Below is the online edition of In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood,
by Dr. Walt Brown. Copyright © Center for Scientific Creation. All rights reserved.
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a . “There has never been a meeting, or a book, or a paper on details of the evolution of complex biochemical systems.” Michael J. Behe, Darwin’s Black Box (New York: The Free Press, 1996), p. 179.
u “Molecular evolution is not based on scientific authority. There is no publication in the scientific literature—in prestigious journals, specialty journals, or book—that describes how molecular evolution of any real, complex, biochemical system either did occur or even might have occurred. There are assertions that such evolution occurred, but absolutely none are supported by pertinent experiments or calculations. Since no one knows molecular evolution by direct experience, and since there is no authority on which to base claims of knowledge, it can truly be said that—like the contention that the Eagles will win the Super Bowl this year—the assertion of Darwinian molecular evolution is merely bluster.” Behe, pp. 186–187.
b . “While today’s digital hardware is extremely impressive, it is clear that the human retina’s real-time performance goes unchallenged. Actually, to simulate 10 milliseconds (ms) of the complete processing of even a single nerve cell from the retina would require the solution of about 500 simultaneous nonlinear differential equations 100 times and would take at least several minutes of processing time on a Cray supercomputer. Keeping in mind that there are 10 million or more such cells interacting with each other in complex ways, it would take a minimum of 100 years of [1985] Cray time to simulate what takes place in your eye many times every second.” John K. Stevens, “Reverse Engineering the Brain,” Byte, April 1985, p. 287.
u “The retina processes information much more than anyone has ever imagined, sending a dozen different movies to the brain.” Frank Werblin and Botond Roska, “The Movies in Our Eyes,” Scientific American, Vol. 296, April 2007, p. 73.
u “Was the eye contrived without skill in opticks [optics], and the ear without knowledge of sounds?” Isaac Newton, Opticks (England: 1704; reprint, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1931), pp. 369–370.
u “Certainly there are those who argue that the universe evolved out of a random process, but what random process could produce the brain of a man or the system of the human eye?” Wernher von Braun (probably the rocket scientist most responsible for the United States’ success in placing men on the Moon) from a letter written by Dr. Wernher von Braun and read to the California State Board of Education by Dr. John Ford on 14 September 1972.
u “What random process could possibly explain the simultaneous evolution of the eye’s optical system, the nervous conductors of the optical signals from the eye to the brain, and the optical nerve center in the brain itself where the incoming light impulses are converted to an image the conscious mind can comprehend?” Wernher von Braun, foreword to From Goo to You by Way of the Zoo by Harold Hill (Plainfield, New Jersey: Logos International, 1976), p. xi.
u “The probability of dust carried by the wind reproducing Dürer’s ‘Melancholia’ is less infinitesimal than the probability of copy errors in the DNA molecule leading to the formation of the eye; besides, these errors had no relationship whatsoever with the function that the eye would have to perform or was starting to perform. There is no law against daydreaming, but science must not indulge in it.” [emphasis in original] Grassé, p. 104.
u “It must be admitted, however, that it is a considerable strain on one’s credulity to assume that finely balanced systems such as certain sense organs (the eye of vertebrates, or the bird’s feather) could be improved by random mutations. This is even more true for some of the ecological chain relationships (the famous yucca moth case, and so forth). However, the objectors to random mutations have so far been unable to advance any alternative explanation that was supported by substantial evidence.” Ernst Mayr, Systematics and the Origin of Species (New York: Dover Publications, 1942), p. 296.
u Although Robert Jastrow generally accepts Darwinian evolution, he acknowledges that:
It is hard to accept the evolution of the human eye as a product of chance; it is even harder to accept the evolution of human intelligence as the product of random disruptions in the brain cells of our ancestors. Robert Jastrow, “Evolution: Selection for Perfection,” Science Digest, December 1981, p. 87.
u Many leading scientists have commented on the staggering complexity of the human eye. What some do not appreciate is how many diverse types of eyes there are, each of which adds to the problem for evolution.
v One of the strangest is a multiple-lensed compound eye found in fossilized worms! [See Donald G. Mikulic et al., “A Silurian Soft-Bodied Biota,” Science, Vol. 228, 10 May 1985, pp. 715–717.]
v Another type of eye belonged to some trilobites, a thumb-size, extinct, sea-bottom creature. Evolutionists claim that they were very early forms of life. Trilobite eyes had compound lenses, sophisticated designs for eliminating image distortion (spherical aberration). Only the best cameras and telescopes contain compound lenses. Some trilobite eyes contained 280 lenses, allowing vision in all directions, day and night. [See Richard Fortey and Brian Chatterton, “A Devonian Trilobite with an Eyeshade,” Science, Vol. 301, 19 September 2003, p. 1689.] Trilobite eyes “represent an all-time feat of function optimization.” [Riccardo Levi-Setti, Trilobites, 2nd edition (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1993), p. 29.] Shawver described trilobite eyes as having “the most sophisticated eye lenses ever produced by nature.” [Lisa J. Shawver, “Trilobite Eyes: An Impressive Feat of Early Evolution,” Science News, Vol. 105, 2 February 1974, p. 72.] Gould admitted that “The eyes of early trilobites, for example, have never been exceeded for complexity or acuity by later arthropods. ... I regard the failure to find a clear ‘vector of progress’ in life’s history as the most puzzling fact of the fossil record.” [Stephen Jay Gould, “The Ediacaran Experiment,” Natural History, Vol. 93, February 1984, pp. 22–23.]
v The brittlestar, an animal similar to a 5-arm starfish, has, as part of its skeleton, thousands of eyes, each smaller than the diameter of a human hair. Each eye consists of a calcium carbonate crystal that acts as a compound lens and precisely focuses light on a bundle of nerves. If an arm is lost, a new arm regenerates along with its array of eyes mounted on the upper-back side of the arm. While evolutionists had considered these animals primitive, Sambles admits that “Once again we find that nature foreshadowed our technical developments.” Roy Sambles, “Armed for Light Sensing,” Nature, Vol. 412, 23 August 2001, p. 783. The capabilities of these light-focusing lenses exceed today’s technology.
c . “To my mind the human brain is the most marvelous and mysterious object in the whole universe and no geologic period seems too long to allow for its natural evolution.” Henry Fairfield Osborn, an influential evolutionist speaking to the American Association for the Advancement of Science in December 1929, as told by Roger Lewin, Bones of Contention (New York: Simon and Schuster, Inc., 1987), p. 57. [Even greater capabilities of the brain have been discovered since 1929. Undoubtedly, more remain.]
u “And in Man is a three-pound brain which, as far as we know, is the most complex and orderly arrangement of matter in the universe.” Isaac Asimov, “In the Game of Energy and Thermodynamics You Can’t Even Break Even,” Smithsonian, August 1970, p. 10.
Asimov seems to have forgotten that the brain, and presumably most of its details, is coded by only a fraction of an individual’s DNA. Therefore, it would be more accurate to say that DNA is the most complex and orderly arrangement of matter known in the universe.
u The human brain is frequently likened to a supercomputer. In most respects, the brain greatly exceeds any computer’s capabilities. Speed is one area where the computer beats the brain—at least in some ways. For example, few of us can quickly multiply numbers such as 0.0239 times 854.95. This task is called a floating point operation, because the decimal point “floats” until we (or a computer) decide where to place it. The number of Floating Point Operations Per Second (FLOPS) is a measure of a computer’s speed. As of 2018, Summit, the world’s most powerful supercomputer, which was developed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, holds the record at 200,000 trillion FLOPS (200 petaFLOPS)— millions of times faster than a standard laptop! One challenge is to prevent these superfast computers from overheating, because too much electrically generated heat is dissipated in too small a volume.
u Our brains operate at petaFLOPS speeds—without overheating. One knowledgeable observer on these ultrafast computers commented:
The human brain itself serves, in some sense, as a proof of concept [that cool petaFLOPS machines are possible]. Its dense network of neurons apparently operates at a petaFLOPS or higher level. Yet the whole device fits in a 1 liter box and uses only about 10 watts of power. That’s a hard act to follow. Ivars Peterson, “PetaCrunchers: Setting a Course toward Ultrafast Supercomputing,” Science News, Vol. 147, 15 April 1995, p. 235.
Also, the 1,400 cubic centimeter (3 pound) human brain is more than three times larger than that of a chimpanzee, and when adjusted for body weight and size, larger than that of any other animal. How, then, could the brain have evolved? Why haven’t more animals evolved large, “petaFLOP” brains?
d . “The human brain consists of about ten thousand million nerve cells. Each nerve cell puts out somewhere in the region of between ten thousand and one hundred thousand connecting fibres by which it makes contact with other nerve cells in the brain. Altogether the total number of connections in the human brain approaches 1015 or a thousand million million. ... a much greater number of specific connections than in the entire communications network on Earth.” Denton, pp. 330–331.
u A more recent neuron estimate for humans is at least 85 billion. [See “Understanding Memory” Science News, 19 March 2016, p. 4.]
u “... the human brain probably contains more than 1014 synapses ...” Deborah M. Barnes, “Brain Architecture: Beyond Genes,” Science, Vol. 233, 11 July 1986, p. 155.
e . Marlyn E. Clark, Our Amazing Circulatory System, Technical Monograph No. 5 (San Diego: Creation-Life Publishers, 1976).