#86 The Tongue

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There must be God.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

#85 Spontaneous Generation

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There must be God.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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