Net Gain Needed -- (No Net Gain Observed)

...God created.... Genesis 1:1

"Lee Spetner, an Israeli biophysicist, in his book Not By Chance! deals a death blow to the Neo-Darwinian theory which explains that as the information that codes for living things (on the DNA molecule) is copied during reproduction, that mutations occur and are inherited.
--Natural selection has been observed but it cannot in and of itself create information.
--Mutations are the alleged source of all the new information needed for evolution. Spetner shows that the chance of getting the required mutations for cumulative selection is far too small.
--Since changes are by point mutations and are all, without exception, losses of information, this cannot lead to macro-evolution which requires a net gain of information."
Heinz Lycklama, Ph.D.

Living Machinery

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

"The Creator of man has arranged the living machinery of our bodies.

Every function is wonderfully and wisely made.

And God pledged Himself to keep this human machinery in healthful action if the human agent will obey His laws and co-operate with God." 

E.G.W.

Consciousness "zombie" Problem

"IF all our organs evolved the same--we should all be zombies--for where does the unique consciousness come from in evolution?" W. Alex Escobar wrote an article for The Conversation that tells you everything you need to know in the title: "Breaking down experiences into millions of parts may help explain consciousness." The rest is details about neurons and qualia (our perceptions of the looks, feels, tastes, etc., of nature around us). The important thing is that his model is a bottom-up approach.

Escobar tries out his theory on vision, assuming the ideas can be extended to other types of qualia. He sees groups of neurons at a first stage he calls V1, V2, V3 that perceive red, green, and blue, for instance. Then higher-level groupings of neurons (V4, V5, etc.) moderate these inputs, yielding the infinite variety of colors we experience. Result: qualia, from simple building blocks.

* Aside from sharing the same problems with evolutionary theories of other complex systems, Escobar's bottom-up theory of consciousness suffers setbacks peculiar to consciousness. For one, it assumes what it needs to prove: that consciousness supervenes on matter. You can watch neurons firing between themselves for ages, and never see the conscious experience of qualia.

* Another setback is that his system provides no confidence that one person's qualia are similar to another person's. He might point to natural selection and common ancestry to support this, but then one would expect humans from one side of the planet to develop completely different qualia from those on the other. When Europeans met Native Americans who had crossed the Bering Strait long ages before, they were able to relate to one another as if their perceptions of nature were very similar, language differences notwithstanding.

* A third difficulty is that Escobar doesn't solve the "zombie" problem discussed by Chalmers. Evolutionary theory might account for sensory organs that can react to red or green, or loud or soft sounds, without ever leading to consciousness, thus resulting in "zombies." 

Conscious experience is above and beyond what is necessary for survival. Each of us knows that we are not merely reacting to stimuli; we are experiencing the world in a deep, personal way.

We're being as charitable to Escobar as possible so far, because all the problems with Darwinian evolution as a creative process apply with a vengeance to consciousness. 

--His theory is merely a restatement of Darwinism as applied to the mind. 

The mutation/selection process

 cannot account for 

irreducibly complex systems that are characterized by complex, specified information." 

EN&V

--In other words, IF evolution were true, and our bodies evolved the same worldwide---WHY are our CONSCIOUSNESSES UNIQUE? Shouldn't we all have the same consciousnesses and likes, dislikes, opinions, etc.?

Q: IF evolution were true shouldn't we all be Zombies?

And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground,

and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life;

and man became a living soul.

Genesis 2:7

Metals & Dust of Life

And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.

Genesis 2:7

"A look at the periodic table of the elements and examination of the elemental make-up of living organisms can quickly confirm Genesis 1 which states that man is formed from the dust of the earth.

There are about 92 naturally occurring elements in the periodic table.
Approximately 25% of these are considered essential to life.

Many are alkali metals such as sodium (Na+), potassium (K+), alkaline earth metals, magnesium (Mg2+), and calcium (Ca2+).
Many others are transition metals, such as iron (Fe2+/3+), copper (Cu1+/2+), cobalt (Co2+/3+), and zinc (Zn2+).

The use of metals by life is so prevalent and important that, as stated by Robert J. P. Williams of Oxford University, “there is no biology without metal ions.”

At least a third of all enzymes use one or more metal ions to catalyze their reactions.
Metal ions are used to help position substrates in enzyme active sites, to provide electron “sinks,” and/or serve as a source of electrons during catalysis. They function as structural support for many proteins and conduct electrons to oxygen within the electron transport chain in mitochondria for energy production."
AIG

Child's Hardware / Software

I will praise thee; 

for I am fearfully and wonderfully made:
Psalm 139:14

"It’s perhaps the most obvious distinctive trait of humans. 

Q: Where did language come from, with all its diversity?

Children come equipped with the hardware and software to pick up a language, even though it is not instinctive (otherwise, all children would speak the same language). 

A new study from the University of Washington Institute of Learning & Brain Sciences (I-LABS), published on Medical Xpress, found that toddlers can even pick up two languages easily.

When exposed to a second language like English for just an hour a day by a caretaker speaking ‘parentese’ (the characteristic style of speaking parents use with their babies), the children readily gained “an average of 74 English words or phrases per child, per hour” compared to 13 words or phrases in the control group. Moreover, the children retained the ability to speak and understand these words 18 weeks later.

“Science indicates that babies’ brains are the best learning

machines ever created, and that infants’ learning is time-sensitive. Their brains will never be better at learning a second language than they are between 0 and 3 years of age,” said co-author Patricia Kuhl, co-director of I-LABS and a UW professor of speech and hearing sciences.

The Bible gives an answer that fits the data. Human beings—and humans alone—were created in the image of God, who is the Logos, the Word, the communicator. 

The Creator’s words have meaning. 

They are not just signals like bird calls or ape hoots. 

The first human pair had a God-given language from the beginning, with which they could communicate with their Maker." 

CEH

Who is the "Coder"?

"Life requires DNA, RNA, and protein in an interdependent triad in which each molecule is wholly dependent on the other two to exist. 

*It’s worse than a chicken and egg scenario.

Furthermore, since each type of molecule carries and conveys complex encoded information, an intelligent information provider is the only logical cause of this information source. 

Code implies a coder."
ICR
Q: Who is the "Coder"?
A: All things were made by Him;
and without Him was not any thing made that was made.
John 1:3

Brain Forms in 11 Dimensions

Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex! 

Psalm 139:14 NLT

"Neuroscientists used a classic branch of math in a totally new way to peer into the structure of our brains.

What they discovered is that the brain is full of multi-dimensional geometrical structures operating in as many as 11 dimensions.
This brain model was produced by a team of researchers from the Blue Brain Project, a Swiss research initiative devoted to building a supercomputer-powered reconstruction of the human brain.
The team used algebraic topology, a branch of mathematics used to describe the properties of objects and spaces regardless of how they change shape.

They found that groups of neurons connect into 'cliques', and that the number of neurons in a clique would lead to its size as a high-dimensional geometric object (a mathematical dimensional concept,

not a space-time one).
"There are tens of millions of these objects even in a small speck of the brain, up through seven dimensions. In some networks, we even found structures with up to 11 dimensions."
Just to be clear - this isn't how you'd think of spatial dimensions (our Universe has three spatial dimensions plus one time dimension), instead it refers to how the researchers have looked at the neuron cliques to determine how connected they are.

Human brains are estimated to have a staggering 86 billion neurons,

with multiple connections from each cell webbing in every possible direction, forming the vast cellular network that somehow makes us capable of thought and consciousness.

By connecting these two levels, the researchers could discern high-dimensional geometric structures in the brain, formed by collections of tightly connected neurons (cliques) and the empty spaces (cavities) between them.

"Algebraic topology is like a telescope and microscope at the same

time," said one of the team, mathematician Kathryn Hess from EPFL.
"It can zoom into networks to find hidden structures, the trees in the forest, and see the empty spaces, the clearings, all at the same time."

Those clearings or cavities seem to be critically important for brain function. When researchers gave their virtual brain tissue a stimulus, they saw that neurons were reacting to it in a highly organized manner.
The progression of activity through the brain resembles a multi-dimensional sandcastle that materializes out of the sand and then disintegrates."
ScienceAlert