#22 Life Spans

Living entities that reproduce over longer life cycles, if they had evolved, would have necessarily taken a longer time.

A rather simple conclusion that must be drawn from the Theory of Evolution is that beings that take years to reproduce must take longer than beings that reproduce in days or weeks. A human being takes about 20 years between generations. A fruit fly takes about 8.5 days between fertilization and adulthood.

But this has not been demonstrated to be true at all.

Take for example experiments on fruit flies. This is a "species that is easy to care for, breeds quickly, and lays many eggs." [1] Eggs can develop into mature adults in roughly 8.5 days. Females will lay about 400 eggs. Research on heredity using fruit flies has been some of the most important research in the history of biology. [2]

Fruit Fly

If you assume half the eggs are female and each individual of each generation every 8.5 days produces 200 female eggs. They could produce 25 to 40 generations in a year. The number of individuals produced that could possibility have evolved is gigantic. 200 x 200 x 200 ... (25 times) in one year. That's of the order of 3.3 x 10 to the 57th power.

That's a lot of opportunity to be able to observe some evolution. Compare that to humans which take 20 years to grow to where they can produce a second generation. There have probably been more generations of fruit flies studied by scientists than there have ever been of human beings.

Yet in all the years of doing scientific research on fruit flies, there has never been any observable evolution. Even when the scientists are interfering, they can't get any evolution.

In July, 2012, there was news that scientists had "evolved" fruit flies that could count.[3] Actually, they detected some perceived response to light flashes after 40 generations. This is not evolution. (1) These are still fruit flies. At most they learned some trick. They did not evolve into some other species, which is what evolution is supposed to be all about. (2) The fruit flies did not change on their own. There was obviously a lot of human intelligence applied. (3) After years of experiments and countless generations, fruit flies are still fruit flies. There is no evidence of evolution. Change yes, but evolution no.

Human beings are millions of times more complicated than fruit flies. Fruit flies mature in 8.5 days compared to humans at about 20 years. That means fruit flies mature 859 times faster.

In the scheme proposed by the Theory of Evolution, the more complicated and highly evolved entities emerged later in time. But this is not feasible because those with longer life spans have to take hundreds of times longer to produce each successive generation.

We can apply this same logic all over creation. Using other insects, fish, or mammals with short life spans that have been studied by scientists, evolution has never been demonstrated. Mice live only for 1 to 3 years. Rabbits live up to 5 years. House flies and bees live about 4 weeks. Pigmy goby fish live only 2 months. Where is there any evolution ever shown in these species? The mayfly that lives less than a day has been around for 300 million years, but it's still a mayfly.

Mouse

Rabbit

House Fly

Pigmy Goby

What about all the beings with much longer life cycles? How could they evolve when it takes so long for one generation to reproduce? Elephants take 2 years in the womb. Giraffes and rhinos take more than a year. The lowly velvet worm takes 15 months. Whales and dolphins take over a year and a half. How about the Black Alpine Salamander that takes 2 to 3 years to produce just 2 offspring? Then there is the champion 17 year cicada which takes 17 years between generations.

Black Alpine Salamander

Velvet Worm

17 Year Cicada

After you apply years and years of research trying to validate a theory and you still have never been able to find any evidence that it is true, isn't it about time to junk that theory?

There must be God.


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[1] Wikipedia. Fruit Fly article. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drosophila_melanogaster

[2] Wikipedia. Fruit Fly article. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drosophila_melanogaster

[3] http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/07/flies-learn-math/

#21 DNA

Every living thing has DNA in its cells. We can’t talk about life without talking about DNA, the “blueprint” of life. Differences in the DNA will determine what type of plant or animal emerges. I’m sure you know a little about it already.

You have about 100 trillion cells in your body and all of them contain DNA except red blood cells. If you laid the DNA from one cell end to end it would stretch about six feet, but would only be about 50 trillionths of an inch wide. Laying out all your DNA, it would reach to the sun and back about 600 times. (6’ x 100 trillion divided by a round trip of 184 million miles). Put another way, it would span the diameter of the Solar System.

If you started typing 60 words per minute for 8 hours a day, it would take you around 50 years to type out the DNA sequence in one of your cells.

DNA is so amazing, there are probably enough facts about DNA alone that I could put together 101 Proofs for God just using DNA.

DNA does almost everything. It sets the patterns for all your proteins. Patterns in your DNA are used for producing the RNA which is then used by ribosomes in your bone marrow to produce hemoglobin. Every second the ribosomes make 100 trillion molecules of hemoglobin. (Can you even believe that?) Hemoglobin carries oxygen to your brain, muscles, and all your cells. Without it, you die.

Humans have 46 chromosomes of genetic material in their cells consisting of 23 pairs. Sections of genetic code on the chromosomes are called genes. We have an estimated 20,000 to 25,000 genes. Each gene is made up of segments of DNA that are about 10,000 to 15,000 base pairs. A “base pair” is like one of the rungs on the “ladder” in the DNA. The genes are the areas of the chromosomes that are passed from parent to child and contain the hereditary information which gives you characteristics like your parents.

The human genome (the exact DNA sequence in a human) consists of about 3 billion base pairs and almost every cell of your body has a complete set. The amount of data in one cell would fill 1,000 volumes of an encyclopedia.

Every time a cell divides the DNA goes through self-replication using cellular protein processes that act like machinery. It makes a complete duplicate of itself, accurately copying the 3 billion base pair genome. Astoundingly impressive! Astronomically impossible to happen accidentally. Your body produces about one billion new cells every hour.

This duplication has just one exception. That is when making a sperm or egg cell. That process requires ending up with only half the DNA makeup. A man’s body makes 1,500 sperm cells per second.

But DNA is not only reproducing itself fantastically fast, it is also helping make every type of protein that is necessary for your life. This is serious multi-tasking.

Watch this 7 minute YouTube video to see an animation of several of the functions of DNA. Astounding mechanical and bio-chemical complexity is taking place. Here is a quote from the video: The DNA is an “assembly line of amazing miniature bio-chemical machines that pull apart the double helix of DNA and crank out a copy of each strand.”

http://youtu.be/4PKjF7OumYo

Here is another video (2:36 minutes) that might help in understanding the very complex replicating process:

http://youtu.be/wkXgwGn_dGU

Certainly lots more will be discovered about DNA and the human genome, but from what we already know, it is mind boggling in its complexity. There is no entity in the known universe that stores AND processes more information MORE efficiently than the DNA molecule. That some scientists continually exclude any possibility of an invisible hand of God that started the DNA processes is unfathonable. To insist that science must remain godless in the face of all evidence to the contrary is absurd.

Science proves there must be God.

#20 GPS and Monarchs

Most people are familiar with devices in your car or Smartphone that are called GPS (Global Positioning Satellite) systems and they guide you over short or long distances to exactly your destination.

If you do any research on GPS, you will learn what a modern-day miracle of technology they are.

First you have to have the 31 communication satellites up in orbit circling around the earth. Each one is emitting a signal telling the time and it's location. Your GPS device has to be able to pick up at least 4 satellites in order to be able to work for positioning. There is a computer inside the GPS that uses the broadcast information to calculate exactly where you are.

Pretty amazing when you think of all the intelligence and development of science, math, and technology to put those satellites in orbit and in creating the GPS devices themselves.

And the purpose is to create a guidance system in order to give directions to get you where you want to go.

Is it possible for such a sophisticated guidance system to come about randomly without purposeful application of intelligence? Not likely.

Let me tell you about a guidance system even more sophisticated and miraculous. It's the story of the Monarch butterfly.

The normal Monarch butterfly that lives in the spring or summer will only live for two to four weeks. They will mate, lay eggs, and die in that time. However, the generation of Monarchs that are born in late August, unlike their parents and grandparents will live for nine months. Scientists do not know why.

Their desire to mate is turned off and they stock up on nectar and water and begin an incredible flight. They start off in Canada or the northern United States and will fly between 2,500 to 3,500 miles using some type of "GPS" system.

They fly all the way back to the same area and maybe the same tree in Mexico where their ancesters started out. 300 million Monarchs coverge from all over North America on the exact same 12 locations in Mexico.

After going into semi-hibernation for the winter, they start the long flight back north. But now their mating instincts are turned back on. They mate, lay eggs, and soon die.

The eggs hatch out caterpillars that eat, make cocoons, emerge as butterflies and continue the flight north, mate, lay eggs, and die. This generation lives only two to four weeks. One, two, maybe three generations live, reproduce, and die. Then comes late August and the whole thing starts over again with a generation that lives for nine months. This is called the Methusela generation and flies all the way back to Mexico to their ancestral home.

This generation has never been to that spot in Mexico where their "GPS" takes them. Neither were their parents there or their grandparents. How's that for an incredible GPS system!

Each generation included caterpillars that spun cocoons, turned into mush, and reconstituted that mush into a butterfly with that GPS system intact in order to get the Methusela generation back to "home".

Scientists don't have any idea yet of how that system works. What does it use for "satellites" for  points of reference for guidance? It's obviously more of a miracle of intelligence than the manmade GPS. Only a super intelligence could have designed Monarch butterflies.

Also note how big the GPS in the Monarch is. The brain of a Monarch is about the size of a few grains of sand.

There must be a God.

#19 Butterflies and Metamorphosis

I think we are all familiar with caterpillars and butterflies.

There are over 20,000 known species of butterflies all over the world.

We know that caterpillars go into a cocoon, turn into mush, and then emerge two weeks later as a butterfly. You may have even watched one in school.

This process is called metamorphosis. There is an incredible and fascinating DVD out by the same name. 

The DVD shows an animation in great detail of what happens inside the cocoon. Based on MRI research that takes "pictures" of 200 slices of a cocoon, they know which parts of the caterpillar dissolve completely and which parts morph into various parts of a butterfly. The processes under evolution theory cannot explain what happens.

The caterpillar and the butterfly are exactly the same being, just at different stages. BUT only the butterfly can reproduce, not the caterpillar.

The caterpillar goes into a cocoon and through the process of metamorphosis becomes a butterfly. In this process totally new structures are built from the dissolved cells of the caterpillar. Some of the new structures are (1) reproductive organs, (2) a compound eye that can see a larger range of colors than the human eye, (3) a probosis, a feeding tube which emerges from the cocoon in two halves and is seamed together, (4) six articulated legs that have sensors that can detect a mate or "host" plant over a mile away, (5) two tenticles, (6) wings with veins and scales and all the muscles needed for flight.

One scientist said they don't even know 1/1000th of what goes on in the tiny butterfly brain.

The Theory of Evolution has no mechanism that can explain metamorphosis. Those very few who attempt it are making what I call faith statements. Basically they are saying, "We haven't found the evolutionary process yet, but it's out there. Just give us more time." The processes in evolution are random mutation, natural selection, survival of the fittest, and not much else. There is no known process for this type of sudden and dramatic change in the life of a single individual being.

Here is an interesting analogy which is a very much simplified example. Metamorphosis is much more complicated. Say a Model T Ford is driving along and then it stops. Then part of the engine cover grows to become a garage that completely covers the car. Inside of the garage the car ALL BY ITSELF without any intelligence added takes itself apart, changes the parts into other parts, and reassembles a new vehicle. Two weeks later out comes a helicopter.

If you do a search on the topic "evolution and metamorphosis", there are relatively a very few entries and there is no clear scientific research. You'll find words like "cannot explain". You might find some die hard evolutionist believers claiming that scientists just need more time. There are also some proposed changes to standard evolution that are suggested, such as "sudden" evolution. But, with those types of changes you don't have evolution any more. You can't keep changing the definition. A theory has to be a statement that can be proven or disproven. It can't be a moving target.

The Theory of Evolution is just based on faith. It's faith in an unproven and unprovable theory that is changeable all the time. Being changeable makes it untestable. And that makes it a worthless theory.

When a caterpillar goes into a cocoon and starts to turn into mostly mush, there must be some direction ALREADY built into the process or there could never emerge a perfectly formed butterfly out the other side. After that first caterpillar turned to mush, he had to get it exactly perfect coming out as a butterfly THE VERY FIRST TIME or else there would be no more caterpillars reproduced whatsoever.

No caterpillar can reproduce, so it is impossible for evolution to work its "magic". The Theory of Evolution requires myriad changes over long time periods by many, many generations of individuals. You CANNOT have evolution in one generation...by definition. The idea that caterpillars could have "evolved" that way is nonsense.

There must be a God.

#18 The Fossil Record

Here’s the real bottom line on the fossil record: there has never been any substantiation of the Theory of Evolution by Darwin. [1]

In fact, as more and more and better and better fossils are discovered, the evidence for evolution is getting worse and worse.

Charles Darwin knew in 1859 when he proposed his theory in On The Origin Of Species that there were a lot of gaps and “missing links” in the fossil record. He assumed that over time and with new discoveries that there would be more evidence discovered for evolution, but in fact the opposite has happened.

Darwin said in his On The Origin of Species:

"Lastly, looking not to any one time, but to all time, if my theory be true, numberless intermediate varieties, linking closely together all the species of the same group, must assuredly have existed... " [2]

In order for higher species to have evolved from lower species, there must necessarily be many numerous intermediate stages of transformation. If you think about it, there should be more intermediate entities than just the first species and the last one. Astoundingly (if you believe in evolution) there is not even one of the proposed links in the fossil record. Zip. Zero. Nada.

Author Luther Sunderland interviewed five respected museum officials, recognized authorities in their individual fields of study, including representatives from the American Museum, the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, and the British Museum of Natural History. None of the five officials were able to offer a single example of a transitional series of fossilized organisms that document the transformation of one Kind of plant or animal into another.

The British Museum of Natural History boasts the largest collection of fossils in the world. Among the five respected museum officials, Sunderland interviewed Dr. Colin Patterson, Senior Paleontologist at the British Museum and editor of a prestigious scientific journal. Patterson is a well known expert having an intimate knowledge of the fossil record. He was unable to give a single example of Macro-Evolutionary transition. In fact, Patterson wrote a book for the British Museum of Natural History entitled, "Evolution". When asked why he had not included a single photograph of a transitional fossil in his book, Patterson responded: "...I fully agree with your comments on the lack of direct illustration of evolutionary transitions in my book. If I knew of any, fossil or living, I would certainly have included them..." [3]

If evolution were true, there should be millions of fossils of the intermediate links between species along every branch of the tree. But there are none. Science needs to find a lot more than just one “missing link”. It needs to find millions. But there aren’t any to be had.

We keep finding better and better preserved fossils. The most recent discoveries in Chengjiang, China, are the most outstanding fossils ever found, but still no missing links. Since Darwin’s time, paleontologists have uncovered about 99.9% of our current fossil record, but still no missing links. [4] [5]

The second enormous problem with the fossil record for the Theory of Evolution is that the vast majority of species appear at about the same time in history, called the Cambrian Explosion.

Darwin predicted that slowly and gradually over time the higher forms evolved from the lower forms. But the fossil record indicates that almost all life forms “suddenly” appeared during the Cambrian Age which is about 2% of the time line of the life of the earth.

Here is a chart of the actual fossil record for the appearance of species. [6]

Do some research on your own. I suggest you look up “problems with the fossil record” or “Darwin and the fossil record.”

Isn’t it about time to junk the Theory of Evolution? Darwin said it himself, “ "If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down." [7]

There must be a God.
________________________________________

[1] The Theory of Evolution can take many forms. I am referring specifically in this case to the theory that humans evolved from single celled organisms and other common ancestors of other species through some process of mutation and natural selection which also included ape-like creatures.

[2] Darwin, The Origin of Species, Chapter Six: Absence or Rarity of Transitional Varieties.

[3] [Colin Patterson, personal communication. Luther Sunderland, Darwin's Enigma: Fossils and Other Problems, 4th edition, 1988, 88-90.]

[4] Quote from the following website:
http://www.allaboutthejourney.org/problems-with-the-fossil-record.htm

"Australian scientist and medical doctor Michael Denton wrote Evolution: A Theory In Crisis. This is from pages 160-162."

"Since Darwin's time the search for missing links in the fossil record has continued on an ever-increasing scale. So vast has been the expansion of paleontological activity over the past one hundred years that probably 99.9% of all paleontological work has been carried out since 1860."

Denton further wrote:

"Despite the tremendous increase in geological activity in every corner of the globe and despite the discovery of many strange and hitherto unknown forms, the infinitude of connecting links has still not been discovered and the fossil record is about as discontinuous as it was when Darwin was writing the Origin. The intermediates have remained as elusive as ever and their absence remains, a century later, one of the most striking characteristics of the fossil record."

[5] DVD: Darwin’s Dilemma: The Mystery of the Cambrian Fossil Record, Illustra Media, 2009 for information about Chinese discoveries.

[6] Icons of Evolution: Why Much of What We Teach About Evolution Is Wrong, by Jonathan Wells, Regnery Publishing, 2000, Figure 3-5, page 43.

[7] Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, 1859, p. 158.

#17 Dr. Antony Flew

This proof is what I'm going to call a "piggyback proof". I propose that you accept the word of a really smart person who searched for the truth about God for his whole life in a very unusual way.

In 2004 after about 50 years as one of the world's leading and best known atheists, Antony Flew, came to the conclusion that there must be a God.

"After a lifetime of probing philosophical inquiry, this towering and courageous intellect has now concluded the evidence leads conclusively to God" [1]

"Antony Flew has been for most of his life a very well known philosophical champion of atheism." [5]

Other atheists were quick to call him senile and said that he was manipulated in his old age by certain Christians. He denied it and came out with a book called, There Is A God, How The World's Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind [9]. It tells his story and the arguments that convinced him. (There are videos on YouTube of his appearances if you search under Antony Flew.) [8]

"I now believe that the universe was brought into existence by an infinite Intelligence. I believe that this universe's intricate laws manifest what scientists have called the Mind of God. I believe that life and reproduction originate in a divine Source." [11]

"This is a fascinating and very readible account of how a distinguished philosopher who was a militant atheist for most of his working life came to believe in the intelligent design of the univers..." [2]

"A fascinating record of how one of our most prominent contemporary atheists was led to the conviction that God does exist." [3]

"A stellar philosophical mind ponders the latest scientific results. The conclusion: a God stands behind the rationality of nature." [4]

Flew was not your average atheist. He was considered a brilliant philosopher who at a very young age in 1950 published a paper called Theology and Falsification on atheism that is the most widely reprinted over the last 50 years and has been highly influencial in philosophy around the world.

He was always involved in the highest levels of the academic world, even having a professorship at Oxford. He kept up on the latest philosophical arguments for and against God as well as the latest scientific research into the origins of life and the universe.

One of his greatest virtues was his commitment to academic integrity and dedication to the Socratic Method of following the evidence wherever it might lead.

Ultimately, it was the developments in modern science that convinced him that there must be an intelligent source that designed and created the universe. The Big Bang Theory, namely that the universe had a beginning something like 13 billions years ago, does not allow for enough time in order for the complexity of life that we observe to have developed according to evolution. Also, research discoveries in micro-biology and DNA led him to the same conclusion, namely that there must have been an intelligent cause.

This man was one of the greatest and most respected philosophical minds of the 20th century. He debated far and wide those who believed in a God. For him to finally change his mind after 50 years of debating, believing, and researching is a monumental change, certainly not done lightly or easily.

His change completely negates the idea that only common people who are uneducated and haven't done the research can believe in a God.

Secondly, he must have known the incredible hatred that would be unleashed on him from the atheistic community if he betrayed their beliefs. He responded as ever with kindness and gentleness, which is all too evident in the book he wrote, There Is A God. In it he patiently spells out the philosophical journey he had taken in life and clearly what lead him to change his mind so all the world could know.

"When Antony Flew, in the spirit of free-thinking, followed the evidence where he thought it led, namely, to theism, he was roundly denounced by supposed free-thinkers in the severest of terms. He had, it seemed, committed the unpardonable sin." [6]

"Perhaps what provides the deepest satisfaction in reading this philosophical memoir is the author's transparent integrity, so habitual over a productive lifetime as to be, as Aristotle would have it, second nature. How shrill and self-absorbed are the opposing works of a Dawkins or a Dennett by comparison." [7]

This man understood all the arguments for atheism inside and out. In fact, he created some of those arguments himself. He was the author of 30 books. All his life he wanted to follow the evidence to find the truth and he ended up accepting that there must be a God.

"In fact, my two main antitheological books were both written long before either the development of the big-bang cosmology or the introduction of the fine-tuning argument from physical constants. But since the early 1980's, I had begun to reconsider. I confessed at that point that atheists have to be embarrassed by the contemporary cosmological consensus, for it seemed that the cosmologists were providing a scientific proof of what St. Thomas Aquinas contended could not be proved philosophically; namely, that the universe had a beginning." [10]

In 2007, Flew was interviewed by Benjamin Wiker. He said again that his deism was the result of his "growing empathy with the insight of Einstein and other noted scientists that there had to be an Intelligence behind the integrated complexity of the physical Universe" and "my own insight that the integrated complexity of life itself – which is far more complex than the physical Universe – can only be explained in terms of an Intelligent Source." [12]

You could do all the research yourself and study all the arguments for and against God. Or you could just take a short cut and check out what Antony Flew has to say. I enjoyed reading his book very much although at times the philosophy was over my head. He was clearly a brilliant thinker.

There must be a God.

____________________________________

[1] Francis S. Collins, author of The Language of God

[2] John Hick, professor and Fellow of the Institute for Advanced Research in Arts and Social Sciences, University of Birmingham

[3] Nicholas Wolterstorff, Noah Porter Professor Emeritus of Philosophical Theology, Yale University

[4] Michael Behe, author of Darwin's Black Box and The Edge of Evolution

[5] Richard Swinburne, author of The Existence of God

[6] William Lane Craig, Research Professor, Talbot School of Theology

[7] Daniel N. Robinson, Philosophy Department, Oxford University

[8] YouTube video example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1e4FUhfHiU

[9] There Is A God, by Antony Flew, 2007, Harper Collins, New York, NY

[10] There Is A God, page 135.

[11] There Is A God, page 88

[12] Dr. Benjamin Wiker: Exclusive Flew Interview, 30 October 2007. http://www.tothesource.org/10_30_2007/10_30_2007.htm

#16 Your Brain

There is way too much information on the brain for me to cover in a short blog post, but I want to give some convincing highlights (probably more that you want to read). Here is a quote that will get us started.

"Scientists claim that the most complicated and mysterious thing in the universe is the human brain. Scientists know more about stars exploding billions of light years away than they know about the brain." [1]

The brain is a vast mystery and our greatest scientists have not figured it out. That makes a great case for me that it must have been created by a higher intelligence than ours. To think that it happened accidentally when our greatest minds are very far from understanding it's complexity is preposterous. Accidents do not create order.

The human brain consists of approximately 100 billion neurons. That, by the way, is about how many stars there are in our Milky Way Galaxy. [3]

Each neuron has somewhere between 1,000 and 10,000 synapses, equaling about 1 quadrillion synapses. [2]

Another source quotes up to 40,000 synapses per neuron. [3]

There are possibly as many connections in your brain as there are stars in the known universe.

If all the neurons in the human brain were lined up, they would stretch 600 miles. [2]

A piece of brain tissue the size of a grain of sand contains 100,000 neurons and 1 billion synapses, all "talking" to one another. [3]

Human brain's are comparable in computing power to the world's greatest computers, but fantastically better at almost every other task while fitting inside your skull and using only the power of a small lightbulb.

"The world’s most powerful supercomputer, the K from Fujitsu, computes four times faster and holds 10 times as much data. And of course, many more bits are coursing through the Internet at any moment. Yet the Internet’s servers worldwide would fill a small city, and the K sucks up enough electricity to power 10,000 homes. The incredibly efficient brain consumes less electricity than a dim lightbulb and fits nicely inside our head." [4]

A human brain is 75% water and has the consistency of tofu, custard, or gelatin.[5] You could cut it with a table knife [6].

Note also that the human brain accomplishes everything at a relatively slow speed, nothing like a computer. Impulses travel at only about 223.56 miles per hour.

"Axons, the long output connection from a cell, come in two types: myelinated and unmyelinated. Myelinated axons have an extra layer of "insulation," a fatty substance, which allows the impulse to travel about 10 to 100 meters per second. Unmyelinated axons only transmit at about 1 meter per second. When the signal reaches the end, it has to cross the synapse to influence the next cell, which adds about 5 ms. (10 meters per second = 22.356 mph and 100 meters per second = 223.561 mph.) As you can see it is a lot slower than the speed of light in a vacuum which is exactly 299,792,458 metres per second, or 186,000 miles per second, or 670,616,629 mph." [6]

A 20-year-old man has around 109,000 miles of myelinated axons in his brain, which is enough to wrap around the earth’s equator four-and-a-half times. [7]

Here is an amazing fact. 3 year old babies have twice as many connections in their brains as adults.

"Babies are born with around a 100 billion brain cells, but only a small number of neurons are actually connected. By three years of age a child's brain has formed about 1,000 trillion connections, about twice as many as adults have. At around 11 years, the brain begins to prune unused connections. Connections that are used repeatedly in the early years become permanent; those that are not are eliminated." [6]

There are more than 100,000 chemical reactions happening in the human brain every second.[7]

The human brain has around 100,000 miles of blood vessels.[7] 750-1000ml of blood flows through your brain every minute. That's enough to fill about 3 full soda cans. [12]

"Research indicates that men and women have different structures and wiring in the brain. For example, the frontal lobe—which is responsible for problem solving and decision making, and the limbic cortex—which is responsible for regulating emotion, are larger in women. Women also have about 10 times more white matter than men." [8,9]

Here is a quote from Jeff Hawkins about computers and brains in his 2004 book "On Intelligence."

"A human can perform significant tasks in much less time than a second. For example, I could show you a photograph and ask you to determine if there is cat in the image. Your job would be to push a button if there is a cat, but not if you see a bear or a warthog or a turnip. This task is difficult or impossible for a computer to perform today, yet a human can do it reliably in half a second or less. But neurons are slow, so in that half a second, the information entering your brain can only traverse a chain one hundred neurons long. That is, the brain 'computes' solutions to problems like this in one hundred steps or fewer, regardless of how many total neurons might be involved. From the time light enters your eye to the time you press the button, a chain no longer than one hundred neurons could be involved. A digital computer attempting to solve the same problem would take billions of steps. One hundred computer instructions are barely enough to move a single character on the computer's display, let alone do something interesting." [10]

Even if humans compete against single minded computers on a particular task, we have to remember the human brain is doing thousands if not millions of other things at the same time.

"However the computational power of the human brain is difficult to ascertain, as the human brain is not easily paralleled to the binary number processing of computers. For while the human brain is calculating a math problem, it is subconsciously processing data from millions of nerve cells that handle the visual input of the paper and surrounding area, the aural input from both ears, and the sensory input of millions of cells throughout the body. The brain is also regulating the heartbeat, monitoring oxygen levels, hunger and thirst requirements, breathing patterns and hundreds of other essential factors throughout the body. It is simultaneously comparing data from the eyes and the sensory cells in the arms and hands to keep track of the position of the pen and paper as the calculation is being performed." [6]

The more we discover about the brain, the more wondrous and awesome it is.

"The discovery of ventral and dorsal visual streams has only made our work more difficult because it is unclear how these streams fit into the functional architecture of the brain and which parts of the brain receive the resulting signals. Similar problems exist with memory processing. So far, no research team has been able to pinpoint where in the brain memory is and how it functions." [11]

Here is a little bit of information on how synapses work in the brain. This should leave you awestruck.

"Neural synapses in the human brain are extraordinarily complex structures. Responsible for relaying information between neurons, chemical synapses govern the release of over 100 different kinds of neurotransmitters, while electrical synapses deliver information via electricity for rapid-fire reflexes." [13]

"When a nerve impulse gets to the end of an axon, its message must cross the synapse if it is to continue. Messages do not “jump” across synapses. Instead, they are carried across by chemical messengers called neurotransmitters. These chemicals are packaged in tiny sacs, or vesicles, at the tip of the axon. When a nerve impulse arrives at the tip, it causes the sacs to release their contents into the synapse. The neurotransmitters diffuse across the synapse and bind to receptors in the membrane of the cell on the other side, passing the signal to that cell by causing special ion channels in the postsynaptic membrane to open. Because these channels open when stimulated by a chemical (in this case, a neurotransmitter) they are said to be chemically gated.

Why go to all this trouble? Why not just wire the neurons directly together? For the same reason that the wires of your house are not all connected but instead are separated by a host of switches. When you turn on one light switch, you don’t want every light in the house to go on, the toaster to start heating, and the television to come on! If every neuron in your body were connected to every other neuron, it would be impossible to move your hand without moving every other part of your body at the same time. Synapses are the control switches of the nervous system.

When a nerve impulse reaches the end of an axon, it releases a neurotransmitter into the synaptic space. The neurotransmitter molecules diffuse across the synapse and bind to receptors on the postsynaptic cell, a neuron in this case, passing the signal to that cell. Enzymes destroy the neurotransmitter molecules to prevent continuous stimulation of the postsynaptic cell." [14]

As you can imagine, I'm just getting started. Hundreds of books have been published on the brain and thousands more will be. I have even read where some people now believe that your memories are stored in all the cells of your body, not just inside your skull.

Our existence is a total and absolute miracle. Only a supernatural cause could possibly be an explanation for our existence. No materialistic cause, and certainly not a materialistic random accident, makes any rational sense what-so-ever.

There must be a God.

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References

[1] Newquist, H.P. 2004. The Great Brain Book. New York, NY: Scholastic Inc.

[2] Chudler, Eric. “Brain Facts and Figures.” November 1, 2011.

[3] http://smartnow.com/page/10570

[4] http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=computers-vs-brains

[5] Juan, Stephen. 2011. The Odd Brain: Mysteries of Our Weird and Wonderful Brain Explained. Riverside, NJ: Andrews McMeel

Publishing.

[6] http://www.disabled-world.com/artman/publish/brain-facts.shtml

[7] Turkington, Carol. 1996. The Brain Encyclopedia. New York, NY: Checkmark Books.

[8] Cohen, Elizabeth. “Loving with All Your . . . Brain.” CNN. February 5, 2007. Accessed: November 17, 2011.

[9] Edmonds, Molly. “Do Men and Women Have Different Brains?” Discovery. 2011. Accessed: November 17, 2011.

[10] Hawkins, Jeff. "On Intelligence" 2004

[11] http://www.lucidpages.com/branco.html

[12] http://science.nationalgeographic.com/science/health-and-human-body/human-body/brain-article/

[13] http://www.nextnature.net/2012/06/replacing-synapses-with-a-single-switch/

[14] http://www.txtwriter.com/backgrounders/Drugaddiction/drugs1.html