Sunspots 765

Things I have recently spotted that may be of interest to someone else:

Christianity: (and Sports) A "prophet" has apparently claimed that, if the Kansas City Chiefs win the Super Bowl, it will be an important sign of Christ's return, or something, according to Relevant.

Relevant also has an article on the difference between praise and worship.


(or something) Relevant also reports that President Trump's spiritual advisor prayed that "satanic pregnancies" would miscarry. What?!


Computing: NPR tells us how to avoid having a smartphone hacked.

Gizmo's Freeware tells how to add a webpage address to a smartphone's home screen.


Environment: The Trump administration has taken steps to drastically change water protection regulations, making it easier for some polluters to pollute, according to Gizmodo.
Politics: The New York Times has an article discussing the different challenges facing the two main parties. Basic conclusion: Democrats have to stay close to the center if they want to win. I thank one of my sons-in-law for a link to the article.

Science: Listverse tells us 10 things our body has or does, that you probably didn't know about. Sample: we give off light.


Sports: Maya Moore, one of the best WNBA players ever, has put her career on hold to work for the release of a man she believes was imprisoned unjustly.

FiveThirtyEight says that there will probably never be another Kobe Bryant -- he took shot s that aren't taken now.

The graphic used in these posts is from NASA, hence, it is free to use like this.

Thanks for looking!

Parasite Rex

Carl Zimmer is an important communicator of science, perhaps the most important such communicating in English, at the present time. I have read a few dozen of his articles and blogs, but had never read one of his books. Now I have. That book is Parasite Rex: Inside the Bizarre World of Nature's Most Dangerous Creatures. Here is the book's Amazon page, Kindle version.

Quick summary: Most animals, at least the vertebrates, arthropods, and molluscs, are parasitized by several other animals. (The book also considers plants a little. It says very little about fungal parasites. Zimmer couldn't cover everything.) Most biologists don't consider the effect of this massive amount of debilitating interaction nearly enough. Parasites are hard to study. They usually are hidden, and often pass through more than one host animal during their lifetime. Humans, until recently, were as prone to parasites as other animals. Some humans, in primitive conditions, still are. Even though parasites harm their hosts, they seldom kill them, at least not until they have had offspring with a good chance of reaching another host. If they did kill immediately, they would be destroying their own chances of survival.

Some interesting ideas:
There are probably more parasitic species than free-living ones.

Parasites have seldom been found as fossils, mostly because they are almost all soft-bodied.

The discovery of parasites caused some theological concerns:

Parasites seemed to arise by spontaneous generation. If God created everything in the first six days, then all organisms living now should be descendants of those first organisms, not just appearing suddenly, as it were, from nowhere. Eventually, it was shown that parasites came from previous organisms, often from their eggs.

It seemed that parasites were a dead end -- they just got into a host and died there. But a scientist named Friedrich Küchenmeister doubted that that was the full story, and found that those parasites, in at least some cases, were not dead ends. If the host was eaten, they went into a new stage of development.

"[Darwin] found that parasitic wasps are a particularly good antidote to sentimental ideas about God. The way that the larvae devoured their host from the inside was so awful that Darwin once wrote of them, 'I cannot persuade myself that a beneficient and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae [one group of parasitic wasps] with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars.'"

I have posted on questions related to whether germs, and by extension, parasites, were present before the Fall.

Some parasites can control the gene activity of their hosts, or control the behavior of their hosts, in bizarre ways, generally to the benefit of the parasite, usually somehow helping the parasite to reach another host animal. To put it another way, they create zombies.

Parasites may be responsible for the development of sex and mating. (It is, of course, possible for many animals to reproduce without sex, although most vertebrates require some sort of fertilization to reproduce.) Often, animals display to attract females. Parasite-ridden animals usually aren't as colorful, or as active, and observing these males allows females to select the more healthy and less parasite-ridden, mates, who, usually, have better genes, perhaps genes that give resistance to parasites, or genes which cause behavior which is less likely to lead to being parasitized.

 IgE, an immunoglobulin that our own bodies produce, and that causes allergies and other problems, isn't just a nuisance. For most of human history, and in many places on earth, IgE helped to repel parasites. Some experiments indicate that ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease (an intestinal problem) can be cured by introducing parasites into the people that have these problems.

There are other fascinating ideas, and many descriptions of how parasites live, and of the scientists who have made discoveries about them, and how these discoveries came about. A fine book!

Thanks for reading!

On the importance of water (again)

I have posted, before, on the importance of water. See here, for one such post.

I'm not the only person to think about this, of course. See here for a recent essay on the importance of water to life, from the BioLogos forum.

Thanks for reading.

Reprogramming heart scar tissue, and cell signalling

I recently read an article on some of the biggest scientific breakthroughs of 2012.

One of these was that experimenters have been able to reprogram heart scar tissue -- tissue that results from a heart attack -- to perform ordinary heart functions. See reports here and here. The work was done in mice, but most likely there will be ways to do this in humans, too.

Another breakthrough was the emerging importance of proteins called G protein-coupled receptors, which proteins receive signals outside a cell membrane, and cause some sort of action inside that membrane. These receptor proteins are involved in the senses of vision and smell, in regulating heart rate and digestion, and in regulating the immune system, as well as having other functions. The DNA which codes for these proteins makes up about 4% of the human genome.

See the previous Sunspots column for links to another list of the most important scientific discoveries of 2012, and to the most interesting microscopic views of living things published in 2012.

Thanks for reading!

Misconceptions about Evolution

The Biologos Forum has posted two fine articles on "Misconceptions about Evolution," which are here and here.

The articles are well written, well organized, brief, to the point, and accurate. No one who plans to discuss evolution with others should do so without reading them.

Thanks for reading.

Animal Death before the Fall, considered again

I have previously posted on the topic of animal death before the Fall. I have concluded, and I am not alone in this, that death of animals before the Fall was, indeed, possible, and would not contradict what the Bible says on the subject. I recently read an article by an author new to me, named Jay Wiles. Wiles, who is a self-confessed young-earth creationist, and apparently a fairly prominent one, argues, using the original languages of scripture (which I am not competent to do) that death, animal death, may well have occurred before the Fall. Wiles points out that most young-earth creationists do not accept this, but he argues that they are wrong. Those who claim that there was no death before the Fall often use this as an argument against the origin of changes in organisms by natural selection. Natural selection requires that some organisms die (or at least don't reproduce very well) so that if there was no death until after humans came about, natural selection couldn't account for much of the variety of organisms. Wiles does not believe that major changes could have occurred in living things, because there hasn't been enough time in earth's history for such changes, not because he believes that there wasn't non-human death before the Fall.

I have posted on this subject before. In this post, I refer to another article on the subject, and link to it. In this post, I claim that God does not like human death. In this post, and this one, I discuss the topic of death before the Fall as related to A Biblical Case for an Old Earth, by David Snoke.

Thanks for reading!

You aren't the same as you were yesterday . . .

. . . but you think you are.

Cells are dying all the time in your body -- and most of them are being replaced at a tremendous clip. (Even brain cells turn out to regenerate themselves far into adulthood.) And yet somehow, despite that enormous cellular turnover, you still feel like yourself week to week and year to year. How is this possible? (Steven Johnson, Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software. New York: Scribner, 2001, p. 83)

I don't really know the answer to that one. Sorry. But part, maybe all, of the answer, may be that our self, whatever that is, is not wholly material. It depends on something besides our neurons.

Thanks for reading.

The Physiology of Christ's suffering on the cross

I did a Google search for crucifixion physiology, and found a number of hits. Here are some of the results:
From an Azusa Pacific science professor. One page, with footnotes:
"The English language derives the word “excruciating” from crucifixion, acknowledging it as a form of slow, painful suffering."

Perhaps the most thorough treatment, from a physician, with footnotes.
"Dr. Barbet secured cadaver wrists to a wooden beam using spikes through the palms and found that the weight of a body when suspended from the cross would simply tear the spikes through the hands. If, however, the spikes were placed in the wrists, a body could be suspended successfully."

From a physician, a page, discussing Christ's last words, in conjunction with His suffering.
"Though very rare, the phenomenon of Hematidrosis, or bloody sweat, is well documented. Under great emotional stress of the kind our Lord suffered, tiny capillaries in the sweat glands can break, thus mixing blood with sweat. This process might well have produced marked weakness and possible shock."

Another good page from a physician, with footnotes.
"Jesus did this for me! He hung on that cross, and went through all this heinous, physical agony of the worst and most intense pain ever devised as torture that a human could conceive and be subjected to. He did this all for me; He took my place; He endured, as an innocent Person, what I deserved as a sinner. He accomplished, by Grace, what I should have born myself." [emphasis added]


They don't agree on all points, but all of them are worth reading. I have included a quotation from each.

Christ suffered for us!

Thanks for reading.

Could there have been death before the Fall?

It is often said that the earth must not be very old, because death could not have occurred before the Fall of Adam and Eve, as told in Genesis 3. When this is said, it means death of non-humans, such as the many generations of animals that would have been needed for, say, the origin of birds from reptiles.

A quick search has led me to six web pages, all arguing, using the Bible, that there could have been, or even must have been, death of non-human creatures before the Fall.

Here they are:
"No Physical Death Before the Fall?" by Glen Kuban.

"No Death Before the Fall - A Young Earth Problem," by Rich Deem.

"Death Before the Fall: God Created Cellular Death Codes," by Glenn Morton.

"Creation Science Issues: Death Before the Fall of Man," by Greg Neyman.

"Animal Death Before the Fall: What Does the Bible Say?" by Lee Irons.

"Creation Essentials, Creation Non-Essentials: Part 1, Death Before the Fall," by Dave Kresta.

I have previously posted on a related matter.

None of these take the view that there couldn't have been death before the Fall, but some of them also present reasons why some people believe that there was no such death.

I have not yet taken the time to evaluate, compare, and review these pages, but have reasons of my own for posting this. I may return to the subject later. Thanks for reading.

See my posts on David Snoke's book, A Biblical Case for an Old Earth. Snoke argues that the Bible allows the death of animals before the Fall. Here's one such post. Click on the "David Snoke" label at the end of the post to see all of them.

*  *  *  *  *

On January 1, 2013, I checked the above links. All were still good, except for the ones I referenced in 2008 from Glenn Morton and Lee Irons. I changed the link to one that is still good, also by Morton, and changed the URL for the article by Irons.

"What Have You Changed Your Mind About?" pt. 2

I continue comments on Edge's "World Question" issue, which question is the same as my title. See here for the first part of this series.

This page contains, as its last entry, an essay on the reality of the soul, by Todd Feinberg. Feinberg believes that there is such a thing as a soul, which is not the same thing as the brain. He indicates why he now believes as he does. Feinberg does not believe this for religious reasons -- he does not believe in the persistence of the soul after death.

On this page, the first entry, by Keith Devlin, considers one of the most fundamental questions underlying mathematics, namely, whether math is invented or discovered. He now believes the former. (Not everyone agrees!)

On the same page, David Dalrymple raises some fundamental questions about how computers are designed, using an analogy with a business.

Tor Nørretranders points out that our body isn't a stable thing. "98 percent of the atoms in the body are replaced every year," he writes.

And Helen Fisher discusses what she calls "the four-year itch" -- that is, more divorces occur after four years of marriage than at any other point. (Her data is from many societies, not just North American.) She speculates about how natural selection might have brought this about.

Thanks for reading!

Two articles on -- gasp -- sex

Two articles about sex have appeared recently in Slate.

One of these is strictly biological, and little directly to do with humans. It's an examination of why there are only two sexes (almost always). Why, indeed? Read the article. Among other things, it tells about a couple of cases of (sort of) more than two sexes, among animals.

Although the relation to biology required that the article be written for reasonably intelligent adults, I don't think there's anything particularly offensive.

Warning: some of the links in the article require membership in certain sites providing scientific journal content.

The second article may be somewhat more offensive to some readers. It explores the question of why most special homes for the aged prohibit sexual activity. (It indicates some of the answers, without mentioning any moral prohibitions.) Lest you wonder why anyone would even consider allowing any such, there's at least one good reason. Some inhabitants of such homes are long-time marriage partners.

As I say, this doesn't explore all the sides of this subject, but it does a good job with some of them.

Thanks for reading.

"The Inner Life of the Cell" video

"The Inner Life of the Cell" video, which, as I understand it, was created at Harvard, is available freely on the Internet, here, lasts perhaps 3 minutes, and is certainly well worth watching. It shows various animations of life processes involving molecules and cells, with no narration at all. Even if you don't know what process is being shown, it is an awesome piece of work, and gives some idea of the tremendous complexity and beauty of molecular and cellular structure. According to my sources, some people have used in devotional presentations. The sponsor, the Howard Hughes Medical Foundation, is not a religious organization.

Thanks for reading. Enjoy watching.

Why do animals have heads?

In previous posts, I mused about why there is sex, and why living things have cells. See the latter post for some discussion of what "Why?" means. Here, I mean "What is the function?" or "What good does it do them?"

A head is a structure, at one end of an animal, that has a concentration of important organs. It contains the brain, some sense organs, and a mouth. In some organisms, such as ourselves, a head is usually clearly defined from the neck. In other organisms, like fish, it isn't. In the Arthropoda, which include insects and spiders, heads are often even more clearly distinct from the rest of the body than they are in vertebrates, like humans or elephants. Many kinds of animals, but not all, have heads. The Echinodermata (starfish and their relatives), the sponges, and other types of animals do not have heads. But the vertebrates, and the Arthropods, which are the types of animals we are most likely to see, do.

Having a lot of sense organs in one place, especially in a place at the front of your body, the part that goes into any new area first, is useful. Being able to see, hear, and smell what you are about to get into before you get there can help you change your mind about where you are going to go, or about how to act when you get there. Having these senses in the head accomplishes that. But why the head? Wouldn't it be even better to have, for example, eyes, nose and ears on our hands? That way we could look, smell, and hear around corners, or behind and in front of us at the same time. The answer appears to be rapid communication. It takes some time for a message to get from the sense organs to the brain. The further away they are, the slower is the reaction. So having sight, smell, and hearing (and also taste, balance, and some of the touch sensors) in the head means quicker reaction time, which may make the difference between life and death. (It is also true that hardly any other organism has structures like the hands, which are flexible, and can go anywhere -- most vertebrates use their "hands" to walk on.)

Another thing the head can do, at least in vertebrates, is to provide protection for the brain. The skull helps with that. It also protects the sense organs and the mouth, but the brain is especially well protected. If the brain, and the skull, were located anywhere except at an end of the body, there would probably be serious interference with digestion and other functions.

I'm glad I have a head, and I hope I use it for God's glory. Thanks for reading.

Play in the Bible

Carl Zimmer, an important science writer, recently wrote about the function and origin of play in animals, in Forbes. Since play is rather widely distributed in vertebrates, it must confer some positive benefits. (The article says that reptiles don't play. It doesn't mention fish, but I am not aware of any play behavior in such animals. Many birds and mammals play.) Zimmer supposes that play helps social animals to bond with each other, enables them to sharpen their skills, and to learn about the environment around them. The same is true of humans. A human child, and probably a human adult, who has no time to play, or lives in an environment that doesn't allow it, is seriously handicapped.

So what is play? Zimmer doesn't define it. The Wikipedia article admits that defining play is difficult. The Free Dictionary has many definitions for play, as both a verb and a noun. Let's say that you and I know what it is, and I won't try to define it carefully, either. Play is something like "an amusing diversion, especially for or by children."

I checked the Bible. Most of the occurrences of the word "play" in the ESV, at any rate, do not match the definition above. Several uses are about performing on a musical instrument, and the most common use is some variation of "play the harlot," in Old Testament prophecies about Israel's disloyalty to God.

There are a few times when the Bible uses play, referring to children, and a couple of the references are to animals playing.

In Job 41, God, speaking to Job, refers to children playing, as if it is natural. In Matthew 11:16-17, Jesus refers to children as having playmates. Isaiah's description of the Peaceable Kingdom includes the idea of children playing. Zechariah's vision of the new, restored Jerusalem also mentions children playing. God seems to think that play is natural, and presumably beneficial. Heaven may include play, depending on what aspect of the future Isaiah and Zechariah were describing.

Here is one of the references to animal play:
Psalm 104:25 Here is the sea, great and wide,
which teems with creatures innumerable,
living things both small and great.
26 There go the ships,
and Leviathan, which you formed to play in it.

(There is an alternate reading of verse 26, but it doesn't change the meaning of play. I don't know what animal Leviathan is, or was, and I don't think anyone else knows for certain, either.)

Here's the other:

Job 40:20, describing the place where Behemoth can be found, says:
20 For the mountains yield food for him
where all the wild beasts play.

(I don't know what Behemoth is, or was, either, but it seems clear that it is some sort of animal.)

I suspect that Zimmer is correct (He isn't the first to have had this idea, of course) that animal play bestows some advantage on the animals. My guess is that God invented the idea of play, as well as inventing laughter, and joy. I can't prove this. C. S. Lewis, among others, supposes, in The Screwtape Letters, that these things are the inventions of God. I think he was right. I think some play is good for us. (Too much isn't, at least for adults.) God must have meant children and animals to play, and, I think, he also meant for adults to amuse themselves and others.

My wife often says of me, even when I am doing something really serious, like writing this blog, that I am "playing at" the computer. Perhaps you are playing at one too, right now. Thanks for playing here. I guess I am bonding, at least a little. Perhaps I'm learning skills, too. Whether or not I am, it can be fun. Thank you, God!

* * * *

Added August 3, 2013: In reading this post, I noted that I didn't refer to the courtship behavior (actual or figurative, or both) described in the Song of Solomon, aka Song of Songs, as a sort of playing. Perhaps it's just as well that I didn't!

Thanks for reading.

The Fall and the immune system (repost)

Mike Russell, of the Eternal Perspectives blog, does some serious writing. His recent post, "Where'd that come from?" asks about the source of the human immune system. I'd like to comment on his question here. (A previous comment by me corrected his use of "auto-immune system." He meant to say "immune system." I wrote the comment more sharply than I should have, and I apologize. Sorry. As another commenter indicated, either way, it's a good question.)

Russell assumes that the first humans wouldn't have needed an immune system until after the Fall. His question is whether it was original equipment, unused until after the Fall, or added after the Fall. The obvious answer, of course, is that we don't know. Not knowing doesn't stop me from musing.
Some believers think that Adam and Eve somehow evolved from previous human-like beings, under God's direction. If so, they would have already had an immune system. Russell doesn't believe this. I'm going to respond to his question, assuming that Adam, and then Eve, were specially created in an uncorrupted state. I don't have a definite answer.

We can't be sure when mosquitoes and germs were created. Genesis 1:20 says that God created water organisms and winged birds on the fifth day, and living creatures on land on the sixth. Are mosquitoes and bacteria water or land creatures? There is nothing that clearly indicates when either was created in Genesis 1. Most insects are land organisms, but mosquitoes spend part of their lives in the water, part on land. (Moses would not have been expected to write about bacteria, because his readers wouldn't have known what he was talking about, nor would he. God knew.) If they were created, along with other creatures, during the period described by Genesis 1, were mosquitoes biting pests before the Fall? Did bacteria cause disease before the Fall? It is possible that both were created after the Fall, although the Bible says nothing about this.
After the list of entities appearing on each day is given, Genesis 1 adds the phrase, ". . . and God saw that it was good." (KJV)

Did humans need bacteria and insects before the Fall? We can't be sure. Very possibly, bees, which pollinate flowers, would have been needed. If non-fallen humans defecated, dung beetles, maggots, and bacterial decomposers would have been useful even before the Fall. Beneficial bacteria now live in our large intestine. Perhaps they did then. Leaves may have fallen, and fruit fallen off of trees, before the Fall. Decomposers, bacteria and fungi, would have been a good thing, in that case. Alcohol production requires yeast organisms. If unfallen humans drunk alcoholic beverages, yeast organisms would have been good to have.

If pest insects, bacteria, and viruses were created before the Fall, they must have been "good." We don't usually consider them good now. Romans 8:21 says that creation will be liberated from decay, or corruption. I suppose that most Christians consider disease germs, pest insects, and weeds to be part of the corruption of the present fallen world. If the creation was free of corruption at its creation, which is implied by Genesis 1's use of "it was good," then it must have changed. The most likely time for it to have changed is the Fall. I am not aware of any explicit Biblical evidence for this, but will assume it. If new germs and insects, preying on people, were created as a result of the Fall, or if pre-existing organisms were modified at that time so as to do so, and humans didn't have an immune system yet, humans must have been modified to cope with some of the new pests at the same time, by giving them an immune system.

It is possible that humans needed an immune system from the beginning, to ward off accidental invasions of decomposing bacteria. Would accidents, of any kind, especially this kind, have been possible in an unfallen world?

It is possible that humans first appeared with the ability to fight off disease germs, at a time when they didn't need it. I believe that God created some entities with properties that are of benefit to us, or to the rest of His creation, and it took us a long time to find it out, so that the benefits weren't used for a long time. For example, quinine and rubber producing plants were presumably present from before the time when humans appeared. It is doubtful if their uses in fighting malaria, or in making tires, were known to many people until within the past 500 years or less. Their uses probably weren't known to anybody in the Old World until 1400 or so. God may have deliberately pre-configured them to be helpful, and we discovered this much later. The same sort of speculation could be made about some of the chemical elements, and about other things. If that is true, why couldn't God have pre-configured humans with an immune system, before they needed it?

A little on how the immune system operates. It has the built-in capability to develop a response to almost any foreign invader. It doesn't have such responses, but the capability to develop them. That's why flu shots are given, so that recipients will develop a response from the exposure to a non-virulent invader, so that when the real thing comes along, they will already be immune to it. (They are given every year because there are new types of flu every year.) I am suggesting that, just as we have the capacity to develop immunity to invaders we haven't experienced yet, built in from our personal beginnings, it seems possible that Adam and Eve were created with an immune system, which didn't become useful or necessary until after the Fall.

Allergies to certain substances that we'd be better off not reacting to are due to the immune system. The immune system makes some pregnant women develop antibodies against their own babies. The immune system makes auto-immunity possible. Some diseases, such as lupus and rheumatoid arthritis, are developed because a person's immune system reacts against her own body, not against a foreign invader. The immune system, which is so important in fighting off invaders, and in policing the body for cancer cells, acts, in the cases mentioned, as if it may have fallen. It's doing things that harm us.

It seems to me that either an immune system existing before it was needed, or one created right after the Fall, are possible. I haven't answered Russell's question. However, I hope that these speculations help him, or someone else.

Taken from a post of February 26, 2005.

I'm thankful for Cell Division

Cell Division doesn't get a lot of time on CNN. Perhaps it should. It's one of the many things that make life possible. We take it too much for granted. Without cell division, we wouldn't be here. How so? (I recently posted on the question of why we have cells in the first place.) We are made of many cells, all coming from one single one, the fertilized egg. We have become this closely linked community of cells by cell division.

Living things can be grouped into two groups, based on their cell type. Prokaryotes have no nucleus or chromosomes; eukaryotes have both. We are eukaryotes. Prokaryotes have mechanisms of cell division, but I'll stick with eukaryotes in this post.

During their science education, students are taught about mitosis and meiosis. These two related processes are ways of controlling the duplication and division of chromosomes. Chromosomes carry almost all of our genes, our heredity.

First, mitosis. Mitosis copies each chromosome as a cell divides. Therefore, when this happens, each of the two daughter cells get the same genetic material as the parent cell. (There are occasional mistakes in the copying process, but they are extremely rare.) That means that, for example, I have the same genes for eye color in each eye, and the same genes for skin color all over my body. (There are, of course, much more important genes than these, but we can see what these do directly.) I have, in fact, the same genes in almost every cell that were in the fertilized egg that gave rise to me, over six decades ago.

Since most of an organism's genes are important, and since some of them are expressed in every cell of that organism, mitosis is a critical process. We depend on it absolutely.

So what is meiosis? Meiosis is a process that does two critical things. It can be thought of as a variation on mitosis. What are these two things? One of them is to cut the number of chromosomes in half. The second is to introduce variety. Unlike mitosis, the daughter cells resulting from meiosis are not identical.

Why is cutting the chromosome number in half so important? Because two cells, a sperm and an egg, fuse to make a zygote, a fertilized egg. If they had the same chromosome number as the organisms that produced them, the chromosome number would double every generation, and reproduction would be impossible.

What about the variety? I received 23 chromosomes from my father, and 23 from my mother, in the sperm and the egg that went to form me, back when I was a fertilized egg, 23 pairs in all. (Human chromosomes are of 22 types, plus another pair that determine the the sex of the new organism.) As a male, I have had a group of cells, in my testes, where meiosis is happening all the time. I'm constantly producing new sperm. Each of these, because of the variety produced by meiosis, may be unique. Let's imagine that we have one of the little creatures by the tail, and can check on its chromosomes. Let's see. Chromosome 1 came from my dad. Chromosome 2 did, too. But chromosomes 3, 4, and 5 came from my mother, and 6 from my father. Over eight million possible combinations (2 to the 23rd power) are possible. And, it's more that that, much more than that. If I could really look at the chromosomes in a sperm, chromosome 2 might be seen to be mostly from my father, but with a little group of genes which came to me from my mother's chromosome 2. It seems possible that I never have, and never will, produce two sperm which are exactly alike. Meiosis also occurs in the production of the egg. The details are different, but the result is the same -- variety. I would expect that, of the hundreds of eggs my wife had or produced during her time of fertility, no two were alike. So, we have two daughters, alike in some ways, but certainly not identical. All because of meiosis. See "Why is there sex?"

This variety is not just good because it produces organisms, including humans, with various abilities and talents. It is good because it makes it possible for natural selection to work. The variety that means that, under some circumstances, some organisms are more fit than others, hence will have more offspring, is generated by accidents to the genetic material during these two processes of cell division, and by the reshuffling of the chromosomes that occurs during meiosis.

I believe, but cannot prove, that God planned these two processes, and made them happen in living things. I'm glad He did.

By the way, I'm also thankful for the Wikipedia, and for Rebecca, who suggesting that November be a month of blogger gratitude emphasis. I previously posted musings about my gratitude for Carbon atoms, and for the electromagnetic spectrum. I also thank you, my readers.

Why do living things have cells?

Why do living things have cells? Good question. I begin with three introductory remarks.

1) A cell is a building block of living things, surrounded by a membrane, which serves as a boundary. Cells were first named such by Robert Hooke, who saw a resemblance between cork tissue he looked at in a microscope (see here for picture), and the cells in a monastery. The cell theory is the idea that all living things are made of cells, and that these cells came from other cells, which existed before them. The cell theory dates to the 18oos.

2) Strictly speaking, not all living things do have cells. Most bacteria, and some other organisms, are made of only one cell, not cells.

3) What is meant by "Why"? Good question. There are several meanings, and several possible answers. One of the meanings is "What is the cause?" One answer is that I have cells because my parents did. Another meaning, and answer, would be that "Organisms have cells because God designed living organisms in this way, or because pre-organisms which had cell-like structures were selected over pre-organisms that didn't." There are theories about the origin of cells from non-living things by evolutionary processes. As would be expected, even if this is the way things came about, there is little or no hard evidence for this. It is possible that God used evolutionary processes to bring about His design for living things.

Another meaning is "What is the function of cells?" As interesting as are the other meanings of "Why?", this is the meaning I am using in this musing. Another way to put it is "What good does the possession of cells do living things?"

I have dealt previously with another basic biological question, namely "Why is there sex?"

OK, why? The answer seems to be that cells allow for specialization. Cells, tiny units, more or less self-sufficient, can have many different functions in the same organism. Most likely, the cell arrangement, wherein discrete units exist, somewhat disconnected from the other units, makes the extreme specialization necessary for our existence possible in a way that having one part of a seamlessly connected whole perform a specialized function could not.

And cells are specialized. For example, some skin cells seem to mostly be there just to act as a barrier between the organism and what's outside of it. Antibody-producing cells seem to manufacture only one particular antibody, helping to fight off only one type of invader each. Neurons (nerve cells) don't produce eye pigment, or secrete digestive enzymes, or carry Oxygen. They transmit messages, sometimes over long distances.

Each of these cells is part of one single organism. Each of these cells (except the antibody-producing cells, where there is some variation) has the same genetic information. But different parts of the genetic information are expressed in each different type of cell.

I'm made up of trillions of cells, and trillions more of my cells have died since my conception. I'm glad for all of them. Here's a web page, from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, answering the same question that I have.

Thanks for reading. I hope to post on being thankful for cell division in a day or two. To see another post on scientifically oriented gratitude, go here.

*   *   *   *   *

August 5, 2013. Upon looking at this post after a few years, I decided to add something: There's another way in which having cells helps organisms. It is related to something called the surface to volume ratio. What is that? Suppose you compare three pieces of jello -- each one containing the same amount of jello, in other words, the same volume. Further, for simplicity, suppose that the jello forms a cube, 4 units of length on a side. Inches, centimeters, pick your unit. OK. What's the surface area of such a piece of jello? It has six sides, and each side is 4 x 4 units squared in area. So, the total surface is 6 x 4 x 4 = 96 units squared. Now, lets take the second piece of jello. This time, we'll imagine that it is sliced across, such that there's a top half, and a bottom half. Then, we slice it again, twice, down from the top, at right angles, so that the piece of jello is now made of eight smaller cubes, each 2 x 2 x 2 units, four on top, four on the bottom. The volume remains the same. What's happened to the surface? The total surface is now the total of the surface of 8 cubes, each with 6 sides, each side 2 x 2, so that the total surface is 8 x 6 x 2 x 2, and the total surface is now 192 units squared.

Then, imagine that the third piece of jello is cut so that there are four layers of 16 small cubes, 1 unit on the side. The total surface will be 4 x 16 x 6 x 1 x 1 = 384 square units. The surface to volume ratio increases, as the object is divided into smaller subunits.

What's the point? The point is that, as a volume is divided into smaller and smaller subunits, the volume acquires more and more surface area. This is true whether the subunits are cubes, spheres, or of some other shape. If the volume is a living organism, that organism would have more surface, to absorb external material (such as Oxygen or water) and, also more surface area to expel unwanted wastes, if divided into cells.

As aside - I once saw a nestful of baby killdeers fall off a two-story building. Their parents had raised them from eggs on the roof. After a brief period of recovery, they ran off, unfazed. If I had fallen off, I wouldn't have been unfazed. An elephant would have likely have been more seriously injured. Why? At least partly because a small bird has more surface per volume than I do, hence, more air resistance. An elephant, or a whale, has even less external surface per volume.

Thanks for reading.

C. S. Lewis and biology, scooped

Back in November, I posted some criticisms of the biology in the Narnia books, by C. S. Lewis. To put it concisely, where did Tumnus shop?

I recently read Alan Jacobs' The Narnian: The Life and Imagination of C. S. Lewis, an illuminating treatment of Lewis's life and work. (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2005) Ruth Pitter, a good friend of Lewis, recorded a conversation between the two of them on this subject (Warren Lewis, the brother of C. S., was also present). According to this account, she pointed out that Narnia was in perpetual winter, with no foreign trade allowed by the Witch, and asked Lewis: "Then how could the Beavers have put on the splendid lunch?" Lewis attempted to explain, but Pitter pressed on. Warren said "Nonsense, Jack; you're stumped and you know it." (pp. 268-9) Jacobs cites Walter Hooper's C. S. Lewis: Companion and Guide by Walter Hooper (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1996, p. 721, as his source.

So obviously I'm not the first to think of this. Hardly a shock.

Why animal predators, parasites, and death?

The question of animal suffering and death may not seem important, but it is. If God's creation was good, then how do we explain predatory animals, or animal suffering? If God designed the world, how do we explain malaria (which lives in human blood cells) and the mosquitoes that transmit it? Did He design them to make people sick?

The only serious article on these topics that I am aware of was published in the June, 2004 issue of Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith. The article is "Why Were Dangerous Animals Created?" by David Snoke, who has scientific credentials (although he is not a zoologist) and is also licensed to preach. The article has numerous references to scripture, and any educated person (such as you) should be able to understand it. In .PDF form, it is 9 pages long.

The answers to the questions posed by the title of this post have implications for one's view of origins (or the reverse), for God's goodness and sovereignty, and one's view of existence in general. I don't expect all who may read Snoke's article to agree with him, but he concludes with a high view of God, and His creative ability.

If you want to read more on parasites, here's Carl Zimmer's discussion of a wasp that turns its cockroach host into a zombie. Really!

Thanks for reading this post.

Why is there sex?

When I taught biology, I could count on an answer to that question, whenever I asked it: "reproduction!"

I then pointed out that many organisms reproduce just fine, thank you, without any sexual activity, and that an awful lot of sexual activity, especially in humans, has little or nothing to do with reproduction.

So why is there sex? Well, I'll give the common biology text answer. (The real one, of course, is "I don't know," or "That's the way God made things," or some such expression of ignorance.) That answer is that sexual processes are a means of combining the genes of two parent organisms, thus allowing better combinations of their genes to appear in their offspring, and be selected for.

Sex is not found in all species of organisms. Where it is found, it often has profound consequences -- consider the fate of the male praying mantis, for example. Regardless, I'm glad it exists, because without it, I wouldn't be here.

Another, related question, that we also can't answer is how Jesus Christ originated. Did he have any genetic material from Mary? Was a Divine sperm created within her womb, by the Holy Spirit, that united with one of her eggs? We don't know.

I have also posted on "Why do living things have cells?"

Thanks for reading.