.edu/s2/chapter06.html
[12] Stephens, Jim, Proof for God #70 Healing, http://101proofsforgod.blogspot.com/2014/10/70-healing.html
The Gift of Pain is a great read Jim. Along with the Gift of Fear. Thanks for your articles.
ReplyDeleteYou bring a new found insight into my life. Thank you.
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