Evidence for God in Life Design Archives

February 20, 2021February 19, 2021

Even Christians Have Abortions

In 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court clearly stated that killing a baby is a choice women have the right to make. We have pointed out before that it is scientifically impossible to support the view that a fetus is just an extension of the mother’s body. Morning sickness happens because the mother’s body tries to reject a foreign object. Nearly 50 million babies, each with their own genome, have been aborted in the United States, and even Christians have abortions.

It is easy to carry a sign around opposing abortion or write an article condemning it. The fact is that if a woman finds herself pregnant and doesn’t want the baby, she has an excruciating decision to make. No one should trivialize an unwanted pregnancy or throw stones at a woman who has had an abortion.

It is essential to look at ourselves and see that we don’t become hypocritical when faced with a situation where abortion seems to be the easiest answer – either for us or someone we love. “40 Days for Life” is a pro-life movement claiming the involvement of over 20,000 churches and more than a million participants. Carmen Pate, working with that group, released disturbing statistics that even Christians have abortions. Of the women who have had abortions, 43% identify themselves as Protestants, and 27% identify as Catholic. One in four women has had at least one abortion by age 45.

The abortion dilemma continues to divide America and is a challenging problem to solve. The real answer is to stop endorsing promiscuity and provide better ways for couples who want children to adopt babies. As an adoptive father of three children, I am so thankful that my kids’ biological mothers were strong enough to allow them to live and grow into productive adults.

February 18, 2021February 17, 2021

Animal Engineers and Survival Ecosystems

One of the most interesting demonstrations of design in the natural world is the way some animals build structures that provide for the needs of other animals. The work of these animal engineers creates new ecosystems for survival.

The classic North American example is the beaver, which goes to great lengths to provide a whole ecosystem that benefits other life forms. One might question whether a dam is necessary for a beaver to eat plant material and raise babies. Dam building requires the beaver to spend massive amounts, and the dam is easily destroyed. A large number of other life forms depend on beaver dams and the ponds that form behind them.

Science News (February 13, 2021) published a similar example found in Australia. Life forms in northwestern Australia have to survive in a challenging environment with little water and extreme heat. How do all those animals survive in the harsh conditions?

The answer to that question is large monitor lizards. Two species of monitor lizards dig holes that are up to 13 feet (4 m) deep with numerous side channels. The monitor lizard lays its eggs at the bottom of the long, spiral-shaped tunnel. After the monitor lizard abandons the nest, other animals use the side channels to escape the extreme environment above ground. Arthropods, toads, snakes, lizards are included in 28 different vertebrate species using the abandoned monitor lizard lairs. Researchers have found up to 750 creatures in a single monitor’s pit and side channels.

Like the beaver, monitor lizards provide an environment that allows life in a place where survival is difficult. In the natural world, the simplest explanation is usually the correct one. That is not true when animal engineers are needed to allow a diversity of life in a challenging environment. The more we learn of God’s creation, the more examples we find of intelligence and design, which frequently involve animal engineers.

February 17, 2021February 16, 2021

Food Shortages and Starvation

One of the frustrating parts of the world situation today is the waste of food. Nearly every day, we get letters from relief organizations about hunger and pictures of starving children. The fact is that God has given us a planet that produces more food than we humans can eat. Food shortages and starvation result from mismanagement and failure to use all that God has given us.

The World Resources Institute tells us that 35% of the food produced in North America goes to waste. Most of this waste occurs at the consumption level in our homes and restaurants.

Some farming practices also contribute to the waste problem. In our area, people grow watermelons. When harvest time comes, hundreds of melons are left in the field to rot. The problem is that what sells at the market is melons of a specific size and weight, so melons that don’t meet those criteria are left in the field. Green beans are grown here, and the machines that harvest the beans cut off the plants allowing only one harvest. If allowed to continue to grow, the plants would produce many more beans.

Also, people are not fully using many food resources. We are just beginning to see the use of insects as a food source. Another developing area is aquaculture used for farming fish, as well as shrimp, clams, and lobsters. God has given us adequate food resources, and it is up to us to use them wisely so we can end food shortages and starvation everywhere on the planet.

February 15, 2021February 15, 2021

Value of Insects in the Ecosystem

We get many interesting responses to our daily articles on this website. Recently, several people responded to our emphasis on the value of insects. Bugs can indeed bother us. Some bite or sting, while others eat our vegetation encroaching on our food supply. Despite those things, we have pointed out that entomologists tell us that insects are beneficial.

Akito Kawahara, a curator at the Florida Museum of Natural History, said that most people are unaware of the value of insects. Kawahara points out that insects annually contribute 70 billion dollars to the U.S. economy by their roles in pollination and waste disposal processing. Everyone knows that insects are involved in pollinating flowering plants, but they may not realize that insects are the linchpins, holding together almost all land-based ecosystems. Also, insects provide food sources for birds, bats, freshwater fish, and numerous land animals.

Not realizing the value of insects, humans have done much to eradicate them. We have reduced their habitat, used massive amounts of pesticides, and made them victims of pollution. Sometimes, we have brought in invasive species of animals and plants that harm the ecosystems. We have also done things that accelerate climate change. The National Academy of Sciences suggests initiating a campaign to encourage people to avoid using bug zappers, practice insect conservation, do less mowing, and use insect-friendly soaps and sealants.

God set up a working system that has produced a high standard of living for thousands of years. We are threatening to unbalance the system by our capacity for high tech devices and materials. Sometimes insect populations get out of control and damage human resources, such as the locust invasions of recent years. It is often human interference with the natural controlling agents that have caused the insect infestations. People need to be aware of the value of insects to life on this planet.

Data from National Science Foundation

February 13, 2021February 13, 2021

Counting Birds for Science

How many bird species can you identify? There are over 10,000 known species of birds in the world, and I am sure you could not identify them all. But God can. More than that, He sees each one individually (Matthew 10:29). That staggers my mind. Sometimes I can’t keep up with counting birds at my backyard bird feeders.

We often feature birds in our daily Facebook postings, and many times we have talked about birds on this website. (For example, HERE, HERE, and HERE.) Birds are fascinating, beautiful, and intelligent creatures. Birds, like mammals, can be trained to do things and respond to humans in various ways. We see that as a purposeful design by our Creator to allow us to bond with these animals.

Watching birds fly through the air and listening to their beautiful songs are fascinating and enjoyable activities. Since the beginning, humans have longed for the ability to fly and see the world from our feathered friends’ perspective. Sometimes, people have been careless in causing harm or even extinction to bird species. When we see the many ways birds benefit life on Earth, we must recognize that we should be good stewards of what God has given us.

An annual worldwide event known as The Great Backyard Bird Count is now in progress. It’s a science project that you can get involved in no matter who you are or where you live. This year, from February 12-15 people worldwide will be counting birds in their vicinity. By doing that, they are helping to compile a database of birds. All you have to do is take at least one period of 15 minutes or more and make a list of all the birds you see in your backyard, in a local park, outside your apartment window, or anywhere else that’s convenient. Just record your location, start and end times, and the number and types of birds you see.

Of course, you can spend more than 15 minutes, or you can do it on each of the four days, or even multiple times per day. As in past years, the statistics from bird watchers worldwide will be tabulated by scientists to get a better picture of the world bird population and health. To help you identify birds, you can consult websites such as WhatBird.com and AllAboutBirds.org, which are free to use.

Counting birds is a science project that anyone can do. To learn the details of how you can get involved in this worldwide project, sign up for free at www.birdcount.org. We think that learning more about God’s creation helps us see our Creator’s wisdom and love. (Matthew 6:26)

February 10, 2021February 9, 2021

What Color Is Your River?

In my lifetime I have spent a lot of time on rivers. Living in Canada, I became acquainted with beautiful blue water with a clarity that allowed you to see the river’s bottom even at 20 feet. When my family moved to Bloomington, Indiana, I became involved with the White River, which was anything but white or blue. What color is your river?

In our 12 trips down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon, I saw changes in the water from time to time. The river was sometimes brown and other times crystal blue depending on how much upstream water was being released from the Glen Canyon Dam. I now live on the Saint Joseph River in southern Michigan. I have read the notes of the first explorers who came through this area in which they tell of being able to see the bottom of the river through 20 feet of water. Now you can only see about a foot down. There has been a massive change in Americas’ rivers through the years.

In 1984, Satellites started taking pictures of rivers in the United States. Over 230,000 images have been taken and analyzed by the University of Pittsburgh, the University of North Carolina, and Duke University. The data shows that only five percent of Americas’ rivers are still blue. Twenty-eight percent are green, which in most cases is caused by algae. The remainder are yellow, with 11,629 miles of rivers having become distinctly greener since 1984.

As rivers change from blue to yellow to green, what can live in the rivers also changes. In the Saint Joseph River, where we live in Michigan, the kind of fish that live in the river today are far different from the native trout seen by the early settlers of this area. Today the river has large numbers of suckers and carp. There are some bass and panfish, and we do have salmon from Lake Michigan migrating up the river to spawn. Transplanted fish like walleye are popular, but the whole ecological makeup has changed.

What color is your river? More important is the question of what is causing the rivers to change color? The causes, according to the studies, are farm fertilizer runoff, dams, sewage, and global warming, which has raised the temperature so that cold-water fish cannot live in the river. This is more than the loss of recreational use of waterways. Numerous diseases, including cancer, are related to what is in the water we drink, bathe in, and provide to our animals.

The question of what color is your river leads to asking what you can do about it. Christians need to be vocal in encouraging our culture to initiate significant efforts to turn our waterways blue again. It is interesting that in Revelation 22:1-2, when the inspired writer wanted to portray some of the properties of heaven to mortal humans, he describes “a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal.” In ancient times, when people wanted to worship and get away from the hassle of human activity, they went to a river. (See Acts 16:13.) Today most of our rivers are not that attractive.

Data from Associated Press article by Seth Borenstein, January 9, 2021.

February 9, 2021February 8, 2021

Cricket Megaphones

Have you ever thought about how a tiny cricket can make so much noise? Researchers have found that male tree crickets use leaves to make baffles that double the volume of their calls. You could call them cricket megaphones.

Cricket wings are resonance structures reverberating with the vibration caused by rubbing the wings together. This reverberation is like the body of a violin, but the sound is weak because the insect is so small. To make a baffle, the male cricket cuts a hole in a leaf and then crawls halfway through the hole, so its wings cause the leaf to vibrate like a loudspeaker. The advantage is that female crickets are attracted to the males with the loudest call.

The discussion among biologists is about whether this qualifies as tool use. Rittik Deb, an ecologist at the National Centre for Biological Sciences in Bangalore, India, says crickets show that sophisticated behaviors aren’t just for big complex brains. Deb says his work “really turns that idea on its head.”

Not everything about this behavior is beneficial to the cricket because increasing the volume of their calls makes them sitting ducks for predators like geckos and spiders. It would seem that this controls the cricket population, but it provides a food source for other living things. For that reason, it appears that evolutionary processes would eventually put a stop to cricket megaphones.

A more likely scenario is that the behavior is programmed into the crickets’ DNA to keep a balance in nature. In places where geckos and/or spiders are in abundance, the cricket population remains small. In Australia, we saw large numbers of geckos and large spiders in the homes of people with whom we stayed. We did not see insect problems in those same homes. In America, we have much to learn about the natural controls that God has built into our world. As more evidence unfolds, we see that human attempts to control insects with chemicals are unnecessary.

Data from Science News, January 16, 2021.

February 8, 2021February 7, 2021

Hidden Design in a Bird’s Eye

Most people know that birds have excellent vision. Eagles can spot a mouse from high overhead. How can they have such sharp vision? Science has revealed the hidden design in a bird’s eye.

The secret of a bird’s eyes was detected first, not in an eagle, but in the eye of a chicken. Color cones are cells in the retina located in the back of the eye. The cones capture the image that the lens focuses on the retina. Human eyes have cones of three different colors: red, blue, and green. Examining the retinas of chickens’ eyes, scientists found that they have five different colors of cones. But it isn’t the number of different color cones that is the most amazing feature.

Much more interesting is the arrangement of the cones. The cones for each color are different sizes. Imagine taking many circles in five different sizes and colors and arranging them on a surface, trying to fit the maximum number of circles into the area. If they were all the same size, you might put them into a grid, but since the circles are in five different sizes, packing the maximum number into the area becomes much more difficult. In packing cone cells onto a retina, more cones will give a higher resolution (sharper) image.

The arrangement of cones in the chicken retina seemed to be haphazard until scientists studied them more closely. What they found was something they call “hyperuniformity.” It’s a mathematically elegant concept that appears to be disordered but is actually optimized with a hidden order. You might call it “disordered hyperuniformity.” It’s the hidden design in a bird’s eye.

What appears disordered is the best possible arrangement to evenly distribute the maximum number of unevenly-sized cones over the retinal surface. Scientists are applying this to many other areas. Hyperuniformity could improve cameras and scanning equipment. It could also improve such diverse processes as mixing concrete, making glass, or any application where you need to distribute solid particles evenly.

How did the cells in the chicken’s eyes get arranged so perfectly? Was the hidden design in a bird’s eye an accident, or is this another example of the work of an intelligent Designer?

You can read more about this and see illustrations HERE.

February 5, 2021February 4, 2021

Biological Barriers to Evolution

For all living things to evolve from a single common ancestor, an incredible number of beneficial changes must occur. The problem is that biological barriers to evolution get in the way.

Although Darwinism looks for genetic mutations to fashion new and beneficial genetic changes, the vast majority of mutations are harmful. Since fruit flies have a short reproductive cycle, scientists have worked with enormous numbers of fruit fly generations, trying to demonstrate evolution. They have produced mutated fruit flies with four wings rather than two. However, the extra wings are a useless encumbrance to the fruit flies because there are no muscles to move them. Additionally, they are still fruit flies, not even houseflies or horseflies.

Darwin saw that the beaks of finches changed over time. However, those beak variations were not anything new; they had always been there. Changes in the habitat caused the birds with beneficial beak sizes and shapes to reproduce in larger numbers. When the climate or other conditions changed again, the predominant beaks changed again. The beak adaptations were not permanent changes, and the birds were still finches.

Mutations do not add new data to the DNA, and for a mutation to be passed on to the next generation, it must occur in the reproductive cells. A genetic change in body cells can’t be passed on to future generations any more than a woman who has had an appendectomy will give birth to a child with no appendix. Mutations in bacteria are well known and can cause them to become immune to the effects of antibiotics. But again, those are just hereditary fluctuations around a median point. They do not become new creatures.

Hundreds or even thousands of years of plant and animal breeding by humans has shown that intelligent breeding can produce remarkable changes and improvements. But new dog breeds are still dogs, and new rose varieties are still roses. If biological barriers to evolution limit intelligent humans to making improved changes within certain limited boundaries, could purely random chance mutations create the wide variety of life-forms in the world today? Billions of years are not enough time to do the impossible.

February 4, 2021February 3, 2021

COVID Effect on the Natural World

One interesting facet of the pandemic has been the COVID effect on the natural world. Worldwide reports have shown that animal life reacted to the reduced human activity. Here are some of the interesting cases:

1) In the Welsh village of Llandudno, a herd of Kashmiri goats descended from the Great Orme Mountain. The goats settled into the town munching on hedges and eating flowers and vegetables as there were no people around to run them off.
2) Dolphins showed up in Sardinia’s canals even though the media erroneously reported that they were in Venice’s canals.
3) Elephants invaded a Tea garden in China’s Yunnan province and became intoxicated after drinking corn wine.
4) Sparrows in San Francisco changed their song, although the reasons for this are not clear. The birds sang more softly and began hitting lower notes.
5) Raccoons shifted their activity periods from being nocturnal to operating in broad daylight.

All of this tells us that these animals have built-in systems of behavior that human activities have altered. When humans are not present, the animals return to the behavioral patterns of their ancestors. COVID reduced some of the negative aspects of human activity as well. In the spring of 2020, there was a 17% drop in carbon dioxide emissions as people reduced their driving.

God has built into the natural world a strong sense of behavior patterns, but most animals have the flexibility to adapt their behavior. Humans also can adapt to act in ways that benefit the world in which we live. We are not programmed to selfishness and to a way of life that destroys what God has given us. Now that we see the COVID effect on the natural world let us learn from this experience to become better stewards of God’s blessings.

Data from Discover magazine, January/February 2021, page 30-32.