Episode Transcript
[00:00:12] Welcome to faith and science. I'm Dr. John Ashton.
[00:00:16] Recently, I bought a book that caught my attention called the lies we told and the truth. We must hold worldviews and their consequences. And I thought that sounded interesting.
[00:00:32] The author is Sharon James, who was educated at Cambridge University and also has a doctorate from the University of Wales.
[00:00:43] And one of the things that she writes about is that in one of her chapters, she talks about how the view that there is no God and no absolute morality. And one of the things that stood out to me was she pointed out that from the book of John eight, chapter eight, verse 44, the devil is the father of lies. And she goes on to assert that he's never stopped telling lies. And the biggest lie is to deny the existence of the creator.
[00:01:25] She says, the glory of creation, from the vast scale of the universe to the complexity of every cell, proclaims that there is a creator God. And then she goes on to say, we're more likely to fall for the lie if we accept the false assumption that real truth only has to do with physical and material things that can be scientifically proven. For example, you can't examine God in a laboratory.
[00:01:52] And this naturalistic worldview suggests that people used to believe in God in a prescientific age. But now that science can explain everything, we can dispense with that old superstition.
[00:02:09] And as I thought about that, I thought there's so much evidence, in my view, for the existence of a creator, that evolution, this naturalistic approach that people talk about how just the material things formed themselves and formed the amazing living systems that we see around us in the world today.
[00:02:38] To me, there's so much evidence now that that is impossible. And of know, Dr. Sharon James goes on to point out some of the consequences of this worldview and the loss of morality. And one of the consequences, she claims, is fatherlessness, and the increase in fatherlessness. And it's interesting, just recently I read a statistic where in the United States, 25% of the children are growing up without the fathers in the home. And it seems that we're seeing the consequences of that in terms of the huge rise in youth crime and so forth, societal changes that are certainly worrying people. There seem to be major issues, for example, here in Australia, with youth crime in many cities and towns, viewed as being out of control.
[00:03:51] And so one of the evidences that I thought points out very clearly to the creator is pregnancy.
[00:04:02] And the development of the baby during pregnancy is an amazing, well timed, perfectly timed, well orchestrated process.
[00:04:14] And so, of course, pregnancy is divided roughly into three trimesters. And the first trans trimester spans from conception to twelve weeks or the first three months of the pregnancy.
[00:04:31] And of course, during this time, the fertilized egg changes from a small grouping of cells to the little baby that begins to have human features. And it's interesting, we have this transformation from a single deployed cell into a living and breathing infant over approximately 280 days. And it's an extremely complex process and quite distinctive. And a successful pregnancy relies on many biochemical processes occurring at precise timings. So I'll just repeat that. A successful pregnancy relies on many biochemical processes occurring at precise timings to ensure that the embryotic and little baby growth is sustained. And this involves a supply of nutrients and energy stores and also protecting the little baby throughout the pregnancy.
[00:05:40] My background is in the area of chemistry and chemical reactions and understanding the processes required to make new compounds and so forth. And the complexity of the biochemistry during pregnancy and the changes that are all perfectly time and the specific compounds that are formed, extremely complex. And we need to remember that people who deny a creator have to believe that random, blind chemical mutations to the dna code produced all the chemical reactions encoded for all the chemical reactions, the enzymes and so forth that underpin these changes.
[00:06:32] And they're extremely complex. And we just know that we don't observe these reactions occurring just by themselves spontaneously out in nature.
[00:06:42] And also the concentrations have to be just right and the timing just has to be right. And to me it clearly shows it's impossible.
[00:06:54] This biochemistry of a baby relies on significant changes occurring in maternal physiology to fulfill these tasks. And so before pregnancy, many of the enzymes are absent in the maternal tissues. And then as the baby grows, they're not there either. They have to be put there or synthesized at precise times in both the baby itself and also in the placental tissue.
[00:07:27] And this requires and necessitates many complex interactions to produce the many hormones, such as estriol. This is one of the three female hormones that's normally present at nondetectable, really very low levels. But as soon as pregnancy starts, it changes and begins to be synthesized by the body. Another important hormone is progesterone, of course, and the mother's plasma levels increase as the pregnancy progresses. And this hormone has many important roles, including sustaining the little baby's growth, making sure that the little baby is accepted by the mother's immune system, stimulating the mechanism to generate heat for little babies so it can be kept warm, and also later stimulating respiration in the baby. And so the baby will undergo many changes throughout the pregnancy as its requirements change, as it's developing and forming into a more complex being.
[00:08:43] And at the same time, the mother's metabolism has to change and be in sync with these changes that are occurring in the baby, which is a separate being at this time. And so if we look at just the first month, the first two weeks of pregnancy, and pregnancy really starts from the beginning of the menstrual cycle in the mother.
[00:09:13] And the body releases hormones, the uterus prepares for a potential pregnancy, and at the end of the second week, the ovary releases the egg. If sperm is available at that time and meets the egg just after ovalation, the process of pregnancy continues and then fertilization occurs. During this third week, the sperm and the egg join and creates the first little cells that the baby form as forming the baby. And this tiny, in week four, this tiny bundle of cells implants into the side of the uterus, the womb, and that is the beginning of what will become the placenta.
[00:10:05] This is a watertight sac that forms around those developing cells that the baby at this stage, and it provides the cushioning to the baby during pregnancy. So we can see these involve specialist cells. All these specialist cells are encoded for their design. Their structure is encoded for in the dna code. And again, evolution says that this whole process came about as random, blind mutations.
[00:10:39] The coordination of this is just absolutely astounding. But the complexity of the biochemistry fills textbooks and a lot of it is still being discovered. The end of the fourth week, the little baby is about 2 mm long, size of a poppy seed, and of course, it doesn't have the full humor. It hasn't developed the human part yet. It's just a cluster of cells at this time.
[00:11:10] But during this time, the mother's body has to adapt to changes in energy and nutrient requirements and through the interactions of hormones and glycogen and fat tissues.
[00:11:27] The glycogen, the fat tissues, begin to accumulate due to the effects of the hormones, and cortisol levels rise. This leads to insulin resistance, and insulin production is increased by the stimulation of other compounds, prolactin and human chorion somamatropin, abbreviated hcs. And this is a placental hormone that modifies the maternal metabolic state and ensures the energy supply to the fetus. So all this kicks in during week four. And as I said, you've got these specific chemical compounds then that have to be synthesized. Now, it's all right to just say that they form and synthesize, but this requires, again, enzymes, special chemical processes to produce these compounds.
[00:12:22] After.
[00:12:24] In the second month, of course, most people then begin to realize, or women folk begin to realize they're pregnant, if they're pregnant. And the hormones, pregnancy hormones concentrations are ramped up. And by the fifth week, home pregnancy test will usually show positive.
[00:12:48] In the fifth week, the neural tube, which becomes the brain, spinal cord and other neural tissue of the nervous system, forms, and the tiny little heart tube will begin beating at 110 times a minute by the end of the fifth week. So it's starting to form this brain. It's starting to form the heart. Week six, tiny little buds that become the arms and legs also develop. Blood cells are now beginning to form, and circulation will begin and structures begin to form that become the ears, eyes and mouth. And so again, what we're seeing here is, again, according to programming, the structures are being assembled. So the little baby is being assembled and it's beginning to beat, has a little heart beginning to beat, and its brain is beginning to form. And this is at week five. And as I said, week six, the ears and the eyes, the structure, begin to form. Week seven, the bones begin replacing soft cartilage, and the genitals begin to form. The embryo's head is large in proportion to the rest of its body.
[00:14:04] And it's interesting that in some of the earlier stages, trying to suggest evolution, because the embryo resembled a small tadpole due to its prominent tail, but they became the legs and had a large head and this tail that became the legs. And, of course, we remember it's a lot easier to divide something than put something that is divided back together. Again. Anybody that breaks something, it's quite difficult to put it back together. But if you have something that's together and then divide it, it's a lot easier. And so, again, during the structure of the body, we find that these things are formed and then divide off in many cases.
[00:14:52] And this is just the whole concept that this is part of an evolutionary stage that, from fish and so forth, has since been disproved scientifically. It's nothing to do with evolution. And this is where we need to also bear in mind that the physical shape of things has nothing to do with the code. The code is, well, nothing to do. The code is quite different to those shapes. It's a code just like, as I often say, the word tadpole, T-A-D-P-O-L-E doesn't look anything like a tadpole or the word leg. Le G, doesn't look anything like a leg. These are codes, and we need to understand that extremely complex code is assembling this thesis and producing the cells that then later divide and become the separate components.
[00:15:49] During the 8th week, the baby is probably now about half an inch to an inch long.
[00:15:58] And then month three begins.
[00:16:02] This is an area during month three, there's quite rapid growth and little baby develops distinct facial features, the limbs, organs, bones, muscles. And by the end of the twelveth week, the little baby has an assigned sex.
[00:16:21] The beginning of going back, I guess starting at week nine, have the beginning of teeth and taste buds are forming, its muscles are forming. Its body's taking the shape of a more human appearance, but its head is still about 50% of its length. And it may be possible actually then sometimes to hear the heartbeat with a Doppler ultrasound. Week ten, the arms, hands, fingers, feet, toes are fully formed.
[00:16:54] No more web fingers. And again, as a point out, people thought, oh yeah, this came from fish, but it's just a matter that as the tissues are forming overall, they are then divided into the individual fingers rather than. It's just the mechanism by which the cells assemble to make the body parts. Rather than sending out separate protrusions, they grow together and are then divided. NASA said it makes a lot of sense. It's a lot easier to do that chemically and biochemically as well.
[00:17:24] And the fingernails and toenails are beginning to develop. External ears form, the external genitals also begin to form, but it's possibly too early to see them on ultrasound. In week ten, in week eleven, the fetus is starting to move a bit like opening and closing its fists and mouth and its knees, elbows and ankles are working.
[00:17:54] And week twelve, all the organs, limbs, bones and muscles are present and continue to develop. The circuitry, digestive and urinary systems are also working.
[00:18:08] The liver is producing bile and the fetus, and this is quite interesting, at week twelve, the fetus is drinking and peeing and maninic fluid. So these are quite coordinated development about this time, because most critical development has taken place. The chance of a miscarriage after this drops considerably.
[00:18:37] And at the end of this third month, the little baby is about three inches long, about the size of a plum, some texts refer to. So we get into the second trimester now and again. What impresses me most is that this chemistry that is underpinning all these changes, the assembly of all these cells that are made up of proteins and fats and carbohydrates and sugars and so forth, they all have to be assembled, they're all being assembled perfectly on time at just the right phase. And it all involves, as I said before, very, very complex chemistry. Second trimester.
[00:19:24] At this time, morning sickness is probably gone and soap part.
[00:19:30] And as the little baby grows, the plasma volume expansion is required in the mother to supply the fetus with adequate circulation.
[00:19:42] And this is necessary to supply the nutrients to the fetus, such as glucose and the fatty acids and amino acids, because now the growth is going to become more rapid.
[00:19:57] Also, there's circulation system set up that ensures that toxic substances are removed from the fetal placental unit, as it's now called. And this little unit stimulates the expansion of the plasma volume. And the fetal placental unit actually has three important functions, a source of protein and steroid hormones, which are delivered to the maternal circulation. And then there's a selective barrier that determines the nature of communication, interaction between the mother and the baby and the baby's endocrinal and physiological systems. And then it also helps control fetal growth development and the baby's endocrine function and then eventually birth.
[00:20:53] It's interesting that in all these functions, the baby and the maternal placenta have separate circulatory systems which exchange nutrient gases, waste products, in the blood pools of the maternal portion of the placenta. And to accomplish this, the blood pool, or blood pour in oxygen, rather, and nutrients, leaves the baby through the umbilical arteries and enters the capillaries of the chlorinate villas. And in these capillaries, the blood is oxygenated from the mother and gains nutrients from and gives up waste to the mother's blood in the pools there before it returns to the baby in the umbilical vein.
[00:21:45] One of the fascinating things about this is that the oxygen depleted blood leaves the maternal blood through blood, through the maternal veins. And thus, from the time blood flow is established at three weeks following fertilization, that's just three weeks after conception, the fetal oxygenated blood is actually carried by veins rather than arteries, and the oxygen poor blood by arteries rather than veins.
[00:22:17] And this reverses when the baby is born to the normal system, where the oxygen rich blood is carried by the arteries, et cetera. So this amazing change occurs at birth, a total reversal. And again, this sort of phenomena just, you can't have something like this evolving, precise timing at birth. It reverses to be the normal, as we experience, because now we're outside the mother's system.
[00:22:51] And again, to me, this is just such powerful evidence for design, for creation, perfect coordination.
[00:23:01] It's interesting, on week 13, for example, the vocal cords form. Fetus's large head begins to grow proportionate to its body. The fetus's skin starts to thicken, fine hair begins to grow.
[00:23:16] It can start bringing its fingers to its mouth, turn its head. The external genitals are fully developed this stage. Week 14 and fingerprints begin to form. In week 15, some organs, like the intestines and ears, are moving to their permanent location.
[00:23:36] The fetus still uses aminetic fluid to practice breathing, but its lungs are beginning to develop and it makes more purposeful movements, like sucking its sun. Week 16, the fetus has lips and its ears are developed so it can hear you talk.
[00:23:56] The little baby can also react to light by turning away from it, and it's now about five inches long.
[00:24:04] Week 17, the baby begins to move around. Week 17, for example, the fetus still has thick skin, but it'll start to put on fat and its skin begins to be covered with a whitish coating called vernix cesarona or vernix. It's a waxy white substance found coating the skin of newborn babies. And again, it's produced by dedicated cells that are there in the skin that protects the skin during fetal develop and a few hours after birth.
[00:24:43] It's composed of mobile corneocytes embedded in the morphous slipid matrix, and the precise biological mechanisms leading to its formation are poorly understood. So this is another major property.
[00:24:58] The fetus is also covered with langua, which is a peach fuzz like hair to keep it warm, has a sleep wake cycle.
[00:25:08] Week 19, the fetus is getting stronger. Week 20, its fingernails begin to grow and the five senses develop.
[00:25:21] Week 21, limb movements are coordinated.
[00:25:25] Week 22, the fetus grasp is getting stronger. And week 23, born now, it may survive. Week 24, the little baby's lungs are fully developed, but not really all that well.
[00:25:43] They still need to grow.
[00:25:46] Week 25, there's more body fat develops. Week 26, the little baby begins to make melanin, the substance that gives the skin and eyes their color. By week 28, the little baby is beginning to turn its head. And of course, the third trimester, we find that the baby is now sort of developing, growing more quickly, kicking and so forth.
[00:26:13] It's getting to the final stages, ready for birth.
[00:26:19] Around week 3637-3839 and 40 are the final developments of the baby. You know, the biochemistry of the baby development is a complex process in the maternal as the mother's body adjusts to the requirements of the fetus, of the little baby throughout the pregnancy. And as these requirements change throughout the pregnancy, there are nutrients have to be provided and so forth. Evolutionists have to believe that the perfectly timed changes to these complex biochemical chemistry systems, including the specific chemical reaction systems to make the specialized hormones, enzymes, and other chemical compounds, arose as a result of blind chemical mutations caused by environmental chemicals or ultraviolet light or cosmic rays. To me, it's clear from the complexity of these systems and the fact that without a complete system, the pregnancy will fail, that it's obvious that this complex biochemical system did not evolve. To me, pregnancy and birth are compelling evidence for the existence of the creator God described in the Bible.
[00:27:41] And, of course, that God desires that we don't die eternally, that we should have and share eternal life with him. That's the message of the Bible, and I would encourage you to read it if you already don't do so.
[00:27:58] You've been listening to faith and science, and if you want to relisten to this program, Google three abnastralia.org au and click on the radio button and the Faith and Science Listen program. I'm Dr. John Ashton. Have a great day.
[00:28:19] You, you've been listening to a production of three ABN Australia radio.
