#83 RAS (Reticular Activating System)

This proof is about one of the most important parts of your brain. It may be the answer to the question of why some people cannot accept that there is a God while for others it is as plain as the nose on your face.

In a previous article I wrote about how miraculous and astounding our brains are [1]. This article is about just one part of the brain which is about the size of your finger. It is located at the top of the spinal column at the base of the brain stem.

Its job is like a gatekeeper for the signals that are coming in to your brain. As you can imagine, you have millions upon millions of nerve cells that are reporting every second to your brain about sounds, smells, tastes, touches, or sights from whatever they are connected to, like your fingertips, your stomach, your leg muscles, your bladder, well…everything.

Your conscious brain can only handle about 130 messages per second [2] in any meaningful way, so it absolutely needs some way to sort out what is important and prioritize those millions of messages coming from your body. Your RAS is what limits the messages down to the manageable flow.

That’s the purpose of the RAS, the Reticular Activating System. Most nerves run through the RAS and then get sent out to various other parts of the brain for the interpretation of their signals.

"The ability to filter out information from external sources and focus on one particular fact, detail, or thought is controlled by this brain region. If it weren't for this circuitry, our consciousness would be overwhelmed and flooded with all sensory information, leading to an inability to make decisions." [3]

As a simple example of how the RAS prioritizes, think about when you get pain. It immediately gets sent to the front of the consciousness so it can be analyzed and responded to.

But that’s not all the RAS does. It is able to learn from the conscious mind what to look for in the environment. Look at this picture and see how quickly you can find one of the two letter “L's” in this diagram.

Probably you did not have to look at every single letter one by one. Also, have you ever looked for your spouse or child in a huge crowd of people? You found them quickly by scanning which is what the RAS does.

Thus the RAS it turns out is the major goal seeking mechanism in our brains. We can tell it what to look for and it will help us find it. In fact once your RAS is instructed what to look for, whether told consciously or even unconsciously, your RAS will be seeking without you even knowing it.

I’m sure you have heard of the “Law of Attraction”. The RAS is the brain mechanism that allows it to work. It sorts through all the inputs from your environment and brings to your attention what you are looking for.

You’ve also heard of a “Self Fulfilling Prophecy”. What you are looking for is what you will get because you unconsciously programmed your RAS to find it.

The other thing the RAS does, which we are usually unconscious of, is ignore information and input that we don’t want. We think we are seeing “objective truth”, but it is already filtered before it gets to our conscious brain. The RAS prevents you from “seeing” information that you don’t want to see.

Hence, an evolutionist has set his RAS to reject any information that supports creationism and only perceive “facts” that support evolution. He doesn’t even see evidence contrary to his beliefs because he has told his RAS that he doesn’t want to see it. It becomes a “blind spot”.

One additional comment I want to add, but there is a lot more, is that some researchers believe that whether you are an introvert or an extrovert depends largely on the amount of nerve fibers which are developed in your RAS. [4]

I encourage you to learn more on your own about this amazing part of your brain, the RAS.

So back to the purpose of this article. Is it possible for the RAS to have evolved, or is it clearly evidence of design by God?

According to the Theory of Evolution, in some ancient low level species, totally by random accident, a mechanism developed that could sort out differences between incoming signals from nerves. This mechanism gets passed from generation to generation until another random mutation occurs. This mutation allows the mechanism to recognize a certain signal as really important for survival, i.e. pain for example. And then it somehow is able to prioritize that signal over any others.

This is good so natural selection keeps it going for generation after generation. Then another random mutation somehow recognizes a different nerve signal as hunger. It randomly figures out how to prioritize pain as more important than hunger. This beneficial mutation gets passed down generation after generation.

Eventually this mechanism is able to differentiate millions of nerve signals into which ones are really urgent, which have high priority, and so forth down to low priority. Note that there are about 100 billion neurons in the brain and each one has about 10,000 connections to other neurons. Also each neuron fires about 5 to 50 times per second. [5] Then, the mechanism randomly mutates again, and again, and again so that it lets only 130 signals pass each second.

Then all the other organisms that don’t have this ability die out so that this is the only one that keeps reproducing. Since we all have RAS in our brains, we have to assume we all came from the original ancestor species (even an original couple) that first mutated a fully functioning RAS.

In fact, since most animal species have this RAS ability, the mutations effected all “branches” of the tree of evolution.

Bunk.

No process of mutation over generations has ever produced a viable new species [6], let alone a complex development of differentiation and prioritization of nerve impulses that could result in the RAS.

There must be God.

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[1] Jim Stephens, Proof for God #16, Your Brain, http://101proofsforgod.blogspot.com/2012/08/16-your-brain.html

[2] Reticular Activating System, Posted on January 26, 2015, http://www.reticularactivatingsystem.org/

[3] Omkar Phatak, Reticular Activating System, March 3, 2014, http://www.buzzle.com/articles/reticular-activating-system.html

[4] Living on Purpose, https://www.crgleader.com/ezine/livingonpurpose/LOP151.html

[5] Neurons & Synapses, http://www.human-memory.net/brain_neurons.html

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

[extra] What Is the Reticular Activating System? http://www.wisegeek.org/what-is-the-reticular-activating-system.htm

#82 The Chicken Or The Egg

You have probably heard the question before about, “What came first, the chicken or the egg?” Everybody knows that chickens come from eggs, but we also know that you don’t get eggs unless you have chickens first.

So we have a puzzle that goes around and around trying to figure out the origin of life question. In fact Wikipedia says the chicken versus the egg question goes way back in history to ancient philosophers, even including the writings of Aristotle 350 years before Christ.

Evolutionists would probably follow Wikipedia in saying that the egg came first because mutations would occur in the reproductive process of some other species and the resulting egg when hatched became a modern day chicken.

That’s not very satisfactory to me since I see quite a few more chicken or the egg issues that are hiding inside consecutive layers inside of other layers of the chicken and the egg question.

If you have read my Proof for God #27 on Mutation [1], then you know that decades of scientific research on mutation has never been shown to produce any viable new species. That’s just one challenge.

Think about another fact. No chicken hatches from an egg if the egg is not fertilized by a rooster. So there is another important half of the egg to consider, the male input. Scientists now know that the fertilization takes place way inside the hen and that the egg forms from a protein that is not found in any other animal.

Suppose the impossible could happen and there is actually a mutation of the pre-chicken species that evolutionists claim led up to the chicken. Did the mutation take place before, during, or after fertilization by a necessary type of male component?

Let’s designate the female parent’s sex chromosomes as the standard XX and the male parent’s sex chromosomes as XY. Then the egg will have one X chromosome. The male parent contributes either an X or a Y. If there is a mutation in the X chromosome, call it X, what you are going to get in the next generation is either XX or XY, neither of which is really a chicken. The odds in random mutations are that it won’t survive to reproduce, but if it did, the odds are only 50-50 that the X would be passed to the next generation.

Can you recognize that there also has to be a “chicken-mutation”, if you will, from the rooster side. That’s also impossible by our definition. (See Proof #81 Definition of Impossible [2]) Even if it occurred somewhere on the earth, you’d still have to get a successful mating of the two individuals with mutated chromosomes.

Even if you somehow got a mutation that lead to XX which could be a hen (female chicken), you are still a long, long way from an XY chromosome set in order to get a rooster (the male chicken).  Until you have a female and a male, there will never be a new species.

The odds of any one such mutation occurring are already impossible (again see [2]), but it is even more impossible that both mutations occur within the same generation and those two individuals mate with each other.

As I think about it, almost every aspect of an animal’s body poses more chicken or the egg problems. Here are some examples:

Which came first, the heart or the arteries and veins to circulate the blood it is pumping?

Which came first, the heart or the lungs to oxygenate the blood that the heart pumps?

Which came first, the muscles throughout the body or the nerves connecting them to the brain to make the muscles work at all?

Which came first, the eyeball or the optic nerve connecting the signals to the brain for interpretation?

Which came first on birds, the wings or the feathers?

What came first, the stomach or the mouth it is attached to?

What came first, the left leg or the right leg?

Which eye came first, the right eye or the left eye?

What came first, the arm or the hand on the end?

Which came first, the male or the female? What about the sperm and the egg? They both had to emerge simultaneously it seems to me. One or the other all alone doesn’t make any sense.

The Theory of Evolution is all about slow, gradual, and incremental changes over many generations. So I think it is a very fair question to ask, “Which came first”?

If you allow for an intelligent designer, as I do, then there is no problem with what came first. Think about designing a car. What came first, the wheels or the axles? What came first, the axles or the drive shaft? What came first, the drive shaft or the steering wheel? You could ask hundreds of questions like that and in the mind of the designer there would be answers to what the thought process was. But all the designing was done in the mind. It was all invisible before any prototype was ever created.

Without the invisible design being created first, nothing ever happens in the material world. The material world is the world of effect, not the world of cause.

Once something has been brought into existence in the material world, then further modifications can be made on it.

This, in fact, pretty accurately describes the fossil record. (See my Proof #58 The Cambrian Explosion [3] and Proof #64 Missing Links [4] for more elaboration.) Most species that appear in the fossil record will appear suddenly and they will be fully formed when they do.

The Theory of Evolution cannot adequately explain the fossil record, cannot show scientific examples of any species mutating into another species, and cannot explain where the very first life came from to name just three of its major flaws.

We are all very familiar with the process of creating something. It first starts in the mind where it is invisible. The artist does not put blob after blob of paint on the canvas randomly and end up with a recognizable image of anything. The artist starts with an invisible image in his/her mind as the goal or end product. Then energy, information, and forces are added to bring it into existence.

That’s how the world works. That’s how the world was created.

There must be God.

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

[2] Stephens, Jim, Proof for God #81, The Definition of Impossible, http://101proofsforgod.blogspot.com/2015/03/81-definition-of-impossible.html

[3] Stephens, Jim, Proof for God #58, The Cambrian Explosion, http://101proofsforgod.blogspot.com/2014/04/58-cambrian-explosion.html

[4] Stephens, Jim, Proof for God #64, Missing Links, http://101proofsforgod.blogspot.com/2014/07/64-missing-links.html

#81 The Definition of Impossible

We have all heard the expression that “anything could happen” and we typically accept the proposition without thinking about it too deeply. If you then add in the concept of huge amounts of time or even infinity, well then “anything could happen.” This is typically part of the argument for evolution.

I want to take a deeper look at what might really be possible and what is in reality impossible by trying to construct a useful definition of what is impossible.

I give credit for this idea to a mathematician named William Dembski in his book, The Design Revolution. He clearly put a lot of deep thought into what is possible and what is impossible and why.

He devises a number which he calls a “universal probability limit.” This is a number limit that no reasonable person, certainly no person of science or math, could ever argue with. The number is 10¹⁵⁰. The working definition is that if the likelihood of some event is less than one in 10¹⁵⁰, it is beyond the universal limit and will never happen and could never happen.

I am henceforth going to call that number “the definition of impossible.”

Where this number comes from is very important. First you take the number of all the protons, electrons, and neutrons in the universe. That is 10⁸⁰. Next you multiply that number by the number of seconds since the universe started at the “Big Bang.” That is 4.0 x 10¹⁷ seconds. Now, lastly, you multiply that by what is theoretically the smallest unit of time, the Planck Unit. There are 10⁴³ Planck units in a second.

You have to practically be a PhD in mathematics to understand a Planck unit, but look that up if you are interested. It’s something like the time it takes the speed of light to pass a proton.

Now if we multiply those three numbers together, we get 10⁸⁰ x 4.0 x 10¹⁷ x 10⁴³ or approximately 10¹⁴⁰. Just for good measure, let’s multiply this by ten billion more and we get the number 10¹⁵⁰. This is how Dembski got the “universal probability limit” or what I’m calling the “definition of impossible.”   

If the likelihood of an event is 1 in 10¹⁵⁰, or anywhere close, and especially anywhere exceeding that, then it is impossible.

Let’s take a fairly simple example of coin flipping. There are only two possibilities for random flipping of a coin, either heads or tails. 

What is the possibility that you can flip the coin and it will land on heads 1,000 times in a row? It would be ½ x ½ x ½ ….on and on up to 1,000. There is one chance in 2¹⁰⁰⁰. That converts to one chance in 10³⁰¹.

1000 coins

The conclusion is that it is impossible if we use the “definition” we just established.

So think of it this way. Even if you had one person for every proton, electron, and neutron in the whole universe and they were flipping coins AND they could do 1,000 flips every Planck unit of time since the beginning of the universe, they wouldn’t even come close to an outcome of all heads. They have hardly gotten started. Conclusion, it’s impossible. The chances are just too small for it ever to happen by accident.

We now have a more realistic understanding of “anything can happen.” Actually, as you can see for yourself, it can’t.

Did I lose you? Let’s go one more simple step and see if that helps. Suppose instead of flipping a coin, you are rolling a die that has six sides and want to get the side with the “one” mark on it to come up 1,000 times in a row. 

You can see that is way “harder” than getting 1,000 heads in coin flipping. It’s way more impossible, right?

Getting a “one” would be 1/6 x 1/6 x 1/6 … on and on up to 1,000. This is a much, much bigger number, i.e. 6¹⁰⁰⁰. Totally impossible. Are you with me?

And now the final point to show that life did not happen by accident. It is totally impossible to a much, much greater degree than flipping coins or rolling dice.

There are 20 to 22 different so-called “standard” amino acids required by all life forms, even the very simplest living cell [1]. 

And those amino acids have to be perfectly arranged in a long chain in an exact order to make a functioning protein [2]. (See my Proof for God #74 Proteins [3].)

The really simple proteins are made up of 300 amino acids in a precise order. Once the long chain is created, then it folds over and over again on itself in another exact pattern. Then proteins interact with other proteins.

So the number of possible arrangements for the very simplest protein are 20³⁰⁰. In a human being the average functional protein has about 450 amino acids, again in a very precise order. That would be one out of 20⁴⁵⁰ random possibilities. That’s the average human protein, but the number of amino acids in a single protein can go as high as 34,350 according to one source.[4][5]

The human body contains approximately 100,000 different, unique proteins [6] but there are estimates up to 2 million [7]. Every different protein has a precise arrangement of the 20 amino acids.

By the definition of impossible that I have established, even one single protein is impossible to occur randomly. But we know there are 100,000 or more different proteins in the human body.

Sample protein arrangements

The most abundant life source on earth, blue-green algae, is also one of the simplest. However, as simple as it is, it still requires about 2,000 genes that each produce different proteins [8]. Any single protein is impossible by randomness and blue-green algae requires 2,000 proteins.

Life is not an accident. The simplest life form could not have occurred randomly. We have shown that it is impossible. We have shown it is orders of magnitude more impossible than 1,000 heads in a row by flipping coins.

There must be God.

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[1] Amino Acid article in Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amino_acid

[2] Protein article in Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protein

[3] Stephens, Jim, Proof for God #74 Proteins, http://101proofsforgod.blogspot.com/2014/12/74-proteins.html

[4] Proteins, http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/BiologyPages/P/Proteins.html

[5] Another source said 26,926. http://www.wisegeek.org/how-many-proteins-exist.htm

[6] Proteins, http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/organic/protein.html

[7] How Many Proteins Exist, http://www.wisegeek.org/how-many-proteins-exist.htm

[8] Ell, Douglas, Counting To God, AttitudeMedia, 2014, page 106.

#80 Four Fundamental Forces

Scientists say that in the whole vast universe that there are exactly four types of forces. Yes, only four. Pretty amazing since the universe is so unimaginably huge. Over 13.7 billion years old and estimated to be at least 156 billion light years across (NASA says no one knows), and all that running on only 4 forces.

This discussion will examine these forces and argue that they must have all had their origin BEFORE the universe began and OUTSIDE OF the universe. Therefore, this discussion will attempt to show that there must be God because these forces exist and came from some source greater than the universe.

The four types of forces are (1) gravity, (2) electromagnetic forces, and two forces inside of atoms, (3) the strong nuclear force and (4) the weak nuclear force. [1]

                                                 Chart of the forces. [2]

Gravity you are familiar with. It holds everything together. There is no known limit to how far it reaches. How much you weigh is a measure of the force of gravity between the earth and your body. The strength of gravity between the Earth and Moon is estimated at 70 million trillion pounds. If you had to replace it with a long steel pole, you would have to get a pole that is 531 miles in diameter. Think about that! It’s hard to even imagine an invisible force that strong. Another amazing thing about gravity is that it is impossible to make a shield against it. Gravity is felt completely right through any known object.

Electromagnetic force is the force that exists between all particles with an electric charge. It is the basis for about every modern invention and convenience in life. It’s hard to think of anything we use that did not have electricity involved in its creation. Also the very energy that makes up your body and the nerve impulses that move everything, including your heart and brain are all electromagnetic.

The strong nuclear force holds everything together in the nucleus of atoms, the protons and neutrons. It dominates in nuclear reactions and decaying. Relatively speaking it is the strongest of all the forces, however, it only operates over a very short distance within atoms. The weak nuclear force is responsible for certain types of nuclear decay of particles.

Note the very, very precise differences in strength between the forces. If any of them were to vary by the tiniest of strengths, the whole universe would fall apart.

Let’s ask where did these four forces come from and when. Is the Theory of Evolution any help? Absolutely not. It doesn't even get a chance to apply until life has already started and gotten to the stage where it can successfully reproduce using DNA.

Did these four forces come about after the origin of the universe? Nope. Most scientists accept the “Big Bang” as the starting point of the universe. But without the four forces, there could be no universe. Therefore, the four forces had to exist before the universe when there was nothing. We could try to say they came about at the same instant as the universe exploded into being, but we still have to conclude that the four forces were “there” somehow BEFORE the explosion.

Gerald Schroeder, doctorate in physics from MIT, points out these facts in a video. [3]

Omnipresent is a word usually used in the theological context, as in God is omnipresent. Note that the four forces all could be said to be omnipresent. There is no known place in the universe where they don’t operate. They are absolutely everywhere, except possibly a vacuum where there are no particles, but even in a vacuum, gravity could still be there. The four forces are not physical or material, but they operate ON the physical.

All the four forces are also invisible. We can experience or see the effects of the forces but we cannot see the forces themselves. The universe contains time, space, and matter. The four forces are “outside” of time, space, and matter, which is very hard to comprehend since we are “inside”. They operate “on” or “over” the universe, but are not affected by the universe.

I could also make a case that the four forces are “all powerful.” No matter what you do, you cannot break or change the forces, go around the forces, or get outside of the forces. We are, in a way, “dominated” by the four forces. We are subjects to the Laws of Nature that exist. But that’s a good thing. Without them we’d be dead.

How about eternal? Are the four forces eternal? It’s more than likely that they are not going to change as long at the universe continues to exist and they’ve certainly been existing since before the universe. That’s about as eternal as you can get by definition. That’s a very god-like characteristic.

How about infinite? The strong and weak nuclear forces operate over very short distances. But scientists believe that gravity and electromagnetic forces are infinite.

God is often called “unchanging” or “immutable”. Are the four forces “unchanging?” BINGO.

We could even say that the four forces are “just” and “fair”. Everyone is treated equally. You cannot get any more fair than that.

I have been describing some of the laws of physics that are outside the realm of materialism and beyond the universe. I believe that you cannot explain these fundamental forces without resorting to there being a creative designer as the cause. The essence of all things is not within this material universe.

There must be God.

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[1] Science Notes: Fundamental Forces of Nature, http://environ.andrew.cmu.edu/m3/s3/06forces.shtml

[2] Hyperphysics, website hosted by Georgia State University, http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/forces/funfor.html

[3] Gerald Schroeder, Science Has Finally Proven that Scientifically, There is a God, http://www.israelvideonetwork.com/science-has-finally-proven-that-scientifically-there-is-a-god/

Gerald Schroeder holds a doctorate in physics from MIT and has been on staff at the Weizmann Institute of Science, the Volcani Research Institute, the Hebrew University. In this video he gives an incredible explanation on the existence of G-d based on the laws of physics and nature. It all makes sense. You just need to follow his train of thought.

#79 The Heart

Here is a major miracle that you experience every second of your life…your heart.

About 3 to 4 weeks after the sperm and egg united and got started to make you, there were a couple of blood vessels that suddenly started pulsing in a very regular beat. Those vessels grow together, enlarge, and twist around each other to form your heart in only about 2 weeks. A swirling pattern of muscles forms around a bulge which splits into the 4 chambers of the heart. It continues to beat about every second for the rest of your life.

In the womb, the heart is responsible for the very development of that fetus into you. 

The average heart is about 10 ounces and the size of a fist. Through an amazing process the electric pulses (red lines below) cause the top part of the heart to beat first, followed by the lower part. 

It beats an average of 72 times a minute. It beats 1,000 times in 14 minutes. It beats 10,000 times every 2.3 hours. It beats 103,680 times a day, every day, your whole life. It beats a million times in less than 10 days. That’s a pretty amazing muscle.

The average heart pumps about 2.4 ounces of blood (.073 liters) each heartbeat. It pumps about 1.3 gallons of blood (5 liters) per minute. That is 1,900 gallons a day (7,200 liters). That would fill an Olympic sized swimming pool in a year. It would fill a couple super size oil tankers in your lifetime.

All the veins in your body are dumping blood into your heart which sends it to the lungs to pick up oxygen before sending it back out through arteries to capillaries and every cell of your body. The blood takes nourishment to your cells and withdraws waste products. There are 60,000 miles of blood vessels in your body. End to end they would reach around the world at the Equator 2.5 times.

That’s not all. That’s just the very basics. Modern research is learning a lot more about the heart.

For example, there is more information being carried by your nervous system from your heart up to your brain than from the brain down to the heart. Some research is even showing your heart perceives things milliseconds before your brain does.

The energy field of the heart can actually now be measured up to 8 feet away from your body. Other people are constantly picking up on that energy intuitively and being affected by it. We influence each other on an invisible energy level. Our hearts to a much larger extent than we realize effect our emotions, our physical bodies, our relationships, and our health. [1]

"The heart generates the largest electromagnetic field in the body. The electrical field as measured in an electrocardiogram (ECG) is about 60 times greater in amplitude than the brain waves recorded in an electroencephalogram (EEG). The magnetic component of the heart’s field… is around 5,000 times stronger than that produced by the brain"[2]

Although our hearts are nearly autonomous, there are still nerves that run from our brain to the heart that can speed it up or slow it down according to what is going on in our consciousness. Is that really a lucky accident?

When people get a new heart through a heart transplant, they find themselves with habits and memories from the previous owner of the heart. Research is showing that there are sections of memory cells in the heart exactly like the memory cells in the brain.

If you believe that all of this came about by accident through mutations and natural selection over many, many generations, how did it happen? Did the beating start first in some random muscles and then many generations later a heart accidentally formed? Or did the heart accidentally form and then some generations later it started beating accidentally in exactly the pattern necessary to push the blood in the right directions. 

When did the valves and the chambers inside the heart form? Even if the heart was beating and pushing blood in the right directions, where did it push the blood before the arteries, veins, and capillaries were accidentally mutated into place which must have taken many generations? 

Blood is made in the marrow of our bones. When did blood accidentally start being produced? How did the hemoglobin cells that carry oxygen evolve over many generations? Toxins are cleaned from the blood by the liver. Food and water are inserted into the blood stream by the intestines to be sent to every cell of the body. When did the lungs get accidentally connected to the heart arteries so they could start supplying oxygen that the cells needed (before they all died)?

I’m having an impossible time seeing how small changes over many generations could accidentally put all these complicated systems into place. Oxygen, food, and water are essential for life to exist from the very first cell and the systems need to be in place at the beginning of the very first organism. Waste products and CO₂  need to be removed in the very beginning. The very first human cannot live without all these systems in place right at the start. You can’t wait generations for them to develop by mutations one at a time.

All cultures have expressions like “from the bottom of my heart” and “follow your heart.” Our very existence is a miracle and at the center of it all is the biggest miracle of all, our heart. It is our constant, trusted and faithful companion. “Be true to your heart” because it is being true to you. It is symbolic of something much bigger than yourself. It is symbolic of your Creator and the essence of your creation.

It’s not in your brain, it’s in your heart where you will find that there must be God. 

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[1] McCraty, Rollin, Ph.D., The Energetic Heart: Bioelectromagnetic Interactions Within and Between People, 2003, Institute of HeartMath, http://www.heartmath.org

[2] McCraty, Rollin, Ph.D., The Energetic Heart: Bioelectromagnetic Interactions Within and Between People, 2003, Institute of HeartMath, http://www.heartmath.org

#78 Icons of Evolution

Suppose you are a high school or college science student and you walk into class on the first day. They hand you a brand new science book. You open it up, but inside is the text book from 50 years ago. The President of the United States is Lyndon Johnson. No Internet, no cellphones, VCR’s are not available yet, DVD’s not invented. A minicomputer cost $18,000. There are no personal computers.

How much credibility would you place on the material in that textbook?

What if I told you that current science books are still publishing the same information as 50 years ago about the Theory of Evolution, without any updating with new research? The truth is some of the information has been known to be false for 50 years and yet it has never been removed. One drawing that was known to be false 100 years ago (Haeckel’s embryo drawings) is still being included as truthful. Young minds of today are not being told the accurate scientific truth. Why not?

This Proof for God is going to talk about the explosive truth contained in a book titled, “Icons of Evolution” by Jonathan Wells [1]. This is not a religious book. It’s a science book about truth. Textbooks in school are supposed to tell the truth, right? Taxpayers are footing the bill to have their kids educated not indoctrinated. We should be collectively outraged if Dr. Wells is correct, and he thoroughly documents that he is.

Copyright Icons of Evolution, Page 249

In the back of the book, the author analyzes 10 popular high school textbooks and lays out a clear procedure for giving out grades on the scientific accuracy of the material covering the Theory of Evolution. Seven of the 10 textbooks rated an “F”. 2 graded out at “D-“. One got a “D+”. This is sickening.

Dr. Wells even called them “massive distortions and even some faked evidence.” [2] The book states, “An ‘F’ indicates that the textbook uncritically relies on logical fallacy, dogmatically treats a theory as an unquestionable fact, or blatantly misrepresents published scientific evidence.” [3]

The book was published in 2002 and to be fair, some of those textbook publishers have probably altered their publications. Nonetheless, we now have a great grading system thanks to Dr. Wells in order to judge the truth or falsity of a lot the material that we learned as kids that supposedly proved evolution was true. Wells spends a chapter each on 10 different examples used in textbooks which are false or misleading at best. If you have kids, I hope you will enlighten them about their 50 year old text books.

The worst lie is Heackel’s drawings from back at the time of Darwin. He tried to show that embryos of many very different species are very similar and thus closely related in an evolutionary tree of life. Even 100 years ago it became known that he faked the drawings and that the real embryos are not that similar.

People who have indoctrination in mind understand very well the purpose of having an “icon” or picture that people can easily relate to and thus swallow a complicated concept uncritically. True seekers of truth, which is the supposed calling of scientists, would have protested these drawings for the last 100 years and they would not be in textbooks today. But people with an agenda always bend an inconvenient truth to fit their own ideas. They make a drawing and claim it as fact when it is not.

Here are the 10 “Icons of Evolution” from the book of the same name. All of them are massive distortions or deliberate falsifications. See if you remember any of them from your science classes.

Icon 1: The Miller-Urey Experiment. This experiment in 1952 supposedly showed how life could have originated in an early earth gas mixture that was struck by lightning. Scientists as early as 1960 began to doubt that the elements in the test tube were the actual elements on the earth at the time of the origin of life. Even if the elements were correct, all it did was create a small number out of the many amino acids required for life. That is still light years away from creating a protein. Hundreds of various proteins are required in order for even a single cell to exist.

Icon 2: Darwin's Tree of Life. It supposedly showed how all life originated from a single cell and branched off into all forms of life in later generations. No fossil evidence has ever been found to support Darwin’s tree of life and over 99% of the fossils we now have were discovered since Darwin. It’s a drawing from his imagination. He made it up.

Copyright

Jody F. Sjogren 2000

Copyright

Jody F. Sjogren 2000

Icon 3: Homology in Vertebrate Limbs. Because the combinations of bones of various animals seem to be similar and used similarly, this supposedly proves they all descended from a common ancestor. This is obviously a logical fallacy and doesn’t prove anything about ancestry. Cars looks similar but they don’t reproduce, they are created by intelligence. Bats and whales have the same ability of echolocation, but do they come from the same ancestors? No one thinks that.

Copyright

Jody F. Sjogren 2000

Icon 4: Haeckel's Embryos. Already I discussed how this has been a known fake for 100 years and yet we can’t get rid of it. In the picture above is Haeckel's fakes on the first line and the actual embryo on the middle line.

Icon 5: Archaeopteryx-The Missing Link This fossil was first discovered in 1861 and was touted as the missing link between reptiles and birds, thus proving evolution. There should be millions of missing links but people were satisfied enough to believe in evolution once they could point to this one fossil. Actually a total of 8 of them were found, parts of them anyway, and they were even called “holy relics” and “unimpeachable evidence” by evolutionists. Most paleontologists today, however, do not believe it is the ancestor of any modern birds. There went the missing link.

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Jody F. Sjogren 2000

Icon 6: Peppered Moths. This supposedly showed how moths “evolved” because the darker ones would get eaten less if the trees they landed on were dark trees. Changing color may be an adaptation, but it is not evolution. It was also discovered that the original researcher faked his data by gluing the moths on the trees. They don’t really land on those trees.

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Jody F. Sjogren 2000

Icon 7: Darwin's Finches. The beaks of finches got bigger in dry seasons when food was less plentiful. This supposedly showed evolution, but it doesn’t because when the rains return, the beaks return to a smaller size. Even if there were permanent change, they are still finches. That’s not evolution.

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Jody F. Sjogren 2000

Icon 8: Four-Winged Fruit Flies. Intelligent scientists in a laboratory bred fruit flies so two small appendages grew into the size of extra wings. You can’t prove evolution by applying intelligent breeding. Fruit flies in the wild never develop extra wings. Even for the ones in the lab, the wings were useless and would have been selected out by natural selection as a disadvantage.

Icon 9: Fossil Horses and Directed Evolution. This goes all the way back to a drawing from Othniel Marsh in 1880 supposedly showing the straight-line evolution of small horse fossils to large modern day horses. It turns out the fossil record is not a straight line and it really can’t be used as evidence for or against evolution or intelligent design either.

Copyright

Jody F. Sjogren 2000

Icon 10: From Ape to Human: The Ultimate Icon. This drawing/icon is especially caught up in the minds of people for several generations. There is no scientific evidence behind this drawing at all. My Proof #1 Male and Female [4] is all about the impossibility of this drawing because it does not show women evolving simultaneously. My Proof #64 on Missing Links [5] goes into the fact that there is no fossil evidence for anything between the chimpanzee and the man.

If the Theory of Evolution rests on these icons for its evidence, it should have been in the dust bin of history already 50 years ago. They are just pictures and drawings. There is no science here.

If this is all the evidence they have for evolution, if this is the best they can do, then game over right now.

A number of evolutionist believers reviewed Dr. Wells book and called him essentially ignorant, stupid, or wicked. He responds to them very adequately in my opinion with scientific evidence. If you are interested in all the arguments, please go to his response: "Critics Rave Over Icons of Evolution". [6]

Once people realize they have been duped by clever marketing using false icons and rabid character assassination of anyone trying to teach the truth, then the Theory of Evolution will be quickly shown to be like the Emperor’s new clothes, nothing there.

The only ultimate explanation of it all is going to turn out that life came from a non-material, very intelligent source.

There must be God.
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[1] Wells, Jonathan, Icons of Evolution: Science or Myth? Why Much of What We Teach About Evolution Is Wrong, 2002, Regnery Publishing. Articles by Jonathan Wells, http://www.iconsofevolution.com/articles.php3

[2] Wells, Jonathan, Survival of the Fakest, Discovery Institute, appeared The American Spectator, December 2000/January 2001. http://www.discovery.org/articleFiles/PDFs/survivalOfTheFakest.pdf

[3] Wells, Jonathan, Survival of the Fakest, Discovery Institute, appeared The American Spectator, December 2000/January 2001. http://www.discovery.org/articleFiles/PDFs/survivalOfTheFakest.pdf

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

[5] Stephens, James, Proof for God #64 Missing Links, http://101proofsforgod.blogspot.com/2014/07/64-missing-links.html

[6] Wells, Jonathan, Critics Rave Over Icons of Evolution: A Response to Published Reviews, Discovery Institute, June 12, 2002, http://www.discovery.org/a/1180