Category: Evidence for God in Life Design

Evidence for God in Living Things

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Psychic Tears – The Third Type

Psychic Tears – The Third Type
Yesterday we mentioned that we have three types of tears. The first type is basal tears which lubricate the eye. The second is reflex tears which help to flush irritants from the eye. Each of those types has a different chemical composition. There is also a third unique type of tears. We call them PSYCHIC TEARS.

These tears are produced by intense emotional stress which can be pleasure, anger, suffering, mourning, or pain. Again, they have a different chemical composition from basal or reflex tears. These tears contain large amounts of protein-based hormones – prolactin, adrenocorticotropic hormone, and leu-enkephalin which is a natural painkiller.

The hypothalamus in the brain has a degree of control over the autonomic nervous system. In a complex process involving neurotransmitters and receptors, the lacrimal gland is stimulated to produce tears. Studies have shown that the shedding of psychic tears is a significant part of the emotional adjustment to stress. Ongoing studies are examining whether mental illness can be affected by the shedding of psychic tears.

We would never have thought that tears could be so complicated. We also find it interesting that tears have different connotations in the Bible. In Luke 7:38 a woman washes the feet of Jesus with her tears. Mark 9:24 tells of a father crying out with tears. Acts 20:19 and 31 show tears used in a different context. Revelation 7:17 and 21:4 speak of God wiping away ALL tears indicating a realization of all the services that tears provide.

A study of tears is a beautiful reminder of David’s statement of Psalms 139:14: “I will praise you, God, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvelous are your works.” Tears show us just one more example of God’s design of our bodies to cope with life on Earth.
–John N. Clayton
Data from the American Academy of Ophthalmology.

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Types of Tears – There are Three

Types of Tears – There are Three
In April of 2016, I received a note from Charles and Brenda Beard who asked if I had ever studied the subject of tears? I put that in my list of topics to investigate thinking that types of tears could not be very complicated. There should be only one type of tears that came with different kinds of situations. Upon researching tears, I have learned that there are three types of tears, and they are different in function and different in composition.

BASAL TEARS keep the cornea of the eye continually wet and nourished. They also lubricate the eye and keep it free of dust. Tears of this type contain water, mucin, lipids, lysozyme, lactoferrin, lipocalin, lacritin. immunoglobulins, glucose, urea, sodium, and potassium. The substances such as lysozyme fight against bacterial infection by dissolving a layer in the outer coating of certain types of bacteria. This action is part of the body’s complex immune system.

Basal tears also contain antioxidants including ascorbate, urate, cysteine, glutathione, and tyrosine. For those of us that aren’t biochemists, this simply means there is a complex, designed system in the tear production of our eyes. This system keeps this vulnerable, exposed surface from being destroyed by agents in the world around us that would attack such a sensitive area.

Typically a person will secrete .03-.04 ounces (.75-1.1 grams) of this body fluid per day. If you have had a family member or even a pet that could not produce tears, you know that very quickly the eye becomes unusable. Basal tears are a carefully compounded chemical substance essential to our vision.

REFLEX TEARS attempt to wash away anything that irritates the eyes. When foreign particles or irritants contact the eye or nasal area, TRP (amino acid) channels in the ophthalmic nerve act to produce these tears. Most of us have produced tears when working with certain substances such as when cutting onions. Tear gas, pepper spray, or some fragrances cause this same reaction. Yawning, coughing, or vomiting can trigger these tears. Bright lights shining in your eyes or hot, peppery substances in your mouth also trigger reflex tears. The fluid, which is water laced with amino acids, help to wash away the irritant.

Those are two types of tears that are very important. There is also a third type which we will talk about tomorrow.
–John N. Clayton © 2018
Data from the American Academy of Ophthalmology.

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God’s Elevator — The Vortex

God's Elevator — The Vortex
One of my favorite demonstrations as a physics teacher was to put a student on a frictionless stool and spin them around with their legs extended out in front of them. I would then tell them to pull in their legs. When they did that, their angular velocity increased dramatically—they spun faster. We see this when a spinning figure skater pulls in their arms and legs causing a dramatic increase in their rotational speed. This is an excellent demonstration of the conservation of energy and angular momentum. It is also a design feature that enables a wide variety of living things to fly without prohibitive losses of metabolic energy. We call it God’s elevator.

Instead of solids, what happens if the material that is spinning is a fluid – water or air for example. When water goes down the drain in your sink, it picks up speed as it gets near the center. In the very center, there won’t be any motion at all. In a hurricane, warm air is rising in the center, and as air rushes in to replace the rising air, it increases in speed. The center with no air rushing in is the eye of the hurricane, and the maximum velocity is in the wall near the eye.

A less dramatic example of the vortex is the convection cell on a hot summer day. The Sun heats the ground which then heats the air near the ground. The heated air rises, and as it does, the edges of the air are cooled by contact with the colder air around it. This creates a doughnut-shaped thermal vortex that rises to make an invisible, energy-saving elevator for any organism that can get into the doughnut. What this means is that an animal like a hawk does not have to beat its wings and spend enormous energy to soar to a high elevation. This is a huge saving in metabolic energy. An amazing number of living organisms use God’s elevator to get high into the sky and travel very long distances.

Charles Darwin, while sailing on the Beagle, noticed a mass of spiderlings 60 miles off the South American coast. These organisms are terrestrial creatures, but they were able to travel enormous distances by using vortices. Moths use vortices to make journeys from where they are to new areas.

Recent studies of birds have shown that the wings of a bird create a vortex system which is like a ladder. There is almost no lift produced by the bird’s wings on their upstroke, but the downstroke creates a vortex. That vortex combines with vortices on the wing tips making a ring. The combination of these ring vortices makes a zigzagging ladder-like system which lifts the bird. This allows the bird to use a smaller amount of energy than if it merely powered itself through the air. That is why the birds in your backyard fly in a zigzag pattern rather than a smooth path.

Blackfly larvae that live on the bottom of a stream position themselves so that water flowing over the bottom of the tube-shaped larva goes faster creating a low pressure rising along their bodies. The resulting vortex brings up food particles along the floor of the stream to the filters that extend out the top of the larva. The number of examples of living things that use vortices to feed or to conserve energy as they travel seems to be endless.

How do these animals know to use the vortex effect? The way they position themselves and how they use the vortices in their environment works to their advantage. God’s elevator is a great testimony to His wisdom of design in the creation. We can know there is a God through the things He has made and how they use things like vortices to survive (Romans 1:20).
–John N. Clayton © 2018

Data from Discover, August 1993 page 81-87.

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Bigfoot Legend and Human Evolution

Bigfoot Legend
Sixty years ago a headline in the Humboldt (California) Times read “Giant Footprints Puzzle Residents.” The paper reported that a road construction crew had found footprints 16 inches long and the paper gave the creature the name “Bigfoot” which has stuck to this day. Today’s media and film-makers have kept the Bigfoot legend going.

Animal Planet has run a series titled Finding Bigfoot for 11 seasons now, without actually ever finding it. There is a Bigfoot Field Researcher’s Organization that keeps a file of bigfoot reports and has at least one from every state in the United States except Hawaii. This year there are two children’s films: The Son of Bigfoot and Smallfoot.

It isn’t just in America that the Bigfoot legend exists. The Australians have a specimen called Yowie, and there is a Himalayan specimen called Yeti. Social media has made the problem worse where, for example, drone footage of a supposed bigfoot in a clearing in Idaho racked up millions of views.

In 1968 Frank Hansen exhibited “Minnesota Iceman” which was a bigfoot-like creature encased in ice. He claimed that it was found in waters off Siberia. In December of that year, Ivan Sanderson of the Smithsonian and Bernard Heuvelman of the Institute of Natural Science in Belgium examined the specimen in a trailer in Minnesota and declared it to be real. Heuvelman wrote in scientific journals that he had discovered a new species of human he named Homo pongoides. In 1969 the Smithsonian learned from a Hollywood prop house that they had created the Iceman in 1967. It was a carnival exhibit made of latex rubber and hair. If you are interested, you can see the specimen at the Museum of the Weird in Austin, Texas.

The Bigfoot legend is not just a scam perpetuated by those devoted to proving that humans evolved from an ape-like creature. We personally visited Glen Rose, Texas, several times to examine “evidence” that humans and dinosaurs lived together in the same time period. In this case, Jake McFall was the primary figure in a film titled Footprints in Stone which was made on his farm and released as proof that science was wrong and that humans and dinosaurs did coexist. It later turned out that the human footprints in the film were painted into the rock and the film was pulled from circulation.

There is no such thing as a ”missing link.” No one specimen can prove or disprove human evolution. Those who try to use footprints or frozen specimens to prove or disprove human evolution do not understand the biblical definition of humans. The biblical idea of humans has to do with our spiritual makeup, not our physical bodies. Humans come in all kinds of sizes, shapes, and colors. What we look like is not what defines us. Our spiritual makeup is what sets us apart. Evidence of that unique spiritual makeup is all around us – in art, in music, in worship, and in our capacity to feel guilt and sympathy.

If you are interested in this point, we encourage you to watch video # 10 in our video series available free on doesgodexist.tv.
–John N. Clayton © 2018

Data from Smithsonian magazine, September 2018, page 13

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Alcohol and Health Exhaustive Study

Alcohol and Health
The most exhaustive study of the long-term effects of alcohol has been released by King’s College, London, and the Chief Medical Officer of the United Kingdom. The study included 28 million people in 195 countries and included 694 separate studies. The research shows a strong connection between alcohol and health.

The report stated that “no amount of alcohol is safe to consume.” It went on to say: “The conclusions of the study are clear and unambiguous – alcohol is a colossal global health issue and small reductions in health-related harms at low levels of alcohol intake are outweighed by the increased risk of other health-related harms, including cancer. There is no safe level of alcohol consumption.”

The study shows that alcohol is the seventh leading risk factor for premature death and disease. Overall 2.2% of deaths in women and 6.8% of deaths in men come from alcohol-related cancers. The study also gives data for drinkers in different countries. Denmark had the highest usage with 95.3% of the women in Denmark and 97.1% of the men regularly using alcohol. Pakistan had the lowest with 0.8% of the men and 0.3%of the women in Bangladesh being regular drinkers. A standard drink was 10 grams of alcohol. Ukraine had the highest amount of alcohol consumed–8.2 drinks a day being consumed by the men in Ukraine and 4.2 drinks a day by the women. The report dealt with alcohol and health. Data on traffic accidents and alcohol is in addition to these health problems.

Like many other issues, Christians have to look at their responsibility to take care of their bodies. First Corinthians 3:16 tells us that our bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit and that God condemns those things that destroy the temple. The cost of alcohol goes far beyond the purchase price. Medical expense, psychological damage, treatment expense, and accident expense make alcohol the most destructive drug in our world today.

The study shows that 32.5% of the world’s population drink alcohol which adds up to 2.4 billion people. What does it take for our world to realize the cost and speak against the use of alcohol? How can Christians take an ambiguous position on this issue? The wisest man who ever lived said it well, “Wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging: and whosoever is deceived by it is not wise” (Proverbs 20:1).
–John N. Clayton © 2018
You can read the report HERE.

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Why Roosters Don’t Go Deaf

Why Roosters Don't Go Deaf
Roosters are loud! They can hit volumes as high as 140 decibels which is the level of sound on an aircraft carrier deck. For humans, a noise above 120 decibels, about the level of a chainsaw, can cause permanent hearing damage. So you may wonder why roosters don’t go deaf.

Belgian researchers writing in the journal Zoology have the answer. They examined the skull structure of the birds. The researchers found that they have a built-in defense against loud sounds in the form of a sound barrier. When a rooster adjusts its head and neck to crow, small flaps of tissue close the ear canal. They effectively act as earplugs to dampens the noise significantly.

On top of that, the study reveals that roosters can regenerate the tiny hair cells deep within the ear that can become damaged by loud noises. Humans can’t do that, which is why deafness caused by loud sounds is permanent for us. For roosters, a degree of deafness would likely only be temporary if it happened at all.

“Micro-CT scans of a rooster and chicken head show that in roosters the auditory canal closes when the beak is opened,” the researchers wrote. “In hens the diameter of the auditory canal only narrows but does not close completely. A morphological difference between the sexes in shape of a bursa-like slit which occurs in the outer ear canal causes the outer ear canal to close in roosters but not in hens.”

So now you know why roosters don’t go deaf. God’s design in every living thing on Earth shows wisdom and an exceptional understanding of the problems that each species faces. The more we learn about the creation, the more we understand the wisdom and creative nature of God. “We can know there is a God through the things He has made” (Romans 1:19-20).
–John N. Clayton © 2018
You can read more about the research by clicking HERE.

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Death Penalty Inadmissible?

Death Penalty Inadmissible?
Pope Francis has resurrected an old debate by declaring the death penalty inadmissible in all cases. The Pope says that the death penalty “attacks the inviolability and the dignity of the person, a dignity that is not lost even after having committed the most serious crimes.”

Romans 13:4 describing rulers says: “For he is the minister of God to you for good. But if you do that which is evil, be afraid: for he does not bear the sword in vain: for he is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon he who does evil.” Some have argued that the sword is a symbol of justice, not execution, so there has been a debate on execution for many years.

One of the major theological issues is that when you execute a person who has not become a Christian you have condemned them to hell. Another problem is that courts cannot always determine guilt worthy of the death penalty in a fool-proof way. In the United States in the past 45 years, 1,479 people were executed. There were 162 people scheduled for execution who were found to be innocent before the death penalty was carried out. How many of those executed were actually innocent? The New York Times says the death penalty “is an arbitrary and hugely expensive barbarism whose victims in the United States are often black, poor, or mentally disturbed.”

Is it wise to make the death penalty inadmissible? We have prisoners in our correspondence program who are on death row. In our discussions with them, it has been clear that in most cases there was considerable doubt about the cause of their incarceration. In many cases, the court debates have gone on for decades. Perhaps finding ways for them to give back to society without allowing them to become a public hazard would be a more merciful and fool-proof response to not bearing the sword in vain.
–John N. Clayton © 2018

Data from The Week, August 17/24, 2018, page 17.

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Walnut Sphinx Accordion Worm

Walnut Sphinx Adult Form
One of the amazing things that we see in the natural world is that animals are designed so that they do not get wiped out by predators. A classic example is a caterpillar, which has no easy defense against birds who can find them even though camouflage is one of their primary defenses. The North American walnut sphinx moth caterpillar employs an unusual defense mechanism that gives it the nickname accordion worm.

This caterpillar is about two inches long and has air holes in its sides. It can compress its body to force air out through the holes. The accordion worm does this when threatened by a bird predator. The holes are spaced and designed so that the air passing through them sounds like the alarm calls of the particular bird species that threatens them. The whistle is not just a little squeak. The sound level is more than 80 decibels compared to a normal conversation which is around 50 to 60 decibels. When the caterpillar makes the sound, the birds that would eat the caterpillar scramble out of the area. Researchers from the University of Washington tell us that this is the first incidence of a deceptive alarm call between an insect and a bird.

God provides for all of life on our planet, and the complexity of keeping things in balance is remarkable. As we see the balance of nature becoming upset by human actions, we have to be impressed with what a delicate system of life the Earth contains. Romans 1:18 tells us that we can know God exists through the things He has made. Proverbs 8:1-6, 22-31 reminds us that wisdom has been a part of God’s creative process from the beginning.

If the accordion worm could not survive, it would not become the beautiful North American walnut sphinx moth in the picture. More and more we realize how important it is to take care of what God has created for us.
–John N. Clayton © 2018
Data from “News of the Wild” in National Wildlife, Summer 2018.

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Why Are Plants Green?

Why Are Plants Green?
Why are plants green? The answer to this is some pretty basic physics.

The colors of light that we receive from the Sun have different energies. Red is the lowest of these energies followed by yellow, green, and blue. The sunlight with the highest energy that actually reaches the surface of the Earth is green. Blue light, which is more energetic, is refracted away by Earth’s atmosphere and scattered as it interacts with molecules in our upper atmosphere. That’s why the sky is blue.

When you look at an object, the color you see is the color reflected by that object. A red ball is red because it reflects red and absorbs all other colors. A green leaf is green because it reflects green and absorbs all other colors. If the highest energy of light reaching the surface of the Earth is green, and if the leaf reflects green, what does this do for the leaf? The answer should be pretty obvious – it keeps the leaf from absorbing too much energy and getting cooked. In the fall of the year when the leaves lose their chlorophyll A, which gives them the green color, what happens? The leaf gets cooked, falls off the tree, and we have to scrape it off the yard.

If a planet had a different atmosphere so that a different energy of light reached its surface, its plants would have to be a different color. To quote Kermit the Frog “It’s not easy being green.” Why are plants green? They are green because green is essential to life on Earth.

This explanation is greatly oversimplified. Obviously, not all plants have green leaves. Some plants live under a canopy of other trees and have to use a different system. The design of life on Earth is incredible, and the green trees and grass around us testify to the wisdom of God in making a place for life to exist.

We have a children’s book titled Why Is the Sky Blue, Why Is the Grass Green. You can read it and all of our children’s books on our Grandpa John’s Science Club site using THIS LINK.
–John N. Clayton © 2018

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Secularizing a Culture

Secularizing a Culture
Is it possible to discover the key factors for secularizing a culture? Yesterday we discussed an international computer modeling project called the Modeling Religion Project. The goal of the international team of experts working on the project was to use computer modeling to learn how politicians could manipulate the religiosity or secularization of a society. We won’t go into all of the background details again, but you can read yesterday’s post HERE.

We said that this scientific study determined that four factors lead to secularizing a culture. The factors are: 1-Having material things, 2-Having personal freedom, 3-Welcoming diversity or pluralism, 4-Having a higher level of education in science and the humanities. We quoted Wesley Wildman, a professor of philosophy and ethics at Boston University and a collaborator on the project who seems to want our culture to become more secularized and less religious. He said, “The U.S. has found ways to limit the effects of education by keeping it local, and in private schools, anything can happen.” He also said, “Lately, there’s been encouragement from the highest levels of government to take a less than welcoming attitude to pluralism. These are forms of resistance to secularization.”

You shouldn’t need a computer model to realize that having money and material things along with personal freedom can lead people to forget about God. The ancient Israelite nation demonstrated that multiple times, and we can see it in more modern societies. Unfortunately, people turn to God in hard times and forget about Him when things are going well. Welcoming diversity or pluralism, when it means that we consider all faiths or no faith to be equally valid, is also an obvious path to secularization. However, sharing our faith with people of diverse cultures does not lead to secularization. Also, education does not have to be a path to unbelief. The DOES GOD EXIST? program has always said that science and the Bible, when both are correctly understood, are friends and not enemies.

Professor Wildman built another computer model to determine why some religious groups survive while others fall apart. He concluded that one of the most important factors is that the movements that persist have “a highly charismatic leader who personally practices what he preaches.” Wildman said, “It’s basically, leave the groups alone when the leaders are less consistent, kill the leaders that have those specific qualities.” In other words, he is saying not to worry about religious movements with leaders who are not charismatic and who don’t practice what they preach. They will probably die out anyway. The religious movements that will last and have a radical effect on society are those led by a charismatic leader who practices what he preaches.

What religious leader fits that description precisely? Jesus Christ, of course. What did the ones who wanted to end His religious movement do? They killed Him. The thing they did not count on, was that we would not stay dead.

Computer modeling has now given us the steps to secularizing a culture. Professor Wildman put it this way: “The MODRN (Modeling Religion in Norway) model gives you a recipe for accelerating secularization—and it gives you a recipe for blocking it. You can use it to make everything revert to supernaturalism by messing with some of those key conditions—say, by triggering some ecological disaster. Then everything goes plunging back into pre-secularism. That keeps me up at night.”

We suggest that we should be working to create not a “secular” or “religious” society, but a society based on the life and teaching of Jesus Christ. We don’t need an ecological disaster. We do need a 1-a secure society, 2-with personal freedom of speech and religion, 3-that welcomes and shares with those in need, not only physically, but spiritually, 4-and with education that recognizes that God speaks through His creation (science) and through His word (the Bible). Remember that the authorities tried to kill Jesus and His message, but they could not.
–Roland Earnst © 2018

Click HERE for information about the Modeling Religion Project.
Click HERE for research reports from the project.
Click HERE for an article from The Atlantic titled “Artificial Intelligence Shows Why Atheism Is Unpopular.”