STILL CURIOUS? LEARN MORE…

4 Philosophical Nuggets You Can Use

Can we learn much from brief philosophical statements? Regular readers of my blog know that I occasionally feature the segment Friday Philosophy, where I provide quotes from profound philosophical thinkers both past and present. A contemporary philosopher that I appreciate is professor David Naugle. Naugle’s book Reordered Love, Reordered Lives: Learning the Deep Meaning of Happiness has been very helpful to me in thinking about life.

Continue Reading »

The End of Cosmic Greatness and the Beginning of Life

When Wayne Gretzky retired from playing professional hockey, National Hockey League fans referred to his departure as the end of greatness. Nicknamed “The Great One,” he was so great that no hockey fan then or now can imagine that any hockey player coming close to matching Gretzky’s talent.

Continue Reading »

New Genetic Evidence Affirms Human Uniqueness

It’s a remarkable discovery—and a bit gruesome, too. It is worth learning a bit about some of its unseemly details because this find may have far-reaching implications that shed light on our origins as a species.

Continue Reading »

More Education Opportunities »

NOW THAT YOU’VE DISCOVERED REASONS TO BELIEVE

Get the latest delivered directly to you by subscribing to the RTB Weekly Digest.

• Home
• Explore
• Events
• Education
• Get Involved
• About
• Store
• Donate

By considering simple symmetries, physicists working on the “bootstrap” can rediscover the basic form of the known forces that shape the universe.

Quanta Magazine

• Natalie Wolchover

Read when you’ve got time to spare.

These three objects illustrate the principles behind “spin,” a property of fundamental particles. A domino needs a full turn to get back to the same place. A two of clubs needs only a half turn. And the hour hand on a clock must spin around twice before it tells the same time again. Credit: Lucy Reading-Ikkanda / Quanta Magazine.

Compared to the unsolved mysteries of the universe, far less gets said about one of the most profound facts to have crystallized in physics over the past half-century: To an astonishing degree, nature is the way it is because it couldn’t be any different. “There’s just no freedom in the laws of physics that we have,” said Daniel Baumann, a theoretical physicist at the University of Amsterdam.

Since the 1960s, and increasingly in the past decade, physicists like Baumann have used a technique known as the “bootstrap” to infer what the laws of nature must be. This approach assumes that the laws essentially dictate one another through their mutual consistency — that nature “pulls itself up by its own bootstraps.” The idea turns out to explain a huge amount about the universe.

When bootstrapping, physicists determine how elementary particles with different amounts of “spin,” or intrinsic angular momentum, can consistently behave. In doing this, they rediscover the basic form of the known forces that shape the universe. Most striking is the case of a particle with two units of spin: As the Nobel Prize winner Steven Weinberg showed in 1964, the existence of a spin-2 particle leads inevitably to general relativity — Albert Einstein’s theory of gravity. Einstein arrived at general relativity through abstract thoughts about falling elevators and warped space and time, but the theory also follows directly from the mathematically consistent behavior of a fundamental particle.

“I find this inevitability of gravity [and other forces] to be one of the deepest and most inspiring facts about nature,” said Laurentiu Rodina, a theoretical physicist at the Institute of Theoretical Physics at CEA Saclay who helped to modernize and generalize Weinberg’s proof in 2014. “Namely, that nature is above all self-consistent.”

How Bootstrapping Works

A particle’s spin reflects its underlying symmetries, or the ways it can be transformed that leave it unchanged. A spin-1 particle, for instance, returns to the same state after being rotated by one full turn. A spin-$latex \frac{1}{2}$ particle must complete two full rotations to come back to the same state, while a spin-2 particle looks identical after just half a turn. Elementary particles can only carry 0, $latex \frac{1}{2}$, 1, $latex \frac{3}{2}$ or 2 units of spin.

To figure out what behavior is possible for particles of a given spin, bootstrappers consider simple particle interactions, such as two particles annihilating and yielding a third. The particles’ spins place constraints on these interactions. An interaction of spin-2 particles, for instance, must stay the same when all participating particles are rotated by 180 degrees, since they’re symmetric under such a half-turn.

Interactions must obey a few other basic rules: Momentum must be conserved; the interactions must respect locality, which dictates that particles scatter by meeting in space and time; and the probabilities of all possible outcomes must add up to 1, a principle known as unitarity. These consistency conditions translate into algebraic equations that the particle interactions must satisfy. If the equation corresponding to a particular interaction has solutions, then these solutions tend to be realized in nature.

For example, consider the case of the photon, the massless spin-1 particle of light and electromagnetism. For such a particle, the equation describing four-particle interactions — where two particles go in and two come out, perhaps after colliding and scattering — has no viable solutions. Thus, photons don’t interact in this way. “This is why light waves don’t scatter off each other and we can see over macroscopic distances,” Baumann explained. The photon can participate in interactions involving other types of particles, however, such as spin-$latex \frac{1}{2}$ electrons. These constraints on the photon’s interactions lead to Maxwell’s equations, the 154-year-old theory of electromagnetism.

Or take gluons, particles that convey the strong force that binds atomic nuclei together. Gluons are also massless spin-1 particles, but they represent the case where there are multiple types of the same massless spin-1 particle. Unlike the photon, gluons can satisfy the four-particle interaction equation, meaning that they self-interact. Constraints on these gluon self-interactions match the description given by quantum chromodynamics, the theory of the strong force.

A third scenario involves spin-1 particles that have mass. Mass came about when a symmetry broke during the universe’s birth: A constant — the value of the omnipresent Higgs field — spontaneously shifted from zero to a positive number, imbuing many particles with mass. The breaking of the Higgs symmetry created massive spin-1 particles called W and Z bosons, the carriers of the weak force that’s responsible for radioactive decay.

Then “for spin-2, a miracle happens,” said Adam Falkowski, a theoretical physicist at the Laboratory of Theoretical Physics in Orsay, France. In this case, the solution to the four-particle interaction equation at first appears to be beset with infinities. But physicists find that this interaction can proceed in three different ways, and that mathematical terms related to the three different options perfectly conspire to cancel out the infinities, which permits a solution.

That solution is the graviton: a spin-2 particle that couples to itself and all other particles with equal strength. This evenhandedness leads straight to the central tenet of general relativity: the equivalence principle, Einstein’s postulate that gravity is indistinguishable from acceleration through curved space-time, and that gravitational mass and intrinsic mass are one and the same. Falkowski said of the bootstrap approach, “I find this reasoning much more compelling than the abstract one of Einstein.”

Thus, by thinking through the constraints placed on fundamental particle interactions by basic symmetries, physicists can understand the existence of the strong and weak forces that shape atoms, and the forces of electromagnetism and gravity that sculpt the universe at large.

In addition, bootstrappers find that many different spin-0 particles are possible. The only known example is the Higgs boson, the particle associated with the symmetry-breaking Higgs field that imbues other particles with mass. A hypothetical spin-0 particle called the inflaton may have driven the initial expansion of the universe. These particles’ lack of angular momentum means that fewer symmetries restrict their interactions. Because of this, bootstrappers can infer less about nature’s governing laws, and nature itself has more creative license.

Spin-$latex \frac{1}{2}$ matter particles also have more freedom. These make up the family of massive particles we call matter, and they are individually differentiated by their masses and couplings to the various forces. Our universe contains, for example, spin-$latex \frac{1}{2}$ quarks that interact with both gluons and photons, and spin-$latex \frac{1}{2}$ neutrinos that interact with neither.

The spin spectrum stops at 2 because the infinities in the four-particle interaction equation kill off all massless particles that have higher spin values. Higher-spin states can exist if they’re extremely massive, and such particles do play a role in quantum theories of gravity such as string theory. But higher-spin particles can’t be detected, and they can’t affect the macroscopic world.

Undiscovered Country

Spin-$latex \frac{3}{2}$ particles could complete the 0, $latex \frac{1}{2}$, 1, $latex \frac{3}{2}$, 2 pattern, but only if “supersymmetry” is true in the universe — that is, if every force particle with integer spin has a corresponding matter particle with half-integer spin. In recent years, experiments have ruled out many of the simplest versions of supersymmetry. But the gap in the spin spectrum strikes some physicists as a reason to hold out hope that supersymmetry is true and spin-$latex \frac{3}{2}$ particles exist.

In his work, Baumann applies the bootstrap to the beginning of the universe. A recent Quanta article described how he and other physicists used symmetries and other principles to constrain the possibilities for those first moments.

It’s “just aesthetically pleasing,” Baumann said, “that the laws are inevitable — that there is some inevitability of the laws of physics that can be summarized by a short handful of principles that then lead to building blocks that then build up the macroscopic world.”

Natalie Wolchover is a senior writer and editor at Quanta Magazine covering the physical sciences.

More from Quanta Magazine

• The Most Famous Paradox in Physics Nears Its End10,240 saves
• Why Gravity Is Not Like the Other Forces10,253 saves
• The Peculiar Math That Could Underlie the Laws of Nature11,314 saves

How was it? Save stories you love and never lose them.

---

This post originally appeared on Quanta Magazine and was published December 8, 2019. This article is republished here with permission.

Get math and science news, explainers, interviews and more in your inbox.Get Quanta’s weekly newsletter

More Stories from Pocket

• New Evidence for the Strange Idea that the Universe Is a Hologram
• What Stephen Hawking’s Final Paper Really Means
• You Thought Quantum Mechanics Was Weird: Check out Entangled Time
• Bizarre ‘Dark Fluid’ With Negative Mass Could Dominate the Universe
• Space: The Final Illusion

Discover More Topics

• Coronavirus
• Business
• Career
• Education
• Entertainment
• Food
• Gaming
• Health & Fitness
• Parenting
• Personal Finance
• Politics
• Science
• Self Improvement
• Sports
• Technology
• Travel

Products

• Must-read articles
• Daily newsletter
• Pocket Premium
• Save to Pocket extensions

Company

• About
• Careers
• Blog

Resources

• Get help
• Developer API
• Pocket for publishers
• Advertise

Get the app

Pocket is part of the Mozilla family of products.© 2021 Read It Later, Inc.Privacy policyTerms of service

BY FAZALE RANA – SEPTEMBER 2, 2020

I think few would be surprised to learn that J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter titles are the best-selling children’s books of all time, but do you know which works take second place in that category? It’s the Goosebumps series by R. L. Stine.

From 1992 to 1997, Stine wrote and published 62 Goosebumps books. To date, these books have been printed in over 3o languages, with over 400 million copies sold worldwide (this does not include Stine’s numerous spin-off books) and adapted for television and film. Each book in the Goosebumps lineup features different child characters who find themselves in scary situations that often involve encounters with the bizarre and supernatural.

The title of the series is apropos. Humans get goosebumps whenever we are afraid. We also get goosebumps when we are moved by something beautiful and awe-inspiring. And, of course, we get goosebumps when we are cold.

Goosebumps are caused by a process dubbed piloerection. When we feel cold, tiny smooth muscles (called the arrector pili) deep within our skin contract. Because these muscles are attached to hair follicles, this contraction causes our hairs to stand on end. Getting goosebumps is one of our quirks as human beings. Most biologists don’t think this phenomenon serves any useful purpose, making it that much more of an oddity. So, if goosebumps have no obvious utility, then why do we experience them at all?

Evolutionary Explanation for Goosebumps

Many life scientists view goosebumps as a vestige of our evolutionary history. So, while goosebumps serve no apparent function in modern humans, evolutionary biologists believe they did have utility for our evolutionary ancestors, who were covered with a lot of hair. Presumably, when our ancestors were cold, the contraction of the arrector pili muscles created pockets of air near the surface of the skin when the hairs stood on end, serving as insulation from the chill. And when our ancestors were frightened, contraction of the arrector pili muscles caused their hair to puff up, making them seem larger and more menacing.

These two behaviors are observed in other mammals and even in some bird species. For evolutionary biologists, this shared behavior attests to our evolutionary connection to animal life.

In other words, many life scientists see goosebumps as compelling evidence that human beings have an evolutionary origin because: (1) goosebumps serve no useful purpose in humans today and (2) the same physiological process that causes goosebumps in humans causes hair and fur of other animals to stand erect when they feel cold or threatened.

So, one theological question creationists need to address is this: Why would God create human beings to have a useless response to the cold or to being frightened? For those of us who hold to a creation model/design perspective, goosebumps in humans cause us a bit of a fright. But is there any reason to be scared?

What if goosebumps in humans serve a useful function? If they do, that function undermines the idea that goosebumps are a vestige of our evolutionary history and, at the same time, makes it reasonable to think that human beings are the handiwork of a Creator. Accordingly, all facets of our anatomy and physiology are intentionally designed for a purpose, including goosebumps. And this is precisely what a research team from Harvard University has discovered. These investigators identified an unexpected function performed by arrector pili muscles, beyond causing hairs to stand erect.¹ This new insight suggests a reason why humans get goosebumps, making it reasonable to interpret this physiological feature of human beings within a creation model/design framework.

Multiple Roles of the Arrector Pili Muscle

To carry out its function, the arrector pili muscle forms an intimate association with nerves in the sympathetic nervous system. This component of the nervous system contributes to homeostasis, allowing the bodies of animals (including humans) to maintain constant and optimal conditions. As part of this activity, animals receive sensory input from their surroundings and respond to environmental changes. So, in this case, when a mammal experiences cold the sympathetic nervous system transmits the sensation to the arrector pili muscles, causing them to contract, helping the animal to stay warm.

Recently, the Harvard research team, working with mice, discovered that the arrector pilimuscle also plays a structural role, with the individual nerve fibers of the sympathetic nervous system wrapping around the muscle. This architecture positions the nerves next to a bed of stem cells near hair follicles, providing the sympathetic nervous system with a direct connection to the hair follicle stem cells.

Normally, the hair follicle stem cells are in a quiescent (inactive) state. Under conditions of prolonged cold, however, the sympathetic nerves release the neurotransmitter norepinephrine. This release stimulates the stem cells to replicate and develop into new hair. In other words, the interplay between the arrector pili and the sympathetic nerves provides both a short-term (contraction of the arrector pili) and a long-term (hair growth) response to cold.

The researchers discovered that when they removed the arrector pilimuscles the sympathetic nerves retracted, losing their connection to the hair follicle stem cells. In the retracted state, the sympathetic nerves could not stimulate the activity of the hair follicle stem cells. In short, the arrector pili plays an integral role in coupling stem cell regeneration and, hence, hair growth to changes in the environment by functioning as scaffolding.

Goosebumps and the Case for Creation

In mammals (which have a coat of fur or bodies heavily covered with hair), the dual role played by the arrector pili muscles in mounting both rapid and long-term responses to the cold highlights the elegance, sophistication, and ingenuity of biological systems—features befitting the work of a Creator. But does this insight have any bearing on why humans experience goosebumps if they are created by God?

Toward this end, if the arrector pili muscles served no true function, evolutionary theory predicts that they should atrophy, maybe even disappear. Yet, the work of the Harvard scientists makes it plain that if the arrector pili muscles became more diminutive or were lost, it could very well compromise the overall function of the sympathetic nervous system in human skin, because the scaffolding for nerves of the sympathetic system would be lost.

The recognition that the arrector pili muscles prevent the sympathetic nerves from retracting away from hair follicles in mice suggests that this muscle functions in the same way in human skin. In mice and other mammals, the positioning of the sympathetic nerve is critical to stimulate the growth of new hair in response to ongoing exposure to cold. The same should be true in humans. Still, it is not clear at this juncture if hair growth in humans under these conditions would have any real benefit. On the other hand, there is no evidence to the contrary. We don’t know.

What we do know is that without the arrector pili muscles the sympathetic nerves would lose their positioning anchor in human skin. It seems perfectly reasonable to think that the proper positioning of the sympathetic nerve in the skin, in general, plays an overarching role in communicating changes in the environment to our bodies, helping us to maintain a homeostatic state.

In other words, because the muscle serves multiple purposes, it helps explain why these intact, fully functional muscles are found in human skin, with goosebumps produced as a by-product of the arrector pili’sassociation with hair follicles and sympathetic nerves. And who knows, maybe these muscles have added functions yet to be discovered.

There may be other reasons why we get goosebumps. They help us to pay close attention to the happenings in our environment. And, of course, this heightened awareness provides a survival advantage. On top of that use, goosebumps also provide social cues to others, signaling to them that we are cold or frightened, with the hope that these cues would encourage them to step in and help us—again, a survival advantage.

The cold truth is this: gaining a better understanding about the anatomy and physiology of the skin makes goosebumps less frightening for those of us who embrace a creation model approach to humanity’s origin.

Resources

• “Silenced B Cells Loudly Proclaim the Case for a Creator” by Fazale Rana (article)
• “The Appendix: Adding to the Evidence for Intelligent Design” by Fazale Rana (article)
• “Optical Illusion Exposes the Reality of Design” by Fazale Rana (article)
• “New Research Highlights the Elegant Design in the Inverted Retina” by Fazale Rana (article)
• “Wisdom Teeth Reflect the Creator’s Foresight” by Fazale Rana (article)
• “Is the Whale Pelvis a Vestige of Evolution?” by Fazale Rana (article)

Endnotes

1. Yuli Schwartz et al., “Cell Types Promoting Goosebumps Form a Niche to Regulate Hair Follicle Stem Cells,” Cell 182, no. 3 (August 6, 2020): 578–93, doi:10.1016/j.cell.2020.06.031.

---

Category

• INTELLIGENT DESIGN

Tags

• ARRECTOR PILI 
• BLOGS

---

SHARE

1 COMMENT – VIEW – POST A COMMENT

THE AUTHORFazale Rana

BIO

I watched helplessly as my father died a Muslim. Though he and I would argue about my conversion, I was unable to convince him of the truth of the Christian faith.

I became a Christian as a … Read more about Fazale Rana.

•  
•  

STILL CURIOUS? LEARN MORE…

More Treasures in Earth’s Attic

Did Earth hide some of its treasure on the Moon?

Continue Reading »

What Was Your Intellectual Epiphany?

Have you ever had a sudden realization that ended up changing your life? You may have had an epiphany, which can be defined as an intuitive flash of insight or discovery as to the deep meaning of something significant that comes through experience and leads to a sense of wonder.

Continue Reading »

Earth’s Attic: Houston, We Have an Opportunity

Those of us who are over 60 will never forget the chilling words spoken by the Apollo 13 command module pilot, Jack Swigert, and repeated by the mission commander, Jim Lovell, late evening on April 13 of 1970, “Houston, we’ve had a problem.”

Continue Reading »https://player.vimeo.com/video/104664126

More Education Opportunities »

NOW THAT YOU’VE DISCOVERED REASONS TO BELIEVE

Get the latest delivered directly to you by subscribing to the RTB Weekly Digest.

• Home
• Explore
• Events
• Education
• Get Involved
• About
• Store
• Donate

About Reasons to Believe

RTB’s mission is to spread the Christian Gospel by demonstrating that sound reason and scientific research—including the very latest discoveries—consistently support, rather than erode, confidence in the truth of the Bible and faith in the personal, transcendent God revealed in both Scripture and nature. Learn More »

Support Reasons to Believe

Your support helps more people find Christ through sharing how the latest scientific discoveries affirm our faith in the God of the Bible.DONATE NOW

---

U.S. Mailing Address
818 S. Oak Park Rd.
Covina, CA 91724

• P (855) 732-7667
• P (626) 335-1480
• Fax (626) 852-0178
• © Reasons to Believe

• Contact Us
• Privacy Policy
• Careers

•  
•  
•  

Reasons to Believe is a nonprofit organization designated as tax-exempt under Section 501(c)3 by the Internal Revenue Service. Donations are tax-deductible to the full extent of the law. Our tax ID is #33-0168048. All Transactions on our Web site are safe and secure.

Copyright 2020. Reasons to Believe. All rights reserved. Use of this website constitutes acceptance of our Pri

STILL CURIOUS? LEARN MORE…

Domestication, Human Exceptionalism, and Creation

How many origin events has Earth’s life undergone? From a naturalistic perspective there is just one origin of life: the origin of the Last Universal Common Ancestor (LUCA). Naturalistic models for life posit that somehow physics and chemistry on the early Earth gave rise to a simple bacterium from which all organisms presently have a common descent. These models also claim that all life can be explained by physics and chemistry alone.

Continue Reading »

Nutritional Needs for Men and Women Highlight Gender Differences

“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them” (Genesis 1:27).

Continue Reading »

COVID Pandemic: God’s Fault or Ours?

The spread of SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID—19)1 across the world and throughout our communities leads many people to ask why a good God would allow such things. I’m often asked variants of this question in interviews and discussions about COVID and other human viruses.

Continue Reading »

More Education Opportunities »

NOW THAT YOU’VE DISCOVERED REASONS TO BELIEVE

Get the latest delivered directly to you by subscribing to the RTB Weekly Digest.

• Home
• Explore
• Events
• Education
• Get Involved
• About
• Store
• Donate

STILL CURIOUS? LEARN MORE…

Impact of Satan’s Rebellion on the Very Good Creation

Question of the week: If everything God created by the end of the sixth creation day was “very good,” does that mean that Satan had not yet rebelled against God? If Satan already was in a spiritually fallen state, where was he and what impact did he have on the environment where he was and upon our environment?

Continue Reading »

Understanding the Coronavirus (COVID-19)

As health professionals around the world continue to assess the impact of COVID-19, our scholar team has provided a brief response to help us understand what is happening and how to protect ourselves and those around us. Dr. Anjeanette Roberts and Dr. Hugh Ross explain. Understanding Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) (embed this video)

Continue Reading »

Where Is the Ark of the Covenant?

Question of the week: Where is the ark of the covenant? Will it ever be recovered and used again?

Continue Reading »

More Education Opportunities »

NOW THAT YOU’VE DISCOVERED REASONS TO BELIEVE

Get the latest delivered directly to you by subscribing to the RTB Weekly Digest.

• Home
• Explore
• Events
• Education
• Get Involved
• About
• Store
• Donate

By Hugh Ross – February 15, 2021MoreShare

“I feel your pain.” Anyone in pain appreciates such an expression of empathy, but could these words be truer than we realize?

Arguably, one of the most underappreciated designs in animals are the social transfers of emotions and feelings. Mice experiments conducted by three behavioral scientists at Stanford University led by Monique Smith sought not only to determine the degree and extent of social transfer of empathy but also the means and pathways.¹ Their results carry implications for evolution and creation.

Biologists typically define empathy as the adoption of another individual’s sensory and emotional state. Field studies establish that humans are not alone in expressing and experiencing empathy. Empathy has been observed in nearly every social mammalian species. Hence, it is possible to use social mammals as proxies to develop therapeutic tools for human neural disorders.

The three behavioral scientists chose mice as their proxy since it is known that for both humans and rodents the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) in the brain encodes information about the affective state of other individuals.²

Behavioral Experiments
In one experiment, Smith’s team injected a drug into a mouse that induced long-lasting arthritis-like pain. The experimenters allowed another mouse, a cage-mate of the injected mouse, to socially interact with the injected mouse for one hour. This one-hour exposure resulted in the bystander mouse experiencing the pain of the injected mouse for the next four hours. When the injected mouse received a morphine shot with subsequent pain relief, the bystander mouse almost immediately experienced relief from the socially transmitted pain.

In a second experiment, Smith’s team repeatedly shocked one mouse while a second nearby mouse watched. Both mice exhibited the same freeze posture response to the shock-induced fear.

Through the use of specific drugs and circuit neuroscience tools, Smith’s team determined that different neural pathways in the brain were involved in the social transfers of pain and pain relief compared to fear. The neural pathway for pain and pain relief is from the ACC to the nucleus accumbens (NAc), whereas the neural pathway for fear is from the ACC to the basolateral amygdala (BLA).

Potential Treatment Applications
Both chronic and temporal pain from severe trauma pose therapeutic challenges. Smith’s team’s experiments indicate that what works for mice might also work for humans. Someone experiencing severe pain may experience relief simply by observing another human with whom they have had significant social interaction. Such social interaction could substantially reduce reliance on pain-relieving drugs and help combat addictions. The immediate and long-term health cost savings would be substantial.

Another major potential health benefit arising from the research lies in the treatment of brain injuries, brain disorders, and genetic brain handicaps where human subjects have lost some empathetic capabilities. Using animal subjects to determine the specific locations in the brain and pathways in the brain responsible for expressions and experience of empathy would greatly assist medical researchers in finding therapies, and even cures, for empathy-related brain disorders.

Life Design Implications
The origin of emotions and empathy in animals poses a huge challenge to naturalistic evolution. While certain chemicals can govern the degree to which emotions and empathy is expressed or experienced, no deterministic explanation for the origin of emotions and empathy has yet passed scientific scrutiny and testing. From a creation perspective, Genesis 1 uses the Hebrew verb, bara, meaning in the context of Genesis 1, to create something brand new that did not exist on Earth before. The creation of animals capable of using emotions and empathy to bond with one another and to sacrifice for one another indicates a nonphysical origin for emotions and empathy.

Birds and mammals have been endowed with the capacity to express and experience emotions and empathy such that they are able to form life-long bonds with one another and make sacrifices to meet one another’s needs. Such endowment makes it possible to tame these animals so that they serve and/or please humans. A discovery like this one, where scientists use animal designs to find ways to relieve pain marks one great way that animals serve us. The fact that humans, birds, and mammals share in common many design features relevant to the expression and experience of emotions and empathy challenges an evolutionary origin but supports creation.

Endnotes

1. Monique L. Smith, Naoyuki Asada, and Robert C. Malenka, “Anterior Cingulate Inputs to Nucleus Accumbens Control the Social Transfer of Pain and Analgesia,” Science 371, no. 6525 (January 8, 2021): 153–59, doi:20.1126/science.abe3040.
2. Monique L. Smith et al., “Anterior Cingulate Cortex Contributes to Alcohol Withdrawal-Induced and Socially Transferred Hyperalgesia,” eNeuro 4, no. 4 (July/August 2017): id. ENEURO.0087-17.2017, doi:10.1523/ENEURO.0087-17.2017; Daejong Jeon et al., “Observational Fear Learning Involves Affective Pain System and Ca_v1.2 Ca²⁺ Channels in ACC,” Nature Neuroscience 13 (April 2010): 482–88, doi:10.1038/nn.2504; Maria Carrillo et al., “Emotional Mirror Neurons in the Rat’s Anterior Cingulate Cortex,” Current Biology 29, no. 8 (April 22, 2019): 1301–12.e6, doi:10.1016/j.cub.2019.03.024.

---

Category

• Genesis
• Animals

Tags

• social transfer
• Pain
• nucleus accumbens
• mice
• Genesis 1
• empathy
• emotions
• circuit neuroscience tools
• basolateral amygdala
• bara
• anterior cingulate cortex
• analgesia
• Blogs

---

Share

The AuthorHugh Ross

BIO

Reasons to Believe emerged from my passion to research, develop, and proclaim the most powerful new reasons to believe in Christ as Creator, Lord, and Savior and to use those new reasons to reach p… Read more about Hugh Ross.

Still Curious? Learn More…

Ancient Cave Art Strengthens Evidence for the Image of God

All human beings are creative. Creativity defines and distinguishes us from all other creatures that exist now—or ever existed. As a Christian, I view our capacity and compulsion to create as a manifestation of the image of God—a quality that every human being possesses and which makes each human life infinitely valuable.

Continue Reading »

Is Earth’s Terrestrial Biosphere at the Temperature Tipping Point?

For many of us, seeing the words “temperature tipping point” may rouse concern or alarm. For researchers who study Earth’s climate, two factors help them know whether we’re reaching a tipping point.

Continue Reading »

Is God’s “Hiddenness” a Rational Objection to Christianity?

One of the common claims that atheists make in objection to God’s existence is that God is hidden. This “hiddenness of God” challenge may take the following forms:

Continue Reading » https://player.vimeo.com/video/104664126

More Education Opportunities »

NOW THAT YOU’VE DISCOVERED REASONS TO BELIEVE

Get the latest delivered directly to you by subscribing to the RTB Weekly Digest.

• Home
• Explore
• Events
• Education
• Get Involved
• About
• Store
• Donate

About Reasons to Believe

RTB’s mission is to spread the Christian Gospel by demonstrating that sound reason and scientific research—including the very latest discoveries—consistently support, rather than erode, confidence in the truth of the Bible and faith in the personal, transcendent God revealed in both Scripture and nature. Learn More »

Support Reasons to Believe

Your support helps more people find Christ through sharing how the latest scientific discoveries affirm our faith in the God of the Bible.

---

U.S. Mailing Address
818 S. Oak Park Rd.
Covina, CA 91724

• P (855) 732-7667
• P (626) 335-1480
• Fax (626) 852-0178
• © Reasons to Believe

• Contact Us
• Privacy Policy
• Careers

• 
  
• 
  
• 
  

Reasons to Believe is a nonprofit organization designated as tax-exempt under Section 501(c)3 by the Internal Revenue Service. Donations are tax-deductible to the full extent of the law. Our tax ID is #33-0168048. All Transactions on our Web site are safe and secure.

Copyright 2020. Reasons to Believe. All rights reserved. Use of this website constitutes acceptance of our Privacy Policy.Site by Ascendio

By Fazale Rana – February 10, 2021MoreShare

At last. There is light at the end of the tunnel.

Skeptics—and Christians—ask a lot of questions about the scientific accuracy of the Bible’s Old and New Testaments. In many instances, these questions have little to do with the creation accounts in Scripture. Instead, they involve biblical passages that seem to present scientifically inaccurate information or raise questions about the soundness of God’s designs and purposes.

For example, several people have asked me  about the practice of circumcision first described in Genesis 17:10–12:

This is my covenant with you and your descendants after you, the covenant you are to keep: Every male among you shall be circumcised. You are to undergo circumcision, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and you. For the generations to come every male among you who is eight days old must be circumcised, including those born in your household or bought with money from a foreigner—those who are not your offspring.

Specifically, the questioners want to know why God would create human males—and other mammals—with a foreskin on their penises only to then instruct them to remove it. Today we know that circumcision offers demonstrable medical benefits. Don’t the medical benefits of removing the foreskin imply that this anatomical feature is a bad design? It seems like God could have come up with a better plan.

Circumcision Is a Ceremonial Practice
In response to this understandable challenge, it is important to keep in mind that the practice of circumcision, first and foremost, signified the covenantal relationship between Yahweh (the God of Israel) and Abraham and his descendants. God instituted the practice as a reminder to Israel that they owed their very existence to Yahweh. God promised Abraham a son well after Sarah was of childbearing age. And that son, Isaac, gave rise to the nation of Israel.

In other words, because circumcision is a religious ritual with covenantal significance, this practice does not require a medical or biological rationale. Neither does the practice necessarily mean that the foreskin is a flawed design.

The Medical Accuracy of the Covenant of Circumcision
This caveat aside, the instructions Yahweh gave to Abraham display remarkable medical insight. In the classic work,None of These Diseases, physician S. I. McMillen discusses the uncanny medical accuracy of the biblically prescribed practice of circumcision.¹

Specifically, God commanded Abraham to perform circumcisions on the eighth day after birth (Genesis 17:12). As McMillen points out, this is the ideal time to carry out the procedure because it ensures that the infant’s blood readily clots after circumcision. For the first four days after birth, an infant has a limited amount of vitamin K and clotting factors in its blood. On day five, the level of these materials increases, reaching the maximum level on day eight.

Additionally, God commanded that a flint knife be used to perform the circumcision (Joshua 5:2). According to McMillen, this practice is significant because the act of sharpening a flint knife removes the surface layer, leaving behind uncontaminated stone that would have minimized infection.

One has to marvel at the Bible’s medical prescience. Given the pre-scientific understanding of the ancient Near East, Abraham could not have possessed this medical insight apart from divine wisdom.

Is the Foreskin a Flawed Design? As it turns out circumcision provides clear medical benefits, offering a rationale for the practice that goes beyond religious ceremony. For example, in recent years, biomedical researchers have discovered that circumcision:

• Prevents the spread of AIDS²
• Prevents cancer of the penis³
• Prevents cervical cancer⁴

And these insights lead us to the questioners’ challenge: Is the foreskin is a flawed design.

This objection assumes that the foreskin serves no function at all. Most male mammals have foreskin covering their penises (though they are often referred to as penile sheaths). These structures serve a variety of functions in animals that include protective and reproductive roles. And increasing evidence suggests that the foreskin also serves similar important functions in humans that include:

• Providing protection in utero, during infancy, and in adulthood
• Serving as a component of the immune system
• Contributing to sexual arousal and stimulation

In light of these functions, a number of physicians now question if circumcision is necessary. Some even express concern that circumcision may be harmful. For this reason, biomedical practitioners debate whether the benefits of keeping the foreskin outweigh the benefits of circumcision.⁵ Those who argue in favor of keeping the foreskin intact maintain that the benefits of circumcision—namely, the avoidance of infection and disease—can be accomplished through effective hygiene.

Regardless of how this debate ends, the new scientific insights make it hard to argue that the foreskin is a flawed design.

Again, the primary purpose of circumcision in ancient Israel was religious in scope. Still, it is remarkable that the timing and details of the process prescribed by Yahweh reflect sound medical practices. And the recognition that circumcision confers medical benefits indicates that God’s plan for signifying his covenant with Abraham and his descendants was, indeed, sound and reflected divine wisdom.

Resources

• “Scripture’s Medical Wisdom Answers a Skeptic’s Challenge” by Fazale Rana (article)

Endnotes

1. S. I. McMillen, None of These Diseases, rev., upd., and exp. ed., ed. by David E. Stern (Grand Rapids: Fleming H. Revell, 1984), 80–85.
2. Katherine Harmon, “Can Male Circumcision Stem the AIDS Epidemic in Africa?,” Scientific American (November 29, 2011), reprinted in Nature (November 30, 2011): doi:10.1038/nature.2011.9520.
3. Brian J. Morris et al., “The Strong Protective Effect of Circumcision against Cancer of the Penis,” Advances in Urology (2011): article ID 812368, doi:10.1155/2011/812368.
4. Salynn Boyles, “Male Circumcision Cuts Women’s Cervical Cancer Risk,” WebMD, January 6, 2011, https://www.webmd.com/cancer/cervical-cancer/news/20110106/male-circumcision-cuts-womens-cervical-cancer-risk.
5. Roger Collier, “Vital or Vestigial? The Foreskin Has Its Fans and Foes,” Canadian Medical Association Journal 183 (November 22, 2011): 1963–64, doi:10.1503/cmaj.109-4014.

---

Category

• Bible Difficulties
• Inerrancy

Tags

• circumcision
• Blogs

---

Share

The AuthorFazale Rana

BIO

I watched helplessly as my father died a Muslim. Though he and I would argue about my conversion, I was unable to convince him of the truth of the Christian faith.

I became a Christian as a … Read more about Fazale Rana.

Still Curious? Learn More…

Ancient Cave Art Strengthens Evidence for the Image of God

All human beings are creative. Creativity defines and distinguishes us from all other creatures that exist now—or ever existed. As a Christian, I view our capacity and compulsion to create as a manifestation of the image of God—a quality that every human being possesses and which makes each human life infinitely valuable.

Continue Reading »

Is Earth’s Terrestrial Biosphere at the Temperature Tipping Point?

For many of us, seeing the words “temperature tipping point” may rouse concern or alarm. For researchers who study Earth’s climate, two factors help them know whether we’re reaching a tipping point.

Continue Reading »

Is God’s “Hiddenness” a Rational Objection to Christianity?

One of the common claims that atheists make in objection to God’s existence is that God is hidden. This “hiddenness of God” challenge may take the following forms:

Continue Reading » https://player.vimeo.com/video/104664126

More Education Opportunities »

NOW THAT YOU’VE DISCOVERED REASONS TO BELIEVE

Get the latest delivered directly to you by subscribing to the RTB Weekly Digest.

• Home
• Explore
• Events
• Education
• Get Involved
• About
• Store
• Donate

About Reasons to Believe

RTB’s mission is to spread the Christian Gospel by demonstrating that sound reason and scientific research—including the very latest discoveries—consistently support, rather than erode, confidence in the truth of the Bible and faith in the personal, transcendent God revealed in both Scripture and nature. Learn More »

Support Reasons to Believe

Your support helps more people find Christ through sharing how the latest scientific discoveries affirm our faith in the God of the Bible.

---

U.S. Mailing Address
818 S. Oak Park Rd.
Covina, CA 91724

• P (855) 732-7667
• P (626) 335-1480
• Fax (626) 852-0178
• © Reasons to Believe

• Contact Us
• Privacy Policy
• Careers

• 
  
• 
  
• 
  

Reasons to Believe is a nonprofit organization designated as tax-exempt under Section 501(c)3 by the Internal Revenue Service. Donations are tax-deductible to the full extent of the law. Our tax ID is #33-0168048. All Transactions on our Web site are safe and secure.

Copyright 2020. Reasons to Believe. All rights reserved. Use of this website constitutes acceptance of our Privacy Policy.Site by Ascendio

STILL CURIOUS? LEARN MORE…

Domestication, Human Exceptionalism, and Creation

How many origin events has Earth’s life undergone? From a naturalistic perspective there is just one origin of life: the origin of the Last Universal Common Ancestor (LUCA). Naturalistic models for life posit that somehow physics and chemistry on the early Earth gave rise to a simple bacterium from which all organisms presently have a common descent. These models also claim that all life can be explained by physics and chemistry alone.

Continue Reading »

Nutritional Needs for Men and Women Highlight Gender Differences

“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them” (Genesis 1:27).

Continue Reading »

COVID Pandemic: God’s Fault or Ours?

The spread of SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID—19)1 across the world and throughout our communities leads many people to ask why a good God would allow such things. I’m often asked variants of this question in interviews and discussions about COVID and other human viruses.

Continue Reading »

More Education Opportunities »

NOW THAT YOU’VE DISCOVERED REASONS TO BELIEVE

Get the latest delivered directly to you by subscribing to the RTB Weekly Digest.

• Home
• Explore
• Events
• Education
• Get Involved
• About
• Store
• Donate

STILL CURIOUS? LEARN MORE…

Ribose in Meteorites: Breakthrough for Origin of Life?

Does an out-of-this-world sugar discovery help solve one of science’s great mysteries?

Continue Reading »

Follow the Science: It Leads to God

In recent months you’ve often heard elected officials say: “I follow the science.” They are referring to the current pandemic; but hearing this mantra so many times raises a more general question: does our society in general really “follow the science”?

Continue Reading »

Does Possessing Freedom Presuppose the Will to Fight?

What do you think about when you hear the word war? You probably think of armed conflict, bloodshed, and death—and lots of it. That is the nature of warfare. It’s also why war presents one of the most challenging issues to address from an ethical standpoint. Given this difficulty, most Christians have adopted just war theory, which requires engaging only in just wars and fighting those wars in a truly just manner. But such an ethical ideal takes great wisdom, courage, and dedicated moral discipline. Here are several brief thoughts to consider when someone asks what you think of war.

Continue Reading »

More Education Opportunities »

NOW THAT YOU’VE DISCOVERED REASONS TO BELIEVE

Get the latest delivered directly to you by subscribing to the RTB Weekly Digest.

• Home
• Explore
• Events
• Education
• Get Involved
• About
• Store
• Donate

BY HUGH ROSS – JANUARY 25, 2021MORESHARE15

Does evolution or creation better explain the rapid emergence of complex animals? If there’s one event in Earth’s fossil record history that garners more spirited discussion than any other, it would be the Cambrian explosion.

The Cambrian explosion refers to the sudden simultaneous appearance of a broad diversity of the first skeletal animals. These animals manifested, for the first time in Earth’s history, bilateral symmetry, hard body parts, digestive tracts, circulatory systems, and complex internal and external organs. They arrived not just in one or two phyla (basic body plans). Between 50 to 80% of all animal phyla known to exist in Earth’s history appeared within a few million years or less—a geological instant—after the beginning of the Cambrian geological period 543 million years ago. Now, thanks to a new fossil discovery by paleontologists John Paterson, Gregory Edgecombe, and Diego García-Bellido,¹ it is evident that the Cambrian explosion is more complex and explosive than previously thought.

One of the phyla that appeared in the Cambrian explosion is Arthropoda, which persists to this day in the form of insects, arachnids (spiders, scorpions, ticks, etc.), myriapods (centipedes and millipedes), and crustaceans. An order within Arthropoda, Radiodonta, existed only during the Cambrian period and included the earliest known large predators. They possessed claws, jaws with rows of teeth, prominent eyes, gills for respiration, and limbs for swimming (see figure 1).

The most famous species member of Radiodonta is Anomalocaris aff. canadensis (the reddish creature in the top right corner of figure 1). Fossils of this creature are

abundant in the Burgess Shale fossil beds in British Columbia, the first discovered evidence of the Cambrian explosion. A few years ago, Reasons to Believe (RTB) took about 40 ministry supporters on an expedition conference to the Burgess Shale fossil beds. Figure 2 shows photos I took of fossils of A. aff. canadensis claws.

Other Burgess Shale–type fossil beds have since been discovered. The most notable one is located in Emu Bay on Kangaroo Island, South Australia (see figure 3).

The Emu Bay Shale has yielded many A. aff. canadensis fossils. These remains reveal well-preserved details of the compound eyes of the species. What Paterson, Edgecombe, and García-Bellido discovered among the Emu Bay shale are new fossils of the compound eyes of another Anomalocaris species, ‘Anomalocaris’ briggsi.

What surprised the three paleontologists was how distinct the compound eyes of each species appeared to be. The two compound eyes of A. aff. canadensis appear on top of two stalks (see figure 1) and each eye measures a little more than 4 centimeters across. Each compound eye consists of 24,000 lenses (see figure 4). The eyes of A. aff. canadensis are optimally designed for hunting prey in well-lit waters.

By comparison, the compound eyes of ‘A.’ briggsi are not on stalks. Each eye measures 7–9 millimeters across and consists of 13,000 lenses (see figure 5). The eyes of ‘A.’ briggsi are optimally designed for detecting plankton in dimly lit waters.

Paleontologists have known for several decades that every basic eye design present among animals today was present among the Cambrian explosion animals. This new find establishes that within a basic eye design, Cambrian explosion animals display both diversity and specialization. Paterson, Edgecombe, and García-Bellido’s discovery provides more evidence for biologist Andrew Parker’s 2011 statement on the Cambrian explosion:

At no other time in Earth’s history has there been such a profusion, such an exuberance, and such an overwhelming diversity in so short time, within one million years.²

RTB scholars maintain that such diversity and specialization speak of a Creator’s purposeful design. Moreover, this discovery and the Cambrian event demonstrate more forcibly what evolutionary biologists Kevin Peterson, Michael Dietrich, and Mark McPeek wrote in a review paper on the Cambrian explosion in 2009:

Elucidating the materialistic basis of the Cambrian explosion has become more elusive, not less, the more we know about the event itself.³

Featured Image: Emu Bay Shale Formation
Credit: David Simpson

Endnotes

1. John R. Paterson, Gregory D. Edgecombe, and Diego C. García-Bellido, “Disparate Compound Eyes of Cambrian Radiodonts Reveal Their Developmental Growth Mode and Diverse Visual Ecology,” Science Advances 6, no. 49 (December 2, 2020): id. eabc6721, doi:10.1126/sciadv.abc6721.
2. Andrew R. Parker, “On the Origin of Optics,” Optics and Laser Technology 43, no. 2 (March 2011): 323, doi:10.1016/j.optlastec.2008.12.020.
3. Kevin J. Peterson, Michael R. Dietrich, and Mark A. McPeek, “MicroRNAs and Metazoan Macroevolution: Insights into Canalization, Complexity, and the Cambrian Explosion,” BioEssays 31, no. 7 (July 2009): 737, doi:10.1002/bies.200900033.

---

Category

• LIFE DESIGN 
• EVOLUTION

Tags

• EMU BAY 
• COMPOUND EYES 
• CAMBRIAN EXPLOSION 
• BURGESS SHALE 
• ANOMALOCARIS BRIGGSI 
• ANOMALOCARIS AFF. CANADENSIS 
• BLOGS

---

SHARE15

1 COMMENT – VIEW – POST A COMMENT

THE AUTHORHugh Ross

BIO

Reasons to Believe emerged from my passion to research, develop, and proclaim the most powerful new reasons to believe in Christ as Creator, Lord, and Savior and to use those new reasons to reach p… Read more about Hugh Ross.

STILL CURIOUS? LEARN MORE…

New Telescope Observations Provide Cosmic Creation Confirmations

Astronomers’ quest to understand features of the early universe and how it originated includes making “maps” of leftover radiation from the cosmic creation event.

Continue Reading »

Who Are the “Men of Renown” in Genesis 6? (Part 2)

In part 1, we reviewed the Genesis 6 description of the Nephilim. Now we consider the Nephilim as portrayed in Numbers 13. These two accounts identify the extraordinary wickedness of the Nephilim, and suggest the reason these “men of renown” from Genesis 6 are nameless.

Continue Reading »

Neighboring Faiths: A Review of Winfried Corduan’s Timeless Book

Fifty years ago, if I wanted to carry on a serious dialogue and apologetic debate with Hindu, Buddhist, Confucian, and Muslim scholars I probably needed to go overseas.

Continue Reading »https://player.vimeo.com/video/104664126

More Education Opportunities »

NOW THAT YOU’VE DISCOVERED REASONS TO BELIEVE

Get the latest delivered directly to you by subscribing to the RTB Weekly Digest.

• Home
• Explore
• Events
• Education
• Get Involved
• About
• Store
• Donate

About Reasons to Believe

RTB’s mission is to spread the Christian Gospel by demonstrating that sound reason and scientific research—including the very latest discoveries—consistently support, rather than erode, confidence in the truth of the Bible and faith in the personal, transcendent God revealed in both Scripture and nature. Learn More »

Support Reasons to Believe

Your support helps more people find Christ through sharing how the latest scientific discoveries affirm our faith in the God of the Bible.DONATE NOW

---

U.S. Mailing Address
818 S. Oak Park Rd.
Covina, CA 91724

• P (855) 732-7667
• P (626) 335-1480
• Fax (626) 852-0178
• © Reasons to Believe

• Contact Us
• Privacy Policy
• Careers

Reasons to Believe is a nonprofit organization designated as tax-exempt under Section 501(c)3 by the Internal Revenue Service. Donations are tax-deductible to the full extent of the law. Our tax ID is #33-0168048. All Transactions on our Web site are safe and secure.

Copyright 2020. Reasons to Believe. All rights reserved. Use of this website constitutes acceptance of our Privacy Policy.