In many war movies that were released fifty to eighty years ago, an infantry lieutenant would challenge his platoon with the question, “Are we mice or are we men?” The platoon soldiers would shout back, “We are men! We are men!” The platoon would then charge into battle, suffering horrific casualties before ultimately winning a great victory. I do remember one spoof of such movies where the soldiers shouted, “We are mice! We are mice!” and then beat a hasty retreat.

Rodents share a lot more with humans than we realize, according to a research paper recently published in Science.¹ The new research affirms Bible passages written more than three thousand years ago that teach that God designed certain bird and mammal species to form relationships with human beings and to serve and please us—each species in its own unique way.

Four neuroscientists at Humboldt University in Berlin headed by Annika Reinhold first noted that mammals can be trained to perform complex behaviors, tasks, and games by motivating the mammals with food treats. They developed a set of experiments to determine if mammals can be trained in an environment where the rewards are not food treats but instead social interactions with humans.

Hide-and-Seek Game Behavior
A characteristic of animal play behavior is that play occurs freely (there is no compulsion for the animals to play) and it provides no material profit. The predominant benefit to the animals is social interaction.

Reinhold’s team sought to establish if rats would play with humans and if the level of play would be more complex than if rats played with one another without human intervention. In their experiments, the team also desired to discover if the rats would play with humans when the only reward for playing would be additional social interaction with the humans. Finally, they wanted to find out if certain play activities were correlated with prefrontal cortex activity.

Reinhold and her colleagues set up the role-play game hide-and-seek with ten adolescent male rats. They tested whether the rats could play a two-player rat-and-human game.

In the “seek” part of the game the human would place a rat in a box and close the lid. Closing the lid of the start box signaled that the rat was the seeker. The human then hid in one of several locations and remotely opened the box. The rat then searched for the human. A close approach (less than 40 centimeters) to the human with a clear line of sight was scored as a “find.” After the rat found the human, the human would reward the rat with playful interaction before returning the rat to the box. Readers can watch a video clip of the seek part of the game here:

In the “hide” part of the game the human left the start box open and crouched motionlessly next to it. This circumstance cued the rat to hide. The human would wait 90 seconds and search for the rat. Upon finding the rat the human would reward the rat with playful interaction. Readers can watch a video clip of the hide part of the game here:

all ten rats learned the seek part of the game in less than two weeks. nine of the rats in the same time period learned to hide and switch roles. reinhold’s team observed that the rats kept track of past hiding locations and, hence, became more proficient with practice. the rats also quickly developed a preference for opaque and cardboard boxes over transparent ones.

surprisingly, most of the rats in the hide part of the game showed re-hide and runaway behaviors. evidently, the rats preferred prolonging the game over getting a quick social reward. readers can watch a video clip of the re-hide and runaway part of the game here:

The rats would vocalize when they found the human but remained silent when the human found them. This vocalization was not shaped by human conditioning since the rat vocalizations were inaudible to the humans.

The rats were strategic. “Seeking strategies included systematic searches, use of visual cues, and targeting of past hiding locations. Hiding strategies included preferences for opaque enclosures, being silent when hiding, and changing hiding locations.”²

Neural Correlations
In testing neural correlations Reinhold’s team did tetrode (electrophysiological) recordings of single neurons in the medial prefrontal cortex, a brain area associated with encoding social proximity. The recordings revealed “neuronal activity specific to phases and events of hide-and-seek.”³

These hide-and-seek experiments showed that rats are capable of decision-making, navigation, and role-playing. The tests also demonstrated that rats are highly motivated to socially engage humans and, when doing so, manifest intellectual and relational capabilities beyond what occurs in the wild where they have no contact with humans.

Biblical Affirmations
The researchers did not discuss philosophical inferences of their experiments beyond suggesting that the behaviors they observed may have evolutionary implications. Their results, however, do affirm several principles found in Genesis 1, Exodus 21, and the book of Job 38–42.

The first biblical principle is that God created three different broad categories of life:

1. life-forms that are purely physical;
2. life-forms that are physical and soulish, meaning that they are endowed with mind, will, and emotions and the capability to form relationships with and to serve and please human beings;
3. human beings who are physical, soulish, and spiritual and endowed with the capability of forming relationships with and serving and pleasing God.

A second biblical principle is that the intellectual and relational capabilities of individuals within the second and third categories of life are much enhanced when those individuals are strongly bonded to a higher being.

Thirdly, individuals within the second and third categories of life are happiest when they are strongly bonded to a higher being.

This hierarchy of relational bonds and fulfillment displays the activity of a Creator—One who enjoys not only creating, but also seeing his creatures enjoy each other.

Resource

• Readers interested in learning about other relevant animal experiments and their affirmations of these and other biblical principles can obtain my book, Hidden Treasures in the Book of Job. A free chapter of the book is available at reasons.org/ross.

One of the most popular articles I have written is “Big Bang—The Bible Taught It First!” I wrote it with the encouragement and assistance of theologian John Rea and we published it in Reasons to Believe’s Facts for Faith magazine in 2000.¹ In the two decades since then, one of the most common objections I have received from skeptics is that the Bible teaches no such thing. Who is correct?

Biblical Evidence
John Rea and I did not claim in this article that the Bible teaches all the fundamental features of the big bang creation model. We did explain, however, how it teaches the four most fundamental properties of big bang cosmology. The four properties it teaches are:

1. an ex nihilo [out of nothing] beginning for the universe
2. expansion of the universe from its ex nihilo beginning
3. constant laws of physics
4. a law of decay that pervades the entirety of the universe

These four properties imply that the universe must get progressively colder, in a highly specified manner, as it expands from its ex nihilo beginning. A pervasive law of decay, known today as the second law of thermodynamics or the law of entropy or Murphy’s law, implies that any system that expands, whether it be the piston chamber in an automobile engine or the entire universe, must get colder in proportion to the degree of expansion.

The notion that the Bible describes the four most important features of the big bang creation model makes a powerful apologetics case for the Christian faith and for the divine inspiration and inerrancy of the Bible. One reason why is that for over 2,500 years the Bible stood alone as the only book, outside of commentaries on the Bible, that made such claims about the universe. It was not until 1925 that any scientist made note that the universe possessed such features. The Belgian Roman Catholic priest and astrophysicist Abbé Georges Lemaître was the first scientist to write about the expansion of the universe from a cosmic beginning.²

Additionally, the Bible’s foreshadowing these four fundamental features of big bang cosmology—thousands of years before any astronomer had ever discerned that the universe possessed such properties—establishes the Bible’s predictive power. The only reasonable explanation for such a dramatic demonstration of predictive power is that the Bible was inspired by the One who created the universe and controlled its history.

Reaction from Nontheists
Understandably, people who deny the existence of God strongly react to the claim that the Bible teaches the four most important features of big bang cosmology. In every public debate I have had with an atheist, the opponent has asserted that the Bible makes no such declarations. During the last several months, an average of at least one response per day has appeared on my Twitter page denying that the Bible teaches any of the features of the big bang creation model.

These nontheists insist that I am using my twenty-first century knowledge of astronomy to read into the Bible what the Bible has never taught. They contend that I am imposing literal interpretations upon Bible passages that are clearly intended to be figurative. I consistently observe, however, that these assertions are made by people who have neither read my article nor the Bible passages I cite. My article explains why these passages must be understood as literal declarations and not mere figures of speech.

Is It Just Hindsight Interpretation?
The nontheists who have engaged me about the Bible and the big bang avow that they don’t need to read my article or the biblical passages I cite to know that my claims are wrong. No theologian previous to the twentieth century ever commented on the Bible making such claims, they say, which is sufficient evidence that it is just my twenty-first–century astrophysical bias that makes me think the Bible teaches big bang features of the universe.

Here again, however, these nontheistic skeptics are mistaken. Long before the twentiethcentury, both Christian and Jewish theologians wrote about the universe possessing properties that today we recognize as descriptives of the big bang creation model.

Meanwhile, these skeptics tend not to dispute that the Bible teaches that the laws of physics are constant and that one of those laws is a pervasive law of decay. The claim for the former is stated in passages in Genesis 1–3, Jeremiah 33, Romans 8:19–22, and Revelation 21:1–5. The claim for the latter is found throughout Proverbs and especially in Ecclesiastes and Romans 8:18–22. Nontheists unfamiliar with these Bible passages note that these two properties—at least as far as Earth and its life are concerned—would have been evident to pre-twentieth-century populations.

Pre-Twentieth-Century Theologians on Ex Nihilo Creation and Cosmic Expansion

Many nontheists dispute that any theologians previous to the twentieth century had ever discerned that the Bible teaches an ex nihilo beginning for the universe or that the Bible teaches the universe has expanded and is expanding.

However, many pre-twentieth-century Jewish and Christian theologians wrote about the Bible’s teachings concerning the characteristics of the universe. For the sake of brevity, I will highlight only some of the comments by a few of the more prominent ones.

Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyons (120–202), stated, “God, according to His pleasure, in the exercise of His own will and power, formed all things (so that those things which now are should have an existence) out of what did not previously exist.”³

Augustine of Hippo (354–430) wrote in his Confessions, “You [God] were, and besides you nothing was. From nothing, then, you created heaven and earth.”⁴ Later in Confessions he added, “You created them [the heavens and the earth, that is, the material universe] from nothing, not from your own substance or from some matter not created by yourself or already in existence. …You created the matter from absolutely nothing and the form of the world from this formless matter.”⁵

The most famous of the medieval Jewish theologians, Moses Maimonides (1135–1204), also known as the Rambam, wrote extensively about Old Testament declarations concerning the beginning of the universe. In his 13 Principles of Faith, Maimonides stated, “We believe that this Oneness is necessarily primary. All that exists other than Him is not primary in relationship to Him. There are many references in the Scriptures. This is the fourth Principle, as affirmed by the verse (Deuteronomy 33:27): ‘God who preceded all existence is a refuge…’”⁶Here, Maimonides explicitly states that the universe cannot be eternal. It must have a beginning.

In The Guide for the Perplexed, Maimonides elucidated what the Torah (the first five books of the Bible) stated about God, the universe, space, and time. He wrote that the entire universe “was brought into existence by God after having been purely and absolutely nonexistent.”⁷Maimonides declared that Moses in the Torah asserted “that there is nothing eternal in any way at all existing simultaneously with God.”⁸ Therefore, according to Maimonides, the Mosaic position puts forth a view of creation that is both ex nihilo and de novo (from [the] new).

Maimonides explains that creation de novo does not mean God exists in time and space and picks a particular moment to begin his creations.⁹ He asserts that time itself is one of these creations. It is not eternal; only God is eternal. Only God is responsible for creating the universe.¹⁰ Maimonides also clarifies his definition of nothing and the impotence of nothing: “if nothing is pure and absolute, it cannot be the material cause of anything; it is, after all, nothing.”¹¹

In the thirteenth century, another medieval Jewish theologian, Moses Nachmanides wrote about the expansion of the universe: “There is only one physical creation, and that creation was a tiny speck. . . . As this speck expanded out, this substance—so thin it has no essence—turned into matter as we know it.”¹²

Evidence for All Readers
In my book The Fingerprint of God I documented the strong reaction by nontheistic astronomers and physicists against the big bang creation model when Georges Lemaître and other astronomers first seriously promoted it to the scientific community.¹³ These nontheistic astronomers and physicists recognized the concordance between the big bang and biblical cosmology. Since this recognition occurred before the big bang creation model became mainstream astrophysics, these scientists cannot be accused of hindsight bias.

While it’s true that twentieth and twenty-first-century discoveries about the universe have brought more attention to biblical texts describing the origin and characteristics of the universe, readers both before and after the twentieth century recognized and wrote about the Bible’s cosmological declarations. Georges Lemaître, Edwin Hubble, Albert Einstein, and George Gamow were not the first humans to talk and write about the big bang creation model. That credit goes back to biblical authors Job, Moses, David, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Zechariah, Paul, and the author of Hebrews. They discerned and wrote about features of our big bang universe because their writings were inspired by the One who created and designed the cosmos.

Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. — John 15:13

More than 6,000 people die every year in the US because they didn’t receive a transplant in time.¹ Help may arrive soon, according to a recent press release from the National Institutes of Health, which highlights research that might help save some of these lives. Researchers have turned data from successful studies of organ preservation in rats to applications in human health and treatments.

Keeping organs viable is key. To meet that challenge “scientists have greatly extended the amount of time human livers can be stored for transplantation by modifying a protocol that extends the viability of rat livers. Previously, human livers were only viable for an average of nine hours, but the new method of preservation maintains liver tissue for up to 27 hours, giving transplant doctors and patients a much longer timeframe to work with.”²

Due to tissue damage caused by the formation of ice crystals in liver tissue, human livers for transplant are routinely stored and transported at temperatures above freezing (4°C). This process has allowed about nine hours for viable liver transplants from donor to recipient. Previous research conducted in rats allowed development of a method for supercooling livers by perfusing them with a cooled protective solution that included additives of a modified glucose compound and polyethylene glycol (a component of antifreeze). By this method, rat livers could be stored at temperatures just below freezing (-6°C) yet avoiding the formation of ice crystals, thus extending the time for successful transplants. However, human livers are much (200 times) larger than rat livers, and when this method is directly applied to human livers it does not sufficiently protect them from the formation of damaging ice crystals.

Prolonging Organ Storage

Working in collaboration, researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School have modified the protocol with three additional steps that now allow perfusion of human livers and prolonged storage at subzero temperatures.

• They removed air from the supercooling storage bag, eliminating the air-solution interface where ice crystal formation progresses more rapidly.
• They included two more additives to the protective solution: trehalose and glycerol. Both of these components are used in cryogenic preservation of cells at temperatures far below zero, but had never been used in organs destined for transplant.
• They developed a perfusion delivery system—using machine perfusion rather than manual perfusion—that solves the problem of delivering a more viscous modified supercooling solution. Machine perfusion allows profusion at 4°C with the traditional protective solution followed by gradual decreases in temperature while increasing the concentration of the additives.

Researchers have yet to implement this new protocol in human transplants, but traditional standards of assessing liver viability indicate that this process will not negatively affect these organs.³ This is certainly good news. The increase in time of viability gives transplant teams more time to get an organ from the deceased donor to the neediest recipient, not just the closest. So this factor may save some lives each year as patients in critical condition may be able to receive organs from more distant sites.

Every Life Saved Matters

Over 120,000 people remained on the wait list at the end of 2015—a year in which nearly 31,000 transplants took place. Despite the amazing ability to save over 30,000 lives in a single year, the gap between the number of patients on the wait list and the limited number of available organs continues to widen.⁴

Although the news from NIH is promising and may save thousands of lives, another challenge remains. The time from harvest to transplant is not the primary reason why so many people are left on the donor recipient lists or find that their time runs out before receiving a donor organ. No, the biggest problem is the insufficient number of donors/organs available.

One possible solution to the organ shortage problem might be to change policies surrounding organ transplants from appropriate deceased donors. Many people believe that there would be no shortage of organ donations if we would adopt a national opt-out policy (also known as intended consent or intended approval) as compared to the current opt-in policy (also known as explicit consent).⁵

There are hard and soft versions of intended consent policies.⁶ A soft version of intended consent is likely to do well in the US where there is widespread religious support for organ donations already.⁷ Under a soft policy of intended consent, the intent for organ donation is assumed, but the option to opt out remains open to the family.⁸ If increasing human organ donations doesn’t meet the organ shortfall, perhaps additional animal research will close the gap.

How Shared Physiology and Genetic Similarity Help

The extended time for liver transplants came from insights garnered in rat studies and highlights one of many ways that research in animals has helped provide practical applications affecting human health and treatment. Perhaps research in and with animals will provide a solution to the organ shortage problem as well. Researchers are investigating this possibility. Another recent report highlights how human organs for transplant may one day be grown as animal chimeras (or animal hybrids growing human-like organs) thanks to gene-editing techniques provided by CRISPR technology that allow for gene manipulation of blastocysts.⁹

Both of these studies show how scientific advances and research in animals might help save human lives and improve quality of life for those suffering from organ disease and deficiencies. Many people think that the only explanation for all of life sharing the same DNA code and similar physiologies is that naturalistic evolution has occurred. But it’s obvious our shared biologies provide a way for us to discover means to better care for creation and for others who suffer from various ailments and disease. As we consider these insights into how God has provided for us through shared biology with animals and capacities to discover ways to steward creation and care for one another better, we can see ways to help others.

Loving Our Neighbor

A hallmark of following Christ is that we love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength and that we love our neighbors as ourselves. All the law and prophets are fulfilled in these two great commandments. Our neighbor may be the one we find in need no matter who they are or what circumstances surround their needs (Matthew 5:42–47, 22:37–40; Luke 6:27–28, 10:25–37).

Organ donation really is a way to give the gift of life. And who knows whether such a gift might extend someone else’s life and provide greater opportunity for them to discover grace, generosity, and new life in Christ before their time runs out. These studies and our actions show how God allows us to discover ways to care for one another and creation, and by acts of mercy, to contribute to human flourishing.