Monday, October 18, 2010

"God's Intelligent Design" Or ? by Charles Carrin

GOD’S “INTELLIGENT DESIGN”  OR
EVOLUTION’S NON-INTELLIGENT ACCIDENT
 
Each square inch of your skin contains approximately 35 miles of nerves. An adult body contains 75,000 miles of blood vessels, serving more than 60 billion body cells. Some vessels are so microscopically small that only one blood cell at the time can squeeze through. If all of your blood vessels could be cut open and laid side by side they would cover an area the size of a football field. During its 120 day life-span, each blood cell makes about 75,000 round trips from the heart to other parts of the body. That is a total distance of approximately 5 billion, 635 million miles traveled in its lifetime. Each cell simultaneously brings nutrients and oxygen to the body while removing toxins. In a quiet room, cup your hands tightly over your ears–like you have done with a sea shell at the beach–and listen to the thunder of blood rushing through your body. That is literally the ocean-roar of life racing through you.  Friction would instantly burn through your veins and arteries were it not for the protective coating of cholesterol lining their inner walls.

At the moment of conception, the invisible male sperm invades the almost-invisible female ovum and development of the billions of components listed above are perfectly–and explosively--initiated.  We have nothing else in Creation with which to compare such massive and flawless organization of functioning parts. For example, in that miraculous event, millions of optic nerves connecting eyes to brain and brain to eyes begin their journey toward each other. At the moment of birth 280 days later all systems climax simultaneously.

David exclaimed: "For you have formed my inward parts; You have covered me in my mother's womb. I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Marvelous are Your works, and that my soul knows very well. My frame was not hidden from You, When I was made in secret and skillfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed. And in Your book they all were written, The days fashioned for me, When as yet there were none of them."

Psalm 139:13-16
 
Oh, fools! Had we eyes to see,
Into the realm of microscopic things;
To step inside the spider's egg,
With its own suns and galaxies,
Here we'd behold Creation in full display
And the flawless pearl of system find,
That touches every insect, leaf, or stone,
With the same brush-stroke of design.
Astonishment would seize our breath,
Silence us as quiet as death,
To behold Creation's chartless realm,
Compressed inside the tiniest cell.
But more than that, to understand
God’s whole in intent in nature
Is inscribed in every cell of man      
 
If for a split-second’s  time you could peak into the cell-formation and organizing of body parts in a human baby in the womb, you would see lightening-speed explosions blasting simultaneously inwardly and outwardly in the development of bones, brain, blood, organs, skin, personality, intellect, talents, etc., and all other components. Ecclesiastes 11:5.  I Corinthians 12:18.

Try to imagine a dynamite fuze reaching all the way from Boston to Miami--exploding every building in its non-stop path. What occurs in the development of a single human being involves a  thousand times more separate parts than there are buildings between New England and Florida. If that baby is male, within four weeks after conception, all the quadrillions of sperm his body will ever produce will already be formed in his tiny being. Think of it! From a single ovum and a single sperm 280 days later emerges a  functioning human being possessing an intellect capable of sending rocket ships into outer space.

Each of those minuscule sperm--containing that embryonic baby boy’s DNA--holds more than 3 billion genetic codes. If you were to spend 8 hours a day looking at each code for one second, it would take two years. If the DNA in  that baby’s human cells could be unraveled and strung end to end, it would reach from earth to the sun, round trip, 400 times. Accidental evolution? Hardly. His entire body could be reconstructed from information stored in just one of his brain-stem cells; these are part of sixty billion more cells that compose his total being. The sound of his laughter, the curve of his eyelash, talents and attitudes he inherited from his grandparents are all perfectly recorded.  At conception, the genetic code from mother and father merged into an ideal arrangement for the creation of his totally new, unique being. Billions and billions of components perfectly joined.

Be aware that there are more than 100 million different animal and plant specie on planet earth. Of some specie, there may be hundreds of billions of individuals. Each has its own distinctive genetic code. In the presence of overwhelming evidence of man's miraculous design, the claim of evolution becomes totally absurd.

Looking at yourself for a moment: Your brain contains as many synapsis as there are stars in existence. The synapse is the point of contact between neurons, by which nerve impulses are successfully transmitted through the brain. After birth, a baby’s brain continues to expand at the rate of 10,000 new synapses per second. Inside your head, you have a composite of total creation. If all five and one-half billion people on earth were talking on eighteen telephone at the same time, it would almost correspond to the electrical traffic handled by the brain. The corpus callosum tissue separating the two hemispheres of the brain contain as many connections as every telephone line in America. To cut through the corpus callosum of one human being would be equivalent to cutting every telephone line in the U.S.  Next time you are outside looking at the stars realize that Creation's vastness goes just that far inside of you.

One much-disputed theory of science claims that the most basic particle of the sub-atomic world, beyond which nothing can be reduced, is “sound.”  True or not, we know that  Creation came into being when God spoke and sound was released.  In the early 1990's one of Germany's most influential scientific magazines, GEO, published an article which publicly challenged the validity of Darwin's theory of evolution. The announcement which startled scientific minds around the world, made the following statement: "Gradual evolution by natural selection, the key element of Darwin's theory, no longer stands up to the latest scientific results..."  In referring to the origin of the Universe, the article also included this statement: "The idea of a preconceived plan instead of a succession of coincidences suggests itself."

Victor Hugo said, “Where the telescope ends the microscope begins. Which of the two has the grander view?” Nearly 60 years ago I came across a poem by Atlanta author, Ernest Hartsock, whose insight grabbed me and never turned loose. He said:
 
Ages of earth are in me; I am made
Of time's immortal matter, which is dust;
I am old atoms in a new parade,
I am iron, miracled from rust.
This that is I, has not been I forever;
Once it was pearl or spider, flame or fly.
Nature's destination is endeavor,
There is no dust beauty will let die."

The most shocking scientific discovery about the Universe came in 1912 at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, when Vesto Melvin Slipher, an American astronomer, discovered that approximately a dozen galaxies were moving away from the earth at speeds of a million miles an hour. It wasn’t until years later that Edwin Hubble, another astronomer, analyzed the implication and formulated a new theory about the earth's origin. According to Hubble, Creation had suddenly exploded from a central point from which the galaxies were still outwardly expanding. That point of beginning, they explained, was no larger than the period at the end of a sentence (.) This was distressing news to scientists. Hubble’s discovery was quickly dubbed the “Big Bang” theory.

One of the last minds to accept the "Big Bang" and by far the most Influential, was Albert Einstein. Einstein rejected the theory because "it implied that Creation had a beginning." As  a Jew, he believed in God, accepted Jesus as Messiah, but strangely rejected the idea of God as Creator. In 1930, however, Einstein visited the Mount Wilson Observatory in Pasadena, California, looked at the evidence through the giant, 100 inch telescope and admitted the proof was there: The Universe had indeed originated in a single moment and everything was still flying outwardly from that incredible blast.

The “Big Bang” was not an accidental, uncontrolled, cosmological firecracker. As the physicist Freeman Dyson put it, the universe seemed to be acting in anticipation for the appearance of mankind.   In fact, leading evolutionists, such as Dobzhansky and others have agreed that there has not been enough time for mankind to have assembled spontaneously within the time span of our universe.”  (Both Italics mine) Dr. David Block, a Messianic Jewish believer, is Professor of Applied Mathematics and Astronomy at the University of Witwatersrand in South Africa. Besides two Bachelor degrees, Dr. Block holds a Master of Science in relativistic astrophysics and a Doctor of Philosophy in Astronomy. He is a world-renowned scientist, a consultant at the European Southern Observatory near Munich, West Germany, and the Institute of Astronomy, University of Hawaii. Relative to the reconciliation of Bible and science, he said “To the person who is seriously seeking, I would say, read the gospels from an objective pont of view, as Albert Einstein did. As Isaac Newton did.”

The next question with which the scientists had to grapple was, "What came before the beginning?" "Who was the Prime Mover?" To this, a British Scientist, Edward Milne, gave the reply, "The first cause of the Universe is left for the reader to insert. But our picture is incomplete without Him."

To my satisfaction, Hubble's explanation is the best, non-theological explanation of Genesis 1:1: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth ..."

In the middle 1970's, leading astronomers in England reinforced the theory when they announced they had discovered the galaxies farthest removed from the center point of that "explosion.” These galaxies were actually the "edge" of the Universe. The British scientists went on to make a mind-boggling statement: "Beyond these galaxies, nothing exists; not even space."  At that point, human intelligence proceeds no farther. As one scientist put it, "We are waiting for someone to step out of the crowd and tell us what it all means." As to the time and place of that “Big Bang” we find both in the opening verse of the Bible: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” When God said, “Light be!,” light was!

In qualifying its position against Darwin's long-accepted claim the GEO article went on to explain That the “chief witness" in support of evolution, a fossil of the Archaeopteryx, or a bird-like animal claimed to be the missing link, has “lost its authenticity." In referring to the origin of the Universe, the article also included this statement: "The idea of a preconceived plan instead of a succession of coincidences suggests itself."

What the scientists are saying is that the mathematical perfection in creation excludes the idea of accidental evolution; rather, they are forced to admit that the Universe resulted from a “preconceived plan.” Whether we are theologians or scientists, we can prove by unwavering mathematical law that our universe was designed by engineering Intelligence. For example, take ten pennies and number them one to ten. Put them in your pocket and shuffle them. Mathematically, your chance of drawing out number one on the first draw is one in ten. Drawing out one and two in succession becomes one in 100. To draw out one, two, and three, in perfect order, your chance is one in one thousand. By fixed, mathematical law, your chance of drawing out all ten pennies in uninterrupted order is one in ten billion. These are the odds of chance. Simply stated, it can't be done. Now apply that law of chance to the multiplied billions of related complexities that are necessary for life to exist on our planet.

In recent years, the Hubble Telescope, named for Edwin and stationed in space was given a unique assignment. It was told to select a spot with the least density of stars and photograph it. The site chosen was equivalent in size to a grain of sand held between a man's finger tips at arm's length. What the telescope photographed through that tiny, minuscule window was breath-taking: In distances beyond comprehension, it showed stratum after stratum of uncountable galaxies disappearing into the distance. If such a panorama lies behind a pin-prick sized view, how great is the power that exploded the rest of it into being? More wonderfully, how great is the Creator who designed it!

Robert Jastrow, in the New York Times Magazine, years ago revealed more of the scientists quandary when he wrote, "Consider the immensity of the problem. Science has proved that the Universe exploded into being at a certain moment. It then asks, "What cause produced this effect? Who or what put the matter and energy into the Universe? Was the Universe created out of nothing, or was it gathered together out of pre-existing materials?" And science cannot answer these questions. Jastrow continues, "Now we would like to pursue that inquiry further back in time, but the barrier seems insurmountable. For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as be pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries."

When Einstein was asked by a reporter if he accepted the historical existence of Jesus, he replied, “Unquestionably! No one can read the Gospels without feeling the actual presence of Jesus. His personality pulsates in every word. No myth is filled with such life. I am enthralled by the luminous figure of the Nazarene.”

Anthony Flew, an 81 year old British atheist-philosopher who for more than 50 years avidly denounced God,  creationism, and Christianity--in defense of Darwin’s theory of evolution--has declared he is now a believer in God. His acknowledgment  has  staggered the scientific community. Flew is the author of scores of books and academic articles opposing God’s existence, including “Atheistic Humanism” and “Darwinian Evolution.” Renouncing his own writings, he now endorses science’s  Intelligent Design Principle, “IDP,”  more technically is known as the Anthropic Cosmological Principle, as the explanation for the origin of the Universe. That intelligent designer is God. This is now Flew’s position.* Flew explained,  “Darwin himself, in the fourteenth chapter of The Origin of Species, pointed out that his whole argument began with a Being which already possessed reproductive powers.” This is the kind of evidence that converted Antony Flew.

But what is the Christian view of the "Big-Bang"?  Good Christians disagree and while I will not argue the point with anyone, I personally believe it is the most profound penetration which science has yet made into the creative-works of God. Even though the Bible gives us no more clue than “God said ’Light be! ... Let the dry land appear,’” it is easy to believe that He Himself is the center point of that explosion.  Probably, His Throne occupies the "O" degree from which everything shot outward. He is the "Original Light" from whom all other light sprang. But where does this idea of a preconceived plan" take us? We are back at Genesis I: Even so, we must remember that "the world by wisdom, knows not God." Saving faith will never come through scientific discovery.  Science can open the door of  inquiry; but only when that inquiry leads to the person of Jesus by whom the Father “made the worlds" can saving faith result.  The verse quoted above goes on to say that “It pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believed."    Believe!

ALBERT EINSTEIN’S VIEW OF JESUS. Albert Einstein probably possessed the greatest mind of the past millennium. As a Jew, Einstein had distinct views on Jesus, the New Testament, and the Church. Below is a clip of an interview from the Saturday Evening Post, October 26, 1929:

“To what extent are you influenced by Christianity?

As a child I received instruction both in the Bible and in the Talmud. I am a Jew, but I am enthralled by the luminous figure of the Nazarene.

Have you read Emil Ludwig’s book on Jesus?

Emil Ludwig’s Jesus is shallow. Jesus is too colossal for the pen of phrase-mongers, however artful. No man can dispose of Christianity with a bon mot [a witty remark].

You accept the historical existence of Jesus?

Unquestionably! No one can read the Gospels without feeling the actual presence of Jesus. His personality pulsates in every word. No myth is filled with such life.”

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