One of the major issues facing us today is how we get enough water to the right places to meet human needs. Between climate change and the growing human population, water availability is a huge concern in countries worldwide. We either have too much water resulting in floods or droughts that threaten food shortages. The fact is that God has equipped planet Earth with plenty of water. The problem is human water stewardship is not what it should be.
In the year 330, Roman Emperor Constantine took an ancient Greek city known as Byzantium and renamed it New Rome to become the new center of the Roman Empire. As the city grew, it became known as Constantine’s City or Constantinople. Three decades later, a court orator named Themistius wrote that “the city thirsts.” The city was surrounded by the sea on three sides, but it needed fresh water for its growing population. So, in 340, Constantius II began a major aqueduct construction project completed under Roman Emperor Valens In 373. The enormous project required an amount of stone equivalent to the Great Pyramid of Giza and enough mortar to fill 500 Olympic-size swimming pools. With the aqueducts, reservoirs, and a system of cisterns, Constantinople could truly become the new Rome in the fourth and fifth centuries.
Many areas today face a shortage of water.Six states, including 40 million people in the American West, receive water from the Colorado River. The states are Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, and California. In 1922, the states made a compact giving California the largest share of the water. Unfortunately, the Colorado River has been shrinking in recent years while the human population has grown. The pact made in 1922 is not working well, especially for Arizona, and the situation requires better water stewardship.
Could we build a water system today analogous to what the Romans did almost 1,700 years ago? Can you imagine the benefit to all Americans if we had such a water distribution system in the western US? Droughts and flooding occur, but the effect is made worse by poor stewardship of the water resources God has given us. People in Africa, and other areas, need wells to provide safe water, and Christian organizations are working to meet that need. We can and must do more, and Christians should be the first to realize the importance of water stewardship because we honor the Giver of every good and perfect gift. (See James 1:17 and Mark 9:41.)
An interesting space mystery circulating since 2017 has been the story of an outer space object named Oumuamua. This object is shaped like a cigar, is dark in color, and has an unusual orbit. Astronomers in Hawaii first discovered it and gave it the name “Oumuamua,” which means “scout” or “messenger” in Hawaiian. Part of the mystery of Oumuamua is deciding what it is – perhaps an asteroid or a comet. Oumuamua is smaller than most comets at 300 to 3000 feet (100 to 1,000 meters) long. It has no visible tail, as most comets do. A surprising thing about Oumuamua is that as it orbited the Sun, it sped up and accelerated away from it.
The media jumped on the scientific announcement of Oumuamua. Tabloids predicted it was an alien spaceship that picked up hydrogen from the Sun, and that’s why it accelerated. We have repeatedly pointed out that nothing in the Bible tells us whether or not there is life in outer space.
Like most tabloid stories, there is no reported scientific explanation of what Oumuamua is and why it behaves as it does, apparently tumbling through space. Comets have a great many volatile materials frozen inside them. When the Sun heats them, those materials vaporize, creating a small force, but usually not enough to alter the comet’s path.
We can learn some lessons from the mystery of Oumuamua. One is to be very careful about what you read in the media or hear on TV news broadcasts. A more important message is that there is a lot of material left over from the creation process that is traveling through space. Space is not a pure vacuum, and capturing and analyzing some of that material could answer many questions about the science involved in the creation.
The most important message is that the universe is carefully designed, and we see signatures of that design everywhere we look. Oumuamua tells us a little more about the mysteries of space and the even bigger wonder of the intelligence that created it all. “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the skies proclaim the work of His hands” (Psalms 19:1).
What animals have been maligned and villainized the most by humanity, yet they are the unsung heroes of the animal kingdom? The Nature Conservancy and Bat Conservation International say the misunderstood bats fit that description. People think that bats hunt human victims and drink blood. On the contrary, Vampire bats do not go after human victims and are shy and gentle in behavior. They also only make up a tiny percentage of the total bat population.
Studies of the Bracken Cave bats in Texas show they eat 140 tons of flying beetles, winged ants, and moths every night, saving a billion dollars in crop damage. That is just in one area of Texas, but other bats eat their body weight in insects every night. Bats also are essential pollinators and disperse hundreds of seeds. Bats are vital to the balance of our natural world, and scientists studying bats tell us that they are declining in number. Can you imagine what life on Earth would be like if we eliminated the animals that eat insects?
As a teenager in southern Indiana, I was a spelunker – one who explores caves. The caves we explored had massive numbers of bats, and several times we were in the caves when the bats were flying out for their feeding binges. I never was bitten by a bat, and they used their echolocation to avoid us. When we found huge piles of bat guano, it never occurred to me that it all came from bugs they had eaten.
God has intelligently designed the systems of life on planet Earth, and we need to care for and protect them. When humans destroy animals such as the misunderstood bats, we invite disaster for our well-being.
If you watch animals in the wild finding food, you will see some amazing techniques that are hard to believe could be the product of blind chance. In many cases, the food-finding system has so many parts that it would take various simultaneous changes for them to happen by chance. Securing food is often hazardous for the animal, but eating is a higher priority than avoiding danger. An example of all this is the canopy feeding of the black heron (Egretta ardesiaca) in Sub-Saharan Africa.
The jet-black color of the black heron causes two problems for the bird. One is that there is no camouflage in its coloration, so predators have no trouble seeing it. The black heron is very obvious from above or on the ground. The other problem is that being black means the bird is in danger of overheating because black absorbs solar radiation in the form of heat.
These problems make you wonder about the wisdom of the black heron being black. This is where we find an ingenious design feature built into the bird, allowing it to have all it wants to eat. The black heron eats fish, but finding fish is challenging for all fish-eating birds. Black herons solve this problem by spreading out their feathers in an umbrella-like fashion for what is called canopy feeding. Small fish in the area looking for shade are drawn to the bird’s canopy. Because of its black color, the water under the bird is too dark for the fish to see the heron.
This cloak of darkness and the cooling create a huge attraction for fish. As they gather in the heron’s shade, the bird can simply choose which fish it wants to eat. This canopy feeding provides food for the heron while controlling the small fish population so they don’t overgraze the area.
To attribute the black heron’s canopy feeding to trial and error or chance requires some imagination. To attribute the black color, which seems counterproductive for the climate, to the survival of the fittest is beyond reasonable thinking. God’s design and creative wisdom are evident in all life forms. Romans 1:20 tells us that we can know there is a God through the things He has made, and the black heron is an excellent example of the truth of that statement.
An interesting fact of science is that researchers investigate the natural world in terms of human actions. An excellent example of that is our understanding of animal communication. Recent studies have shown that turtles have a rather complex system of communication which researchers have missed because the communication is very low-pitched and quiet. The frequency of the turtle communication is below 20 hertz, putting it below human hearing limitations.
With new listening devices, researchers have found that baby turtles chirp to one another while they are still in their eggs. They discovered this communication in giant South American river turtles called arraus. The apparent purpose is to coordinate their hatching time. When all the baby turtles come out of their eggs at the same time, it dramatically improves their chances of making it to the river before being snatched by a predator. The researchers also found that mother turtles use sounds to respond to the calls of their young and shepherd them to the water.
You can add turtles to the growing list of animal communication with sounds above or below the frequencies that humans can hear. Examples of subsonic or ultrasonic communicators are whales, fish, bats, and numerous birds. God has designed life to have maximum survival potential. Being able to communicate is just one of the tools that animals have been given to enhance that objective.
Reference: Lead research author Camila Ferrara of the Wildlife Conservation Society speaking to the Washington Post as reported in The Week magazine, February 3, 2023, page 22.
Genesis 1:31 tells us, “God saw everything that He had made, and behold, it was very good.” The creation is a carefully designed system that allows beauty and function, benefiting humans in every way. Every life form benefits humans in some way, but we may not understand how until we study all living things. Our websites and materials often point out surprising facts about how animals and plants benefit us.
Today we have many medicines, vaccines, and remedies for ailments derived from the creatures God created. However, many cures for human afflictions remain to be secured from other life forms that share the planet with us. Medical researchers are concerned that many creatures which might be able to help us cure disease and afflictions are becoming extinct because of the mismanagement of God’s creation.
Research on animal population changes from 1970 to 2018 shows that the number of birds, amphibians, reptiles, mammals, and fish declined by 69% during those years. The research was an exhaustive study of 5,230 species in 31,821 populations. The most significant loss was in Latin America and the Caribbean, where the decline was 94%. Africa was second with a loss of 66%.
The research also studied the causes of the decline in living things and found that overexploitation and habitat degradation were the main issues resulting in 70% of the loss. Pollution contributed to less than 10% of the decline. Thus, human greed and selfishness are causing most of the problems.
An old story tells about a man at the judgment asking God why He allowed him to die in a flood. God replied, “I sent you my workers with a canoe, a row boat, a motor boat, and an airboat, but you kept saying you were waiting for me to save you.” God’s creation design provides that every life form benefits humans. He has given us everything we need, from food to medicinal agents, but we continue to allow greed and selfishness to waste God’s provisions.
Vital resources are becoming less available because of careless human use of the resources God has given us. The most critical of these resources is water. California produces a third of the vegetables that Americans eat, and 80% of California’s water usage is for agriculture. Thirty-two of the fifty-eight counties in California did not receive enough rain to meet the needs of the crops planted in 2022. To supply the needed water, farmers pumped it from underground aquifers faster than those aquifers were being replenished. As a result, farmers may have to return to an ancient practice called dry farming.
Farmers in areas around the Mediterranean have been using dry farming for centuries. Indigenous people like the Hopi in Arizona have used dry farming methods for thousands of years. People grow grapes in many places worldwide, but irrigating them can take a lot of water. With dry farming techniques, a grapevine can send roots down six meters into the ground to get the water it needs. Other crops such as tomatoes, squash, potatoes, and corn can be grown by dry farming methods.
Dry farming means not watering from the top but planting early and allowing more space between plants so their roots can reach out for water. For example, when tomatoes are planted early, their roots will go deeper into the soil, reaching water and minerals that can improve the taste. Saving water and improving flavor are two advantages of dry farming. Other benefits include less erosion and fewer weeds, meaning less need for herbicides. Also, dry farming requires less equipment than irrigation farming. Disadvantages include reduced size of the vegetables and lower yield.
The design of plants that produce food for humans allows them to be grown with smaller amounts of water with winter rain or snow, more space, and careful timing of the planting. By looking at how God structured plant growth in arid areas, indigenous people learned long ago how to survive in the desert southwest. The changing climate may force us to study God’s design and change the way we grow our food to be good stewards of the resources God has given.
Whether we live in a city or in the country, we all recognize that cities are hubs of activity that keep life going and hopefully thriving. A living cell is like a miniature city, and we see life functions in the cell that correlate with activities that maintain life in the city. We can learn some things by comparing cells and cities.
A city has a boundary called the city limits, and cells have a membrane marking their outer boundary. At the city center, we have a city hall and courthouse storing vital information and sending out directives to keep the city functioning. Cells have a nucleus that performs similar functions. The nucleus contains DNA that stores all the information for constructing and controlling the cell’s components and, ultimately, the entire body.
Both cells and cities must have a way to transport materials within their boundaries. In cities, streets, roads, and highways perform this function. Cells have a transportation system called the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) to move proteins around and perform other functions. Both cells and cities need an energy source to function. Cities get their energy needs from fossil fuels, solar cells, and electrical generators. Mitochondria, “the powerhouse of the cell,” convert food calories into chemical and heat energy to maintain the cell’s life.
Garbage trucks and sewers remove waste in the city. Cells have structures called lysosomes filled with digestive enzymes that eliminate toxic materials. Cities have factories that produce the products people need. Protein factories in the cell are called ribosomes, which manufacture new structures according to the genetic instructions in the DNA.
While the U.S. Postal Service and companies such as UPS and FedEx transport materials between cities, the Golgi apparatus does that for the cells. For example, Golgi bodies in the pancreas package insulin for transport to other cells, allowing them to convert sugar into energy. Cells and cities need places to store essential commodities, and vacuoles perform that function in the cells.
We live in a city that was not built by random chance. Our city has a history of design that allowed Niles, Michigan, to be founded and developed. Just as Niles was not merely a product of chance, so too the cell is not an accident. In this comparison, we have greatly oversimplified our explanation of the cell functions since cells are even more complex than cities. If cities require design and purpose by intelligent beings, living cells give strong evidence of purpose and design by a wise creator God.
Two months ago, I asked a computer if God exists. Actually, it was Open AI’s chatbot named ChatGPT. This Artificial Intelligence program has received much attention in the form of praise and concern. The praise is because of the many ways AI might positively affect business, medicine, entertainment, work, and education. The concern is how AI can negatively affect those same areas. That is especially true of education because students can use it to write their term papers. Now Google has an AI chatbot named Bard.
Since I had tested ChatGPT with questions on God’s existence, I wanted to put Bard to the same test. I first asked, “How did the universe begin?” Bard gave me a 176-word response compared to 237 words from ChatGPT on that question. It was four short paragraphs that all began with “The Big Bang Theory.” The third paragraph also mentioned the “Steady State Theory and the Oscillating Universe Theory” as if they have some credibility, which they no longer have. However, the Big Bang Theory does not fully explain how the universe began.
When I asked the AI chatbot named Bard to give me a 300-word essay proving the existence of God, it responded with these 354 words:
“There is no one definitive proof of the existence of God. However, there are a number of arguments that have been put forward that attempt to show that God is a reasonable explanation for the universe and the existence of life.
“One of the most common arguments for the existence of God is the cosmological argument. This argument states that the universe must have had a cause, and that this cause must be something that is uncaused itself. This uncaused cause is what people call God.
“Another common argument for the existence of God is the teleological argument. This argument states that the universe appears to be designed for a purpose. The order and complexity of the universe, the existence of life, and the laws of nature all seem to point to a creator who had a specific goal in mind when creating the universe.
“The existence of evil in the world is often seen as a challenge to the existence of God. However, some people argue that evil is necessary for free will to exist. If there were no evil, then there would be no good, and no choice between the two.
“Ultimately, whether or not you believe in God is a personal decision. There is no scientific evidence that can prove or disprove the existence of God. However, the arguments that have been put forward by philosophers and theologians can provide a framework for thinking about the question.
“Here are some additional arguments for the existence of God:
The moral argument: This argument states that the existence of objective moral values is evidence of a God who created us with a moral compass.
The argument from religious experience: This argument states that the personal experiences of people who claim to have encountered God provide evidence of His existence.
The argument from miracles: This argument states that the occurrence of miracles, such as healings and resurrections, is evidence of God’s intervention in the world.
“These arguments are not without their flaws, but they do provide some food for thought for those who are open to the possibility of God’s existence.”
That is the summary of arguments for God’s existence that the AI chatbot named Bard gave me. It corresponds very closely to ChatGPT’s answer, except that Bard added the argument from miracles and the existence of evil versus free will.
Again, I asked the AI chatbot named Bard the direct question, “Does God Exist?” Here is the answer I received:
“The existence of God is a question that has been debated for centuries. There is no scientific evidence to prove or disprove the existence of God, so the answer ultimately comes down to faith.”
Bard went on to say that there is no right or wrong answer to that question, but each person must make their own decision. I suggest that there is scientific evidence in the design and fine-tuning of the universe and life, but many people choose to reject that evidence.
Like ChatGPT, Bard did not mention Genesis 1:1, so I asked, “What do we learn from Genesis 1:1?” I thought Bard’s answer to this question was the best of all:
“Genesis 1:1 teaches us that God is the creator of the universe. He created the heavens and the earth, and everything in them. He is the source of all life and all order.
“Genesis 1:1 also teaches us that God is a God of order. He created the universe in an orderly fashion, with each part having its own purpose. This order is a reflection of God’s own character, which is orderly and just.
“Finally, Genesis 1:1 teaches us that God is a God of love. He created the universe out of love, and he continues to love his creation. This love is evident in the beauty and order of the universe, and it is also evident in the way that God cares for his creation.
“Genesis 1:1 is a foundational verse for all of Christianity. It teaches us about God’s character, his creation, and his love for us.”
So, I have now questioned two of the latest versions of Artificial Intelligence about the existence of God. Whether it’s an AI chatbot named Bard or ChatGPT, all AIs are created and programmed by humans, so we can expect the answers to correspond to human responses. How would you answer the question, “Does God exist?” The difference is that AI does not have a life, but you do. So, how does your answer to that question affect your life?
One of the fascinating things about research on microorganisms is the diversity of species and environments in which they live. Superheated material at temperatures of up to 400 degrees celsius is extruded from vents in the deep ocean. When it contacts the cold seawater, it produces porous rocks in the form called “chimneys.” This rock differs from rocks on Earth’s surface due to the pressure at those depths. Researchers from Portland State University and the University of Wisconsin found diverse microbes in hydrothermal deposits.
The researchers sampled 40 rock communities and found 3,635 species of microbes in hydrothermal deposits. The researchers were amazed at how diverse these bacterial communities are. The lead researcher Anna-Louise Reysenbach said, “At one volcano, there was so much new diversity that we hadn’t seen elsewhere.” Not only did they find new species, but they also discovered two new phyla and at least 500 new genera. In addition, the scientists found that New Zealand samples differed from those found in other places.
The design of life is so flexible that you can find living things in locations where you would not expect life to survive. It is important to note that scientists are classifying the microbes in hydrothermal deposits using the same phyla, genera, and species categories they use for life on Earth’s surface. The bacteria are not so different from surface bacteria, but they can live in environments of extreme pressures and temperatures.
We know that life forms exist in extremely cold and hot places on Earth. The design of life is exquisite, and these microorganisms support the higher life forms familiar to us. This study implies that life could exist elsewhere in the cosmos if God chose to put it there. However, there is a world of difference between finding a microbe on a distant planet or satellite and finding a sentient alien being as portrayed on the movie screen. The complexity of life and the amazing design of our own bodies shows God’s creative wisdom. I am “fearfully and wonderfully made” (Psalms 139:14). As we learn more about the diverse places where life can exist, we are amazed at how sophisticated life design is.
