Recently I began to study the human brain by reading a number of different articles written by experts who have been studying the brain for decades. The information that they gave was nothing less than astounding. In fact some of it is so huge that it almost defies imagination. In the midst of my reading and study I came upon how evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins said our brains came into being. What amazed me is how, in the end, Dawkins wanted me to believe him rather than God. Let me share a little bit of it with you.
Our brain is somewhere between 3 and 3.5 lbs as an adult. It easily fits into a gallon jar with plenty of room to spare. Yet, Cambridge Physicist Roger Penrose said the following about the brain, “What’s in our head is orders of magnitude more complex than anything one sees in the Universe: "If you look at the entire physical cosmos our brains are a tiny, tiny part of it. But they're the most perfectly organized part. Compared to the complexity of a brain, a galaxy is just an inert lump." Michio Kaku, theoretical physicist at the City College of New York made this comment on the brain. “The human brain has 100 billion neurons, each neuron connected to 10 thousand other neurons. Sitting on your shoulders is the most complicated object in the known universe.”
Professor of Computational Neuroscience at MIT Sebastung Seung has commented that the human brain contains 100 billion neurons and 10,000 times as many connections. By the way the number of neurons in the brain is about the number of stars that are in the entire Milky Way galaxy. Other Neruoscience experts list the number of connections called synapses at about 40,000 connections. Either way, the complexity of the human brain is astounding!
If this is not enough to blow your mind – the way that our body communicates with the brain is by sending electrical impulses along these neural highways throughout our bodies. Some of these impulses we actually see, feel, hear, taste, or touch, but other messages are constantly being sent without our conscious knowledge of them in what is called our sympathetic nervous system. This is how our heart, lungs, and all our major organs work. It is how all the systems of our body connect and function with incredible accuracy to keep us healthy from moment to moment. The typical neuron fires from 5 to 50 times a second. So in a minute’s time your brain fires off somewhere near 30 to 300 trillion electrical messages within itself or the rest of the body. If you are feeling a little “nerve-tired” – by the end of a typical day your brain has fired off 43 to 430 quadrillion electrical messages to keep you alive and free from pain and doing things that would damage yourself. Imagine a set of highways 100 billion miles long with just over 400 quadrillion cars travelling over them every 24 hours. This is honestly beyond our ability to conceptualize. But then realize that many of these cars are travelling in excess of 200 miles per hour. Oh, and one other thing – all the cars are reaching their desired destination without any accidents or mishaps. Sheesh!
This is what is happening in your brain and the rest of your body each and every day. We can now see why these scientists say that the human brain is the most complex thing in the entire known universe. Yet, the person who holds to an evolutionary understanding of origins says that all this was not designed. It happened over billions of years completely by accident – with no intelligence behind it and no designer responsible for it. Some may think I’m being a little harsh on the evolutionist – but let me give you a quote from Richard Dawkins on how he has come to believe these things happened – based on scientific reason alone. Dawkins, the famed Oxford evolutionary biologist reflecting on the sheer wonder of the emergence of life on Earth and the evolutionary process in his classic The Ancestor's Tale said this:
“The fact that life evolved out of literally nothing, some 10 billion years after the universe evolved literally out of nothing -is a fact so staggering that I would be mad to attempt words to do it justice. And even that is not the end of the matter. Not only did evolution happen: it eventually led to beings capable of comprehending the process by which they comprehend it."
To say that Dawkins statement is scientific - is laughable. Take a moment to consider that a supposed genius scientist has just said that both life and the universe evolved out of “literally nothing,” almost 10 billion years ago. Dawkins also holds that no designer or intelligence was involved. So then, how do we take that statement into a scientific laboratory and test its thesis? First, we’d have to have no intelligence involved in doing the scientific test. Then we’d have to add to no intelligence, no elements whatsoever as well as no where to have them be. So there we sit – not thinking with nothing before us and nowhere for it to happen. THEN – boom (they tend to prefer bang – big bang actually) right before us would be the proof of our thesis – a complete universe in which we can now have a laboratory develop. Then while waiting a few billion years longer, exercising no intelligence in working with whatever it was that big banged itself into existence, life would emerge in complex systems that function due to incredibly complex information systems that perfectly replicate themselves. Then these simpler one-celled versions of totally accidental organization and information centers that replicate themselves, without any intelligence and quite by total accident would (over a few more billion years) become a human being. This human being (ignoring all other systems within the human body) would have within itself (once again quite by total accident and random chance) have a brain that functions to communicate with over 100 billion nerve cells that are highly organized and set (accidentally of course) to stretch over an entire body so that in a days time 430 quadrillion electrical messages can be communicated without any errors in any of their communications. Um,yeah – sure.
Dawkins tells us that trying to describe how all this happened literally out of nothing – with no intelligence guiding it – no pattern which it followed – and ending in the most complex thing in the entire universe – he says that trying to describe that with words would be injustice filled with madness. Please – don’t be scared away from this ridiculous statement. Dawkins is saying the same thing Scripture says, kind of. Here is what the Scripture says, “By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible. Hebrews 11:3 (NASB) By faith we believe that all we see and all that is was created by God as He spoke it out of literally nothing. But Dawkins modifies it this way – by faith in science and what he says it is a fact that the universe evolved out of literally nothing. Since he cannot ever prove this in any scientific laboratory or in any way that would come near the scientific method, we are left with this. By FAITH in what Dawkins says (and he won’t say it because it would be madness to try to say it with any justice to how staggering to the mind it is) the world was made out of literally nothing. Stop and think about those two statements. Both argue for a world created out of literally nothing. One claims God did it. The other claims no one did it – but we should believe him when he tells us this – even though he has absolutely no proof that this is how it happened. At least none based on that it came from literally nothing – because for him to prove this as fact he would have to have something and someone to do it. So our brains came from literally nothing and no one. When we put it that way – yes, it is madness to think this way. It is ridiculousness to the highest degree. It is ridiculousness for Dawkins to tell us as Christians that we are idiots for believing by faith God made the world out of nothing by His Word – all the while holding to a view that nobody using “literally nothing” made it instead. Oh – and you know why we should accept this? Because Dawkins has said it. Seems to me that we are moving from God speaking it into existence with His Word – to Dawkins speaking it into existence with his. Forgive me – but I think I’ll stick with God over Dawkins – especially when both are basically saying the same thing. Oh, and one other thing. I’ll also stick with God since His Word reminds me of the following truth.
For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse. For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures. Romans 1:18-23 (NASB)
Our brain is somewhere between 3 and 3.5 lbs as an adult. It easily fits into a gallon jar with plenty of room to spare. Yet, Cambridge Physicist Roger Penrose said the following about the brain, “What’s in our head is orders of magnitude more complex than anything one sees in the Universe: "If you look at the entire physical cosmos our brains are a tiny, tiny part of it. But they're the most perfectly organized part. Compared to the complexity of a brain, a galaxy is just an inert lump." Michio Kaku, theoretical physicist at the City College of New York made this comment on the brain. “The human brain has 100 billion neurons, each neuron connected to 10 thousand other neurons. Sitting on your shoulders is the most complicated object in the known universe.”
Professor of Computational Neuroscience at MIT Sebastung Seung has commented that the human brain contains 100 billion neurons and 10,000 times as many connections. By the way the number of neurons in the brain is about the number of stars that are in the entire Milky Way galaxy. Other Neruoscience experts list the number of connections called synapses at about 40,000 connections. Either way, the complexity of the human brain is astounding!
If this is not enough to blow your mind – the way that our body communicates with the brain is by sending electrical impulses along these neural highways throughout our bodies. Some of these impulses we actually see, feel, hear, taste, or touch, but other messages are constantly being sent without our conscious knowledge of them in what is called our sympathetic nervous system. This is how our heart, lungs, and all our major organs work. It is how all the systems of our body connect and function with incredible accuracy to keep us healthy from moment to moment. The typical neuron fires from 5 to 50 times a second. So in a minute’s time your brain fires off somewhere near 30 to 300 trillion electrical messages within itself or the rest of the body. If you are feeling a little “nerve-tired” – by the end of a typical day your brain has fired off 43 to 430 quadrillion electrical messages to keep you alive and free from pain and doing things that would damage yourself. Imagine a set of highways 100 billion miles long with just over 400 quadrillion cars travelling over them every 24 hours. This is honestly beyond our ability to conceptualize. But then realize that many of these cars are travelling in excess of 200 miles per hour. Oh, and one other thing – all the cars are reaching their desired destination without any accidents or mishaps. Sheesh!
This is what is happening in your brain and the rest of your body each and every day. We can now see why these scientists say that the human brain is the most complex thing in the entire known universe. Yet, the person who holds to an evolutionary understanding of origins says that all this was not designed. It happened over billions of years completely by accident – with no intelligence behind it and no designer responsible for it. Some may think I’m being a little harsh on the evolutionist – but let me give you a quote from Richard Dawkins on how he has come to believe these things happened – based on scientific reason alone. Dawkins, the famed Oxford evolutionary biologist reflecting on the sheer wonder of the emergence of life on Earth and the evolutionary process in his classic The Ancestor's Tale said this:
“The fact that life evolved out of literally nothing, some 10 billion years after the universe evolved literally out of nothing -is a fact so staggering that I would be mad to attempt words to do it justice. And even that is not the end of the matter. Not only did evolution happen: it eventually led to beings capable of comprehending the process by which they comprehend it."
To say that Dawkins statement is scientific - is laughable. Take a moment to consider that a supposed genius scientist has just said that both life and the universe evolved out of “literally nothing,” almost 10 billion years ago. Dawkins also holds that no designer or intelligence was involved. So then, how do we take that statement into a scientific laboratory and test its thesis? First, we’d have to have no intelligence involved in doing the scientific test. Then we’d have to add to no intelligence, no elements whatsoever as well as no where to have them be. So there we sit – not thinking with nothing before us and nowhere for it to happen. THEN – boom (they tend to prefer bang – big bang actually) right before us would be the proof of our thesis – a complete universe in which we can now have a laboratory develop. Then while waiting a few billion years longer, exercising no intelligence in working with whatever it was that big banged itself into existence, life would emerge in complex systems that function due to incredibly complex information systems that perfectly replicate themselves. Then these simpler one-celled versions of totally accidental organization and information centers that replicate themselves, without any intelligence and quite by total accident would (over a few more billion years) become a human being. This human being (ignoring all other systems within the human body) would have within itself (once again quite by total accident and random chance) have a brain that functions to communicate with over 100 billion nerve cells that are highly organized and set (accidentally of course) to stretch over an entire body so that in a days time 430 quadrillion electrical messages can be communicated without any errors in any of their communications. Um,yeah – sure.
Dawkins tells us that trying to describe how all this happened literally out of nothing – with no intelligence guiding it – no pattern which it followed – and ending in the most complex thing in the entire universe – he says that trying to describe that with words would be injustice filled with madness. Please – don’t be scared away from this ridiculous statement. Dawkins is saying the same thing Scripture says, kind of. Here is what the Scripture says, “By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible. Hebrews 11:3 (NASB) By faith we believe that all we see and all that is was created by God as He spoke it out of literally nothing. But Dawkins modifies it this way – by faith in science and what he says it is a fact that the universe evolved out of literally nothing. Since he cannot ever prove this in any scientific laboratory or in any way that would come near the scientific method, we are left with this. By FAITH in what Dawkins says (and he won’t say it because it would be madness to try to say it with any justice to how staggering to the mind it is) the world was made out of literally nothing. Stop and think about those two statements. Both argue for a world created out of literally nothing. One claims God did it. The other claims no one did it – but we should believe him when he tells us this – even though he has absolutely no proof that this is how it happened. At least none based on that it came from literally nothing – because for him to prove this as fact he would have to have something and someone to do it. So our brains came from literally nothing and no one. When we put it that way – yes, it is madness to think this way. It is ridiculousness to the highest degree. It is ridiculousness for Dawkins to tell us as Christians that we are idiots for believing by faith God made the world out of nothing by His Word – all the while holding to a view that nobody using “literally nothing” made it instead. Oh – and you know why we should accept this? Because Dawkins has said it. Seems to me that we are moving from God speaking it into existence with His Word – to Dawkins speaking it into existence with his. Forgive me – but I think I’ll stick with God over Dawkins – especially when both are basically saying the same thing. Oh, and one other thing. I’ll also stick with God since His Word reminds me of the following truth.
For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse. For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures. Romans 1:18-23 (NASB)
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