Consciousness was not an “emergent property” of dust

"Souls are conscious but the brain is not. 

It is no more aware of itself than a clock is aware of the concept of 8:39 a.m. 

Q: Does a computer understand the program it is running? 

A: No; electrons are merely flowing through it directed by a mind.

Q: Is consciousness a mechanism performed by matter?

A movie does not derive from the flashing pixels on a TV screen; it comes from a mind who intentionally organized matter to convey a message. In every case we know, meaning is a product of an immaterial mind. 

A: Genesis 2:7 says, “the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.” 

Consciousness was not an “emergent property” of dust. 

Nor was the dust already conscious. 

What made Adam come to life, able to perceive his surroundings and experience the qualia from his newly-created senses, and respond in semantically-rich words to his Maker, was the breath of God—the life-giving bequest of an intelligent, wise, creative, self-existent, self-aware One who gave His name as “I AM” (Exodus 3:14)." 

CEH

Biology Myth

MYTH: “Biology is nothing more than sophisticated physics and chemistry.”

"That’s like saying the Internet is nothing more than sophisticated copper wire and silicon chips.
Nobody I talk to ever describes the Internet that way. Do you?
You talk about things like email and Google and Facebook. 

You tell your friend about the Youtube video where the guy goes to every country in the world and does his little dance jig.

All those things are information. 90% of Electrical Engineering is

concerned with controlling and processing information. Only a small part of EE is concerned with things like motors and generators and watts and horsepower.
Even power equipment is controlled by information. 

All the interesting things you do with electricity involve signals or digital codes. Temperature measurement or text messages or a radio transmission.
The software is more interesting than the hardware. 

So it is with DNA. 

Chemicals are just the hardware."

CosmicFingerprints

Thank You for making me so wonderfully complex!
Your workmanship is marvelous—how well I know it.
Psalm 139:14 NLT

The "WHY" of Creation

"Why: Man’s creation is listed separately because he was created in

God’s image. “So God created man in His own image, in the image of God created He him; male and female created He them” (Genesis 1:27). 

God’s purpose for the entire material universe was humanity. “The heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat” (2 Peter 3:10).

--Everything will eventually be uncreated except for humanity."

ICR

The "WHAT" of Creation

"What: God spoke into existence what previously had not existed

(Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear. Hebrews 11:3). 

The Hebrew words bara (divine creation through God’s command) and yom (the day-by-day pattern of God’s creation work) 

---remove any wiggle room for evolutionary insertion into the first chapter of Genesis." 

ICR

TNR points to Genesis as HISTORY

TNR points to Genesis as a history book, not poetic prose or allegory.

TNR (True Narrative Representation) is used to weed through ancient texts to sort of historical writings from fiction.

When applied to the book of Genesis it gets a grade of 99.999%...meaning that it is a nearly 100% chance that it was written based on, and meant to pass on, historical events.

3 criteria of TNR:
1- Determinacy (whether the objects in the narrative are realistic)
2- Connectedness (the time sequential of subset events examined)
3- Generalizability (the reproducibility of events and/or exploring the evidence for residua if it was meant to be a one time occurrence)  

EXAMPLE applied to the ark......

Determinacy ..The measurements are realistic and the design sturdy for such a catastrophe by all objective assessments. Also, it is calculated to have enough room to hold up to 16,000 animals.
Connectedness ........... The time sequence of events is realistic for the story and is supported by 9 literary devices.
Generalizability.......... Here we find the residue of the one time event in the global fossil record, geology, biology, anthropology, etc.....

Now all these things happened unto them for ensamples:

and they are written for our admonition,

upon whom the ends of the world are come.

1 Corinthians 10:11

"t-values" of Dendrochronology

As the valleys are they spread forth, as gardens by the river's side, as the trees of lign aloes which the LORD hath planted, and as cedar trees beside the waters.
Numbers 24:6

"There are several fundamental problems with using tree rings as reliable natural clocks. 

Beyond the fact that more or less than one ring can be added to a tree per year, the main problem with using “dendrochronology” as a reliable natural clock, independent of other forms of calibration, is that matching rings from different pieces of wood isn’t remotely a dependable science. And, this has been known for some time now.

In a 1986 paper, “Interpretation of cross correlation between tree-ring series”, Yamaguchi recognized that overlapping tree rings from different trees tend to “auto correlate” or actually cross-match with each other in several different places within a tree-ring sequence.

What he did to prove this is quite interesting. He took a 290-ring Douglas-fir log known, by historical methods, to date between AD 1482 and 1668 and demonstrated that it could cross-match in multiple different places within the Pacific Northwest Douglas Fir Master Growth-ring Sequence to give very good “t-values.” 

A t-value is given to a “wiggle-match” on the basis of a statistical analysis of the correspondence between two wood samples. This statistical assessment is done by computer which assigns high t-values (3 and above) to good wiggle-matches and low t-values (below 3) to those with poor correspondence between the ring patterns. 

Amazingly, using such t-value analysis, Yamaguchi found 113

different matches having a confidence level of greater than 99.9%. For example, Yamaguchi demonstrated that his log could cross-match with other tree-ring sequences to give t-values of around 5 at AD 1504 (for the low end of the ring age), 7 at AD 1647 and 4.5 at AD 1763. Six of these matches were non-overlapping. That means that this particular piece of wood could be dated to be any one of those six vastly different ages to within a 99.9% degree of confidence. 

-- Because of this fundamental problem, many of the most well-known tree-ring series are fatally flawed.

....of Rod A. Savidge, a professor of tree physiology/biochemistry, Forestry, and Environmental Management at the University of New Brunswick. He vented the following interesting comments regarding the science of dendrochronology, published in a Letter to the Editor in the New York Times, November of 2002:

“As a tree physiologist who has devoted his career to understanding how trees make wood, I have made sufficient observations on tree rings and cambial growth to know that dendrochronology is not at all an exact science. Indeed, its activities include subjective interpretations of what does and what does not constitute an annual ring, statistical manipulation of data to fulfill subjective expectations, and discarding of perfectly good data sets when they contradict other data sets that have already been accepted. Such massaging of data cannot by any stretch of the imagination be considered science; it merely demonstrates a total lack of rigor attending so-called dendrochronology “research” . . . It would be a major step forward if dendrochronology could embrace the scientific method.”

Sean Pitman

Mutations Undermine Evolution

Thank You for making me so wonderfully complex!

Your workmanship is marvelous—how well I know it. 

Psalm 139:14 NLT

"A mutation is simply an inheritable error that occurs when DNA is copied. A long-standing assumption of biological evolution was that mutations are completely random. This is what most evolutionists

believed, and this is what most students have been taught. This randomness is important for evolution theory because it allows for any and all possible mutational changes to happen. A series of discoveries have proven that assumption to be false.

A recent study found something previously unknown in the plant Arabidopsis thaliana. Also known as thale cress, A. thaliana is one of the ‘workhorses’ of modern molecular genetics.

Associated with the DNA in chromosomes is a group of proteins known as histones. Their usual role is to provide structural support to the coiled DNA that makes up the chromosome. By wrapping around and around histone proteins, DNA is also able to attain an incredibly compact conformation. The researchers discovered that certain portions of the plant’s genome are surrounded by specialized histones that have chemical markers which detect mutations and release chemical signals to bring in DNA repair proteins.

Copying errors (‘typos’ in the DNA, as it were) take place regularly in the complex process of DNA replication. But they will often be repaired by the cell’s machinery. 

As a result, the error is not passed on to succeeding generations as an inherited mutation. 

This study indicates that certain parts of the genome, particularly in areas essential to the organism’s functioning, are more likely to be repaired, and thus less likely to suffer mutational change, than other parts.

Monroe said he was shocked to find this indication of non-randomness in the process of mutation, as he had been taught the opposite as far back as high school.

The article, however, was quick to perform damage control for evolution with this throw-away line: “The new finding does not disprove or discredit the theory of evolution, and the researchers said randomness still plays a big role in mutations.”

However, there was no attempt to explain why this was not a problem for evolution, just a fact-free assurance that boils down to nothing more than: ‘Don’t worry, don’t doubt’.

Those processes would need to have morphed from one strategy to another over time, but the mutations required would affect reproduction, and successful reproduction is required for the supposed evolutionary process.

***And the genes that control this process, the very ones that would have needed to be changed by mutation in the evolutionary scenario, are exactly the kind that these special histones would prevent from mutating.

The genome appears to be designed to resist the major evolutionary changes that are needed to create the extreme diversity seen among living things. These specialized histones are another example of this design." 

CMI

Triplicate Memory Storage

 I will praise Thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvellous are Thy works; Psalm 139:14

"The memory of a specific experience is stored in multiple parallel “copies.” 

These copies are 

---kept for varying lengths of time

---modified to some extent, 

---and sometimes eventually deleted.

Professor Flavio Donato’s research group at the University’s Biozentrum found that memory development begins long before birth. 

At least three different groups of neurons in the brain’s hippocampus emerge at different stages during embryonic development. A single event is stored in parallel memory copies in all three — in triplicate, if you like.

First to arrive during development, the early-born neurons are responsible for the long-term persistence of a memory. In fact,

even though their memory copy is initially too weak for the brain to access, it becomes stronger and stronger as time passes. Also in humans, the brain might have access to such memory only some time after its encoding.
In contrast, the memory copy of the same event created by the late-born neurons is very strong at the beginning but fades over time, so that if one waits long enough, such a copy becomes inaccessible to the brain. 

In the middle ground, among neurons emerging in between the two extremes during development, a more stable copy could be observed.

The hippocampus is the seahorse-shaped inner part of the brain that plays an important role in memory and learning. There are actually two hippocampi, one on each side, but they are generally referred to as a single unit. People who have lost one or both have great difficulty forming or retaining memories.

The researchers think that the type of neuron in which a memory is stored there might relate to how easy it is for memories to change. The memories stored short-term via late-born neurons can, they say, be modified and rewritten: “This means that remembering a situation shortly after it has happened primes the late-born neurons to become active and integrate present information within the original memory.” 

But when an event is remembered after much time has passed, the memory retrieved from the  early-born neurons is hard to change.

Recalling an event soon after it occurs generally draws on those neurons that emerge late in development, which store the more malleable trace of the memory—which means that as we remember it, we can layer onto that memory trace associations with related events and ideas, and other new information. 

For example, you may learn to associate your first memory of a room with more recent experiences in that room, such as of a bad smell or painful accident. 

The different neuron populations allow us to preserve fundamental aspects of a memory over the long term, while also enabling us to adapt and incorporate new or related information we have learned about the world." 

MindMatters

Sweet & Bitter Taste

I will praise Thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made... Psalm 139:14

"A perfect example is another taste, bitterness.
Unlike sweet receptors, 

---which detect desirable substances in foods, 

bitter receptors 

---detect undesirable ones: toxins. 

And the brain responds appropriately.

While sweet taste tells you to keep eating, bitter taste tells you to spit things out.

It’s impossible for anything to make evolutionary sense, because evolution is senseless.

Evolution is not about sense.

It’s about chance.

The only explanation that does make consistent sense is that.... is a created being with a conscience and rational nature that is un-evolved and immaterial. "
CEH