The Creator Revealed

Design In Humans

Three Angels Broadcasting Network

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Series Code: TCR

Program Code: TCR180003A


00:30 Welcome to The Creator Revealed.
00:33 I'm Tim Standish. I'm a scientist.
00:36 And I work for the Geoscience Research Institute
00:40 in Loma Linda, California.
00:43 This program and this entire series
00:46 is about the creation
00:48 and what it can tell us about the Creator.
00:53 Yeah, I'm Shelley Quinn and we just want to thank you
00:56 for joining us today.
00:58 This program is in two segments.
01:00 The first half of the program
01:01 you will get some scientific information,
01:05 just enough to kind of whet your appetite.
01:08 In the second part, we will be talking about
01:11 a practical and biblical application.
01:14 What is the life lesson we get from this?
01:17 Paul said in Romans 1:20,
01:20 "That God's invisible attributes
01:23 were seen in everything that He created.
01:27 He imprinted or encoded
01:30 His artistic ability in His love,
01:36 if you will, on His creation."
01:38 And today, we're going to talk about
01:40 a well-noted biologist who's probably more famous
01:45 for being an atheist and how he mocks the design,
01:48 God's design of the eye.
01:50 Yes, you know what I like about Romans 1:20
01:53 is that it points us
01:55 in a very clear way to the creation.
01:58 God says, "Go and look,
02:01 taste and see that the Lord is good."
02:04 Amen.
02:05 And there's no hesitation about it.
02:08 Unfortunately, there are some people who think
02:10 that you cannot see the hand of the Creator
02:13 in the creation.
02:14 And some of them actually are
02:16 a certain kind of Christian.
02:19 I hope we all wind up in heaven.
02:21 I'll say that, you know, all of our eyes
02:27 obviously will be opened at that particular point.
02:29 But while we're here, the Bible encourages us
02:33 to look at the creation to appreciate what is there.
02:38 And particularly when it comes to human beings,
02:43 the Bible tells us beautiful things to expect
02:47 when we look at how a human being is made.
02:49 I love this text.
02:51 This is Psalm 139:13, 14,
02:55 "For you created my inmost being,
02:59 you knit me together in my mother's womb."
03:01 Isn't that fantastic imagery there?
03:04 Yes. I really like it.
03:06 That's actually why I use the NIV version, it has that...
03:10 It summarizes that imagery so nicely there for this text.
03:16 And then it goes on,
03:17 "I praise you
03:18 because I am fearfully and wonderfully made,
03:22 your works are wonderful, I know that full well.
03:26 Amen.
03:27 That's the biblical view of a human being
03:32 created by God, created in the image of God.
03:38 We expect as Bible-believing Christians
03:42 to see something wonderful.
03:44 But, of course, we all know we can't pretend
03:47 that there is not another view of what a human being is.
03:52 So let's look at one way
03:56 in which that has been expressed.
03:57 This is Charles Darwin writing.
04:00 Now you'll remember that Charles Darwin
04:02 was a materialist.
04:04 He believed really that the only thing
04:07 was the material world.
04:10 And here's what he says,
04:11 "Man in his arrogance thinks himself a great work
04:15 worthy the interposition of a deity."
04:18 So human beings think that we're fantastic and therefore,
04:22 you know, God somehow or other made us,
04:24 he's turning things completely around.
04:26 "More humble and I believe truer
04:30 to consider him created from animals."
04:32 But that was in 1838. That's right.
04:35 This is long before
04:36 the publication of his famous book
04:39 the Origin of Species.
04:41 So I've always heard that
04:42 it was because of his research and the origin of species
04:47 that he turned to an "evolutionist"
04:50 and denied God, but that clearly...
04:52 That's really a commonly held myth.
04:56 Darwin was clearly a dedicated materialist
05:01 before he ever went on the voyage
05:04 that he went on around the world
05:05 actually looking at things.
05:07 And he was searching
05:08 for a naturalistic explanation for things.
05:13 That's what his particular theory
05:15 of evolution really is all about.
05:18 Trying to come up with an alternative explanation
05:22 to what is pretty much obviously true to most people.
05:27 And that is the human beings
05:29 and the rest of everything we observed was created
05:34 in some way for a purpose interestingly enough.
05:38 Yes.
05:39 So, yes, you already mentioned Richard Dawkins
05:44 and Richard Dawkins is an atheist.
05:46 You could think of him as being an atheist evangelist.
05:48 Say, well, you're a Christian evangelist, Shelley,
05:51 he's an atheist evangelist, and he's very articulate.
05:55 I appreciate his writings actually
05:56 because he doesn't try to pretend,
05:58 he tells you precisely what he thinks.
06:00 So he's talking about the human body.
06:02 Now remember, this Darwinian view of things
06:07 inclines us to see things in a negative sort of way.
06:11 No, we're kind of cobbled together,
06:13 we are not a product of any intelligent thought
06:18 or any planning.
06:19 No, infinitely wise God made us.
06:23 So we don't expect to see infinitely wise things
06:27 in the creation.
06:28 This is what he says.
06:30 And he's talking about the human eye.
06:32 So if you're watching this on television,
06:34 he's talking about the instruments
06:36 that you are using to see us with amazing clarity.
06:41 Who isn't amazed by the human eye?
06:43 Well, it turns out, Richard Dawkins isn't?
06:46 He says, "Suppose I tell you that the eye's photocells,"
06:49 so these are the cells at the back of the eye
06:52 that are detecting light.
06:53 Okay.
06:55 "The eye's photocells are pointing backwards,
06:57 away from the scene being looked at.
07:00 The wires," that would be the nerves,
07:03 "connecting the photocells to the brain
07:06 run over all the surface of the retina,
07:09 so the light rays have to pass through
07:12 a carpet of massed wires before they hit the photocells.
07:17 That doesn't make sense and it gets even worse."
07:22 So let's take a look at what he's talking about here.
07:23 Here's the human eye.
07:25 Most of us will be familiar with the basic architecture.
07:28 At the back of the eye there are light sensitive cells
07:32 and at the front you can see there is a lens.
07:35 So if you're looking at my smiling face,
07:39 what's happening is that
07:40 lens is focusing an image of me.
07:46 Well, both of us, on the back of your eye,
07:49 and those light sensitive cells are detecting that image.
07:52 So as the light falls on it, they change,
07:55 and they then send a signal through the nerves.
08:01 Back to our brains
08:02 and that's why we see things the way we do.
08:07 So here is what Dawkins is concerned about,
08:10 the nerves that pick up that signal,
08:12 they run over the front of the light sensitive cells,
08:16 they don't go behind.
08:18 And he thinks that's a terrible design.
08:20 So let's zoom in here
08:23 on just a little part of that retina
08:26 and take a look at what his issue is with it.
08:28 All right?
08:31 And so here we have our light detecting cells.
08:36 All right.
08:37 There they are
08:39 and those light detecting cells,
08:44 they use a lot of energy.
08:47 That means they need a lot of oxygen...
08:48 Lots of blood.
08:50 They need sugar then that's all bought by the blood, right.
08:52 So they need a blood supply to supply them.
08:55 That's why if you injure your eye,
08:57 you've probably noticed
08:58 there's a lot of blood involved.
08:59 Yes.
09:01 And if you ever tried looking through blood,
09:04 you've probably noticed that,
09:05 that's not really a good strategy.
09:07 It's quite opaque.
09:09 So if you put the blood
09:11 in front of the light sensitive cells,
09:14 you couldn't see anything.
09:16 The blood has to go behind.
09:19 So this is a design necessity that we're looking at here,
09:22 the blood is behind.
09:24 If you have the blood there,
09:25 you can't in the same place have the nerves, right?
09:29 You can only have one thing in one place at a time.
09:31 So therefore, the nerves have to go
09:35 in front of the light detecting cells.
09:39 So when light comes in...
09:41 This is according to Dawkins,
09:43 and this was a commonly held view.
09:46 When the light comes in, it passes through those nerves,
09:50 and it gets dissipated a bit.
09:51 So that would reduce the clarity of what we see.
09:57 And Dawkins thinks this is a bad design.
09:59 But we can see
10:01 it's actually necessary that things be this way
10:05 or else our eyes wouldn't work.
10:07 I should tell you, there are other designs
10:09 on how this works.
10:11 They suit the purposes
10:13 of those animals that have that design.
10:16 But this... So for an eagle or someone...
10:18 Well, actually, an eagle would have this kind of design.
10:20 Okay.
10:21 I'm talking about things like octopuses.
10:23 Oh, okay. Okay.
10:25 Their eyes,
10:26 the same general camera type eye as ours,
10:29 but their retina is arranged differently.
10:32 And it suits the purposes of an octopus...
10:35 Yes.
10:36 But not the purposes of a human being.
10:39 Okay.
10:41 So this is what Dawkins is complaining about.
10:44 He says, this is bad design,
10:46 even though everybody would admit,
10:48 "Hey, you know, our eyes work remarkably well."
10:52 Yes. Okay.
10:53 So then he goes on and he says,
10:56 "One consequence of the photocells
10:58 pointing backwards is that the wires,"
11:00 remember that's the nerves there,
11:03 "that carry their data
11:04 somehow have to pass through the retina
11:07 and back to the brain.
11:09 What they do, in the vertebrate eye,
11:10 is all converge on a particular hole
11:13 in the retina, where they dive through it.
11:16 The hole filled with nerves is called the blind spot."
11:19 And this is the most shocking statement.
11:21 He says, "It's not just bad design,
11:24 it's the design of a complete idiot."
11:27 But it's interesting being an atheist
11:30 that he is still calling it a design.
11:32 Isn't that interesting?
11:33 Yes, yes.
11:35 This is a fascinating thing
11:36 because frequently people will argue,
11:38 "Oh, something is badly designed,
11:40 therefore, it's not designed."
11:42 No, we experience bad design all the time
11:46 but the things are still designed.
11:48 Yes.
11:50 The issue is really how competent the designer is.
11:55 So let's see what he's talking about here.
11:56 You see there where the nerves go through,
11:58 that's the blind spot.
12:00 He has a problem with that.
12:01 You will probably notice that most people have two eyes.
12:06 And the great thing is because of our two eyes,
12:09 we have this 180 degree view of everything,
12:13 and the blind spot isn't in the same place
12:15 in both eyes.
12:16 So your brain puts the image together,
12:18 you don't see any blind spot.
12:19 Okay.
12:20 This is actually brilliant design.
12:22 There's something else that's more
12:23 recently been discovered, and that is that, in fact,
12:27 the light does not get dissipated.
12:30 What happens is
12:32 there are these special glial cells
12:34 act like fiber optics, and what they do
12:36 is they carry that light through.
12:39 How fascinating. So it isn't dissipated.
12:41 What happened was the designer
12:44 actually anticipated that problem
12:47 with the nerves running over the front of the eye...
12:50 That's amazing.
12:51 And engineered in a brilliant solution.
12:54 And because of that brilliant solution,
12:57 human beings can do amazing things.
13:00 We have these sensors and those sensors
13:03 are coordinated by our amazing brains
13:06 so that we can see, we can hear,
13:10 we can put all of this information together,
13:12 and we can understand to some degree
13:15 the creation that we all enjoy.
13:17 So poor Richard didn't have this information,
13:20 when he's mocking God's design of eyes.
13:22 He didn't have the information about the glial cells.
13:24 He had all the other information.
13:26 Yes. Yeah.
13:27 But he's been disproven, right?
13:29 Well, it's been shown that that was a foolish
13:32 and presumptive view of things.
13:34 Remember, the Bible encourages us to look for God.
13:38 Amen.
13:40 Evidence of God
13:42 to contemplate what He created
13:45 and what we can learn about God.
13:47 Nature, the creation, doesn't tell us everything.
13:50 Amen. But it tells us plenty.
13:52 So there are a number of points
13:55 that we can get out of this I think.
13:57 Okay.
13:58 The Creator is revealed in the design of humans.
14:02 His love is shown in His provision of senses,
14:05 such a sight,
14:07 so that we can appreciate and enjoy the creation
14:09 He made for us.
14:11 His love is evident in the way He anticipated
14:13 and solved problems created by design necessities
14:18 so that we enjoy senses far better than are minimally
14:22 necessary for survival.
14:23 And He demonstrated His love
14:25 by providing us with nervous systems
14:27 designed for a relationship with Him.
14:31 When you consider the human eyes,
14:33 certainly, you see that there had
14:35 to be intelligent design.
14:37 We're going to take just a short break.
14:39 We'll be back in 60 seconds
14:41 to talk about the practical life application.


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Revised 2019-03-14