#61 Muscles

If you are a fan of any sport, I’m sure you are amazed by what human beings can do. How strong and how fast they are and how coordinated they can move is astounding. It is almost incomprehensible that their eyes can see a ball moving over 100 miles an hour and through the brain coordinate their arms, legs, and hands to catch or hit that ball with precision. Also, I’m sure you know that many animals are capable of feats that humans cannot begin to duplicate.

All of these movements are accomplished by specialized cells called muscles.

If you do an Internet search for “evolution of muscles”, you will come up with almost nothing. The articles have totally speculative statements or are just a description of a supposed sequence of development, but there is no explanation. If they are honest, they will admit they have no idea of the origins of muscles. For example, “The structure and function of vertebrate striated muscle, which can be contracted at will, has been studied in detail, but its evolutionary history remains obscure.” [1] Here is another, “While the structure and function of muscles, especially of vertebrates, have been intensively studied, the evolutionary origin of smooth and striated muscles has so far been enigmatic.” [2] Even Wikipedia, which is pro-evolution, admits this with a disclaimer at the top. “This article has multiple issues.” [3]

The tiniest movements we make, like the “jitter” of each eye over 30 times a second [4], like every beat of your heart, like large jumps with your legs, are all accomplished by muscle(s). Every time your mind wants your body to do something, it calls on specific muscles to accomplish it.

Not only movements, but our minds have so many emotions they need to be able to express. So our faces are designed with all the muscles we need for that. Why would all those facial expressions we can make be necessary in order to be the fittest to survive as evolutionists claim?

I like this description from How Stuff Works. “Because muscles are so crucial to any animal, they are incredibly sophisticated. They are efficient at turning fuel into motion, they are long-lasting, they are self-healing and they are able to grow stronger with practice. They do everything from allowing you to walk to keeping your blood flowing!” [5]

Many things inside your body happen automatically to keep you alive, but they happen without you having to think about it. Muscles move your food down your esophagus, through your stomach and intestines, and all the way out. Your lungs suck in air. Your heart beats almost every second. This is all done by muscles.

Wikipedia has a list of 642 “skeletal muscles” which are the ones controlled by our consciousness and the list includes their location in the body and their purpose. [6] But some other sources may count muscles differently and come up with as many as 850.

Muscles exist in 320 pairs. According to Wikipedia’s sources, “almost every muscle constitutes one part of a pair of identical bilateral muscles, found on both sides,...” [7] Remember this point. It will be important later.

There are 3 distinct types of muscles.

            Skeletal muscles, also called “voluntary”, are ones which can be controlled by the mind. These are the 642 mentioned above.

            Smooth muscles, or “involuntary”, are ones which we cannot control. They are contained in our digestive system (esophagus, stomach, intestines), blood vessels, bladder, bronchi (lungs), arrector pili (skin), and, in females, the uterus (childbirth).

            Cardiac muscle is found only in the heart and is very unique. The cells are specially designed and connected so they can all contract at the same time at the command of cells called “pacemaker” cells in the heart.

42% of a man’s body mass is muscle. For women it is 36%. While we are on the subject, it could be noted that men and women have many differences in their muscle systems, particularly in the reproductive area. If you want some fascinating reading sometime, check out how the uterus works.

The Skeletal muscles can be further subdivided into “slow twitch” or “fast twitch” muscles. The slow twitch muscles contract for a long time but with little force. The fast twitch muscles can contract rapidly and with strong force. The fast twitch muscles are even subdivided into 3 more categories.

Muscles are made up of many, many muscle cells which are arranged together in bundles inside a sheath called a sarcolemma. Furthermore, many of these sheaths are again bound together in a large bundle which is surrounded by another sheath called a fascicle. Then again many fascicles are bound together in another sheath called an epimysium. This reminds me of the steel cables used to make the Golden Gate Bridge. This design gives amazing strength.

Inside every muscle there are numerous arteries and veins to bring blood with oxygen and nutrition and carry away waste products. There are also many nerve endings coming all the way from the brain that initiate contractions. There are also many mitochondria in the cells to process oxygen, fats, and carbohydrates as fuel for energy.

The whole process of chemical reactions and how a muscle is able to contract and relax is super complicated and over my head. But you can research the details yourself if you are interested.

Common sense will tell you that our muscles were designed by a super intelligence. The abilities of man-made robots are miniscule in comparison.

Remember I noted that muscles all come in pairs. If you put your arm out, you need a complementary muscle to pull it back. If you look up, you need a complementary muscle to pull your eye back down. If you step forward, you need a complementary muscle to keep you from falling over.

If there is no God, and all muscles came about by accident, mutation, and natural selection, how can you account for complementary pairs of muscles? Mutation would have to guess right 340 times. Suppose you evolve a muscle (which isn’t easy) that will move your arm out. What good is that? How many generations will it take with all people having their arms hanging out until some individual evolves a muscle to bring his arm back in. If it’s a man, he has to wait for a woman to also evolve that same muscle to pull in her arm, find her, marry her, and have children. Then they become the Adam and Eve for all mankind because we all have both those muscles. All the people without both those muscles have died out. Oops, I almost forgot that we have to repeat that process 339 more times to account for all the pairs in our bodies. And that’s just the voluntary muscles. How we could possibly evolve the cardiac and involuntary muscles is still not accounted for.

Remember evolving a muscle is not going to be simple. You have got to also evolve the nerves (connected to the brain) and arteries and veins (connected to the heart) inside the muscle and then surround it all with 3 layers of sheathing. You also have to evolve the tendons to connect the muscles to your bones. This is not even in the realm of possibility.

Natural Selection would theoretically prevent the evolution of muscle pairs anyway. Survival of the fittest would eliminate single muscles before their complementary muscle could evolve. You can’t close your eyes and not be able to open them. If you stick out your arm and can’t bring it back, you would not be one of the fittest that could survive.

I’ve already discussed in other posted articles the explanations of how mutation [8] and natural selection [9] have never been shown to be processes that can produce new species. So to, they are not processes that can even begin to explain how muscles originated either.

We discussed human muscles above, but every other species of mammal, fish, birds, and insects has muscles as well. Most all of those muscles are in pairs. We’re talking about several million species that would have had to evolve their own unique muscles to accommodate their unique skeletons.

All those species also have hearts and involuntary muscles as well. Those would all have to evolve separately too inside every animal species. This is astronomically impossible.

Think about involuntary muscles for a minute. If evolution were true, then at some point before our lungs worked automatically we would have to think “breath in, breath out,” all the time. Ridiculous. Before our esophagus evolved to automatically push our food down, we would have to think about it. At what point after many generations of evolution did we have to stop telling our stomach to move the food along and our lungs start breathing on their own? Equally ridiculous. It was all in place from the beginning or we would have died out as a species.

What about the cardiac muscle in the heart? How did that muscle accidentally “evolve” and start beating. At what point did the arteries and veins get connected and then blood was created to move around the body or up to the lungs for oxygen and back again?

The masterpiece of the human body is not the result of ad hoc, random additions over many generations.

It was designed from the beginning.

There must be God.

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[1] Evolution of muscles, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, http://www.en.uni-muenchen.de/news/newsarchiv/2012/2012_woerheide.html

[2] Searching for the origin of muscles, Science Daily,   http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/06/120628145626.htm

[3] Muscular evolution in humans, Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muscular_evolution_in_humans

[4] Proof for God #45, The EYE, http://101proofsforgod.blogspot.com/2013/11/45-eye.html

[5] How Muscles Work, How Stuff Works website, http://health.howstuffworks.com/human-body/systems/musculoskeletal/muscle.htm

[6] List of muscles of the human body, Wikipedia,   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_muscles_of_the_human_body

[7] List of muscles of the human body, Wikipedia,   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_muscles_of_the_human_body

[8] Proof for God #27, The Truth About Mutation, http://101proofsforgod.blogspot.com/2013/02/27-truth-about-mutation.html

#60 Water

Of all the treasures that we could talk about on earth, the number one most valuable substance is water. Every living being requires water. As a matter of fact, every living cell requires water.

The water molecule is so unique and special among all substances. It is so finely tuned and ideally suited to foster the existence of life that it is impossible to rationally conclude it was a cosmic accident. It is much easier to accept that it was miraculously designed.

A water molecule is totally different from the normal properties that would be expected from the patterns of similar compounds in the Periodic Table of Elements. Its freezing temperature and boiling point are way too high. It should be a gas at room temperatures. It should turn from ice to liquid at around -100°C (instead of 0°C) and then from liquid to gas at around -80°C (instead of 100°C). This would mean almost all the water on Earth would not exist (and neither would we).

Water is everywhere on Earth, covering 71% [1] of the Earth’s surface. “Earth is the only known planet to have bodies of liquid water on its surface.”[2] No other planet in the known universe has even the tiniest fraction of this much water. Think about the implications of that truth and the specialness of our “home” in the vast universe.

This much water allows for gigantic numbers of species to live in the water, especially the tiny life giving organisms like algae and plankton which produce a lot of the oxygen and nutrition for most species. “It is estimated that marine plants produce between 70 and 80 percent of the oxygen in the atmosphere.” [3]

What is the origin of water? It is so absolutely essential to all life that without water there could never have been any life. The properties of water are so chemically unusual and yet so absurdly complementary and coordinated with life that it is impossible to conceive that this is an accidental relationship. The most rational conclusion is that water and life were designed.

All of your needs for Oxygen, down to the last cell, are provided by the water in our blood. The way you get rid of Carbon Dioxide is provided by water. Water does the same thing for plants, but in reverse.

Even the smallest variation in any of the properties of water would be the end of us. It is all functioning miraculously on the tiniest cellular level.

“If the angle between hydrogen atoms in the water molecule were different, there would be no complex life-giving molecules, and no life on earth.” [4]

This property is one of my favorites. When water freezes, it expands. Only a small handful of other substances do that. But because it does that, frozen water, i.e. ice, floats. The density of ice is almost ten times lighter than liquid water. [5] If water were a normal compound, its frozen form would sink. But imagine if ice were to sink, then in winter when all the lakes would freeze, then the ice would sink to the bottom. Then new water on the top of the lake would freeze and sink to the bottom. Soon the whole lake from the bottom up would be frozen solid, killing all the fish and plants. When could it ever thaw out? It would take a really long time if ever with the sun only melting the ice on the surface. But fortunately that’s not what happens because of how water is designed. The ice floats and actually provides a protective layer against the cold for all life under the surface. Doesn’t that sound like it was designed by a brilliant, loving intelligence that was concerned for the life it created?

You probably realize cooler water sinks. This creates what is called “stratification”. You might have noticed this when swimming in a lake, that the water down deeper is colder. However, when water becomes ice it rises to the top. This causes a churning effect in the spring and fall that circulates and oxygenates the lake waters. That effect is very beneficial for plant and animal life in the lakes. Also because the warmer water stays on top, the sun’s heat cannot penetrate so deeply that it would harm the animal and plant life below.

An important property of water due to hydrogen bonding is called “cohesion”. The hydrogen atoms are constantly bonding and breaking bonds in tiny fractions of a second. “Cohesion due to hydrogen bonding contributes to the formation of waves and other water movements that occur in lakes. Water movements are integral components of the lake system and play an important role in the distribution of temperature, dissolved gases, and nutrients. These movements also determine the distribution of microorganisms and plankton.” [6]

Water has a high degree of surface tension. This also creates a protection effect, not only for lakes and oceans, but even in our own bodies. “Water has a greater surface tension than all other liquids except mercury.” [7] That surface tension is what makes water drops take the shape of spheres. Water falling from the sky takes the shape of drops. These can act like little bullets to penetrate and refresh plant life and the earth. They can dissolve and wash away toxins. It mixes up soils and fertilizes. It erodes rocks over time, making soil. It churns the oceans, benefitting fish and plant life.

Water rains down to the earth to nourish all life. It then flows towards streams and rivers to the sea where it evaporates and goes back into the atmosphere to repeat the cycle. The unidirectional flow of water in the evaporation/condensation cycle enables water all over the earth to continuously cleanse itself and renew the earth and all forms of life.

When water is heated in hot climates, the water vapor can carry large amounts of heat energy away to cooler locations and then release it in the form of rain. This cools the hotter climates and warms the colder ones, while at the same time refreshing and oxygenating the atmosphere.

"Water is called the ‘universal solvent’ because it dissolves more substances than any other liquid. This means that wherever water goes, either through the ground or through our bodies, it takes along valuable chemicals, minerals, and nutrients." [8] This allows water to carry nutrition throughout your body to every one of your 100 trillion cells. It also allows the water to extract the waste products from your cells and carry them to the organ that is designed to eliminate them.

Colloidal action is another special property of water. The inherent vibration by the H₂O molecules pushes around any dissolved substances so they are evenly distributed throughout the water.

Capillary action and surface tension are also important properties. This means that water goes into the tiniest of cracks and crevices automatically. This makes your life so much easier because your heart does not have to provide huge amounts of force to get your blood to circulate through all the tiny capillaries to supply all your cells. Blood carries nutrients to every cell in the bodies of all animals and then removes waste products. Water in the sap in trees and plants carries nutrients for their life.

“Water also has the ability to pass through cell membranes and climb great heights in plants and trees through osmosis and capillary force. Osmotic pressure and capillary action enable water to climb hundreds of feet to the tops of the highest trees. The mystery of osmosis enables plants to feed, and plants and animals to carry on a multitude of life processes.  Osmosis enables marine creatures to absorb fresh water in an increasing salt-water environment.” [9]

Water has a highest heat capacity of any liquid, [10] meaning it can absorb relatively huge amounts of heat. This means it is slow to increase in temperature and to eventually boil. It also releases heat very slowly. The whole planet and everything on it benefits from this. The sand on the beach can get so hot you can’t walk on it, but the ocean stays cool and doesn’t turn to steam.

The oceans keep our entire environment from getting way too hot and conversely from getting way too cold. Water makes a “womb” for all life, a protective habitat. It’s almost analogous to the female womb that lovingly supports the growth of new life. Near large bodies of water, the winters are warmer and the summers are cooler.

Because water can absorb great amounts of heat and our bodies are mostly water, it means our body temperature is much easier to regulate and there are not huge swings to deal with. Our body even has a mechanism to release sweat that will evaporate from our skin taking heat with it and keeping us cooler.

“"More energy is required to evaporate liquid water than most other substances. To evaporate each gram of water at room temperature, about 580 calories of heat are needed, which is nearly double the amount needed to vaporize a gram of alcohol or ammonia." [11]

Water remains a liquid over a very large range (0°C to 100°C, 32°F to 212°F). Most other substances have a much shorter range between solid and gaseous states. This range allows life to exist over a large spectrum of temperatures.

One source noted that water has "at least twenty-one anomalies, properties that the laws of chemistry and physics say it should not have." [12]

This doesn’t cover all the amazing properties of water, but let’s get to the point. Does this prove that God exists? Suppose every morning when you wake up, you go outside your front door and there waiting for you is exactly all the food and water that you will need for the day to live. The next day the same. The day after that the same. It never fails. All your essential needs are provided for in exactly the right proportions. If any of the ingredients were to vary slightly, you would starve or die of thirst. Could this be just a cosmic accident? The odds are so infinitesimally small as to be non-existent.

There must be God.

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[1] How much water is there on, in, and above the Earth? U. S. Geological Survey http://water.usgs.gov/edu/earthhowmuch.html

[2] Are there oceans on other planets? National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, U. S. Dept. of Commerce. http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/et-oceans.html

[3] The Most Important Organism? http://www.ecology.com/2011/09/12/important-organism/

[4] Twenty Three Unique Properties of Water. http://www.intelligentdesigntheory.info/unique_properties_of_water.htm

[5] What happens to marine life when a lake or pond is frozen? http://www.myuniversalfacts.com/2005/12/what-happens-to-marine-life-when-lake.html

[6] Student Reading - The Unique Properties of Water. (The ensuing discussion is adapted from Campbell, N.A. 1996. Biology (4th edition))  http://www.waterontheweb.org/curricula/bs/student/water/unique.html

[7] Student Reading - The Unique Properties of Water. (The ensuing discussion is adapted from Campbell, N.A. 1996. Biology (4th edition))  http://www.waterontheweb.org/curricula/bs/student/water/unique.html

[8] Water Properties and Measurements, U. S. Geological Survey. http://ga.water.usgs.gov/edu/waterproperties.html

[9] Twenty Three Unique Properties of Water. http://www.intelligentdesigntheory.info/unique_properties_of_water.htm

[10] Water Properties and Measurements, U. S. Geological Survey. http://ga.water.usgs.gov/edu/waterproperties.html

[11] Student Reading - The Unique Properties of Water. (The ensuing discussion is adapted from Campbell, N.A. 1996. Biology (4th edition))  http://www.waterontheweb.org/curricula/bs/student/water/unique.html

[12] Twenty Three Unique Properties of Water. http://www.intelligentdesigntheory.info/unique_properties_of_water.htm

#59 Invisibility

You may have heard someone say at some time that “God cannot exist because no one has ever seen God.” In this article I’m going to discuss invisibility and why that does not disprove God. In fact, God has to be invisible.

Let’s think about some things that are invisible. Just because something is invisible does not mean that it is not real.

In my Proof for God #45 on The Eye [1], I noted that our eyes cannot see any light outside of a rather narrow “visible spectrum”. The visible spectrum is only 1.5% of the whole range of light rays that exist. We cannot see most of the ultraviolet or infrared parts of the spectrum. There are some animals that can see things that we cannot see.

Some people have the ability to see auras, which are energy fields that most people cannot see. There are many discoveries in the field of Kirlian photography that show life/energy forms that cannot be seen with the naked eye. Some people seem to have the ability to see and communicate with the spirits of the deceased which are invisible to the rest of us. I think most of us will admit that there are limitations to what our physical eyes can see and therefore being visible is not necessary to really exist.

There are lots of ordinary things that are very real but you can’t see them. How about a glass window? You can see very clearly right through it, but we know how solid it can be. There is even such a thing as bulletproof glass.

Air cannot be seen, but where would we be without air? However, if you have ever stood in a strong wind, you know it could blow you over. Wind can move huge ships and tornadoes cause tremendous destruction. That’s a very powerful force, but you can’t see it.

There are other amazing forces like gravity and magnetism that scientists don't know where they came from. They are invisible, but very powerful.

Other things you can’t see are carrying amazing amounts of intelligent information. Think about the radio and television signals all around you. If you tune into one of these invisible channels, you can get sounds and videos from possibly tens or hundreds of channels for music, news, or movies. All of that is somewhere in the air around you right now, simultaneously, but you can’t see it, touch it, taste it, hear it, or smell it in any way.

You probably have a smartphone that allows you to carry on an intelligent conversation with another being somewhere else on the planet. That person is invisible to you, but you don’t question whether he or she exists. Smartphones allow you to watch a movie or even live events like sports. Someday maybe someone will invent a “hotline” to God.

What about all the people in history? How can you be sure your great, great, great, great grandfather really existed? You've never seen him and neither has anyone else alive. You have to conclude that he must have existed because you exist. Otherwise you are the product of an immaculate conception some generations back.

Just because you may have never seen God, does that mean that no one else has ever seen God either? Hardly. That would be a pretty foolish thing to conclude. Most people have never seen God. But they obviously have not seen everything that could be seen. Millions, if not billions, of people claim to have experienced God and some insist they “saw” God in some form. Those who have had a “Near-Death Experience” often relate an experience like seeing God.

Testimonies of God are written down in every language all over the world and all throughout history. It’s pretty hard to discount all that evidence and call it categorically false just because no scientific experiment, based solely in the material world, can verify it. It doesn’t matter how intellectually brilliant a scientist may be if he/she is looking in the wrong place. To say that you know for sure there is no God is a staggering declaration that you know the truth beyond all these other people who must therefore be ignorant or deceived.     

Here’s something else that is invisible but still very real… ideas. They are very real and provide driving forces in people’s lives: freedom, truth, goodness, honesty. People are willing to give up their lives to gain freedom. Then there’s the greatest motivating force of all, love. It cannot be seen. You recognize it by its effects, by what is created by its power, and what lengths people will go to in order to possess it.

If God were visible, that would put physical limitations and boundaries on Him. Can we put boundaries around love and truth and freedom? Clearly not. By definition, God is the one who created the whole universe. He created time and space, and ideals. So He would necessarily be “beyond” or “outside” of time and space. Or maybe “throughout” is a better explanation. God should not be inhibited by having to be in one place. He needs to be in all places simultaneously and thus be available to every person who wants a relationship with Him. No matter where you go, you can have access to God. No matter who you are among all the people in the world, you can have access to God. If God is love, and support, and comfort, how wonderful for all of us.

Of course, if you believe God is mean and nasty or repulsive, then you don’t want that kind of God anywhere near you. That would be a horrible reality and you would fight against it. If God is more powerful than Santa Claus, then He can “see you when you’re sleeping and know when you’re awake.” If you do something wrong, then He can see you, judge you, and punish you. That needs to be revolted against, right?

God has to be real. Everywhere around us is the evidence. People have been experiencing God throughout history. All of nature is a testimony to God because we can’t even dream of how to duplicate such beauty and complexity.

In our lives, the most valuable things are not our worldly possessions, but are all the invisible and intangible things like love and freedom. It is impossible that those invisible things originated from rocks and chemicals by random accident.

There must be God.

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[1]  Proof for God #45 The Eye. http://101proofsforgod.blogspot.com/2013/11/45-eye.html 

#58 The Cambrian Explosion

We have all been taught by the Theory of Evolution that all species came into existence by small incremental changes over a long period of millions of years. Diversity came about over time from the beginning as various mutations created many new species. The various species branched out like a giant tree. Diagrams of the development over time would look like this. With more time, there would be more phyla (categories of species).

This "tree of life" structure is Darwin's prediction that all species evolved from one original being. 

Would it surprise you to know that the fossil record is not like this at all? Would you feel betrayed by the scientific community and media if you found out that the truth is totally different?

Here are diagrams of what the actual evidence in the fossil record looks like. All the major phyla appeared in less than 1% of time and a number have gone extinct since then.

There is no Darwinian Tree of Life in the fossil record. The true record looks like the above diagram of 2 phyla out of the many phyla that exist. Each phyla appears suddenly and without any connection. 

The diagram below shows what Darwinian Theory predicts by showing little circles where fossils should appear. NONE have ever been found. His predictions are wrong, so therefore the theory must also be wrong.

The best fossil records available on earth actually show that the majority of phyla suddenly appear, FULLY FORMED, within a very narrow period of time and with no precursors about 540 million years ago.

The name given to this phenomenon is literally an “explosion”. It happened during the Cambrian Age and hence it is the Cambrian Explosion.

Time magazine called it Evolution’s Big Bang. "New discoveries show that life as we know it began in an amazing biological frenzy that changed the planet almost overnight." [1]

"The fossil record - in defiance of Darwin's whole idea of gradual change - often makes great leaps from one form to the next. Far from the display of intermediates to be expected from slow advance through natural selection many species appear without warning, persist in fixed form and disappear, leaving no descendants. Geology assuredly does not reveal any finely graduated organic chain, and this is the most obvious and gravest objection which can be urged against the theory of evolution.” [2]

Suppose you make a time line from the beginning until now and convert it to a 24 hour clock. On that clock almost all of the species on earth appeared in their early forms, each with their unique “body plans”, all within just a 2 minute span of the clock. That should forever debunk Darwin’s slow and gradual in my opinion.

Note in this picture that the major fossil beds with the best fossils are located throughout the world. The beds in Chengjiang, China, include extremely well preserved soft-tissue specimens. Note also that they all exhibit the same explosion of species in the Cambrian Age, during the same time frame. The period is 0.14% of the time clock mentioned before, absolutely not slow and gradual change. There are various calculations about how big that window is ranging from about 5 to 10 million years out of billions.

The Theory of Evolution is totally disproved based on the evidence in the fossil record. However, if you are a true believer, you deny the evidence shows what it clearly shows. You either make up a story of why you are still right or try to destroy the messenger.

Evolutionists have been grabbing at straws to hold on to their theory for years despite the Cambrian Explosion.

1. Not enough fossils have been discovered yet. Darwin used this reason too. "The explanation lies, as I believe, in the extreme imperfection of the geological record." That was back when we had just 1% of the current fossil record. Unfortunately for them, every time new fossils are discovered, it just further substantiates the evidence of the existing fossils and the Cambrian Explosion.

2. Missing links and the precursor species didn’t fossilize. How that could possibly be true all over the world is a gigantic mystery. It’s especially problematic since there are existing fossils of many species before the Cambrian Explosion with soft bodies and even single-celled animals.

3. Punctuated Equilibrium. This idea basically says that all the necessary evolving of each of the different species must have taken place in tiny, isolated groups. Also they believe changes take place in spurts separated by long periods of no change. Hence there are no fossils found for this yet. During the Cambrian Explosion all these species suddenly come out to the world. Clearly this is a repudiation of Darwin’s idea of slow and gradual. Also they have no explanation of why or how it happens in spurts. This idea has been proven false by statistical analysis. To get the very large number of changes that are required to evolve all the different species, you must necessarily have huge numbers of mutations. There must be enough individuals reproducing in order to account for all those mutations. This model has nowhere near enough in their populations. 

The paleontologists have all the evidence right before their eyes, but they won’t take the “leap of faith” away from accepted dogmas. You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink.

Verbalizing publicly that the fossil evidence is totally against the Theory of Evolution is likely to get a professor fired or his/her funding taken away.

When scientists have a hidden agenda, truth suffers. They will not go where the evidence leads them. They are not being true scientists. And we are all the worse for it. Think what amazing discoveries await us once scientists stop wasting energy pursuing and/or defending a fraud and devote that same energy to discovering more about the true loving source of all things and the amazing creation.

There is truly a God.

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[1]  Time Magazine. December 4, 1995 issue.

[2]  Steve Jones, University College, London, Almost Like A Whale: The Origin Of Species Updated, p. 252, 1999

#57 17-Year Cicadas

How many animals can count? Probably you have seen dogs and horses count, maybe even elephants. Of course they were trained by intelligent beings (namely humans) to do that. Also they are considered among the “higher animals”. But have any of them counted up to 17. You probably would not ever think than an insect can count, let alone count up to 17.

Even people might have a little trouble counting up to 17 if you counted so slow that it took you 17 years. That’s a little more difficult because you have to remember your place for a whole year before adding 1.

Well, let’s talk a little about the 17-Year Cicada. There are over 2,500 species of cicada that have been described and they are still counting. [1] Different cicada species emerge on different schedules. Some species come every year. Some every 13 years. But the most famous and largest “brood” comes every 17 years to the eastern part of the United States and may number 1 trillion individuals. As many as 1.5 million cicadas of this species may emerge from a single acre of land. 

They are 1½ inches long and basically harmless, just annoying. The adults which emerge do not eat at all. They will climb a tree, molt/shed their skin exposing their wings, then fly around to find a mate.

Within 6 weeks the females have all laid their eggs in a slit they carve in a tree and they all have died. When the eggs hatch, the larvae drop to the ground and burrow in, never to be seen again for 17 years.

By the way, the cicada emerge when the ground temperature is exactly 64 degrees. Also, the males emerge first and are out there with their very loud mating calls when the females come out. Females do not make noises. They all have two big red eyes and 3 smaller black ones. Each species has a distinct mating call which is made inside the male abdomen by “clicking” parts while a type of echo chamber magnifies it. The sounds can get as loud as 120 decibels, among the loudest of all insects. Wikipedia has some sample sounds. [2]

17 years is a really long lifespan for an insect. Even more amazing about Cicadas is that each generation only mates once, and it's at the very end of their life after 17 years. If evolution were true, you would only have 6 generations every 100 years so only 6 chances to get a beneficial mutation (which I have already detailed very rarely happens). In my article on “The Truth About Mutation” [3] I wrote how scientists have mutated fruit flies (on purpose using intelligence) for over 40 years and thousands of generations without ever producing a new species. If the scientists were studying the 17-Year Cicada, there would only be 2 generations in that same 40 years.

How did the 17-Year Cicada learn to count to 17? Have you ever heard of any case where a number emerged where there was no intelligent origin.

Let’s also remember that you have to have a male and a female for mating purposes to get a next generation. The male and female also have to both be alive in the same 6 week window and in the same vicinity on earth to be able to meet and mate. If one or the other stays in the ground longer by just 6 weeks in 17 years, then they can’t mate. If there is a mutation of the genome for the time the species stays under the ground, it has to be simultaneous in both male and female so they can still come out at the same time. How is that possible to be coordinated? Not only would the mutation in both the male and female have to be in the same direction (longer time or shorter time), but it would also have to be of exactly the same length of time in weeks. I suppose you could say there are billions of them and enough randomly could meet up for mating. But somehow you still have to get to the end point of all of them staying in the ground exactly 17 years at the end of the evolving.

Another problem is the temperature of 64 degrees. How could the male and female have mutated separately but still somehow decided jointly on that exact temperature and never mutate away from it? And here is an even bigger problem. How do they know what the temperature is? Are you able to tell me what the temperature is at any time or even when it hits 64 degrees? We all know the Cicadas stay underground for 17 years and then when the temperature hits 64 degrees, they come out. Oh and by the way, the males come out first. Also they have a mechanism for making a gigantic noise, which the females don’t do. So if you believe in evolution, you have to believe this is all accidental mutations and natural selection for them to have different body mechanisms, but the same timing.

Of course, we all know that males and females of all species are astoundingly different in body parts.  New research is showing they are even more different than was thought in the past. There is no possibility that they could have evolved slowly in incremental changes because they would have to have made complementary changes in the same generation and live in the same vicinity of each other, meet, and mate. The Theory of Evolution should have been debunked at the beginning. [4]

How does an insect tell that the temperature is 64 degrees above the ground? How did that kind of mechanism evolve? Even if you somehow had an organ to tell the temperature, it somehow has to be wired to the brain and send a signal. Once the signal arrives in the brain that the temperature is 64 degrees, so what? Somehow the brain has to figure out that it now has to dig upward, climb a tree, shed its skin, find a mate, copulate, and then die all within 6 weeks.

When an insect can do something that no human can do, even the greatest genius among us, there is no way to convince me that this evolved from nothing.

There must be a God. 

_______________________

[1]  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cicada 

[2]  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cicada

[3] Proof for God #27 The Truth About Mutation. http://101proofsforgod.blogspot.com/2013/02/27-truth-about-mutation.html

[4] Proof for God #1, Male and Female. http://101proofsforgod.blogspot.com/2012/05/male-and-female.html 

#56 Snowflakes

This past Tuesday was March 25^th, 2014, 5 days after the start of Spring. Still we got 2 inches of snow and it’s been freezing cold. In fact, snow has been a regular weekly occurrence this whole month. This winter has been one of the coldest on record in the last 100 years.

So this article will be a tribute to the lowly snowflake. May I not see another one until next winter!

In reading the Wikipedia article on snowflakes, it says that scientists aren’t really sure how snowflakes get made or what holds them together.

In warmer clouds an aerosol particle or "ice nucleus" must be present in (or in contact with) the droplet to act as a nucleus. The particles that make ice nuclei are very rare compared to nuclei upon which liquid cloud droplets form; however, it is not understood what makes them efficient. [1]

The exact details of the sticking mechanism remain controversial. Possibilities include mechanical interlocking, sintering, electrostatic attraction as well as the existence of a "sticky" liquid-like layer on the crystal surface. The individual ice crystals often have hexagonal symmetry. Although the ice is clear, scattering of light by the crystal facets and hollows/imperfections mean that the crystals often appear white in color due to diffuse reflection of the whole spectrum of light by the small ice particles. [2]

It’s amazing that something as simple as some frozen water is a mystery to today’s scientists. Whoever claims that scientists have discovered all the truth is either not digging deep enough or intentionally deluding themselves.

Snowflakes are absolutely fascinating. Here are some amazing photos of snowflakes to remind you of what they can look like. These are by a famous snowflake photographer. [3]

Some photos from CalTech. [4]

Here is a link to some time-lapse photography of snowflakes being formed. It is almost like they are alive. [5]

Your typical snowflake has about 10¹⁹ (10 quintillion) water molecules.[6] Since there is an unbelievably huge number of molecule combinations going into a snowflake, it pretty much guarantees that old saying that “no two snowflakes are identical.”

When you looked at the snowflakes in the pictures, do you get some type of feeling in response? What is that feeling? Do you have any thoughts about where such amazing patterns could have come from? Do you marvel at the intricate details? Do you think, “Wow, what an amazing accident!!!”, “What an amazing accident”, “What an amazing accident,” over and over and over again every time you look at a different snowflake? Hardly.

Scientists may not be able to explain it yet, but one thing we can be sure of is that the ability of water to turn into snowflakes has been a property of water since the very origin of water. It could not be something that was added or “evolved” at a later time.

Long before there was life on earth and long before any inkling of “evolution” existed, there was water. And surely that water had the capability to make snowflakes.

If there is a creator of water, that intelligent being endowed it with the capability to make snowflakes long before we came along to look at and appreciate them.

If there was no creative intelligence, then it must have all come from NOWHERE. All of it. Then, of course, there is no purpose to anything? Without a purpose, what value is there? When you look at something that has no value, it does not inspire you. Think of a piece of junk. You don’t feel inspiration or amazement.

The joy that is experienced from the beauty of a simple snowflake is almost universal among human beings. We all feel it. How could that be? That we all have a reaction of awe and wonder at snowflakes is not accidental or a mistake. There was no ancient “natural selection” for only people who could appreciate snowflakes and they were the only people able to survive.

There is an overall design built into human beings so we can appreciate the precious gifts around us, all the way down to the lowly snowflake. Even one scientist, Dr. Masaru Emoto, goes so far as to proclaim that humans by using thought energy can change the patterns of ice crystals. [7] Very interesting research (but controversial of course). His pictures are really interesting and he has been featured in movies like What The Bleep Do We Know. [8]

Not just snowflakes, but all of the tiniest particles of the universe are awe inspiring. DNA is a beautiful spiral staircase. At the other extreme are the largest entities of the universe which inspire awe as well. The amount of beauty we can discover is mind boggling, possibly even infinite.

There must be God.

______________________________

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowflake

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowflake

[3] Famous snowflake photographer: Alexey Kljatov http://www.flickr.com/photos/chaoticmind75/with/10152925944/

[4] http://www.its.caltech.edu/~atomic/snowcrystals/photos/photos.htm

[5] Time lapse photography of snowflake. http://twentytwowords.com/?s=snowflakes

[6] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowflake

[7] Website of Dr. Masaru Emoto. http://www.masaru-emoto.net/english/water-crystal.html

[8] Website of movie: What The Bleep Do We Know? http://www.whatthebleep.com/