The Chicken’s Egg

The Chicken Egg

The proverbial question, ‘Which came first, the chicken or the egg?’ is easy to answer. Genesis indicates that God created a mature world ready to reproduce. Thus, it would seem God created chickens ready to lay their first eggs.
The egg is a common enough part of most homes. In America each year we consume 71 billion eggs laid by 284 million hens. That’s 254 eggs/person. We crack them into a pan and think nothing of them. Yet, each egg is a marvel of creative genius.
Consider, for example, that the egg is one very large cell with all the basic parts of any animal cell. How does the hen surround this potential life with a calcium encasement (shell) so perfectly every time?
The shell contains 10,000 tiny pores that allow the developing chick to breathe, yet keep the liquids inside the shell from escaping. As the fertilized egg begins to develop, blood vessels grow out of the chick’s body. Two of these attach to the membrane under the eggshell and two attach to the yolk. By the fifth day, the tiny heart is pumping blood through the vessels. The nutrition in the yoke is the food for the chick, attained through that blood vessel. As the chick develops, it gives off water vapor and carbon dioxide. These could kill the chick before birth were it not for the other blood vessels carrying the wastes to the shell where they escape.
When you boil an egg, you probably notice that one end of the egg is flat, the only part that did not fill the shell. This is an air sack and contains approximately 6 hours of oxygen for the chick. By the 19th day, the chick is getting too large to sustain life on the oxygen obtained through the shell pores. By this time, the chick has grown an egg tooth on its beak. With this, the chick breaks through this air sack membrane and gets the fresh oxygen needed for its next task, breaking the shell and hatching on the 21st day. Oh, by the way, the chick just ‘happens’ to develop so the head is on the air-sack end every time.
Is it not easy to see that each part of the egg is perfectly designed for the needs of the chick? The chick could not survive without all the parts being in place. With this, and the thousands of other examples in nature, we must conclude that an all wise God planned it that way from the beginning. And the same Lord said He cares for us infinitely more than he cares for the birds.

Human Digestive System

For those who believe the human body is the result of a series of random accidents, consider its amazing digestive system.
The products that the earth grows- fruits and vegetables- are exactly what our bodies need for fuel, cell growth, and energy storage. The nose overhangs the mouth so that aromas will add pleasure and flavor to the eating process. The mouth contains lips that allow us to chew with our mouths’ closed. They contain 32 teeth that bite, tear, crush and grind our food and a tongue that senses flavor and pushes the food under our molars without itself getting chewed (most of the time). Our mouth also contains three saliva glands that produce a quart of the starch digesting chemical a day and help to wash the food down.
The esophagus is a 10 inch tube containing a series of muscles that contract in rhythm called peristaltic waves, forcing the food to the stomach, even if we are upside down! At the end of it is a valve to close off the stomach so that digesting food will not be forced back up.
The stomach contains 35 million digestive juice glands that begin to break down the complex protein molecules of the food into amino acids. A series of muscles in the stomach churn the food so that it is mixed with the acid, yet the acid does not digest the stomach!
Then the ring muscles in the stomach begin a series of peristaltic contractions of their own so that every 20 seconds they force some of the chyme (partly digested food) into the small intestine.
Were it not for the small intestine, we would starve because at this point only simple sugars and a few starches are ready for use by the body. The small intestine is 23 feet long and 1 inch in diameter. It too contains muscles that not only keep the chyme moving in one direction, but also turn it three ways so that the chemicals added mix into the chyme and the digested molecules are absorbed into the blood stream.
At the beginning of this trip, three additional fluids are added to the chyme. The pancreas adds pancreatic juice that breaks down fats, carbohydrates, and proteins. A pint of bile from the liver (stored in the gall bladder) breaks down fatty substances. The small intestine itself produces intestinal juice that helps with final digestion of carbohydrates, fats, and proteins. A total of 3 quarts of these enzymes are produced each day.
The small intestine contains so many ridges and fingers (called villi) to absorb the nutrition chemicals that, were it smooth, it would have to be 600 times longer to accomplish the same task!
The large intestine is 5-6 feet long and 2.5 inches in diameter and, among other things, reabsorbs 2 gallons of fluids into the body to avoid dehydration.
Question: what are the chances that all this perfectly engineered system came about by accident? How would man survive during the long process of small random changes that ended up with the present system? Like so many things in nature, it had to be fully functioning from the beginning. It is far easier to believe an intelligent Creator designed and made it for our good. And He wants to deliver you from a far greater problem than starvation, the problem of sin.

Palm Trees

One of the great losses in accepting the validity of evolution is missing the lessons God wants to teach us through His design. One example of this is the Palm Tree.
Worldwide, the family Palmae (Palm Tree) is composed of 2500 to 3000 different species.  A few of these are found in the continental United States, mostly in the warmer regions of southern United States, southern Florida, and southern California. 
Palms, for identification purposes, are divided into two major groups: those that have palmate or fan-shaped leaves; and those that have pinnate, or feather-shaped leaves.  “The palmate-leaved species are characterized by a leaf structure in which all leaf segments arise from a single point, similar to the structure of a human hand.  Pinnate leaves are characterized by leaves along each side of a central axis, similar in design to that of a feather.” (http://www.sunpalmtrees.com/About-Palm-Trees.htm)
God says in Psalm 92: 12-13, “The righteous shall flourish like the palm tree: he shall grow like a cedar in Lebanon. Those that be planted in the house of the LORD shall flourish in the courts of our God.” In what ways does a palm tree flourish better than other trees?
The root system of a palm tree is unique. Most trees have branching roots that grow smaller and smaller the further they are from the taproot. The palm roots are the same size at the stem or base. This makes the tree difficult to pull up. It also means the roots will grow deep into the ground, getting nourishment that is not available on the surface. David said the blessed man is “like a tree planted by the rivers of water that bringeth forth his fruit in his season.” (Psalm 1:3) God also commands us to “take root downward, and bear fruit upward.” (Isaiah 37:31)
Most tree trunks are made up of dead wood while the living part, the cambium layer, is just inside the bark. This makes it easy for animals to ‘girdle’ a tree, nibbling the bark around the bottom and thus killing it. The palm, on the other hand, has living wood throughout. Therefore, damage to the truck has little or no affect. This and the strong root system allow it to weather hurricane force storms because it bends with the wind without breaking. When our lives are rooted in Christ (Col. 2:6-7), the storms of life will not only strengthen us spiritually.
Fruit trees normally decrease in fruit production as they grow older. Palm trees do not bear fruit at all until they are mature. This takes up to 50 years. But as the palm tree ages, the fruit grows sweeter. Consider this promise: “They shall still bring forth fruit in old age; they shall be fat and flourishing;” (Psalm 92:14) God does not want us to become less fruitful in old age. Instead the fruit of our lives should increase and become sweeter as the years pass.
Beyond the creation debate, God has many important lessons for us to learn from His creation. His fingerprint is on all He does!

Choices

One of the leading spokesmen for evolution, Thomas Huxley, stated this: “It is clear that the doctrine of evolution is directly antagonistic to that of creation. . . if consistently accepted, it makes it impossible to believe the Bible.” Unfortunately, many Christians do not understand why this is true. The Bible is crystal clear on the subject of origins. To deny that is to deny the veracity of the Bible or to explain the clear historic statements as incomplete or simply as Hebrew poetry.
In his book, The Collapse of Evolution, Scott Huse lists 24 contrasts between the Bible and evolutionary dogma. Here are the first twelve:

Bible: God is the Creator of all things. (Gen. 1:1)
Evolution: Natural chance processes can account for the existence of all things.

Bible: The world was created in six literal days.
Evolution: The world evolved over aeons.

Bible: Creation is completed. (Gen. 2:3)
Evolution: Creative processes are continuing.

Bible: The Ocean was made before the land. (Gen 1:2)
Evolution: Land came before oceans.

Bible: Atmosphere existed between two hydrospheres. (Gen 1:7)
Evolution: Contiguous atmosphere and hydrosphere.

Bible: First life was on land. (Gen 1:11)
Evolution: First life began in the oceans.

Bible: First life was land plants (Gen 1:11)
Evolution: Marine organisms evolved first.

Bible: Earth was made before the sun and stars. (Gen. 1:14-19)
Evolution: Sun and stars came into existence before earth.

Bible: Fruit trees were made before fishes. (Gen. 1:11)
Evolution: Fishes existed before fruit trees.

Bible: All stars were made on the 4th day. (Gen 1:16)
Evolution: Stars evolved at various times.

Bible: Birds and fishes were created on the fifth day. (Gen. 1:20-21)
Evolution: Fishes evolved hundreds of millions of years before birds appeared.

Bible: Birds were made before insects. (Gen. 1:20-21)
Evolution: Insects existed before birds.

The greatest difference between the Bible and evolution is this: the Bible states that man and woman were made in the image of God but fell from that image through rebellion, and thus brought death into the world. Evolution says that man is the highest (so far) step in a long process of accidents, is only slightly different from the primates, and that death and struggle existed long before mankind evolved.
These problems are not solved by the compromise of theistic evolution, that God directed creation through the process of evolution. Walter Brown in his book In the Beginning, deals conclusively with this theory, showing it to be unreasonable. (for an online version, go to http://www.creationscience.com/onlinebook/FAQ42.html)
As I have said many times, since science deals with the observable and repeatable, origins cannot be dealt with conclusively with science. Both theories are matters of faith. The evidence, I believe, is much stronger on the side of creation. But every individual, including you, must make a choice, a step of faith. You cannot have both.