Have I Not Made the Eye and the Ear?

As you know, I love science because science is what God does. You think science has been hijacked, that somehow God is not scientific. No, He created everything. Science are just the tools He has used to carry out creation. So I refuse to let that and concede that, no, these skeptics are the ones that do real science. No. God is the author. It's just a matter that the Bible and science complement each other. They don't substitute because the Bible is not based on being a science textbook. It's basically revealing spiritual truth, but in a real world with real evidence.

It's not poetry or some poetic expressions. No, it's God revealing things. So that's very important to take into account. Now, what we're going to look at are two of the great marvels of creation. The eye and the ear. And, as you can read here, God Himself says, well, didn't I not create the eye and the ear? In Psalm 94-9, it says, the one who formed the ear can hear, can he not? The one who made the eyes can see, can he not? Proverbs 20, verse 12 says, the hearing ear and the seeing eye, the Lord has made both of them. Darwin, who was the one that expounded on evolution, said, the eye to this day gives me a cold shudder.

He said it was absurd to think it evolved. And yet, because he was a materialist who did not accept anything other than matter, he had to come up with some explanation. There are five senses that we have in our body. Sight, hearing, taste, touch, and smell. With those five senses, we perceive everything around us. Pretty soon, the Apis are going to do their magic, and we're going to smell a very nice aroma.

It's so great to have the sense of smell. It's very nice to smell the flowers, the wonderful atmosphere around us. It's nice to be able to taste food. That's another great marble that we take for granted. Just think that you put substances that you can taste and enjoy. First comes the main meal, and then comes a dessert, because sweet things are special. My dad taught me a big lesson in life. He said, you don't start with your dessert, and then go to the main meal.

No, you do the hard thing first. You go through the meal, and then you deserve the dessert. See, people live life. Let's go for the dessert. Let's do everything that's nice and happy and sweet, and then they don't do the hard things. Now, first constitute your life.

Do the right things, and then enjoy the dessert later. Have a wonderful relationship. Do the hard thing. Build that relationship. Work on it. Hone it down so it'll fit, and then enjoy the dessert. Everybody seems to be teaching now in this society. No, no, just go for the dessert. You don't have to do the hard things, and then you find out 50% of the people end up in divorce. And so, everything in life.

You get your education first, then you'll work. Hone your skills, your mind. Get a good profession. Work at it. Nowadays, this generation that we have has so many free education that wasn't there 20-30 years ago. It's even easier to go to college now. And Esther Bailey, whom we had the funeral, she was 92 years old. And she came when she was eight months old to Los Angeles. And they were immigrants, and they didn't have money.

She said they lived in a tent in Los Angeles. They had hunger. Some days they didn't get enough food. But they worked. They developed. They got businesses going. And what strikes me is that the children were all able to educate themselves and their grandkids. And every generation is so much wealthier than this generation that went through the Great Depression and all the difficulties.

And now you have the opportunity to really advance farther than your parents ever did. And so we come back to what we're talking about here. About the dessert, what is, first of all, it's the hard work of educating yourself. And just to understand the marvels of the human eye and the human ear should be one of the greatest evidence for our belief in a creator God who cares for us. If he went through all that work, it wasn't so we would become dumb people, right? He gave us all of this because he wanted us to study and to learn to have a relationship with him.

And so today we have these countering arguments and Darwin is still taught at the schools, at the colleges. Now, in his origin of the species of which I was reading last night, he starts by saying that, yes, when I look at the human eye, it looks absurd that these organs of extreme perfection and complexion would be able to be done in a step-by-step manner.

So he starts admitting that that looks just about impossible. But then he says, but I can conceive that maybe something that was just the light sensor in an amoeba eventually developed into an eye and how step-by-step you have all of these different types of eyes in nature. See, the problem, as they bring out, is that you can imagine things, but the other thing is where is the concrete evidence of the eye evolving from one animal to another?

So you see, he used the idea that, well, if I can conceive something, then it's possible, even though it's absurd. So his argument has a fatal flaw.

And that is, he said, well, even if you have an imperfect eye, as it's developing a half an eye, they say, well, half an eye is better than no eye. Now, what's wrong with that argument? Can anybody tell me? Yes, Ray. We need all the components of the eye to work. Exactly. I mean, you need the thing to be all connected. If you just have half of the connections, my cars aren't going to run. See, you got to have, even if it's a simple source, a light sensor, you need to have it all connected. And then, as it evolves, you have to evolve connections that are all fitting together. You can't just have all these strings of wires that then they eventually are going to evolve into getting connected. What use are these loose wires? See, that's going to be eliminated. A good book on the subject is Francis Hitching. He wrote the book, The Neck of the Giraffe.

And this is what he writes. He says, for the eye to work, the following minimum perfectly coordinated steps have to take place.

The eye must be clean and moist, maintained in this state by the interaction of the tear gland and movable eyelids. So, what good is an eye if you don't have tears on it? It's going to dry up and die.

So, you have to have all of these things to keep it. Anybody here have problems with moisture in their eyes? You know, where people have to be putting all kinds of teardrops? Well, imagine if we didn't have tears. It wouldn't work. You could have 100% of the eye, but you forgot the tear duct. You forgot that it's not going to work. It's going to be useless. The eyelashes act as a crude filter against the sun, so you need eyelashes, too.

I know girls think eyelashes are just to attract boys, but they do have an important purpose. Now, the size of the eyelash of women, that's something else. They've got more eyelashes than men do. Okay, and then the light has to pass through a small transparent section. The cornea. So you've got to make a tube with a lens to protect it, and it has to be connected all the way to the back. And then you need this pupil that adjusts so the thing won't get burnt up with too much light. So you have this pupil to open or close.

And then, of course, all of that has to be a lens that focuses to the back of the retina.

A hundred million of the impulses with a retina are transmitted every second.

That's a billion. A billion per second. Now, you can imagine how do you evolve something like that? And, of course, that goes to the brain, which recreates the image. You don't actually see the image through the lens. The retina recreates it. So from a light, it becomes a chemical, and then eventually the nerve senses it and recreates it.

Years ago, I remember in one of the sermons about a world turned upside down that this scientist put on these goggles of a mirror, and he saw everything backwards, and he couldn't see anything else. And so he would walk around, and everything, you know, the tree was backward, and he was trying to hold on. But he said that in two days or so of doing that, the brain realized something was wrong, and with the lenses put on, he was still seeing backwards. It reversed the image, and he could see perfectly, and he could walk.

So the whole image was reversed in the brain, seeing the same thing. That's how smart the brain is. So he says, hitching, it is evident that if the slightest thing goes wrong en route, in the way, if the cornea is fuzzy, or the pupil does not dilate, or the lens becomes opaque, or the focusing goes wrong, then a recognizable image is not formed. The eye either functions as a whole or not at all. So how did it come to evolve by a slow, steady, infinitesimally small Darwinian improvements? Is it really possible that thousands upon thousands of lucky chance mutations happened coincidentally so that the lens and the retina, which cannot work without each other, evolved in synchrony or in harmony? What survival value can there be in an eye that does not see?

Small wonder that it troubled Darwin. He said, to this day, the eye makes me shudder because he's trying to explain something that just does not make sense. Okay, now let's go and those that everybody has, did everybody get one? Let's go over this.

The notes. Here you have the eye. We already talked about the cornea, the pupil, the lens in the front, the iris, and then what is called the choloid, which is the large part of the eye, the optic nerve that goes to the brain. But I want to focus on that little space that is amplified, which has to do with the rods and the cone cells.

Just to show you how complex it is, the second image shows the connections.

And you have different connections, the rods and the cones.

You see how they are attached to the retina.

This is the way it transfers the image seen to the connection of the retina that goes to the optic nerve, and then you get the image.

And actually, the image that you get from the retina is backwards. So the brain normally, it just naturally switches it back. That's why if you have lenses that are opposite of that, the brain can reverse it.

Okay, now comes the test.

Okay, how many rod cells? First of all, the rod cells, what kind of sensors do they produce? Yes. Light. Correct. Light sensors.

How many million would you guess there are of these rod cells? 14 million. 14 million, yes. 20 million. 20 million.

No.

Yes.

That's a little too much. But it's actually 120 million.

That's a third of the population in the United States.

Can you imagine having 120 million people all organized to do one thing? Well, this is what the cells, this is what they do.

That's in a single eye.

Now it functions in less intense light and is used in what kind of vision?

Night vision. Peripheral vision is called.

Responsible for, Bill mentioned it, night vision.

Aren't you glad when you go to the bathroom at night that you can actually find the toilet without turning the lights on and waking up? Well, we're all thankful for these rods.

Now just think, do you need that actually to survive? Maybe not. But boy, it sure is handy.

Especially in olden days when people are out at night, where you don't have any source of light. Sometimes it's a very dark black night, but you still have those sensors.

It detects black, white, and shades of what? Gray. Gray. All 50. Yes.

Many types.

And then you have the cone cells.

Detects what?

Color.

How many million do you think?

Actually, they're not as many as the others. It's harder to get the light from darkness than during the sunlight. You have seven million of these cone cells. Seven million.

The highest concentration is at this area that talks about the fovea centralis.

It's more of the central area of the eye.

And it functions best in what?

Functions best in what?

Yes, bright light.

That's why, even taking pictures, you need bright light.

And it perceives what kind of details?

Fine details.

Able to see every hair on one's beard.

There are three types of cone cells, each sensitive to one of the three primary additive colors. Always go back to the three primary colors that artists use.

Yes, yes.

They are red, green, and blue.

And from all of these, you get all the varieties.

I'm sorry. It's not green, it's yellow.

Red. Okay.

Well, I guess they got it wrong. But it should be red. I guess it says green here, but who knows? What does it say? Primary, I mean, it's green. It's yellow and green. Right. So we'll have to check on that. That's an interesting point. Usually it should be red-yellow, but it says green. So somehow, maybe it's able to change it out. Or there's an error here.

So we'll Google it. Yes.

So that has to do with the human eye. And now, let's turn over the page to the ear.

The second most important sense. Does it say, mixing green and blue? Yeah. Right. But does it say anything about the eye? The three primary color wheels. Yellow, blue, red. Okay. So, but I would like to see from the eye itself, if we, what kind, the cones, what kind of perception, just if anybody has that information.

Now, let's go over the three parts of the ear. The outer ear serves to collect and channel sound to the middle ear.

So we don't think this really works very well. But if you didn't have your ears, it would sharply reduce what you pick up. Because the sound waves would just bounce off your side of your head. But this all has all of these ridges to channel. It has to go into the tunnel.

The middle ear serves to transform the energy of a sound wave into the internal vibrations of the bone structure of the middle ear. So once it goes into the ear canal, then that inner ear is able to push through.

And the middle ear transforms these vibrations into a compression wave.

So it has to compress it.

The inner ear serves to transform the energy of that compression wave into nerve impulses that can be transmitted to the brain.

So you're converting sound energy to mechanical energy to a nerve impulse that is transmitted to the brain.

Again, it is the brain that does the work of getting us to understand what the sound is all about.

So let's go over the graph. See how well we can answer.

Sound waves are collected by the what?

Outer ear. And are funneled through the ear what? Canal to the inner ear, which it starts with the eardrum.

Just like a drum that's a little flap of skin at the end of the canal. And that's the eardrum. Just like a battery, but these are the vibrations hitting the eardrum.

Sound waves cause the eardrum to do what? Vibrate.

The three bones of the middle ear transmit and amplify the vibrations to the oval window of the inner ear.

Okay, what in the inner ear stimulates nerve endings? What is it that is involved here? The hair. Fluid. Fluid in the inner ear stimulates nerve endings called what?

Hair cells.

Approximately about some 10,000 of them in each ear.

Impulses are sent from the hair cells along the what? Auditory nerve. Auditory. Very good. Nerve to the brain. So you have the optic nerve, which is the one for sight, and the auditory nerve for hearing. And then, going below, what kind of noise exposure is one of the leading causes of hearing loss? Loud or negative. Yes, or excessive. That's why parents go nuts with the kids that want to listen to such loud music. Excessive noise exposure.

What in the inner ear are easily damaged by loud noise?

Yes, the tiny hair cells. And once you lose them, they never grow back.

So be careful what kind of noise and music you're listening to. It might sound cool, but afterwards, that's why a lot of these rock stars, you see them at the age of 60. Huh? What? What? What? They blew out their whole hair cells!

Machinists, too. Loud motors. So let's read, and we can get that barbecue. I want to start using my sense of smell.

And then of sight. And then of taste. And then of touching.

Notice the external auditory canal.

Oh, by the way, you can see here the eardrum.

Next comes the anvil, because it's kind of shaped like an anvil. And then you have a stirrup. It has a hole in the middle, just like you'd put your foot in.

So those are the three that move and vibrate. So the first one is here, the eardrum.

That's where you have the first space to write it down.

The eardrum. Well, you have the hammer and the anvil.

The hammer and the anvil, because one is touching the other. And then you have, at the end, the stirrup. So now, let's read the last two scriptures in 1 Corinthians 12, 13 through 18.

For in fact, the body is not one member, but many.

He says, And if the ear should say, Because I am not an eye, I am not of the body, I'm skipping here down, is it therefore not of the body? You know, some cell might say, Oh, I'm not the eye or an organ, that's not as important. And people, Oh, I haven't much use in the body. This is what Paul is saying. Everybody has a function. He says, if the whole body were an eye, just like the Disney movie on the monsters, right? Monster University, the one eye?

Nobody wants to look like that. If the whole body were an eye, where would be the hearing? If the whole body were like an ear, hearing, where would be the smelling?

But now God has set the members, each one of them in the body, just as He pleased. He knows what He's doing.

So there's a comparison. We all need to work together. Whatever we can do, let's do it together, contributing as we can, as God has given us, the different gifts.

I can't barbecue like Jesse can. I'm very happy Jesse's there. I would botch it up. I would botch it up.

So He knows how to prepare the bread, to break the bread. We need that.

1 Corinthians 2, 9 and 10 says, but as it is written, eye has not seen nor ear heard, nor have entered into the heart of man the things which God has prepared for those who love Him. What a fantastic future!

We're so appreciative. He gave us eyes and ears and all of these wonderful senses. But God has revealed them to us through His Spirit. For the Spirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of God.

So, although seeing and hearing are so important, having God's Spirit is even more vital to understand the purpose of life and His plan of salvation.

We don't necessarily need to see and hear. We have members that are blind and deaf, and yet they have God's Spirit. So, it's more important to have God's Spirit than even our physical senses.

That, my brethren, is the wonderful evidence of creation that God exists and cares for us.