John N Clayton Archives

June 24, 2025June 23, 2025

Sperm Cell Design for Reproduction

With the number of children born every day on planet Earth, it is easy to miss the complexities of human reproduction. All animal life on our planet radiates this complexity, and the sperm cell is the most complex of all the cells in the body. Science is still struggling to understand sperm cell design, but we are learning more about how it functions as technology opens doors that were previously unavailable.

The sperm cell has three parts: (1) The head, which contains a haploid nucleus carrying half the normal number of chromosomes. It also has an acrosome, which contains enzymes that enable it to penetrate the egg. (2) The middle, which is packed with mitochondria to provide energy for the sperm’s movement. (3) The tail (Flagellum), which allows the sperm to swim through the female reproductive system.

Sperm cells are also biconcave or disk-shaped, allowing them to absorb oxygen more quickly and rounded to flow easily through the tiny capillaries. Sperm cells can swim fast thanks to a tail, a streamlined shape, and a high concentration of energy-transferring mitochondria.

The sperm cell design is just half the story. The egg becomes concave at one spot, allowing a single sperm cell to complete fertilization. All animal life depends on this design. The mechanism by which this happens is not understood and is the subject of modern research. We take for granted the fact that animal life can reproduce, but the design that makes it possible speaks eloquently about the existence of God.

Reference: Wikipedia and Michigan State Genetics Course Notes.

June 23, 2025June 22, 2025

A Partial Solution for Invasive Species

The California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) has suggested a partial solution for invasive species: eat ‘em. Erin Huggins of the CDFW wrote, “Eating invasive species can help protect native wildlife by reducing their numbers and limiting the damage they cause to ecosystems.”

The nutria is an invasive species causing problems in 18 states, particularly in California. These rodents are native to South America but were initially introduced into the United States for the fur trade. Officials thought they had eradicated them from California in the 1970s, but they began to reappear in 2017. Nutrias cause significant problems for farmers and livestock owners, as they eat vegetation right down to the root. Nutrias are even more omnivorous than goats, so they are more destructive.

This is not the first time an invasive species has become an issue. In the 1970s, Asian Carp were introduced into ponds to control the growth of aquatic plants. Four East Asian species were introduced: silver carp, bighead carp, grass carp, and black carp. Some of these species would jump high out of the water when disturbed, creating a hazard for recreational boaters, and elaborate measures have been taken to keep them out of the Great Lakes.

Fish and wildlife officials are now advancing a partial solution for invasive species — making them a food source for humans. Even high-end restaurants now offer nutria and carp meat on their menu. Selling the public on this will take time. Consider that there was a time when Europeans shunned tomatoes, considering them to be poisonous.

The Bible has a good record of banning meat that would be hazardous for human consumption. A familiar prohibition of the Old Testament was against the eating of pork (Deuteronomy 14:8). The Israelites were also told not to eat anything that had already died or any bird or fish that could have eaten contaminated meat, such as vultures, owls, and falcons.

Strong evidence for the inspiration of the Bible is its accuracy in giving the ancient Israelites health guidelines that were far ahead of their time. We rely on science today to provide us with guidelines for healthy eating. A partial solution for invasive species might be to eat them, but a better solution is for humans to avoid upsetting the natural balance in God’s well-designed world.

Reference: “Rodent for Dinner” in The Guardian, March 6, 2025

June 19, 2025June 18, 2025

Collateral Damage of Cohabitation

If you listen to today’s music, whether country, heavy metal, folk, or pop, you will hear that “hooking up” is the thing to do. Television shows and movies add to the commercialization of sex, so we see the collateral damage of cohabitation in the entire entertainment industry.

Roughly 20.1 million couples in the United States live with an unmarried partner. That is approximately 8% of U.S. couples, most of whom are in the 25- to 34-year-old age group. According to Pew Research, by double digits, married adults are more likely to trust their spouse or partner to be faithful to them, to act in their best interest, to always tell them the truth, and to handle money responsibly. That means those who are cohabiting may never experience the complete joy and commitment that God intended for the marriage relationship.

Not only do the participants in cohabitation not know the security or commitment that comes from God’s design for marriage, but they also lose the structure of the nuclear family as God intended. Children grow up living with constant change in their home situation. Those of us who have been foster parents or have adopted children know how hard that is for the kids.

The collateral damage of cohabitation is a worldwide tragedy, with drugs, including alcohol and marijuana, catalyzing the instability of these relationships. Every culture in which marriage and family disintegrate is doomed to collapse. Will America learn from history or repeat it?

Reference: pewresearch.org

June 18, 2025June 17, 2025

Animal Pathogen Transmission to Humans

The World Organization for Animal Health and the World Health Organization released data on the number of illnesses and deaths caused by pathogens transmitted to humans from animals worldwide each year. They gathered data from 183 member states, showing that a billion illnesses and millions of deaths occur worldwide due to animal pathogen transmission to humans.

The recent data was triggered by the outbreak of bird flu known as H5N1. That virus has sickened millions of birds, dozens of mammalian species, and people worldwide. This strain of avian influenza has threatened food supplies and pressured governments to take a serious look at food security and public health.

When God created life on Earth, He planned it to meet the needs of humans. Long before modern science, God gave dietary instructions to the ancient Israelites. Skeptics today may consider those instructions archaic; however, they were far ahead of their time, and many of them remain applicable today. We see the consequences of not following wise dietary and health instructions.

Animal pathogen transmission to humans is not the only problem we face today. Every time humans have discarded the Bible as a guide for life, the consequences have been dire. We are seeing that again in the tragedies of humans suffering because of the rejection of God’s design for healthful and moral living.

Reference: WHO and WOAH public health assessment, April 2025

June 17, 2025June 16, 2025

Dealing With Disasters

One of the challenges that we all face is dealing with disasters such as tornadoes, hurricanes, and floods. Skeptics claim that if a God exists, He wouldn’t allow these terrible natural disasters to take place. That claim displays a combination of scientific and theological ignorance.

Tornadoes result when hot air is trapped under a layer of cold air. Warm air rises, but if the cold air above it is dense enough, the warm surface air will become even warmer. Eventually, the hot air will rise through the cold layer. Hang glider pilots and soaring birds look for these vertical updrafts. When the ground is covered with vegetation, there is never enough heat to trigger a strong upward air movement. However, when thousands of acres of land are plowed up or paved over, the surface air becomes hotter and creates stronger vertical movement. Earth’s rotation spins these upward air movements, creating a tornado.

Areas around 30 degrees north and south latitude are usually deserts. The states of Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, and Alabama are at or near 30 degrees north latitude. Hurricanes pick up massive amounts of water from the ocean and dump it on the land. Without hurricanes, there would be a water shortage in many places. In the past, storm surges were not a problem because the coastal areas were lined with mangroves and other plants on the barrier islands and along the mainland coast. Today, that protection has been stripped away and replaced with hotels, roads, parking lots, and beach-front homes. The result is that we are dealing with disasters.

God told humans to take care of the Earth, but greed, selfishness, and ignorance have often caused disasters. The more we learn about the creation, the more we understand that God designed it to work well, but humans have brought much pain and suffering on ourselves by misusing God’s gift. We must work together and avoid repeating past mistakes, or we will continually be dealing with disasters.

June 6, 2025June 2, 2025

The Church Worshiping Together

These thoughts were inspired by a good friend who said, “I get a lot more out of sitting on a log in the woods and listening to the birds than I do out of sitting in a pew and listening to a preacher.” Yesterday, we looked at some reasons why the Church needs to gather in prayer. Today, we explore some other benefits of the Church worshiping together.

Worship is not a spectator sport! Every command related to music in worship involves the individual participating in a shared activity. (See Romans 15:9; 1 Corinthians 14:15; Ephesians 5:19; and Colossians 3:16.) Jesus prayed for unity among His followers, and singing together is one of the most unifying things we can do. The purpose is not to entertain God or people. By singing together, we unify, encourage, and build up one another.

The Lord’s Supper, also known as communion, serves as a means to encourage and edify one another. It is not just vertical toward God but also horizontal to your fellow Christians. Remembering the sacrifice of Christ and sharing a memorial provides a way to unify, grow, and be encouraged by the Church worshiping together.

Even giving is not for God’s benefit. God is the creator who made and owns everything. He does not need our money. The Bible makes it clear that giving benefits the giver. (See Acts 20:35; 2 Corinthians 9:7; and 1 Corinthians 16:2.) The person who never learns to give loses in every aspect of life. A good marriage, good kids, good sex, good recreation, and good health all depend on being able to give freely and unconditionally.

People giving through their local congregations can accomplish significant things in the world. Atheists and agnostics take delight in pointing out every mistake that Christians make, but atheism does not primarily address hunger, disease, broken families, mental illness, and homelessness. The Church worshiping together not only encourages and builds individuals, but it also coordinates resources and directs them to meet real needs.

A person may find that “sitting alone in the woods” brings them more personal pleasure than “going to church,” but it will not address the world’s problems or allow them to be part of something bigger than they could accomplish on their own. “Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together …” (Hebrews 10:25) is not an ego trip for God but a call to action for Christians. The fellowship of the Church worshiping together can have a powerful effect on us individually and on the world.

June 5, 2025June 2, 2025

The Church Gathering to Pray

A good friend of mine said, “I get a lot more out of sitting on a log in the woods and listening to the birds than I do out of sitting in a pew and listening to a preacher.” To non-Christians, much of what goes on in a worship service is boring and irrelevant. The problem is that non-Christians, and even many Christians, don’t understand the importance of the Church gathering to pray and worship. Much of this misunderstanding is based on misconceptions about God or a failure to understand what Christianity is about.

The worship service is not something designed to meet a need God has, since God has no needs. He doesn’t need us to pray to Him to let Him know what is happening on Earth! If we understand that “in Him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28), then surely we realize that God is not ignorant of day-to-day events. Jesus said God knows when a sparrow falls to the ground (Matthew 10:29).

Atheists portray God as a jealous egomaniac who uses and exploits people for His own ends. Those who believe God commands prayer for His own needs don’t understand God’s nature. He has no needs or weaknesses. Turning God into a man creates misconceptions that distort the purpose of the Church gathering to pray.

If prayer is not for God’s benefit, then it must clearly be for ours. The beneficial aspects of an active prayer life are widely accepted by anyone who deals with human issues. Learning to look to a higher power is a fundamental part of almost all twelve-step programs for overcoming addictions. The Church gathering to pray together fosters unity and peace.

Jesus condemned those who turned prayer into a public display of their religiosity. In Matthew 6:5, He said, “And when you pray, you shall not be like the hypocrites. For they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men.” Everything done in a worship service needs to be understood in the same way. It is not to impress others but to fulfill our need to praise and worship God.

There are other aspects of worshiping together that make it better than “sitting on a log in the woods listening to the birds.” We will deal with those tomorrow.

June 4, 2025June 2, 2025

Genetic Difference Between Humans and Chimpanzees

The media has popularized the myth that the genetic difference between humans and chimpanzees is only 1%. Recent research shows that the variance is 15% or more. What we have here is the old graduate student mentality: “Make sure your data conforms to your conclusions.” If you are trying to prove that humans came from apes and that genetics supports that faith, you cannot accept the 15% data. The result is the popular 1% myth.

The Bible is silent on how God made the human body, stating only that He formed it “of the dust of the earth” (Genesis 2:7 and 3:19). These verses use the Hebrew word “yatsar,” meaning to form as a potter would shape a vase from clay. The Bible does not tell us how God formed the first human or how long He took to do it.

One thing is clear: both men and women are created in the image of God (Genesis 1:27). This refers to the human soul, not the physical body. God is a spiritual being, not a physical one. Humans are uniquely endowed with a soul, a spiritual component that distinguishes humanity from all other life on Earth. The human soul enables us to create music and art, to worship, and to develop the capacity for critical thinking. We are not driven by instinct as animals are.

Some physical components of the human body are similar to those of chimpanzees. Stereoscopic vision, an opposable thumb, and body hair are some genetic similarities. The fact that the genetic similarity between humans and chimpanzees is 85% should not be surprising, given that fruit flies share 60% of their genes with humans. God has used the best design in many features of all animal bodies.

What separates humans from animals is our spiritual makeup, not our genes. However, the 1% genetic difference between humans and chimpanzees is a myth.

References: Evolution News, the journal Nature, and wikipedia

June 3, 2025June 2, 2025

The Design of the Woodpecker’s Tongue

One of the great questions ornithologists must answer is how a woodpecker can pound its beak on wood day after day without suffering brain damage. In previous articles, we have talked about the shock-absorbing features of the woodpecker’s skull. Researchers have learned more as they study the design of the woodpecker’s tongue.

Woodpecker tongues are much longer than their beaks. The design of the woodpecker’s tongue extends back into the skull, wrapping around the brain and looping around the eye socket. Woodpeckers slam their beaks into wood 20 times per second, and the tongue’s unique path acts like a biological seatbelt, distributing impact forces and protecting the brain. The woodpecker’s specialized hyoid apparatus (tongue-supporting bone and soft tissue) is a design feature that helps protect its brain from concussions.

Oak trees line our home office by the St. Joseph River in Michigan. We have five kinds of woodpeckers, ranging from the large pileated woodpecker to the downy woodpecker, which is the size of a house sparrow. Watching wood chips fly as they hammer at the oak trees to reach insects reminds us of God’s design and the impossibility of it resulting from chance mutations.

The Bible calls us to look at the evidence. The more we see, the more we realize that atheists and biblical skeptics must deny more and more of what science learns. As we look at the creation, we see the Creator’s wisdom, even in the design of the woodpecker’s tongue.

Reference: nih.gov

June 2, 2025June 1, 2025

Why We Care About Entropy

As a high school physics teacher, I frequently found myself challenged to keep my students interested. Some subjects were easy, but others were challenging, and the kids became bored very quickly. An example of the latter was a unit on the laws of thermodynamics. The second law, also known as the entropy law, states that a closed system tends to become increasingly disordered over time. Entropy is a statistical measure of disorder. During that unit of study, I once had a student who said, “Who cares?” There are good reasons why we care about entropy.

My response is that entropy is a design feature of the cosmos that produces black holes, but it also allows us to breathe and have engines in our cars. As a public-school teacher, I could not bring my religious views into the classroom, but it also disproves one of the atheist arguments against the existence of God.

When we say that God has always existed and He created the cosmos, atheists ask, “Then who created God?” They suggest it is easier to believe that matter has always existed. Why we care about entropy is that it shows that matter and the cosmos have not always existed.

Every reaction in the physical world reduces the amount of energy available to do work. The total energy in the cosmos available to do work is constantly decreasing, eventually becoming zero, and entropy will be maximum. That means the cosmos could not be eternal, and it must have had a beginning. There must be a cause for that beginning, and that cause is God.