The Brain and Truth
Any discussion of the brain in the context of faith would be incomplete if it did not at least attempt to clarify the limits of what the brain can do, that is, the spiritual limits of knowledge. The brain is a proven expert in the gathering and processing of data and information. But can we trust it to bring us all the way Home? Sadly, we cannot.
There is no clear correlation between filling the mind with facts and discovering Truth; between advancing in educational attainment and advancing in the things of God; between IQ and righteousness. Should we then forsake education and go in the other direction? On the contrary, we should instruct and discipline the brain. But if at the beginning of every day the brain will not humbly bow to Truth, then our synapses are pointed in the wrong direction. Paul, one of history’s most brilliant thinkers, warned: “We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.”40
The brain is the realm of data, information, and knowledge. The spirit, however, is the realm of understanding, wisdom, and Truth. The brain and the spirit need to register for classes together in the halls of education, and their togetherness needs to be fixed. Harvard University, for example, had in its original charter this statement: “Let every student well consider … that the main end of his life and studies is to know God and Jesus Christ.”41 Somewhere in the process of gaining prestige they lost Eternity. And such a loss can never be compensated by piling up Nobel laureates, for it is written, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.”42
The brain must act humbly or it will sabotage its own search. God resists the proud, and He surely and reliably will resist the brain when it defies Him. This is why, sadly, many brilliant thinkers stumble in the darkness their entire lives. As A. W. Tozer accurately warned: “The uncomprehending mind is unaffected by truth.”43 God has ordained from the beginning that worldly learning will never be sufficient to reveal Christ.44 This does not, of course, mean that the message of Christ is irrational, but only that it is extra-rational. Its meaning is not accessible through neurons and synapses, no matter how exceptional. To see Christ requires that a light be turned on in our understanding, and the light switch is controlled by God and not by the brain. This has upset many prominent scholars throughout the ages, but it is a matter God alone adjudicates and so far He has not changed His ruling in the matter.
“Knowledge puffs up,” explained Paul.52 Following two millennia of progress, the puff factor has now grown quite pompous. Francis Bacon said knowledge is power, and in today’s economy indeed it is. But knowledge is insufficient. T. S. Eliot in The Rock bemoaned the loss of transcendence:
Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?53
The British scholar Paul Johnson, in researching a scathing book about the personal lives of intellectuals, came to the following stern conclusion:
Intellectuals have the arrogance to believe that they can use their brains to tell humanity how to conduct its affairs. In so doing, they turn their backs on natural law, inherited wisdom and the religious background that have traditionally defined the aims of society. They find it hard to admit that there is a higher authority than their own judgment; they have a deep-rooted and tremendously powerful arrogance.
An intellectual consensus can and often does become a general consensus, warned Johnson, because intellectuals “are very influential, powerful people who have a gift for words and access to the media. That’s why I think they are so dangerous. … One should listen to and read intellectuals but not necessarily take great notice of what they say, particularly when they gang up and produce manifestoes.”54
World-class brain researcher Sir John Eccles, himself a Nobel laureate in medicine and physiology and a Christian, offers this perspective:
We need to discredit the belief held by many scientists that science will ultimately deliver the final truth. … Unfortunately, many scientists and interpreters of science don’t understand the limits of the discipline. They claim much more for it than they should. They argue that someday science will explain values, beauty, love, friendship, aesthetics and literary quality. They say: “All of these will eventually be explicable in terms of brain performance. We only have to know more about the brain.” That view is nothing more than a superstition that confuses both the public and many scientists.55
Quite honestly, if we wish to be straight about it, the brain is having trouble even understanding itself, let alone God. When someone challenged Woody Allen to explain God, he quipped, “I can’t explain God to you. I don’t even know how my toaster works.” Author Lyall Watson drives perhaps the final nail in the coffin of neuronal presumption: “If the brain were so simple that we could understand it, we would be so simple that we couldn’t understand it.”56
The brain is quite spectacular in its own right, and it does not need inflated claims about its potential. Let’s challenge it diligently to learn, but then let’s accept the borders it cannot cross. Even given its limitations, the brain’s amazing capacity speaks to the genius of the God who endowed it.
The CELL, GENES, and DNA
EVEN though we have already briefly examined the world of the cell, let’s revisit that terrain to get a glimpse of perhaps the most spectacular of all human miracles—the DNA. If for some reason you are still a skeptic needing more evidence of the genius and majesty of God, you will perhaps find it here.
The cell, composed predominantly of carbon-based ingredients, is the basic structure of living matter. An adult human body contains tens of trillions of cells.1 Because trillions of these cells die every day, the body always has a repair kit on hand to make duplicate copies as rapidly as the old cells disappear.
Each individual cell floats in a swimming pool called the interstitial fluid. This fluid is rich with molecules that have just come from the bloodstream and are now dog-paddling their way over to the cell. Once they arrive at the cell door, they knock at the tiny pore openings in the cell membrane and request permission to enter. If the cell has need of their services, molecules such as oxygen, glucose, and small proteins are invited in.
Once inside, these newly arriving molecules probably gasp in astonishment. The cell’s interior must feel like a combination video arcade and Radio City Music Hall. Things are popping everywhere, for they have entered a protoplasmic pyrotechnic factory in hyperdrive. In fact, it is a shrine to God’s efficiency and precision. He probably visits it now and then, lingering in the lobby just to enjoy that which He has made.
The cell itself is intricate and complex, made up of many tiny specialized structures. The membrane is a microscopic miracle all its own, functioning crucially in the exchange of important materials. Electrical forces (each cell has an electrical potential difference across the cell membrane) play an important role in cellular functioning, with perhaps a lightning strike from time to time to keep the mitochondria entertained. Speaking of the mitochondria, they are the tiny engines of each cell busily making the fuel ATP. Food is oxidized within the cells. Carbon dioxide and other waste products are dispatched to the lungs or kidneys, no doubt waving good-bye as they pass the inbound oxygen and nutrients. Then there are the lysosomes, the endoplasmic reticulum, the Golgi apparatus, the ribosomes, and more—but you don’t have to worry about these structures other than to realize that the cell is a very active, crowded place.
Also buried deep in each cell is the nucleus. This is the epicenter of the cell’s functioning. If the mitochondrion is the heart of the cell and the membrane is the skin of the cell, then the nucleus is the brain of the cell. The nucleus contains twenty-three pairs of chromosomes, and here is where the story becomes interesting. But we are getting ahead of ourselves. Let’s rewind the video camera all the way back to the beginning …
The Fir
st Cell
All of these tens of trillions of cells began very inauspiciously as one single, tiny, minuscule, microscopic, almost invisible speck—the fertilized egg. This cell is the result of the union of the male sperm and female egg (as if I have to explain that to you). The sperm is among the smallest cells in the body, while the egg is among the largest cells and, in addition, contributes essentially all of the energy-producing mitochondria.2 I told you God has a sense of humor. But before males get too depressed by it all, just remember that you beat out 200 million other sperm to get where you are today—no small feat.
Within this tiny first cell, measuring mere microns, is the blueprint for building an entire human body with a complexity that is incomprehensible. Think about it. Let’s do a comparison: I am a grown adult with a sophisticated education including degrees in both medicine and physics—but I can’t even figure out how to set the clock on my car radio. On the other hand, here is a single fertilized ovum, smaller than the period at the end of this sentence, that with apparent ease directs the proliferation and differentiation of tens of trillions of cells, as various from each other as the retina is from the toenail. As I said, think about it.
Thirty hours after fertilization, en route down the Fallopian tubes and headed for the uterus, this single precocious cell undergoes its first division. The resultant twin cells, still bonded tightly together, continue to divide at a faster rate, roughly twice a day. Doing the math of exponential growth, we notice that it doesn’t take long for the two cells to become two thousand, two million, and then two billion.
Sometime within the first couple of weeks, in addition to dividing, the cells also begin to differentiate. Even though we start out with cells that look identical, after the process of differentiation one cell goes off in the direction of the retina and the other goes off in the direction of the toenail. This is one of God’s highest-quality tricks, and many world-class biologists would give up tenure just to know exactly how He pulls it off.
The secret of this differentiation—which will eventually result in over 200 different kinds of tissue and organ cells—is somehow mysteriously locked up in the DNA. Within each cell are chromosomes consisting of tightly coiled DNA, and encoded within this DNA are instructions on how to recreate the entire human body. This initial single-cell DNA, which determines everything from your handedness to eye color to foot size to whether you are at risk of premature heart disease, weighs 0.2 millionths of a millionth of an ounce. The combined initial single-cell DNA of every person alive today (all six billion) would weigh one thousandth of an ounce.3
With that introduction, let’s spotlight more directly this amazing story and see what we can discover about the power and sovereignty of God.
The Chromosomes, Genes, and DNA
As we turn our microscope deep within each cell we find a nucleus. Inside the nucleus we discover twenty-three pairs of chromosomes staring back at us. These chromosomes are not the only structures in the nucleus, but they are the superstars, and I think they know it. They stand out like Michael Jordan in the midst of a fourth grade basketball team. They have been getting a lot of press lately, with good reason.
These twenty-three pairs of chromosomes—one-half contributed from the maternal egg and one-half contributed from the paternal sperm—contain 100 thousand genes. If you connect all these twenty-three pairs together (at least figuratively) you will have the total genetic structure of the human body. This single combined mega-chromosome is called the human genome. The Human Genome Project, begun in 1990, is an ambitious, multi-year, multi-billion-dollar, multi-nation undertaking to “map” the position of each gene on the human genome.4
Envision this human genome as a very, very, very, very, very long twisted strand consisting of two thin pieces of filament. These filaments are the two strands of DNA. They are wound tightly together in what is called a double helix. It was the discovery of this molecular model of twisted-ladder DNA in 1953 that later won Francis Crick and James Watson the Nobel Prize.
The double helix DNA is constructed of three fundamental repeating ingredients: a sugar, a phosphate, and a base. The sugar and the phosphate combine to form the backbone of the long DNA molecule, while the bases form its side chains. In other words, the sugar and phosphate make up the length of the ladder and the bases are the horizontal rungs.
The sugar and the phosphate are always the same, but there are four different bases, which we will call A, C, G, and T.5 The chain of DNA is built by linking these base pairs, rather like God playing with Legos. For example, at one level you might have an A linked to a T; then at the next level you might find a C linked to a G; and you just keep linking and building, up and up, for a very long way. There are three billion such base pairings that make up the human genome, leading to a staggering level of mathematical and biochemical complexity. Lest you are still unimpressed, consider the following:
If we were to take all of the DNA out of a single cell and stretch it out, it would be over five feet long.6
This same DNA is so thin that it is only 50 trillionths of an inch wide.7
A strand of DNA stretched to the sun would weigh only one-fiftieth of an ounce.8
It you were to take this single-cell DNA and compress it down, it would be tinier than a speck of invisible dust.
If you took all the DNA from all the cells in the body and squeezed it together, it would fit inside an ice cube.9
If you were to take this same DNA from all the cells and stretch it out end to end, it would reach 10 billion miles (at minimum; the maximum estimated range is 170 billion miles).10
The purpose of the chromosomes and DNA is to carry the genes. And the purpose of the genes is to make proteins. And the purpose of the proteins is to … well, to do everything. “A typical cell,” explains biochemist Michael Behe, author of the award-winning Darwin’s Black Box, “contains thousands and thousands of different types of proteins to perform the many tasks necessary for life, much like a carpenter’s workshop might contain many different kinds of tools for various carpentry tasks.”11 Each gene knows how to make one specific protein. Thus if there are 100 thousand genes, there are also about 100 thousand different proteins. “The best way to look at it is that a gene is like a sentence in an encyclopedia,” explains geneticist Maxine Singer. “The gene instructs the cell how to do some one thing.”12
These proteins are made from twenty different amino acids. Some proteins are simple and need only a short span of the human genome to instruct for their duplication. Other proteins are enormously complex and take a great length of genetic material for their duplication. The DNA performs well with either demand—short protein or long protein. It is like a computer, copy machine, and Encyclopaedia Britannica combined.
The capacity and performance of the DNA is impressive. If the DNA sequence of the human genome were compiled into thousand-page books (the size of a Manhattan telephone directory), the equivalent of 200 volumes would be needed to hold it all. To read a person’s genome sequence out loud without stopping at a rate of ten bases per second (A, T, C, G, A, T, C, G, A, T, and so on) would take 91/2 years to finish. At a more realistic pace of three bases per second (rather than ten per second) and a forty-hour reading week (rather than nonstop reading twenty-four hours a day), it would take 132 years to finish.13
Of DNA, Mutations, Evolution, and First Things
Only 10 percent of the DNA is used for coding the proteins. We are not completely sure what role the other 90 percent plays. Some of it might be control sequence, some of it might be debris, and undoubtedly at least a portion of it carries a run-down of intercellular baseball scores and most actively traded liver stocks.
In addition, a portion of this extra DNA guards against faulty copies. Obviously with a job this big—copying three billion base pairs at a time, trillions of times a day—there are bound to be mistakes. The DNA has its own spell-checker of sorts, an enzyme that examines the newly copied DNA for errors. When an error is found, that segment is repla
ced. If the error is not found and corrected, the resulting flawed DNA then carries a “mutation.” This is thought to be the mechanism (at least in part) behind many birth defects, cancer, and aging.
Usually the DNA replication occurs with remarkable accuracy, making only one error in a billion copy steps.14 Nevertheless, each of us carries about half a dozen defective genes. This does not mean that we have genetic disease, but only that we all have some degree of defect in our genetic sequencing. In fact, nearly 100 percent of us carry genetic defects of some type, but only about 10 percent of us has or will develop an inherited genetic disorder. The reason we are protected is redundancy. Because we carry two copies of every gene—one from the mother and one from the father—in the majority of cases one normal gene is sufficient to avoid all the symptoms of genetic disease.15
Evolutionists trust—as a matter of fact, they totally rely on — this process of mutation for the development and advancement of all species. The theory of first things goes like this: first you start with nothing, which then becomes something. The something then becomes a prebiotic soup with hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, and water vapor (free oxygen arrives later). The soup bubbles into compounds like methane and ammonia. Lightning strikes periodically, stirring the pot. This frightens various molecules into each other’s arms. Eventually, after this happens enough, you get an amino acid. Then several. These get frightened into each other’s arms (they don’t like lightning either), and you get a protein. Then larger and larger proteins. Then more and more of them. And pretty soon (well, actually, not so soon) you have an organism with a hundred thousand proteins made by a DNA that has three billion base pairs—all because of random beneficent mutations. When the pot stops bubbling and the smoke clears, out of the cave steps Arnold Schwarzenegger: tens of trillions of cells with a hundred billion neurons, sixty thousand miles of blood vessels, and a retina that in a fraction of a second solves nonlinear differential equations that would take a Cray-2 supercomputer a hundred years to solve.
More Than Meets the Eye Page 6
