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June 2003 Creation Corner - Birds
July 2003 Creation Corner

Logically, we are either:

1) The result of mindless, accidental evolution, or

2) The result of some kind of a creator God.

On the one hand is Evolution that says a speck of matter spontaneously sprang into life, grew, divided multiple times, and after millions of years evolved through a series of mindless, unguided accidents to finally result in the millions of species, including humans, that are alive today.

As a direct opposite to evolution is a Being writing in the Bible who claims He created humans; as well as the wood, stone, metals, the sun and stars; the very materials that make up other gods. (Psm 95: 3-5; 115:3-8; 135: 5, 15-18; Isa 44:all; Jer 10:2-15.) This Being further claims He is the giver of life. (Job 33:4,; Pro 4:4; 7:2; Rom 6:23; Jn 1:3-4.) Strong claims indeed! The Creator talking to his creation are one of the major differences between Christianity and other religions.

Revealing the Creator God is a dominant theme that runs throughout the Old Testament. The New Testament is then securely fastened to that theme by the first chapter of John which reveals the Word [Jesus Christ] as the One who did the creating.

Humans are unable to see this Being. However, we are assured in Rom 1:20 that the invisible things of Him are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made. Just as we know there is gravity, wind, magnetism, because of what we see them do, so this Being says we can know Him by what he has done and is doing.

Actually proving this Creator seems to be a fundamental starting place for those interested in Christianity. Notice Paul used the Creator (Acts 17:24-25) when revealing God to the pagan philosophers at Athens. And he did it again at Lycaonia. (Acts 14:15) Moreover in the last days an angel is scheduled to preach the creation message to all nations and peoples (Rev 14:7).

Perhaps the best way to add credibility to one’s arguments, and to persuade others, is to use outside references. That is why about 95% of the information used in "Creation Corner" articles are from the "other sides" material, from evolution supporting sources. (Italics or bold emphasis are added to many of the quotes.)

I am writing this on my "computer" using "software" that was "programmed" by computer scientists.

What if I told you my computer came about by accident? What if I said the metals came out of the ground and over millions of years fashioned themselves into a box, that meanwhile inside this box hundreds of wires evolved and connected themselves to each other, that a pile of sand came out of the ground and likewise fashioned itself into a glass monitor screen, and that a blob of plastic came out of the ground and fashioned itself into keys, and that wonder of wonders, those keys happen to make perfect sense and match exactly an alphabet I use to form words and to do my writing?

Furthermore my computer was dead and useless until it came to "life" through something called "electricity"?

I then point out that when electricity brought my computer to life, software programs popped up that I use to write words, make drawings, or perform mathematical calculations. And what if I told you there was no intelligence behind those software programs, they all happened purely by mindless accident?

Would you believe my computer, it’s programs, and it’s perfect meshing together to function as one unit, all evolved by accident without an intelligent designer or maker?

I really don’t think you would.

Our son, Jeff, recently received his Computer Science degree. He would probably be insulted if someone said a program he labored weeks or months to create and perfect evolved itself by accident.

What if we find mini-computers in nature? What if we find programming in nature?

Some may say, "Frazier, you are a creationist, you want to see hardware and programming in nature, but is it really there"?

We can answer that. But let’s make it extra difficult by using sources that support evolution.

Christopher O’Toole, an author of many books on nature, is based at the University Museum in Oxford, England. He is also a frequent broadcaster and consultant to a Natural History TV series.

In his well researched and most informative book, "Alien Empire"(1) Mr. O’Toole examines the world of insects and concludes insects are like miniature computers or hardware, and concludes insect behavior patterns are like software or programming.

Mr. O’Toole starts out with an analogy which explains it very well. The author poses the question:

After setting out the requirements for the one million different robots project, the author sums up:

So there you have it. Computer hardware and software/programming in nature as seen by an evolution supporting author. Mr. O’Toole apparently sees a marvelous project having taken place, although he gives evolution the credit for it.

In fact he takes several pages to explain "Insects and Evolution". Ironically, those evolution explaining pages are part of a chapter entitled, "Designed for Success", with the sub-title of "Miniature Miracles of Engineering".

That prompts two questions. Is it logical to have design without a designer? Is it logical to have engineers who have not received instructions from a master engineer?

He further explains, "As the true miracles of miniaturization insects compress all of this processing power into a tiny brain, an on-board pre-programmed computer...A computer with the processing power of an insect brain, assuming we could build one, would be the size of a small tower block, and maybe even larger if we would include the necessary cooling system."

The author also asked the question, "Are Insects Intelligent?"

He then answers: "Insects can be seen as miniature super-computers. Most of what an insect needs to do to survive long enough to produce offspring is hard-wired in the system - preprogrammed efficiency.

Wow. Does that not seem to be incredible supporting verification of nature’s mini-computers and programming in just one sentence?

A Discovery Channel book also sees programming in nature. On page 13 of "Insects and Spiders"(2) the matter of fact statement is made, "A male praying mantis is programmed to release sperm (and thus complete mating) even after its head has been severed from its body by its partner."

On page 64 more programming is noted. "Mating is a risky endeavor for most male spiders. Usually their prospective mates are considerably larger and more powerful than they are, programmed to interpret any nearby movement as a potential meal."

One evolution supporting author even sees programming in plants! Sir David Attenborough is a highly acclaimed British nature writer and BBC filmmaker. He writes in his book "The Private Lives of Plants"(3),

The New York Times science column(4) had an article on Monarch Butterflies. Included was this "The returning monarchs, each born in the north, rely solely on navigational instructions programmed genetically into one of the tiniest of nervous systems."

"If you’ve ever looked inside the brain of a butterfly, its about the size of a pinhead," said Dr. Bower, "and yet the minicomputer inside that pinhead has all the necessary information to get them to Mexico without having been there before." Very significantly, he then adds, "How this guidance system works is a mystery…"

"Journey to the Ants"(7) is an evolution supporting book that has been called "A masterpiece" by Scientific American. The authors inform us "The Pheidole soldiers [ants] remain true to their caste. They do what they are programmed to do: stay on and fight to their death."

The authors tell more on page 130, "This fidelity should come as no surprise. Free-living ants have been programmed to act in such a way, and the slave-makers - programmed in their own special way - have taken advantage of that instinctual rigidity."

Back to Mr. O’Toole: "But some aspects of an insect’s world are just not predictable enough for a strictly preprogrammed response: the insect computer has to be able to learn and modify its responses. Hence, our smart Polistes wasps and the dance language of the honeybee."

The book "Nature Writing"(5) gives an interesting example of how programming in nature has been given latitude to adapt. Gilbert White, an eighteenth century naturalist wrote"

Isn’t that a remarkable example? Consider…..these tiny birds had to 1) recognize the danger from excessive sun, and 2) make a connection between their shadows falling on the nest and a subsequent cooling, and 3) maintain the vital shadow despite their weariness.

Christopher O’Toole continues, "Advanced insects such as ants, wasps, and bees have a vast range of such behaviors and therefore can react to a wide range of both internal and external stimuli……This is a tribute to the processing abilities of the insect brain and sense organs. But insects are very selective in the information they take on board. Unlike us, they do not overload themselves with irrelevant information. An insect, then, is just as intelligent as it needs to be."

"Alien Empire" also gives us information about the various jobs done by honeybees. As noted in the previous example, some latitude to adapt seems built in for emergencies.

Isn’t that remarkable? Could considerable thought have gone into the survival of honeybees, so much so that pre-determined job duties can even be re-arranged for emergencies? What is age structure anyway?

The author explains. "The tasks performed by worker honeybees are age related. A newly emerged worker spends her first three days as a cleaner. From about days 3 to 10, she is a nurse. Glands in her head become active and enlarged and these secrete royal jelly…She feeds this to the larvae…At day 10, the glands which produce royal jelly atrophy, and at the same time, the wax glands in her abdomen become active; she makes the transition from nurse to worker and makes honeycomb until about day 16. For the next four days she receives pollen and nectar loads from returning foragers and places them in the comb…From about day 20 she is a guard at the nest entrance….After guard duty, the bee spends the rest of her six week life as a field bee, foraging for pollen and nectar.

Let’s summarize what we have just been told by the author. Except for the very rare emergencies, the honeybee follows a definite, pre-determined, sequence of job duties. Notice:

3 days Cleaner

4-10 days Nurse

11-15 days Worker making honeycomb

16-20 days Worker placing nectar in the ho. comb

21-few days Guard duty

rest of 6 wk life Field bee foraging for pollen and nectar.

At this point, we need to consider some questions:

• Are these duties highly specialized?
• Does the honeybee attend school to learn each of these highly specialized jobs?
• If not school or training, where did she learn to do them, and to do them so perfectly?

Just the job of making the honeycomb is in itself a highly skilled, precise job of engineering.

To quote Nobel Laureate Karl von Frisch(6) on the matter of honeycomb making, "What truly astounding precision!….Human craftsmen could not to do work of this nature without the use of carpenters’ squares and sliding gauges".

This writer had always assumed bees were born to do one of the six distinct jobs listed above. (In itself amazing enough.) But to learn that all six jobs are performed by each bee in an exact sequence was surprising to me. How about you?

Doesn’t it seem that the knowledge needed to do six different jobs during a short six week life span has to have been programmed into every honeybee? Doesn’t it seem as if that knowledge is passed to each new generation by something like programming? Doesn’t it seem that not only the knowledge of how to do each function had to have been programmed, but also the counting of days and thus a timing mechanism as well?

In addition to what we have seen reported as mini-computers and programming, O’Toole also pointed out these tiny, tiny insects have their own:

• on-board clocks,
• magnetic compasses, or
• gyroscopes as well.

He further states that "the ways in which information from their sensors is processed is the envy of all human computer scientists".

Imagine that.

We are told by Mr. O’Toole there are One million identified insect species. And there are another Fourteen (some say twenty nine) million species as yet unidentified and unnamed. The book "The Science Times Book of Insects"(4) puts the number of insect species at between 15 and 30 million. In the book, "Microcosmo"(4) it is put this way, "There are as many kinds of insects as there are stars in the sky." So it seems there are at least Fifteen million different "mini-computer" insect body designs and Fifteen million different insect "software" programs.

Those are indeed incredibly awesome numbers!

But also consider this……the differences are more than just body design and programming aren’t they? Because they also include for each fifteen million species:

• Different food supplies and feeding methods.
• Different protections from predators.
• Different mating and mate recognition methods.

Factoring these differences in as well makes the above numbers and the mammoth amount of work involved all the more awesome.

Perhaps for the "last word" on programming in nature we should go to the expert. Author Larry A. Witham(8) quotes the master programmer, Bill Gates, as saying this:

You might want to ponder that a minute.

We have considered insects as mini-computers, described as such by a well respected evolution supporting scientist and author.

As for programming, this short article has just scratched the surface about programming that can be seen in nature. What previous generations without any computer knowledge called "instinct" we can better understand as "programming". As such, it can be seen all over in nature including birds building their nests, spiders making webs, honey bees constructing hives, and on and on.

Now we have to ask ourselves: Having the hardware or mini-computer aspects of insect bodies pointed out to us, and their behavior patterns as programming, are those things more logically the result of:

Evolution, that admittedly is:

mindless,

purposeless,

accidental chance?

Or, are they more logically the result of:

planning,

design,

an intelligent Creator/programmer?

Which one makes more sense to you?

"Creation Corner" articles usually end at the above question mark. But for this particular subject the writer would like to add a personal observation:

As a believer that we have indeed been created:

"I find it a great comfort and very reassuring every time I remind myself a God who was able to create 15,000,000 different insect bodies and 15,000,000 insect software programs,

has also promised to take care of me." (And of you.)