Episode Transcript
[00:00:12] Welcome to faith and science. I'm Dr. John Ashton. Recently, I went to a lecture on the brain, some of the new developments with the brain, and I was reminded of the amazing structure of our brain.
[00:00:32] Now, of course, our evolutionists claim that our brain evolved over hundreds of millions of years to be to the present situation. And of course, people also are taught that we evolve from some apelike ancestor, our brain. And while all mammals, indeed vertebrates, share similar structures and mammals similar aspects, I remember quite some time ago, one of the australian universities, they were looking at doing some experimental work with possum brains to improve brain surgery. But there was quite an outcry about this hurting the possum. So I understand that particular rub project was canceled. But when we look at the human brain and the structure of it, and indeed brains, they're amazing, amazing structures. And the evolutionary model has to remember that these structures all resulted from, according to their claim, to mutations, to the genetic code, which is made up of four chemicals that we represent as act and g on the dna.
[00:02:12] When we look at the brain though, the complexity of the brain, it's the most complex structure in any biological system. It's amazingly complex, amazingly complex machine. And so the central nervous system, of course, consists of the brain and the spinal cord. But I'm just interested really in, for the sake of this presentation, just looking at the brain itself.
[00:02:48] So it consists of the cerebrum, the main part, and the brain stem and the cerebellum.
[00:02:55] And so you've got these three major parts.
[00:03:02] And the cerebrum is the largest part of the human brain. It consists of the two cerebral hemispheres that we're familiar with, where you see in diagrams. And each hemisphere has an inner core composed of white matter and an outer surface of the cerebral cortex composed of gray matter.
[00:03:28] And so this cortex has an outer layer itself called the neocortex. And also there's an inner allocortex and the neocortex made up of six neuronal layers, while the allocortex has three or four.
[00:03:46] And each hemisphere is conventionally divided into four lobes, the frontal, the temporal, the parietal and the occipital lobes. And so the frontal lobe of the brain of the hemisphere is associated with executive function.
[00:04:11] So we think about control, planning, reasoning, abstract thought, while your occipital lobe seems to be dedicated to vision, within each lobe, the cortical areas are associated with specific functions, such as sensory motor and so forth. Of course, we hear about right brain and left brain. Well, the left and right brain hemispheres are broadly similar in shape and function, and some are associated with language in the left and visual spatial ability in the right.
[00:04:53] So we can see that the brain itself has a whole lot of different functions and control, but a whole lot of parts. And we need to remember that these parts and structures that all work together are supposed to have arisen by random mutations to blind mutations, by the way, just random, purely random mutation to a code made up of chemical letters, act and g.
[00:05:26] Now, when we go a little bit further and we look at the brain stem, we can see there's the midbrain, the ponds, the medallo blata, and then the cerebellum is connected to the brain stem by three pairs of nerve tracts. We've got the cerebrospinal fluid there is produced in the ventricles, which is in the cerebrum, and this is produced there and circulated. And so, again, we've got random mutations. Produce the chemicals that make up this fluid and produce the glands that release it.
[00:06:10] When we think of what random blind mutations have done, we can see random blind mutations don't produce these structures.
[00:06:21] And then, of course, under the cerebral cortex, there are other structures, such as the thalamus, the epithalamus, the pineal gland, and this is quite an interesting gland. And remember, of course, there's an optic pathway, a little optical fiber that actually takes the light photons from the eye through to the pineal gland.
[00:06:47] And this optic stimulation, by light helps regulate our circadian rhythms, helps regulate things like blood pressure, cholesterol levels, blood sugar levels, all these sort of things.
[00:07:02] Then we've got the hypothalamus, we've got the pituity gland, we've got the subthalamus. We've got limbic structures, including the amygdali and the hippocampi clostrium.
[00:07:16] Then we've got basal ganglia, all sorts of other organs that we could go on about. And so here we have this amazingly complex structure. And as I said, if we go down the evolutionary pathway, this amazing structure that all works together, and all these little components that we've just rattled off, the different names and the different nerve tracts, for example, I haven't mentioned the hemispheres, are connected by the commercial nerve tracts, the largest being the corpus callusum or colysum.
[00:07:59] All these different structures all have to be programmed in, all have to fit in the right place, all have to be connected. They're all made of different molecular structures. Those molecular structures are made up of the different proteins that make them up. Proteins are molecules. Those molecules have to be built and assembled from the basic amino acids using ribosomes that are reading the code. And so changes in the code change the assembly of the amino acids to make the new different proteins, to make these different structures. This amazing complex system, according to the theory of evolution, arose by chance with all these different components. And it's taken decades in recent times of research, understanding the different structures, looking and researching how they function and so forth. And of course, when we look at the brain again, we've got all the cells that make up the brain, we've got the neurons, and there's supposed to be about 86 billion neurons, but thousands of different types of neurons.
[00:09:28] So these are all individual cells. Now, when we look at the structure of these things, it's all right to just talk about, oh, well, there's neurons, right? And that's a word with seven letters in it, but the structure in English, we write neurons, we've got seven letters which are the code. And in English, my brain is a programmed to read in English. I couldn't read very easily in Latvian or Chinese or Persian, but I'm programmed to read in English. I used to know a little bit of French and some Latin, but when we think about the DNA code written with the chemical letters that we abbreviate, act and g to make these amazing structures, and as I said, seriously, we talk about, oh, there's 86 billion neurons, but as I just said, there's thousands of different types of these cells. All have to which have their unique function, all have to be made uniquely from a unique code. And yet we assume that blind, random chance mutations made these structures. And of course, there are other cells, there are supportive cells called the glial cells, and of course, they're called glial cells because originally they thought they were just there to glue and hold the other cells together. But of course, now we know they play a very important function.
[00:11:09] They release certain chemicals that carry information.
[00:11:17] It's amazing. Brain activity, of course, is made possible by the interconnections of the neurons and their release of what we call neurotransmitters. And these, again, are specific compounds that our body makes. Again, according to codes that are made in through the chemical factories, through the ribosomes and so forth, the neurons connect to form neural pathways and it's an amazing network system. And of course, the brain then is protected by the skull, which is suspended in the cerebrospinal fluid.
[00:11:58] And of course, it's actually separated from the bloodstream by the blood brain barrier that filters out, so that nasty things in the filter seed the blood out and only allows certain compounds through to enter the brain.
[00:12:16] It's interesting when looking at brain cells, I think these are absolutely amazing. So the neurons or the nerve cells, these connect with other parts of the brain and they're responsible for carrying information throughout the human body.
[00:12:42] They use electrical and chemical signals and they help coordinate all the necessary functions of light, of life, rather our brain, we have our thoughts there and they essentially carry our thoughts to other parts of the body. And of course, some are automatic.
[00:13:05] For example, they help control our heart rate and these automatic things that keep us breathing and our body going.
[00:13:15] It's interesting when you think that the brain to grow, when you think when human egg is fertilized and it begins to grow, for that little egg to grow into a fetus and then develop the brain, it was interesting, just a little fact that I read that a developing fetus must create about a quarter of a million neurons per minute to grow those cells. When you think about this, it's absolutely amazing. And then each neuron is connected to 1000 other neurons.
[00:14:00] That's an amazing network system, creating an incredible complex network of communication. So when you think about it, we've got an estimated 86 billion neurons, and this whole structure, each neuron is connected to 1000 other neurons.
[00:14:23] And so very quickly, information can travel through the brain.
[00:14:31] Of course, the neurons are sometimes called nerve cells.
[00:14:37] But again, when we look at this, we've got the cell body of the nerve cell with the soma, and then you've got that long, if you see a diagram this, you've got that long sort of tail or trail that sticks out the axon. And when you then break down the axon itself, you've got the node of ranvia, you've got the Schwann cell, you've got axon terminals where at the end of the axol, it all branches out. And then you've got the dendrites on the soma itself.
[00:15:15] The soma, of course, is the actual body. That's the little round bit in the diagrams that you see. And this portion of the neuron receives information and it contains the nucleus of that particular cell, that neuron cell. And of course the dendrites, little thin filaments that carry information from other neurons to the soma Itself, to the main cell body.
[00:15:44] They're the input part of the cell. Now, the axon actually is this long projection, and it carries the information from the soma, from the cell and sends it off to other cells. So that's the output part of the cell, and it normally ends with a number of what they call synapses to the dendrites of other neurons. So when you have your little nerve cell, you've got that little round, bally looking structure, and then you've got all the little streamers, little dendrites, little fine tissue portions off that. That's where the information comes in, and the information goes out via the axon. And then at the end of the axon, again, you've got all these little dendrites that connect to the dendrites, the soma of other cells. And so it's amazing. And as I said, these nerve cells, there's thousands of different types. For example, the cell with the longest accidents are called doors, or root ganglion.
[00:16:52] And it's one of the types of nerve bodies that carries information from the skin to the brain. So it's quite incredible, the different neurons.
[00:17:10] It's interesting that neurons carry messages via what we call action potential. So they receive inputs from these other neurons and the signals are added up until they exceed a particular threshold. Once this threshold is exceeded, a neuron is triggered to send an impulse along, snaxin its action, and this is called an action potential.
[00:17:36] And so this potential is, of course, created by electrically charged atoms, which we call ions, cross the membranes. And it's interesting that this electrical conductivity there can be measured. So we have a lot of electrical impulses generated in the brain. And when these nerve impulses receive enough signals to trigger it to fire, the potential quickly rises and falls. And all this happens extremely quickly, in about 1000 of a second.
[00:18:23] So it's quite, very rapidly occurring. And some of these ions are potassium ions, and of course, sodium ions that generate the potentials as they move along.
[00:18:40] We've got the sodium ion channels, which allow the sodium plus ion to flood into the cell, making it more positive. And once the cell reaches a certain charge, the potassium positive iron channels open, allowing potassium to flow out of the cell.
[00:19:00] The sodium channels then shut, but the potassium channels remain open, allowing the positive charge to leave the cell. And as a result, the membrane potential then drops.
[00:19:14] And then as the membrane potential returns to its resting state, the potassium samples shut. And then finally, the sodium potassium pump transports sodium out of the cell, back in and out of the cell, and potassium back into the cell, ready for the next action potential.
[00:19:33] When you think, like the chemistry involved and the little pumps, all these sort of things, it's incredible. And we have to believe, we're told that we have to believe that these amazing structures and processes arose by blind, random mutations to the DNA code. Because the code looks nothing like the structure of a brain. It's just a code of chemical compounds arranged along this really long molecular structure of the DNA.
[00:20:10] It's interesting, of course, when we dig down to it, the axons themselves, when you look at all the structures of these cells, have to be again made, and they're all made of all different components, and all the different components, again, have to be encoded for in the helix structure of the DNA. And so, for example, most axions are covered by a white, waxy substance called myelin. And this coating insulates the nerves and increases the speed at which the impulses travel. The myelin itself is created by Schwann cells in the peripheral nervous system and oligodendocytes in the central nervous system.
[00:20:57] And there are small gaps in the myelin coating, and it's called the nodes of ranvia. And the action potential jumps from gap to gap, allowing the signal to move much quicker.
[00:21:10] It's absolutely amazing, these structures that are there, and they're all essential structures for our brain to work.
[00:21:22] It's extremely complex and it's interesting. For example, multiple sclerosis is caused by the slow breakdown of myelin. So when we talk about mutations creating these things, we need to realize that experimentally, what we observe, most mutations cause disease.
[00:21:45] We get diseases of the brain, Alzheimer's, different forms of dementia, Parkinson's and so forth, disease and so forth.
[00:21:55] We don't see new abilities, new components being evolving in terms of the brain. And we see it's extremely complex, and yet it all works. It works in amazingly way. And it's interesting. Again, the brain cells, these particular ones, the neurons, and we've only talked about neurons so far, they are connected to each other in tissue, so they can communicate messages. However, they do not physically touch. There's always a gap, and that's a synapses. And these synapses can be chemical or electrical. In other words, the signal that's carried from one nerve fiber to the next is transmitted by an electrical signal or a chemical one. Again, the chemical synapses we've classified depending on the particular neurotransmitter they release. So there's glutamurgic ones that release glutamine.
[00:22:57] There's gabaergic ones that release gaba, which is gamma aminobutyric acid.
[00:23:07] And then there's cholineogy ones that release acetylcholine.
[00:23:16] And then there's adrenogenic ones that release norepidine. Which are type of adrenaline.
[00:23:27] So we can see that, again, these are all specific chemicals that, again, have to be created by a code, and without them, the brain isn't going to work. And so all for the brain to work, not only all these cells, all these different physical major structures, all the different types of nerve cells, all the different chemical reactions, all have to have arisen by random chance blind mutations, yet they all work. And then when we look at, say, the gliacells, these cells that help support the neurons, there's three main types of gliacells, the astrocytes, the oligodendrocytes, and the epidemiol cells.
[00:24:18] And of course, they're known as macroglia. And together, the gliacells actually outnumber the neurons and gliacells being involved in the communication with the neurons as well. And they involve signaling processes similar to the neurotransmission, called gliotransmission. But they don't actually produce action potentials as generated by a neuron, but they produce chemicals which can express excitability and influence neural circuitry. So it's quite amazing when we look at all these different cells. The bottom line is when we look at the structure of the human brain and the enormous number of cells there, the larger physical structures, all the different parts, for example, that we mentioned earlier, like the pineal gland and the hypothalamus and the pituitary gland and all this sort of thing and the different structures of our hemispheres and the different cells and so forth, and read a number of articles from top research institutions saying the brain is the most complex machine that we know of, biological machine. To think that it formed by chance, random, blind chemical mutations, in my view, is clearly impossible. The human brain clearly points to a creator. And as I mentioned several times in these talks, when you think about it, you can weigh your brain.
[00:26:09] If you were dead, you could have it cut out and weighed.
[00:26:13] You could have then take it and squash it into its measuring cylinder and measure its volume. But you can't measure your thoughts. You can't weigh your thoughts, can't measure their volume. Our thoughts are non material and God is non material. And yet with our non material thoughts, we can affect those electrical impulses. We have free will. We can choose what we say. We can make decisions. We can make choices that even artificial intelligence can't make. Can't choose between something, make a choice. That's a personal thing that we do. You can't choose which flavor you're going to have today. Chocolate or banana, sort of thing.
[00:26:55] The artificial intelligence works on pre programming, but we make choices. And this is, in my view, again, powerful evidence for a creator God that made us and wants to communicate with us. And of course, that's exactly what the Bible explains is the situation.
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[00:27:44] I'm Dr. John Ashton. Have a great day.
[00:28:04] You've been listening to a production of three ABN Australia radio.
