Evolution & the Brain

A recent issue of National Geographic featured an article entitled “The New Science of the Brain” exploring the latest research on brain function. Above, on the left, is the cover of that issue. On the right is an actual photo of a cross-section of a mouse brain. Each of the rectangular dots is less than 1/1,000th the thickness of a human hair! Small, very small. Ten thousand of these photomicrographs form a 3-D model no larger than a grain of salt. Now it gets really interesting. At this level of detail, human brain tissue the size of that grain of salt would contain an amount of information equal to all the written material in all the libraries of the world! (This is not my assumption but the conclusion of evolutionary scientists, published in this prestigious journal.) So, the entire human brain has the capacity of . . . . well, it’s unimaginable.

This information raises the obvious question, to any honest, inquiring mind: “Is there a God?” Could something so complex and so unbelievably magnificent have just happened? Suppose that one’s “god” is the process of evolutionary time, the passing of millions of year? Are there enough epochs, enough mutations, enough survival-of-the-fittest momentum for the human brain, let alone the mouse brain, to have gradually produced this complexity? And keep in mind, that’s just in brain, let alone considering the rest of the human body’s intricacy. No wonder the Psalmist said, in the classic King James Version, “I am fearfully and wonderfully made.” Wonderfully, indeed, and with enormous brain power potential to know and worship God. How sad that many have used that same intellectual ability to deny the existence of any intelligent design.