God told Noah and his sons: “…BE FRUITFUL AND INCREASE IN NUMBER; MULTIPLY ON THE EARTH AND INCREASE UPON IT” (Genesis 9:7). Scientists who study genetics tell us that this command is impossible by genetic evolution alone. When evolutionary anthropologists calculate how long it would take for humans to spread throughout the planet by genetic evolution, they find it would require at least 88 million years. No one believes that humans have existed on Earth for that long, so genetic evolution is not the answer.
Humans occupy as much of the planet’s dry land as all other mammals combined. Evolutionists attempt to solve this problem by saying it is due to “cultural evolution,” meaning that as cultures evolve, humans find ways to adapt to new environments.
Since genetic evolution is not the answer, a biblically sound approach is to accept that a combination of social cooperation, language, creativity, and intellect allowed humans to cover the planet many times faster than would be possible by genetic evolution. We can credit that to God creating humans in His image with those abilities.
The spread of humans over the entire planet is due to the way God created us, and is not an accident. The bigger issue now is how we can control our numbers and efficiently use the resources for survival that God has made available on Earth.
Yesterday, we examined the fact that the 20 amino acids commonly used in biological proteins are not a random set but are precisely fine-tuned for optimal protein synthesis. But that is only the beginning of the fine-tuning of the genetic code. A series of articles by biologist Dr. Jonathan McLatchie reports on further fine-tuning.
Cell reproduction requires the replication of the DNA contained within those cells. RNA is the molecule that facilitates DNA replication. RNA has 64 different codons–three-letter “words” that are the fundamental units of the genetic code. Of those, 61 specify amino acids that build proteins, and the other three are stop codons that mark the termination point in creating those proteins. As we mentioned before, there are 20 amino acids used for life. Since there are 64 codons, “a marvel of molecular logic” selects the proper amino acids. That coding system shows evidence of a conscious, deliberate, intelligent agent guiding the creation of the genetic code.
The genetic code in living cells seems to be beautifully fine-tuned to protect cells from mutations during replication. As reported by Dr. McLatchie, the statistical rarity of the conventional genetic code is 1 in 2 billion. That does not seem to be a random chance occurrence. But there are additional levels of fine-tuning, including the fact that the genetic code has been written to reduce the impact of frameshift mutations. It’s beyond the scope of this article to discuss what frameshift mutations are, but the point is that the 64-to-20 mapping system is designed to minimize the number of amino acids translated from a frameshifted transcript before a stop codon halts the process.
But that does not fully cover the fine-tuning of the genetic code. It has multiple layers of highly optimized, independent constraints. The genetic code has been established and used by all forms of life on this planet, with each of the 20 amino acids tied to specific codons. Making significant modifications to the code would create major problems in every cell because the relationships between codons and amino acids are essential for every polypeptide (protein) the cell makes.
Dr. McLatchie’s report contains this statement: “Why is the genetic code the way it is, and how did it come to be? That was asked over 50 years ago, at the dawn of molecular biology, (and) might remain pertinent even in another 50 years.” The point I make is that until scientists consider the possibility of an intelligent Agent who designed the genetic code, that question will never be answered. Why not at least consider the possibility that all these signs of the fine-tuning of the genetic code are not merely accidental but the product of design? The reason modern science refuses to do so is that design requires an intelligent Designer.
Organic compounds are large molecules containing carbon and having carbon-hydrogen or carbon-carbon bonds. Many organic compounds are involved in life, and life as we know it could not exist without carbon. One group of organic compounds, known as amino acids, numbers at least 500. Of those, only 20 (or, in some cases, 22) are used in plants and animals. Why and how were these amino acids selected to make living things? Amazingly, the amino acid set was fine-tuned for life.
There are three possibilities for how they could have been “selected.” The selection could have been due to chance, with no intelligent agent involved. It could have been because of necessity, meaning that some kind of law could allow only those amino acids to be selected. The third possibility is selection by an intelligent agent with a purpose. Did this apparent choice happen because of mere chance or because of laws that required no other choice? No known laws required this selection, and chance seems questionable since the choice appears to be perfect.
With many alternatives, why this 20? Would any 20 out of the 500 work just as well? The answer is “No,” according to a research paper published in the journal Astrobiology, titled “Did Evolution Select a Nonrandom Alphabet of Amino Acids?” by Gayle K. Philip and Stephen J. Freeland. They wrote, “Random chance would be highly unlikely to represent the chemical space of possible amino acids with such breadth and evenness in charge, size, and hydrophobicity (properties that define what protein structures and functions can be built).” In other words, these 20 amino acids represent the best choice. You can say that the amino acid set was fine-tuned for life.
We have often talked about the cosmic creation event (“big bang”), the laws of physics, the physical constants, and the fundamental forces of nature as having been fine-tuned for life. It appears that the amino acid set was fine-tuned for life. The amino acids that make up the proteins in our bodies seem to be optimally selected. They must have been selected by an agent with the wisdom and power to design a complex, finely tuned, information-rich system, which we call life. We suggest that the agent is the God of the Bible. Tomorrow, we will examine more fine-tuning within our DNA.
“Don’t shoot till you see the whites of their eyes!” That was an order given by Colonel William Prescott to the Colonial soldiers at the Battle of Bunker Hill during the American Revolution. The reason for the order was not to get close to the British soldiers to get to know them, but because the Colonial Army was low on ammunition and Prescott wanted to make sure it wasn’t wasted. Seeing the whites of the eyes may be dangerous in warfare, but it’s valuable for communication.
Human eyes come in various colors, such as blue, brown, or green, but that refers to the iris. The area surrounding the iris is called the sclera. In humans, the sclera is white, or at least close to white. That makes us different from other animals, since most mammals have dark eyes. The question is, why are the whites of the eyes the way they are?
In 1997, Shiro Kohshima, a Japanese biologist at Kyoto University, compared the eyes of primates and found that only humans had white in their eyes. He proposed that the white sclera helps us communicate because the contrast between the white and the dark pupils makes it easier to tell where someone is looking. Parents can often tell if their child is telling the truth by whether the child is looking at the parent. When someone looks away, it may mean they are hiding something. The whites of the eyes tend to draw our attention away. When someone looks us directly in the eye, it helps us to bond with that person. Thus, the white sclera helps us communicate or avoid communicating.
In 2007, Michael Tomasello, a psychologist at Duke University, expanded on Kohshima’s theory, developing a cooperative eye hypothesis. He said that the whites of the eyes help us determine what someone is focused on because we are sensitive to where a person is looking. Tomasello conducted experiments on human infants, gorillas, chimpanzees, and bonobos. He did this by looking at the ceiling with only his eyes, only his head, or both, to see how humans and primates would react.
Tomasello found that human infants followed the researcher’s eye direction three times more often when he glanced toward the ceiling with his eyes only than when he tilted his head upward with his eyes closed. He found that the primates did the opposite. For them, following the head movement was more important than following eye movement.
From an early age, humans are very sensitive to eye contact. Within the first few days, babies looked longer at faces that were directed at them. In two to four months, babies learn to follow where others are looking. You can hold the attention of babies by looking directly at them. When the parent looks at an object and names it, this helps the infant connect the name to the object, improving language skills.
Even though some people’s eyes are not as white as others’ due to age, health, or race, humans do show more of the sclera than other animals do. Experiments with humans and chimpanzees indicate that the whites of the eyes enable both humans and chimpanzees to better determine the gaze direction of humans than that of chimpanzees.
The bottom line is that humans have more white in their eyes, giving our eyes greater contrast that draws attention to where we are looking, helps us communicate, helps infants learn language terms, helps us determine the status of someone’s health, and helps us to bond with someone we care about. We can be thankful that God has given humans this exceptional gift, but it may not have been an important factor in helping the Americans win the Revolutionary War.
Have you ever thought about why you have two nostrils? When you need to take in more air during strenuous exercise, mouth breathing becomes necessary. But breathing through your nose is much better than breathing through your mouth for various reasons. When I have had a cold or allergy and one nostril was plugged, the other still worked, at least partially. That could be the reason for two nostrils. But that’s not the whole story of why two nostrils are better than one.
It may be a surprise to you, as it was to me, that even when your nostrils are not plugged, one of them will always draw in more air than the other. They trade off every few hours. Your nostrils prepare the air for your lungs by warming it and adding moisture. When the nostril that has been passing most of the air becomes dry, the other can take over while the first one recovers moisture.
A second reason two nostrils are better than one is more efficient fragrance detection. We detect smells when odorant molecules dissolve in the nasal mucus, where they bind to neurons that send signals to the brain. Some chemicals are quickly absorbed, while others are absorbed more slowly. The nostril with faster airflow will detect odor chemicals that dissolve quickly, while the nostril with slower airflow will have time to detect slow-dissolving chemicals. The brain combines the two fragrances to give us a more complete picture of the environmental smells.
Perhaps another reason two nostrils are better than one is that they help detect the direction smells are coming from. Our ears on opposite sides of our heads can give us information about the direction of sound. Our brains combine the vision from our two eyes to give us a three-dimensional view of the world around us. Even though the nostrils are not as far apart as our ears and eyes, they can still give us a clue to determine the origin of a smell.
Your nostrils contain hairs that filter out some of the dust and pollutants in the air. That is another advantage over mouth breathing. One more thing that comes to mind is that having two nostrils allows a ridge of cartilage to form between them, giving your nose its distinctive shape. (Although you may not think that the shape of your nose is advantageous.) Overall, I have to admit that two nostrils are better than one. I am glad the Creator made that part of the body’s marvelous design.
Human eyes have a remarkable ability to adjust quickly to changes in light intensity. That is especially important when driving at night. When bright headlights from an oncoming vehicle shine into our eyes, we must be able to continue to see the road and any possible pedestrian or deer crossing in front of us. This requires our eyes to adjust very quickly. God has designed human eyes with an amazing ability to adjust quickly to changes in light. Inspired by the human eye’s design, researchers at Penn State University have engineered a “photomemristor” to improve the safety of self-driving cars.
Human eyes have a combination of rods and cones. The rods work well in dim light, and the cones work well in bright light. Together, they enable us to adjust quickly to changing light conditions. Typical photocells can’t handle the wide range of light intensities required in some driving situations, especially at night. The Penn State researchers have designed a device that can “dynamically adapt to changing light conditions.” The newly designed photomemristor is a bio-inspired device that uses water, a gel-like plastic, and titanium oxide.
Many times, we have seen innovations that involve biomimicry, imitating the design God has used in the natural world. Visual perception is an essential human capability. Over 80% of the information we receive about our external environment comes through our vision. To improve the safety of self-driving cars, or robots that perform various duties, requires learning from God’s design of vision.
Causes can be of two types: intelligent or unintelligent. As we look for what caused the universe to come into existence or what caused life to appear on this planet, we should ask whether it was an intelligent cause or an unintelligent one, meaning chance. When you see the Grand Canyon, you can conclude that it was the result of natural forces and therefore not a direct intelligent cause. When you see Mount Rushmore, the mountain itself can be attributed to natural causes, but the faces of four presidents carved into that mountain testify to an intelligent cause.
Darwinists agree that the living things we see around us appear to be designed. But those who reject intelligent causation for living things have to keep reminding themselves that what they’re seeing was not designed by an Intelligence, but rather merely happened by chance. Is that attitude intelligent or unintelligent?
The complexity of DNA is certainly a challenge to those who believe that life happened by chance. However, they also have to contend with the fact that DNA relies on proteins for its structure, while proteins require DNA to provide the instructions for how they are to be constructed and folded. Since each requires the other, which comes first: proteins or DNA?
Spontaneous generation of life from non-life was advocated by Aristotle and accepted by science for 2,000 years until Louis Pasteur disproved it. However, those who believe that life came into being without guiding intelligence from purely natural chemicals must accept the concept of spontaneous generation, even though it is not supported by any empirical observation. Francis Crick, an atheist and co-discoverer of the DNA molecule’s structure, said, “Every time I write a paper on the origin of life, I swear I will never write another one, because there is too much speculation running after too few facts.”
Other scientists, such as Fred Hoyle, recognizing the problem of life’s origin, have proposed panspermia (“seeds everywhere”). That idea suggests that life on Earth was seeded by aliens from another star system. Besides having zero evidence for such a thing, it doesn’t explain where the interstellar life came from, stretches the imagination, and requires a great deal of blind faith. When scientists and others stick to their belief in spontaneous generation or panspermia, is that intelligent or unintelligent?
Physicist and information scientist Hubert Yockey, realizing the difficulty of explaining intelligent life without an intelligent cause, wrote, “The belief that life on earth arose spontaneously from nonliving matter is simply a matter of faith in strict reductionism and is based entirely on ideology.” The faith of those who refuse to believe in intelligent design is not based on scientific evidence but on ideological bias. Do you think that believing in creation without a Creator is intelligent or unintelligent?
According to the Darwinian concept, gradual changes over long periods lead to the development of new traits. The Darwinian tree of life displays branches leading to diverse life forms. Along each branch, we see new traits emerging and then being further developed in subsequent generations of creatures. That means similar traits indicate common ancestry. Over billions of years, the result should be a tree, with each branch showing an obvious progression of similar traits. A neatly arranged tree of life should be the result. However, that is not the case.
Convergent evolution throws the tree into disorder. Scientists use the term “convergent evolution” to explain similar characteristics appearing on different branches of the tree. Those similarities show up not only in obvious physical traits but even at the genetic level. According to the common understanding of the evolutionary tree, a trait should appear in a branch and then be carried forward, further developed, or even lost in the succeeding branches or twigs. For a neatly arranged tree of life, the same trait should not appear in other, unrelated branches.
According to Richard Dawkins, “It is vanishingly improbable that exactly the same evolutionary pathway should ever be traveled twice.” In other words, it is unlikely that evolution would cause the same trait to appear multiple times in different evolutionary lines. That is, two separate branches of the tree should not be marked by the appearance of the same evolved trait.
However, in many instances, the same trait shows up in animals or plants that are not closely related. In other words, the same evolutionary change occurred independently many times. According to a paper published April 30, 2026, by Yacine Ben Chehida and others in the journal PLOS Biology, “Convergent evolution, the repeated evolution of similar phenotypes, is widespread in nature.” (Phenotypes are the sets of observable characteristics or traits of an organism.)
Who is correct, Richard Dawkins or the paper in PLOS Biology? How can it be “vanishingly improbable” and yet “widespread in nature?” Furthermore, Simon Conway Morris, who has held the Chair of Evolutionary Paleobiology in the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Cambridge for more than 30 years, said, “Convergence is ubiquitous.” If by ubiquitous he means present anywhere and everywhere, how can unguided evolution explain that? How can something be “vanishingly improbable” and “ubiquitous” at the same time?
Since a neatly arranged tree of life does not seem to exist, perhaps the existence of a common creator God has more explanatory power than mere chance evolution. For more examples of convergent evolution, read our posts HERE and HERE.
I’m sitting by my window, looking out at the beautiful trees, green grass, flowers, birds, groundhog, and squirrels, and I’m thinking about Darwinism. According to Darwinism, all living things have evolved from a common ancestor, a single-celled creature about four billion years ago. I’m thinking that it takes a lot of faith to believe in the creativity of chance.
People often cite similarities among living things as evidence that all life originated from a single common ancestor. In their book I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist, Norman Geisler and Frank Turek consider how much faith it takes to be a Darwinist. To believe in Darwinism, you must be able to explain the dissimilarity among living things. I think that may be more difficult than explaining the similarities.
Think about the variation among the millions of life forms. Geisler and Turek point out that if you believe in Darwinism, you must explain the dissimilarity between “the palm tree, the peacock, the octopus, the locust, the bat, the hippopotamus, the porcupine, the sea horse, the Venus flytrap, the human, and mildew.” The question is, how could those and all other species have descended from the first unicellular life by mere chance and without intelligent intervention?
As you ponder that, you must also realize that if you’re going to leave God out of the picture, how did nonliving chemicals organize into that original single-celled organism from which all life sprang into being? Furthermore, how can you explain the existence of the fine-tuned universe that makes life, and especially advanced life, possible? Could chance and time have created all of this, or does it require an intelligent Designer? Believing in the creativity of chance takes more faith than I have.
A new scientific study defines yawning as “a stereotyped orofacial-respiratory behavior characterized by a prolonged jaw gape and coordinated oropharyngeal movements.” We know what yawning is, and we know it can be impolite to yawn while listening to someone speak or perhaps during a sermon. But maybe yawning is good for your health, according to this new study.
Yawning is not confined to humans—mammals, amphibians, reptiles, and other vertebrates also yawn. We think of yawning as accompanied by taking a deep breath, but even marine mammals, including beluga whales, bottlenose dolphins, and dugongs, display a similar action, gaping their mouths even when they’re underwater so they can’t breathe. Yawning must be good for something.
According to the scientific report, most yawns appear to consist of an initial deep inspiration, a pause, and then a rapid expiration. It was suggested that yawning may play a role in regulating blood oxygen levels, brain thermoregulation, or attention/arousal. According to the study, it may also have something to do with cerebral metabolic waste clearance. In other words, it helps clear your brain, so yawning is good for your health.
The movement of cerebral spinal fluid (CSF) contributes to waste removal in the brain. So, if CSF movement is critical to remove metabolic waste from the brain, how does yawning help with that movement? That was what the group’s research sought to find. They said, “The movement of the jaw and the act of inhaling can impact circulation within the skull.”
Furthermore, yawns may be coordinated by a brainstem central pattern generator (CPG), similar to those that control breathing and locomotion. Swallowing is also organized by CPG circuitry, and the researchers found that swallowing is often tied to yawning, since swallowing frequently occurs within seconds after a yawn.
The bottom line, as far as I can understand, is that yawning is good for your health because it helps clear the brain of waste materials. I presume that means when your brain is busy thinking, a yawn becomes necessary to clear out the waste and give room for your brain to keep on thinking. Perhaps if you’re yawning while reading the posts we present on this web page, we are stimulating your brain rather than putting you to sleep. If that is true, I am encouraged because while writing this, I found myself yawning.
I never cease to be amazed at the complexity of life and the human body that God designed, and yawning is just one more thing that amazes me.
