DOES GOD EXIST? TODAY - Page 62 of 242 - Evidence for God In the Things He Has Made

February 9, 2022February 7, 2022

Design of Lizard Lungs

Studying the design of lizard lungs may lead to innovations in developing artificial lungs for humans. A Princeton University study showed how reptile lungs develop. Human lungs take months to develop, and that makes repair very difficult. The Princeton researchers studied the development of lungs in brown anole lizards and found that their lungs develop in a few days.

In the brown anole lizard, fluid fills the area that will become a lung and pushes against smooth muscle tissue until gaps develop in the muscle. Then, a membrane protrudes through the gaps so that a large surface area forms, and within two days, the surface area is ready for gas exchange. Researchers were able to build a working replica mimicking the lizard’s natural process of lung development.

The Princeton researchers say that the process is a simple mechanical process that could be a model for “advanced biotechnology design.” By copying the design of lizard lungs, it may become possible to produce lung material to replace lungs damaged by disease. The National Science Foundation says this discovery could lead to innovations in artificial lung design and development. God’s design of living things is very complex, but sometimes humans can copy a simple creative method like this lizard lung development.

Medical science can eventually treat almost all chronic human ailments by recognizing God’s design. Celeste Nelson, who authored the lizard studies, said, “If we appreciate that there’s a lot of biodiversity that we can’t see, and we try to take advantage of it, then we as engineers will have more tools to tackle some of the major challenges that face society.” Likewise, we can improve the future of human health by studying living things, including God’s design of lizard lungs.

References: National Science Foundation and Science Advances

February 8, 2022February 7, 2022

Color Vision Differences in Various Creatures

Color vision differences in various creatures result from eye design. Humans see color because we have three kinds of cones in the retina that respond to different energies of light. Our eyes have color cones sensitive to red, green, and blue. If light stimulates all three types of cones, we see it as white. When light stimulates red and green cones but not blue, we see yellow. Other combinations result in every color we can see.

Some light energies do not trigger any of our cones, yet they affect us. For example, our eyes don’t perceive ultraviolet energy, but UV rays can cause sunburn. Likewise, we can’t see infrared energy, but we can feel it as heat.

Animals have many color vision differences compared to humans. Why do deer not see the orange jackets that hunters frequently wear? A deer can’t see very much color at all. That means a hunter standing still in the woods wearing an orange camouflage outfit will be invisible to a deer but highly visible to other hunters.

Some animals that do not see color can see light energies that we can’t. For example, a rattlesnake can see infrared, which is a lower energy than the visible light we see. A warm-blooded animal such as a rat or mouse gives off infrared radiation. A rattlesnake can see the infrared light coming from the rat on a very dark night when there is no light visible to humans.

The National Science Foundation reported on a jumping spider (Saitis barbipes) found in Europe and North Africa with no red color sensitivity. A red ball would appear gray or black to those spiders. However, the males of these furry spiders have a bright red crown and legs. Even though potential mates cannot see the red, certain areas of the spider’s body strongly absorb ultraviolet light. Those areas appear as “spider green” to other jumping spiders.

In addition to color vision differences, some animals have specialized vision tools to help them survive. For example, a marine turtle’s eyes have polarized corneas. That polarization allows the turtle to see reflected light because it is polarized parallel to the reflecting surface. A turtle needing to locate water will simply scan the horizon to see polarized light reflected from the water’s surface. Other animals, such as birds or fish, have polaroids in a vertical orientation, enabling them to see through clouds or water without having to deal with glare.

Designing cells that can detect light is only part of the story. Making eyes that meet the peculiar needs of various animals is much more difficult. Your vision is just one more support for David’s statement, “I will praise you, Lord, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.” (Psalms 139:14.)

Reference: The National Science Foundation and the journal The Science of Nature

February 7, 2022February 5, 2022

Snow Is a Blessing from God

I just spent an hour moving snow. Blowing out the driveway, digging out the mailbox, and leaving early to get to any appointment is ordinary for us during the Michigan winter months. People moan and complain about it, yet snow is a blessing from God.

Most of us know about igloos used by people in the far north to shield themselves from super cold conditions. Snow is an excellent insulator, preserving plants and small animals during the cold winter months. I am always concerned when we don’t have snow during the very cold days because my roses suffer. Small animals also are very active beneath the snow. Not only does the snow protect them from the cold, but also from predators.

Snow is a blessing from God. In Job 38:22, God refers to the storehouse of the snow. In many areas of the world, mountain snow stores water that melts in the spring and summer, supplying a constant water supply to arid and semi-arid locations. When additional layers compact the snow, it behaves as a fluid and actually flows. We call that a glacier and glacial ice can store massive quantities of water. One of the concerns about climate change is that if the glacial ice melts, the sea level will rise, threatening populations worldwide.

Snow exists only because of the unusual properties of the water molecule. The water molecule is polar instead of being linear (H – O – H), as you might expect. Both hydrogen atoms are on one side of the water molecule, with the oxygen atom on the other side. (We have discussed the polar nature of the water molecule previously on this website.) When the temperature is low enough, one molecule will attach itself to another, and because of water’s unique molecular structure, they form a lattice at many different angles.

If you haven’t looked carefully at snowflakes, please do so. Snowflakes are all hexagonal with six sides, but they are all different with unusual spacing that gives them a lower density than water. For this same reason, ice is less dense than water, and it forms on the surface of a lake and does not sink to the bottom. Usually, solid forms of materials are more dense than their liquid forms, but that is not the case with water. Otherwise, a lake would freeze solid and kill all the fish and other creatures living there.

This design of water is a testimony to God’s wisdom that we see in every corner of His creation. In Job 38:29-30, God reminds Job of His design of snow and ice by saying, “From whose womb comes the ice? Who gives birth to the frost from heaven when the waters become hard as stone when the surface of the deep is frozen?” We have learned much about the design of water since Job’s day, but the message of creation to us is the same as it was to Job. Snow is a blessing from God.

February 5, 2022February 5, 2022

Christianity and the Origin of Science

Stephen C. Meyer and the origin of science — Stephen C. Meyer

One of the most prolific writers in the field of apologetics is Stephen C. Meyer of the Discovery Institute. His book Return of the God Hypothesis has stirred up a great deal of discussion in academic circles, and Prager University has been promoting his work on the web. One of his interesting points relates to the origin of science.

Stephen Meyer points out that science began in western Europe, and he attributes that to the tenants of Christianity. However, all cultures have made significant contributions to human progress and technology. For example, the Chinese perfected the use of gunpowder and rockets. Islam contributed to the field of mathematics and applications of math to astronomy. The Incas and various Central and South American native populations made significant progress in agriculture, irrigation, and land use. Egyptian and African cultures built marvelous pyramids and employed incredible engineering techniques to build great memorials.

In all of these cases, there was no advancement of science as occurred in western Europe. The science of western Europe culminated in enormous progress in chemistry, physics, biology, and medicine. It resulted in industrialization and the high standard of living that we enjoy in America today. While ignorance, greed, and selfishness may have contaminated that progress in modern times, the origin of science is in the belief system of Christianity.

The biblical concept of the natural world shows us that it is intelligible. If you believe there is design and order in nature that we can understand, we can study that design and use it. The great heroes of western science saw that there was order and planning in what they were investigating. The “Scientists and God” column in our quarterly journal contains quotes from the great minds in western science expressing that the universe is orderly because the Creator made it that way, and we can understand it. The Christian system was the basis of their work. The Bible condemns witchcraft, spiritualism, sorcery, and multiple gods and goddesses fighting each other, resulting in chaos.

The orderliness of the universe is based on laws such as the laws of thermodynamics. Fixed laws guide the fields of astrophysics, geology, and oceanography. The whole basis of Darwin’s understanding of biology was that there is an order to life that depends on the environments in which living things find themselves.

Webster defines science as “knowledge,” and modern knowledge has come from the biblical beliefs of a creation that can be understood and has order and design. The origin of science did not come from a chaotic belief system that embraced mysticism and spirits.

February 4, 2022February 2, 2022

An Overlooked Role of Birds and Mammals

Various data sources show massive evidence of climate change. The melting of the ice sheets, the warming of the Pacific Ocean, and the increase of weather anomalies affect all of us. Some of these changes have to do with flooding and the frequency of storms. Others affect our food supply where there is an overlooked role of birds and mammals.

While the effect on human activity is pretty dramatic, the natural changes in living things in the environment are usually less noticeable. The reason is that the design of life anticipates that climate will change from time to time, even if humans have no role in that change. If a plant species faces environmental change threatening its existence, it will disperse its seeds into a different place where the environment is more suitable.

The often overlooked role of birds and mammals is that they are the primary agents for seed dispersal. The National Science Foundation helped fund a study showing that more than half of all plant species rely on animals to disperse their seeds. The NSF website said, “Plants that rely on seed dispersers can face extinction if there are too few animals to move their seeds far enough to keep pace with changing conditions.”

One of the things that plant-eating dinosaurs did was to spread the seeds of the plants they ate. This means that pruning was not the only benefit of plant-eaters, but seed spreading was also significant. As the climate has changed in the past, animals have spread the seeds over a vast geographic area allowing the incredible diversity we see in plants today.

This kind of research has a variety of practical uses. It reminds us of the overlooked role of birds and mammals in dispersing seeds in the environment. The study showed a 60% reduction due to the loss of seed-spreading birds and mammals.

We see evidence of God’s wisdom in designing birds and mammals with a diet that allows spreading the seeds of the plants they eat. That design helps to moderate the effect of climate change. God told Adam and Eve to take care of the Garden (Genesis 2:15), and we need to understand our responsibility in that. The fact that creation’s design allows life to survive climate changes is a testimony to God’s wisdom.

Reference: National Science Foundation website and the journal Science

February 3, 2022February 2, 2022

The Biblical Description of God

It is amazing to see the level of ignorance of the nature of God displayed in the media and cartoons and by prominent entertainment figures. It is no wonder young people are turned off by religion. People need to see the Biblical description of God.

It’s easy to see the poor understanding of God in statements about where God is, when He does things, if He is dead, what sex God is, what race God is, what politics God has, what nation God supports, or who created God. A good part of this comes from religious systems outside of Christianity that portray God in nationalistic, racial, or pantheistic terms.

The biblical description of God is radically different from what you may hear. The biblical concept of God is not physical in any way. God created time and space, so He must be outside of time and space. Jeremiah 23:23-24 talks about God “filling heaven (space) and Earth.” Acts 17:28 describes God as an entity “in whom we live and move and have our being.” In 2 Peter 3:8, Psalms 90:4, and Palms 102:27, we read that God is outside of time. Numerous passages talk about things that God did before time began. (See Proverbs 8:22-23, John 1:1-3, Revelation 1:8, etc.)

God has created our three-dimensional world from an existence outside of the three dimensions in which we live. It is no longer possible for skeptics to deny the existence of dimensions beyond our familiar X, Y, and Z cartesian coordinates. Quantum mechanics clearly shows dimensions beyond our own, and theories like string theory propose up to eleven spatial dimensions. The only way we can even remotely comprehend these dimensions is to study their properties.

That is precisely what we see in the biblical description of God. The Bible explains God by His properties. For example, the Bible says God is light (1 John 1:5), God is the Word (John 1:1), God is unseen (1 John 4:12), God is not a man (Numbers 23:19), God is not flesh and blood (Matthew 16:17), God is love (1 John 4:8 & 16), and God is spirit (John 4:24).

In the same way that the Bible gives properties of God, it also gives properties of heaven and hell. Hell is not a hole in the ground or a big cave with little men in red suits running around jabbing people. The Bible symbolically describes hell as darkness and flaming sulfur (brimstone). Hell is a spiritual condition separated from God and all of His properties. Unfortunately, cartoon pictures of hell are steeped in ignorance and often mock the concept of spiritual responsibility.

How would you describe what you see to a man who has been blind from birth? How would you explain color? How can you talk about music to a person totally deaf from birth? This is the kind of problem the Bible writers have in describing God, heaven, hell, and the whole concept of spiritual awareness.

If you reject God, that is your prerogative, but at least do so on the level He claims to exist. Don’t reject God based on your own concept or the false concept of someone else. Instead, examine the biblical description of God. For more on this, go to our doesgodexist.org website and read the two booklets titled “A Help In Understanding What God Is” and “Who Created God?”

February 2, 2022February 1, 2022

Studies of Elephant Trunks

So many designs in living things seem to be beyond any chance explanation that it is difficult to watch a nature program or read a scientific paper without seeing another example. For example, we have recently written about studies of elephant trunks HERE, HERE, and HERE. National Wildlife magazine for the first quarter of 2022 reported on another elephant trunk study.

This report centers on the elephant’s specialized respiratory system, which produces lung pressure that allows the elephant to use suction both on land and underwater. No other terrestrial species can even come close to doing what an elephant can do.

Every day an African elephant consumes 400 pounds of food and drinks several gallons of water. The engineers studying the elephants discovered that they can dilate their nostrils to reduce the thickness of the walls of their trunks, increasing the space inside the trunk by 60%. High-speed video and computer modeling show that the elephants can suction air at nearly 500 feet per second and inhale a gallon of water every 1.5 seconds.

As with previous studies of elephant trunks, this new data makes the elephant even more amazing. As scientists understand specialized equipment, it becomes more and more difficult to suggest that this specialization can be the product of chance. Many species of elephants have inhabited our planet, and their trunks all show specialization, even though the environments they live in vary enormously.

Every living thing on Earth has something to teach us. Therefore, we must take care of our planet and the animals we share it with so we will not lose this information. From studies of ants to studies of elephant trunks, an abundance of life demonstrates the wisdom and design of the Creator.

References: National Wildlife magazine and Journal of the Royal Society Interface

February 1, 2022January 31, 2022

Vulture Bees and Evolution

One of the interesting design features that we see in the biological world is how waste material is recycled into the environment. When something dies, all of its body must return to the bio-system. Otherwise, the bodies of dead animals and plants would cover Earth’s surface. Vultures and hyenas play an essential role in recycling dead bodies. In past columns, we have written about birds that eat bones. Vulture bees are another agent that takes a dead carcass and reduces it to the elemental constituents.

We are all familiar with bees that flit from flower to flower, searching for nectar. Vulture or carrion bees are three species of stingless bees in the genus Trigona, living in the jungles of Central and South America. To prevent them from getting sick on rotting meat, they have the same gut bacteria as vultures and hyenas.

The jungle poses a different environment from open terrain. A dead animal carcass can quickly turn slimy and stinky in the warm and humid jungle environment. However, vulture bees have a digestive system that can handle any dead animal, even lizards and snakes.

Studies of the vulture bees show that they have one-third more acid-producing gut bacteria and some microbes not found in other bees. Vulture bees regurgitate some of the meat they eat into their nests, where it serves as food for young bees, and their gut bacteria prevent further decay of the meat to protect the colony.

Researchers trying to give an evolutionary explanation to the existence of these bees face a problem. According to Science News, entomologist Jessica Maccaro of the University of California expressed it well: “It’s hard to know which evolved first – the gut bacteria or the bees’ ability to eat meat. But bees probably first turned to meat because there was so much competition for nectar for food.”

It is hard to imagine a bee choosing to eat meat to reduce competition for food. It seems more plausible that vulture bees are part of God’s designed system to recycle nutrients from dead material to protect the environment.

Reference: Science News January 29, 2022, page 4 and the American Society for Microbiology

January 31, 2022January 29, 2022

The Burden of Alzheimer’s Disease

One of the great scourges today is Alzheimer’s. At present, over six million Americans are living with Alzheimer’s. That is 1 in 9 people age 65 and older and 11.3% of the senior population. Since 2000, deaths from Alzheimer’s have increased by 145%. The burden of Alzheimer’s disease affects many of us in various ways – financially, emotionally, and spiritually.

Medical science is still looking for the causes of Alzheimer’s. There is a genetic connection, and Alzheimer’s also seems to be a product of environmental factors. God does not cause it, and so far, it appears to be untreatable. One of the blessings of Alzheimer’s is that the afflicted person is not aware of what is happening to them. In most cases, they do not recognize family or friends or what has taken place, good or bad, in the past.

I have seen that when we apply Christian principles, people with Alzheimer’s respond positively. First Thessalonians 5: 14 tells us to “comfort the feebleminded, support the weak and be patient with all men.” Alzheimer’s patients respond to kindness and love. As Christians, we have the unique perspective of putting the past behind us and accepting people where they are – not where they were 25 years ago.

If your view of life is “survival of the fittest,” you will have very little empathy for someone living with Alzheimer’s. That person is no longer among the fittest and may be a burden. On the other hand, if your view is that all humans have value and God will bless us for serving those in need, the burden of Alzheimer’s disease becomes an opportunity.

Matthew 25:21-40 finds Jesus talking about the blessing of serving others. Verse 36 speaks of Christians reaching out to help someone who is sick or in prison. Alzheimer’s is a kind of prison and is certainly a sickness. The need for us to bring love, care, and relief applies as much to an Alzheimer’s patient as to anyone else.

Data from Alzheimer’s Association (alz.org) 1-800-272-3900.

January 29, 2022January 26, 2022

Christianity Brings Freedom from Ceremonial Laws

People must decide how to live and how to treat one another. The atheistic evolutionary system suggests that the only governing law is “survival of the fittest.” Writers like Ayn Rand espoused the idea that if we do what benefits us personally, the world will become a utopia. From a biblical standpoint, there are three systems of laws that answer the question of how we should live, and Christianity brings freedom from ceremonial laws.

Christianity is not a set of “thou shalt not” rules, but misconceptions abound because people don’t understand the difference between the Old and New testaments. The Old Testament emphasized ceremonial laws. Leviticus describes a rigid set of laws to follow. (See the first 13 verses of chapter 1.)

In the New Testament, Galatians 3:10-25 refers to this system as a “curse” because breaking one ceremonial law invalidates the whole system. Many people believe those ceremonial laws are binding today. However, Colossians 2:13-17 points out that Christ did away with the ceremonial laws. The New Testament does urge Christians to pray while allowing tremendous freedom as to how and when. Only communion and baptism could be considered ceremonial activities.

The second kind of law we all have to deal with is civil law. Deuteronomy 24 is an example of applying laws of that kind at the time of Moses. Civil laws have changed as culture has changed. Romans 13:1-7 tells Christians to obey civil law, but those laws can sometimes conflict with the third kind of law, which is moral law.

The moral laws of the Old Testament were all repeated in the New Testament, but Christ gave us a way to successfully follow laws that benefit humans. The teachings of Christ deal with attitudes. Rather than just saying “do not murder,” Christ says “do not be angry” (Matthew 5:22). Rather than saying “do not commit adultery,” Christ says not to look on a person with sexual intent (Matthew 5:28).

Christianity brings freedom in many ways. That includes freedom from ceremony, power struggles, violence, racism, and gender issues. Christian faith also frees us from arranged marriages, religious taxes, and spending money on extravagant buildings, idols, or shrines. Yet, tragically, some have encumbered people with ceremonial laws and destructive civil laws in the name of Christianity. Jesus said, “You shall know the Truth, and the Truth shall make you free.” (John 8:32).