Episode Transcript
Welcome to Faith and Science. I'm Dr. John Ashton.
You know, as I read among the literature, there's certainly overwhelming evidence and increase evidence for intelligent design in nature, particularly in living systems. And it really frustrates me that the evidence for intelligent design isn't being taught in our schools and universities formally. We have so much evidence now for the existence of God, a creator, the biblical creator.
We have so much evidence for the Bible from so many aspects from history, from geology. The global flood explains so much of what we see in terms of the topology of the earth's surface. It can explain the origin of ice ages or an ice age.
There are so many things that the Bible can explain as well, human behaviour, it can explain the origin of evil and so forth. So it's really something that, again, I think as Christians, and if you're listening to this programme, need to tell people about the resources that are available that point overwhelmingly to our creator God, and especially design in nature. And one book too that I'm reading at the moment is a new book out published by Andrews University.
It's called Design and Catastrophe: 51 Scientists Explore Evidence in Nature. And one of the articles that I was reading in this book caught my attention by a Dr. David Pennington. Now, I've met David a few times and chatted with him and he was actually the first person in the world to replant a human ear using microsurgical techniques. And he's certainly a recognised expert in the field of microsurgical reconstruction.
And so he's an Emeritus Associate Professor of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery at Macquarie University. So that means he holds that title of professor here in Australia, which is a title of rank in Australia permanently as recognition. And he was formerly head of the Department of Plastic Surgery at the Royal Prince Alford Hospital in Sydney, Australia.
And his article really caught my attention. He's given it quite a clever title, actually. He called it Why Chimpanzees Can't Play Chopin. And I found he brings out some quite interesting and quite powerful points in his article. He writes that he had often pondered the amazing structure of the human body that allowed the fine patterns of dexterity that produced, for example, the Mona Lisa, the delicate carvings of Chinese ivory figures, and also the very elaborately illustrated Bibles of medieval times, but also the fact that people can handle by hand assemble microprocessors and many other intricate works. And so what he points out is that there's this ability in humans to perform manual tasks involving very fine movement, and that this very fine movement differentiates the humans apart from all other primates or apes.
Now, of course, it's often claimed that humans evolved from some sort of ape ancestor. And in this article, which is in this book, as I said, Design and Catastrophe, which has just been published by Andrews University in the United States, it's in Michigan in the United States, and his article is in this book as a chapter, and I think it's quite revealing. He points out that accomplishments such as being able to play Chopin's Etude in G Minor, in G Sharp. Sorry. Opus 25, Number 6. Or again, the performance of brain surgery are way beyond the technical ability of even the smartest ape.
He points out, however, that in our education system, the proposed concepts in neurophysiology that dominate the field of human neurophysiology are actually based on evolutionary biology. And this is certainly a worry. It is really a worry when we're sort of teaching students that we evolve from apes, and then we're teaching this sort of as an underpinning factor of biology, which is underpinning then research in medicine and surgery and all this sort of thing.
And it's clearly wrong. And I've talked many times previously on these programmes, that the changes in the genetic code that are required to produce new body parts, new organisms, new functions, are huge, and they can't arise by random mutations. It's just impossible.
We know that statistically, and the number of times that the mutations would have to be performed, there just wouldn't be enough time or space in the universe, even if you had billions of years, which we know we don't have from many other aspects, and much other evidence as well. Life on earth can't be that old. And I've mentioned this before, just classic example, there are erosion rates.
But it's interesting, he points out, that the cognitive advantages in the human brain have generally been attributed to its large size, and in particular, the encephalo cortical mass, which is genetically controlled. There's actually a gene called microcephalin, which regulates the human brain size. So here we can see, again, there's a specific gene, a specific code in the DNA, that regulates the human brain size, and there is a large amount of code that especially relates to the human hand, and especially the thumb and the index finger in this parietal lobe, cortical areas.
And again, we concede that they're genes. There are genetic codes that specifically construct these parts of the brain that are specifically associated with the operation of our thumb and index finger. So again, human hands are different. Feet of course, are different to ape hands and feet.
And what he's pointing out is that the code here, there's changes to the code that gives humans this special ability in terms of using their hands. And these changes in code, in the genetic code, provide for changes in the human brain that for us to operate and do these delicate operations. He also points out that the functional anatomy of the human hand is designed for precise movements that are impossible for other primates.
The longer and fully opposable thumb of the human is a chief example, producing the pincer, or pen type, grip, which is used in art and writing and in surgery. And that's something that's not possible in a chimpanzee. Now, of course, Pennington points out that although there are claims that chimpanzees and other apes have opposable thumbs and even opposable first toes, their function is for crude but strong grip, an advantage in climbing trees.
And, of course, chimpanzees may even use crude tools, but their neuroanatomy precludes the precision movements that would be similar to those movements in the human hand. So this is a very, very important differentiation. So while chimpanzees can still grip things, they aren't capable of these precision movements.
And this is a very, very significant difference. So Dr. Pennington points out that there are many movements that the human hand can do and gives humans dexteritus activities that are not seen in apes.
And so he also points out that he can't think of an evolutionary advantage to the appreciation of Beethoven's Fifth, let alone the ability to play it. There's another aspect, of course, to human dexterity, too, that we can look at, and that is that the sensory end organ density of the human fingertips also is represented by a special central post central parietal cortex of the brain. And it has a large representation there.
So there's a lot of nerves from the end of our fingers that actually go into the brain. And he points out that sensory discrimination is at least as important as motor function in the performance of fine movement as it is the rapid feedback of position and stretch receptors in muscles and joints, rapidly informing the brain, especially the cerebellum, of the exact spatial positioning, accurate to fractions of a millimetre in some cases. So what he's saying is that we have such sensory precision.
Well, we have such precision locator or three dimensional precision in our fingertips, and also with the sensory nerve endings that are concentrated there in our fingertips, that give us this ability to sense and locate highly, very accurately and very rapidly. And again, this is very, very fine movement. And his argument is this is not really essential for survival, but it gives us humans superior skill in so many ways.
And let's remember again all the time, that these extra skills and all these fine features of our fingers are part of a genetic code that is stored, that generates these functions and storage capacity in our brain, as well as the actual physiology of the structures of our fingers as well. And so when you think of the chances of mutations randomly forming in a coordinated way, not only the nerves, but also the changes in brain structure to be able to utilise the information from these nerves, it's just powerful evidence for creation. He also points out that the world of neuroanatomy, or brain anatomy, was recently updated in an amazing way in late 2018, when the Australian Neuroanatomist professor George Paxinos announced the discovery of a new cerebral nucleus at the base of the human brain.
Now, Paxinos is a world leader in his field, and he found a structure he called the endorestiform that's probably pronounced differently, endorestiform nucleus. And he achieved this through a close study of thousands of thin slices of brain tissue. And after studying large numbers of mammals, including primates, Paxinos and his team have found that this nucleus is unique to humans.
So this is pretty important. Moreover, the nucleus has neural connections with many other parts of the brain, indicating that it is most likely a coordination centre for fine motor function, which is an attribute exclusive to homo sapiens. So those that are interested in the reference for that, the title is, or the reference is an article by L.
Manix Mawnix and it's titled Aussie Brain Mapper discovers part of the brain that lets you play the piano. And that was in the Sydney Morning Herald November 22, 2018. But there's also, if you google that, the article will also come up on the web.
If you google that title, Aussie Brain map, it discovers part of the brain that lets you play the piano. So it's quite fascinating, this uniqueness. And again, as Paxinos has found, this is quite unique to humans.
Now, Dr. Pennington, the author of the article on why chimps can't play piano, he points out that while Paxinos believes in evolutionary theory, his discovery gives rise to some interesting questions. And one of this is based on the fact that a brain nucleus contains the cell bodies of many neurons, and so its presence means that something cellular has been added to the basic primate celebral blueprint, if we can use that term.
But like the fossil record there seems to be no intermediate form of this structure. It just appears in the human brain and in no other. And so one of the questions is, how did it get there? Because this is a really powerful anatomical way that differentiates us from the apes.
Pennington goes on to, and I think actually, before I go on, that is an important point, that the discovery of this endorestiform nucleus in the human brains, that seems to be a control centre that isn't in the brains of other animals, including apes, is very special. And it also, again, powerfully differentiates us from apes, because for the genetic code to form a centre that actually coordinates all other parts and other functions of the brain, that enables us to operate in this way, to arise by chance, not only for the code itself to arise by chance, but to code something that coordinates with a whole lot of other complex functions, is just absolutely impossible. It's got to be designed, it's got to be deliberately designed and put there.
And again, little points like this that are very subtle are very, very powerful evidence for creation. Pennington goes on, there are many other functional differences between the brains of humans and other animals, and these include higher cognitive functions such as consciousness, speech, artistic and musical appreciation, empathy, logical thinking, including inference, hypothesis formation, memory and ideation, to mention a few. The learning process in humans is therefore far more complicated than the behaviour patterns of other species.
So that's quoting from Pennington. He points out that another unique feature that human learning is transmissible to others due to speech, and also the fine motor functions of writing. And also another aspect is our colour stereoscopic vision that permits a whole lot of aspects in terms of visual communication, such as writing and symbols and these sort of things.
And he argues that some of these attributes appear to have no evolutionary survival advantage. And so again, he points out this point that to him, the evidence that we're finding of the human ability to carry out these fine motor skills bears witness to a privileged positions of humans that was granted by a higher power. And he concludes by saying, and I'll quote him, the unique functional anatomy of homo sapiens differentiates us so widely from other, even superficially similar, mammals that it is perhaps best expressed by this statement.
Then God said, let us make mankind in our image. Genesis 1:26. So this, I think it's a very interesting article in the book Design and Catastrophe.
It's interesting that Pennington talked about the vision and the human eye, and there was another interesting article in the book Design and Catastrophe, and it was called The Human Eye: Designed for Vision. And the author, Jesson Martin, points out that the human eye is a fascinating example of optical and anatomical design. Human vision has significant functional contributions, ranging from tear film, cornea, the lenticular optics, the aqueous and vitreous humour, the pupil and the retinal layers.
And he points out that vision is possible due to the interaction of light with the optics of the eye and the efficient way an image is transferred to the retina and then converted into information and then transmitted to the processing sensors of the brain. And at each component of the eye, the tear film, the cornea, the iris, the crystalline lens and the retina, there's less room for error for it to function efficiently. And so, there's some amazing aspects of the human eye that give human vision its great accuracy and precision.
And it's probably something that I'll talk about in another programme. But why I just mention it here again is that these aspects of the human eye give it quite great accuracy and precision. And when you couple that with the nerves and the sensory aspects of our fingers, and the ability of our hand and the shape of our hand, and the ability of our hand to carry out these very, very precise movements, when you couple that with the ability of the eye, with the amazing functional ability that it has, it provides, again, a very, very powerful combination.
Now, again, evolutionists have to say that this coordination arose by chance. And it's quite fascinating, actually, that I know. I've read an article where the great, or the sort of the widely known evolutionist or proponent of evolution, Richard Dawkins, who's certainly written so many articles on evolution, one of the aspects that he argued at one stage was that the eye was really poorly design and that it was sort of, it was a very backward design.
I can't just at the moment remember the exact details of his argument. But of course, as they did further research into this, they found, well, hang on, there's a particular reason why this structure is reversed, and that is because part of the sensory equipment in the eye, the optic nerve, there's heat generated and it requires cooling. And so the way it is arranged in the eye enables it for it to be cooled.
If it was designed the way that Dawkins suggested it should be designed, for obvious reasons, then it would be very difficult to have the cooling that it requires. And to me, this points out just this example, that here we have human logic and everything says, oh, hang on, this is a crummy design. And often this happens with other parts of the human anatomy as well.
People have said, oh, well, if it was really designed by God, why didn't he do it this way? Do it better? But then, as we do more research into it, we find, whoa, hang on. There's a reason for that.
Now, for me, what this is saying is intelligence, such as humans, and obviously, Dawkins is quite an intelligent guy, he writes beautifully, he's been granted a professorship at Oxford University and so forth, but even he didn't get the complete picture. But yet, when we look at it, the complete picture is there. How can random mutations produce this structure that works? Now, people argue, oh, hang on, there's natural selection.
The earlier eyes that built the other way all failed. But hang on, the eye isn't going to work at all unless you have all the complex functions working at the same time. And this is the classic case that for a machine to work, you have to have all the components lined up and just right.
Where I work, we build machines, we build manufacturing machines. And I know, talking to engineers, they build the machine, it's nearly all there, but if one little part isn't quite right, it might be just a little bit too big, and it's rubbing on something, there's not enough clearance that they didn't allow under certain conditions, and the whole thing stops working under certain conditions, and they've got to go back and redesign.
So you've only got to have one little bit out, and the machine doesn't work, it's useless. And when you're looking at living systems, one little thing out often means that totally, it won't survive. So, so many things are so complex.
They've all got to have evolved with the right random mutations all at the same time. And this is one of the functions that makes evolution so impossible. Well, I've been absolutely fascinated by learning about this extra part of our brain that we have and the ability that the explanation for how we have fine movement and we certainly didn't evolve from apes.
We were created in the image of God. You've been listening to Faith and Science.
And remember, if you wish to relisten to this programme or check up on the references, just google 3abnaustralia.org.au and click on the radio Listen button.
And remember, too, to tell your friends about these programmes. Put links up on your social media pages. Let other people know the amazing evidence we have for our creator God.
I'm Dr. John Ashton. Have a great day.
You've been listening to a production of 3ABN Australia radio.
