"I Think; Therefore, There Is A Supreme Thinker"

Even though the large majority of modern scientists still embrace an

evolutionary view of origins, there is a significant and growing number

of scientists who have abandoned evolution altogether and have accepted

creation instead.

(1) this phenomenon of recent times has occurred not

only because many scientists recognize the dearth of evidence from

paleontology, biology, and other fields to support evolution, but also

do to the realization that the world around us is incredibly complex and

shows so many signs of design that it cries out for an Intelligent

designer.

Man shares with animals the ability to integrate sensory

information and to direct motor responses through a command

center called the brain. In higher vertebrates, the brain has the

ability to learn, and, in the case of humans, to think. the very

fact that man posses the capacity to even think about thinking

sets him further apart from animals. So, too, does his brain's

incredibly complex structure, which makes thinking possible.

 

The BRAINS COMPLEXITY

The adult brain--weighing only about three pounds and averaging about

1400 cubic centimeters--contains about ten billion (10^10) neurons.

The neuron (nerve cell) is the basic unit of the brain. Each contains

branching fibers, call dendrites, and each neuron is in dendritic

contact with as many as 10,000 other neurons. Amazingly, the total

number of neuron interconnections (also called "bits") is

approximately 1000 trillion (10^15), and if the dendritic connections

were lad end to end, they would circle the earth (if it's round :-))

more than four times.

To put this in another perspective, one could compare the human brain to

the most sophisticated of computers--the super computer. The @Cray-2

spupercomputer has a speed of 10^9 computations per second. More

impressively, the brains speed is perhaps 10^15. furthermore, the Cray-2

has a storage capacity of 10^11 bits, as compared to 10^14 bits in the

brain, making the brain equivalent to 1000 super computers (2).

Oxford

professor Roger Penrose, evolutionist and author of the 1889 boo, The

Emperors's New Mind, cautions, however, against stating that the human

brain is just a complex computer or that a computer will ever be able to

think (i.e., artificial intelligence): "The very fact that the mind

leads us to truths that are not computable convinces me that a computer

can never duplicate the mind" (3). The brains sophistication has also

prompted prolific science writer (an evolutionist) Isaac Asimov to

acknowledge that "in Man is a three pound brain which, as far as we

know, is the most complex and orderly arrangement of matter in the

universe." (4).

In his iconoclastic volume, Evolution A Theory In Crisis, evolutionist

Michael Denton has offered the following descriptive observation and

analogy regarding the brain's 10^15 connections:

Numbers in the order of 10^15 are of course completely beyond

comprehension. Imagine an area about half the size of the USA

(one million square miles) covered in a forest of trees

containing ten thousand trees per square mile. If each tree

contained ten thousand leaves, the total number of leaves in the

FOREST would be 10^15, equivalent to the number of connections

in the brain. (5)

Although Dr. Denton is not a creationist, he argues a good case against

the random chance (mindless) processes of evolution bringing about higher

forms of life and a correspondingly complex brain, noting that the human

brain contains a "forest of fibers [which] is not a chaotic random tangle

but a highly organized network..[with] communication channels following

their own specially ordained pathways through the brain" (6).

Denton also concludes that

"it would take an eternity" for engineers to assemble an

object remotely resembling the brain, using the most sophisticated

engineering techniques. (7)

Not only does the incredible design of the brain point to a Master

designer, but so, too, does the Law of Cause and effect. simply put,

this law states that every phenomenon is an effect of a cause.

therefore, using causal reasoning, the first cause of intelligence must

be of supreme intelligence..

EVOLUTIONARY THEORIES ON THE ORIGIN OF THE BRAIN

How, then, does the evolutionist explain the origin and function of the

brain? Darwin, himself, conceded in Origin of the Species that the

formation of the eye--part of the nervous system over which the brain is

in charge--by natural selection "seems, I freely confess, absurd in the

highest degree." (8).

Yet he claimed that it must have happened anyway.

In addition, evolutionary writer Lewis Thomas candidly admits regarding

the brain's operation: "We know a lot about structure and function of

the cells and fibers of the human brain, be we haven't the ghost of an

idea how this extraordinary organ works to produce awareness." (9)

Many evolutionists either avoid the question altogether--Nobel laureate

and evolutionist John Eccles declared it to be "EXTRAORDINARY that there

has been so little publication on the brain's development during the

most important creative process of biological evolution" (10)--or offer

bizarre theories (11).

But recently, some evolutionists have seriously

endeavored to suggest the possible mechanisms that could have produced

something as complex as the brain, but their theories, frankly, perhaps

only reveal that many evolutionary scientists are more right-brain

(creative) than left-brain (cognitive) inclined. For example, in his

recent book, Evolution of the Human Brain (1989), Eccles wrote that,

"while recognizing that much is unknown or only imperfectly none, I have

been able to unfold the fascinating story of hominoid evolution of the

human brain using CREATIVE IMAGINATION restrained by rational criticism"

(12) (emphasis mine).

At any rate, the most common mechanisms cited are natural selection and

mutations. In Richard Dawkins' lucidly written, The Blind Watch-maker,

he attempts to counter the oft-used creationist argument that, just as a

watch is too complicated and purposeful to have come about by accident,

so, too, are living things--especially humans. Dawkins maintains that

"natural selection, the blind, unconscious, automatic process which

Darwin discovered" (13) is the mechanism that has brought about higher

forms of life, and, by implication, the highest manifestation of life's

complexity: the human brain." This is pure speculation, of course, on

Dawkins' part.

No scientist has ever observed natural selection (also

known as survival of the fittest) bringing about a new trait or animal.

Another evolutionist, Carl Sagan, has tackled the brain's origin with

lyrical (and very creative) writing in The Dragons of Eden. (14) Sagan's

subtitle reveals the non-scientific nature of his study:"Speculations on

the Evolution of Human Intelligence" (emphasis mine). Sagan declares

that mutations--mistakes in the genetic makeup of a molecule--are the

raw materials of evolutionary development. (15).

Genes. however are very stable; they rarely change. Furthermore,

mutations, when they occur, are usually lethal and almost always

harmful. (16) the evolution of just one species into another would

require hundreds (thousands? millions?) of accumulated beneficial

mutations. Clearly, "mistakes." Mindless evolution could never, even in

a trillion years, produce the human brain. In fact, it is so complex

that most of it remains unused, yet another conundrum for evolutionists.

CONCLUSION

It must be acknowledged that one cannot prove, scientifically, that the

animal or human brain was created by a Supreme Intelligence. The

question of origins--creation or evolution--is almost entirely outside

the experimental domain of science, for whenever the first brain was

formed, there were no human observers.

Cognitively, however, and from

observation, it is reasonable to conclude that the human brain

was created; it certainly requires more faith to believe the brain was

formed by mindless evolution than it does to believe it was created.

It was the Apostle Paul who declared the obvious: "For the invisible

things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen" (Romans

1:20)

The question of origins is of supreme importance even though ultimately

it is outside the domain of experimental science. As we week our

identity in a vast univere, what we believe about origins will influence

how we think and how we view our destiny.

If we choose to believe that

we are the product of chance, random processes (evolution), where man is

perhaps merely of the highest order, then we will possess a

materialistic and relativistic philosophy.

On the other hand, if we choose to

believe that our brain was created by a Master Intelligence,

then we will have a theological world view, one which should prompt us

to use our minds to understand His purpose for His creation. This was,

after all, the conclusion of no less than Isaac Newton, a creationist,

and, arguably the greatest of all scientists, who declared that we had

been created "to think God's thoughts after Him."