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DUST AND DEITYWonders of Creation that cannot be explained by Evolution
If you read that inimitable study, "Mistakes God Did Not Make." in the Sunday School Times (Jan. 6 and 13, 1940) by Dr. Shadduck, you will know what to expect in this new classic from this gifted seer, thinker, and humorist. With merciless logic Dr. Shadduck shows the hopeless impossibility of the "clever" evolutionary conclusion of an eminent college president. This new article brings together astounding but undeniable faces of God’s erection in the world of nature, the lower animals, and man. In this first installment Dr. Shadduck tells something of the wonders of plant and animal life. In the concluding article next week he discusses man, the "masterpiece." When you have read both articles you will doubtless agree with the Pittsburgh reader who wrote: "I consider Dr. Shadduck’s articles great receding for youth now in our colleges and universities, especially for those in our high schools and in young people’s departments in our Sunday schools." When, as a lad of sixteen, I had reached a goal in my school program, my father offered a kindly comment that I did not appreciate at that time. He said. "Son, you know more now than your father or mother; you know more than you ever will know again." Hidden in this cryptic phrase was a prophecy that, when I reasoned more, I would realize that I knew less. That prophecy was fulfilled, I "knew" then what life, mind, matter, and force were; I do not know now. Like millions of youth, I had only earth horizons. If there was a life after death, I thrust the thought from me, because I understood that I must die to get it: I did not know I could have it before I died. Later, there came the conviction that I must reckon with God, and that until I entered into covenant relations with him all my hoarded information was like cargo on a ship with a landlubber pilot—a ship sailing to nowhere. THROUGH TELESCOPE AND MICROSCOPE With a new program adjusted to an invisible kingdom in a visible world, I turned back to my studies. With a telescope, my teachers opened up vistas of space beyond human comprehension; with a microscope, they convinced me that a teaspoonful of stagnant water contained more than a million animals, and finite mind was baffled by infinity. When I took up the study of ultimate reality, scientists took my world apart, denied the validity of my senses, and tried to loosen the foundations of my faith. An eminent philosopher who was a president of a college used to say to his class, "Oh yes, I believe that God made man of the dust, but he used an ape mammy to gather the dust." If anyone asked how the ape was made, the answer was that some animal of a lower order gathered the dust, and so on, back through dust-gatherers to a microscopic bit of protoplasm that must take all the responsibly. High caste people would like it better if God had made man of opals, rubies, and pearls, but they balk at the raw material that they classify as dirt. Others who hold the Bible in high esteem—second only to the writings of their favorite authors—accept the obvious fact that man is made of dust; but it shocks them less to be told that God put the dust through an ape refinery. Why anyone who ever has occasion to pray would not want a resourceful God I do not understand, unless denial of miracles lends itself to scientific swank. Unbelief often passes for incredulity. For minds that must have a conventional God, It eases the strain to relegate the miracle of creation to the remote past, make it as small as possible, have it happen but once or twice, and hope it was an accident. Many who profess faith in Christ concede the claim that the creation story is an allegory, failing to see that the theory makes a myth of the resurrection. If God needed an ape to make man of the dust, he will need another one to raise man from the dust. LEARNING TO TRUST THE WORDS OF CHRIST The driving motive of this paper is to offer helps to those who have been confused by the compromises of professed friends of Christ. I would say to the student, "Distrust the leadership of any professed Christian who doubts what Christ believed." • A pastor at Windsor, Canada, who has arranged to distribute "Dust and Deity among his young people, offers the kindly criticism that Christ did not believe or doubt anything—HE KNEW. We accept the amendment. What the author had in mind was the obvious fact that our Lord had ample opportunity to make any needed corrections in the Holy Scriptures of the Old Testament, and the author would distrust the leadership of any man who appoints himself long overdue helper of God to correct what he thinks has been overlooked. Science that has to do with material things could not possibly know anything of mind and personality apart from matter, and it could not possibly know that God could not or did not make man as the Bible says he did. Faith in God is not less than science, it is more than science. Anything that God does that is not an observed habit is called a miracle. Some scientists would shut God up to the deadly monotony of doing nothing that is not routine unless He lets them see Him do it. If there have been no miracles, then Christianity is the greatest hoax that has ever been foisted on a sin-steeped world. If a magician confuses spectators with hocus-pocus and seems to take out of a hat what had not been put in, it fools the children. If a miracle-dodging theorist juggles with millenniums and takes out of a theoretical bit of plasm horns, hair, fins, feathers, eyes, nerves bones and brain, does it fool you? All the ramifications of life were in that first living cell, if they have since come out of it, and what a storehouse of wonders it was!
Personally, I would not marvel so much at a man making a complete watch, as I would if he made only a hair spring and soaked it in warm water and metal filings until it became a watch. Before God used dust as the wrapping paper for life, at was already full of pulls and pushes, affinities and aversions—the playground of mighty forces. As solid matter is only dust stuck together, it may help some to reflect that there was nothing else that God could not have put life into and have the living thing visible. The physicist says that dust is made up of molecules. If you have any difficulty in believing the Bible, the things that science has to say about molecules will put a heavy strain on your credit department. I quote from a twenty-volume encyclopedia much used in our schools: ‘There are as many molecules in a rain drop a there are drops of water In the Mediterranean Sea." Do I believe that? I can give no good reason for denying it. Molecules are made up of atoms that are smaller. Now,—if you do not have a weak heart—the atoms are miniature solar systems, and just as planets go around the sun, the atom has a central core and satellites dash about it at a speed of 186,000 miles a second. They say that I have 1O,O0O,O0O.0OO,OOO,OO0.000,OOO,0O0,OOO,OOO, of these satellites or electrons in my body. That is, ten thousand, million, billion, trillion, and in my laziest moments they are all moving at that terrific speed. I try to believe it. I have been meek in my attitude toward scientists. Like a young robin in a nest, I swallow everything they bring me and revise my educational content when they change their minds—unless they dispute the God of the Bible, who does not change His mind. How fortunate we are that the theory of the atom as a group of things in motion provides that the motion is circular. Going at such amazing speed, if your electrons maintained a straight course for a millionth part of a second, you would be scattered all over the neighborhood. There are times when I am staggered by the pronouncements of science and, in the words of at Scottish friend, "I hay me doots." I have been taught to stand in awe when science speaks, but when they oppose revelation with theories, I have learned to trust revelation; it has never let me down. WHEN GOD PUT LIFE INTO DUST When God lifted land above sea level, He saw that it was good." The Bible indicates that angels have curiosity (I Pet. 1:12). Certainly they accepted God’s appraisal that it was good, but they may well have wondered, "What good?" All heaven must have looked on when God put life into dust, and, under the spell of that life, microscopic particles of that dust began to march and countermarch in the building of a plant. Is there a mind in plant life? I dare not say that there is, but there is something that directs activities with the precision of an experienced architect. There are a hundred thousand forms of vegetable life and each kind sets up a hermca1 laboratory and transmutes the environment into building material peculiar to that plant and puts the building blocks into place. One kind of Life builds an onion, another an oak or a melon or a mushroom. From the same soil and air, one plant stores up bitterness, another sweetness, another poison. The life itself, and whatever determining factors it has in it, is invisible, intangible, elusive, and when it leaves the plant, no one sees it go, but anyone may observe that it has gone, for the millions of workers turn into mummies or crumble in decay. The casual thinker seldom reflect on the marvel of SHIFTING GROWTH In a plant. It is as though a congregation desiring a church, and having nothing but a great heap of clay and sand and sawdust and lime and Iron filings, buried a prayer in the jumble of materials and forthwith the elements of the trash-heap began to build a church exactly like the pattern in the prayer. Now suppose this church is at first a very small church, but it pushes it own walls out and builds from within so that even the bell in the steeple is larger in the fall than it was in the spring. Is not this the way a peanut or a pumpkin would grow, fastening loose building material into the enlarging structure? If you would discover the stubbornness of the architect within the plant, try to persuade a bean vine to go around the pole in the opposite direction from that which it is determined to go. Wonderful as is growth, it is no more wonderful than that, after the insensate dust, inspired by life, starts growing, it stops growing when it ought to stop. If an angel with miracle working powers supervised the growing of a stalk of corn, he could not do better than the cells of the plant do under the spell of corn life. Such an angel, as superintendent of construction, could only say at the proper time: "Now you are tall enough to crown your head with a tassel Send out braces from your lowest joint or the wind will blow you down. It is time to project an ear from your middle and wrap it with husks and silk." Something makes the millions of cells in the plant know that it is time to stop growing and start getting ripe. When plants were created, "God saw that it was good." Unless the angels could foresee the future they might well have asked. "What good?" If they could not see reason for a hundred thousand kinds of plants, at least they were not so stupid as to argue that God could not work a miracle. LIFE IN ANIMALS The marvel of animated dust was multiplied when God hid another kind of life in dust and these organized lumps of dust had a mind. That the reader may observe the truth of my statement, I limit the discussion to animal structures large enough to be seen. Mind is as invisible as life, and so far as human observation goes, it comes from nowhere and goes back to the same place. Animal mind has a capacity for love, hate. courage, fear, memory, and reason, but no more and no less than each kind of creature needs. The skunk is much more stupid than the fox, but the skunk has enough intellect and the fox has no more than it needs. There are many thousands of distinctly different types of animals, each equipped in its own collection of dust with its own type of motors, chemicals laboratories, sewer systems, building crews, repair gangs, and means of defense. adjustment, and reproduction. It would be incredible.—If facts could be incredible,—that some wisdom can reside in wet dust and direct its particles in the building of an intricate structure, according to a pre-determined individual pattern. It would not be more wonderful if an invisible draftsman directed an army of sightless deaf-mutes in the building of a battleship that could find its own fuel and ammunition, and repair any damages it sustained. It would be incredible,—if it were not so obvious,—that the millions of builders in an animal body obey some starter and stopper. Many people have never considered what a disaster it would be if animals did not start growing, shift growing, and stop growing. A newly hatched pigeon may double its weight five times in the first week. If it continued to double its weight five times every week for four weeks it would weigh over eight tons. When the baby pigeon becomes a plump squab, something stops the growth of the body and starts the growth of feathers. When the feathers have reached sufficient length, something stops the growth of feathers and starts the growth of reproductive organs. One of the baffling mysteries of animal life is a resident wisdom in creatures newly born or hatched that enables them to decide. without experience what is best and safest for them, exactly as though they had been careful observers for a thousand years of what was good or bad for their kind. DOES INSTINCT EXPLAIN THESE MARVELS? If an animal could have a guardian angel, its name might well be called INSTINCT. First consider that nine-tenths of the creatures big enough to be seen never knew parents, much less teachers. Could you imagine that a caterpillar knows that its mother was a butterfly? Yet the caterpillar knows exactly what to do and when to do it, in preparing for its metamorphosis. The silk worm never knew parents, but it wraps itself in silk more skillfully than a draper could do it. Who taught the honey bee to make hexagon cells? The mother wasp builds a chamber of mud and leaves an egg therein. I refuse to believe that the wasp with a brain that bulks less than a pinhead knows that the egg will hatch into a grub, which in turn will turn into a wasp, or that the grub will have an appetite for spiders, or that the spiders she stores the chamber with will remain stupefied and alive to feed her baby, or that the baby will be able to break a way through the walls of adobe; but she knows exactly what to do, and baby grub knows what it must do to fulfill the cycle of life. A chicken hatched in an incubator knows the language of its kind, and it will scurry for cover when the farmer lad imitates the cry of a hawk or sails a straw hat over the chick yard. Eels will live in fresh water four years, then go to the sea to spawn, and their babies will return to fresh water and the homes of their parents. Salmon reverse the process by going to the sea to grow up, and after four years return to fresh water to spawn where they were hatched. The following story of a beetle was told to a class in my presence, by a professor of Boston University. Neither the beetle nor I remember what its name was. The story begins with a beetle’s egg, thrust into the decayed surface of a dead log. In due time the egg became a grub and began eating its way into the log. As it ate farther into the log, it grew larger and of course, bored a larger hole. If it continued eating into the log until it reached maturity, it could not back out and after maturity it could not dig out, but how could it know that? To prevent such a disaster to itself, it curved its tunnel so that it would reach the surface of the log when it reached full growth. At the surface of the log it bored out a chamber just large enough to fit a beetle. How the grub knew that it was to be transformed into a beetle, and what would be the shape and length of the beetle, has never been explained. Now the gentleman beetles are twice as long as the lady beetles, because they have very long pincers projecting forward from the head. How could a grub know whether it would be a buck beetle or a doe beetle? Do grubs have fortune tellers to forecast their future? The grubs that will become male beetles dig their transformation chamber twice as long as the grubs with a feminine future, and for many minds the word INSTINCT serves as a flippant dismissal of the problem. When as a youth, I observed how inexperienced creatures behaved as though the spirits of their dead ancestors guided them, I asked questions, and the old folk answered with convenient abstraction. "Its just nature." Later, I found people who explained it by saying: "It is God. Nature is God—the only God we have.’ I knew one woman who prayed to the god in her flowers, and I could not resist the urge to ask her. "What about the god in the poison ivy? If there is a snake-god that helps the snake swallow a toad and a toad-god that helps the toad to escape, then Evolution may indeed be a religion, and escape by death in its heaven. Again, when animal life was created. "God saw that it was good.’ and again angels might ask, "What good?" It is difficult to believe that God could find entertainment for ages, looking at plants and watching animals. Editor’s introduction to the second article that
appeared in the ‘Sunday School Times’. At the beginning of this second and concluding part of this article on "Dust and Deity," Dr. Shadduck makes a simple but penetrating observation that at once greatly weakens the case for evolution. He shows how important it is to note the difference between men and animals rather than the likenesses. He is unusually well equipped to write on this subject, since he has had much personal experience in nature study on the form and in the field, and at the same time is a firm believer in the Bible as the verbally inspired Word of God. As is the case with many of the best writers of English, the reader will find in this article that laughter and tears are not far removed from one another, for Dr. Shadduck has a delightful sense of humor, and the tenderness of a loving father. While this essay is a strong argument against evolution, yet it is much more than that, for the conclusion touches the heart and impels one to have a more humble, childlike trust in the Heavenly Father. "And the Lord formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life (lives)" (Gen. 2:7). A nation’s destiny may turn on whether that nation believes it has
been upthrust from the brutes or handed dawn from God. It is a question
of whether man COMIARES himself with beasts or thinks of himself as in
CONTRAST. If you compare a diamond with a lump of coal, both are carbon, one is whiter. If you contrast them, one is a jewel. If you compare a caterpillar with an earthworm, the caterpillar crawls higher. If you contrast them, the caterpillar will develop proportionally greater wings than an eagle. If you compare a man with an ape, the man has better table manners, and it may be that in the matter of having a job, paying taxes, drinking liquor and being a public liability the advantages are with the ape. If you contrast them, the Son of God was cradled in a woman’s arms. If man is to beasts like the top flapjack of a stack of pancakes, let him make the most of the butter and syrup: if he is heir apparent, busy with trifles at the gateway of the King of kings, let him claim his birthright. MANS USE OF LANGUAGE Man makes and uses language; other earth creatures may communicate elemental slates of mind with a code of sounds born with them, and as much a part of them as their ears. If a hundred babies were raised by deaf-mutes on an island having no other human inhabitants, they would grow up and adopt a language by agreement. If a hundred kittens were put on the island, they would grow up and communicate with a code of sounds settled before they were born. So far as I have discovered, animals communicate with sounds that could all be grouped as shades of meaning of five words. I suggest, "come," "go", "beware," "give," "take." As an example, the "come" may mean come and help, come and eat, come and fellowship, come and fight. Contrasted with these elemental communications, man has languages written, spoken, and signaled Alphabets would be beyond the comprehension of animals Man has many. A boy scout who is deaf may learn six alphabets—capitals and small letters, written and printed, and alphabets made with fingers and flags. Could you by the wildest stretch of imagination visualize a fox on one hilltop waving a cloth to a mate on another hilltop to say that rabbit dinner is ready, and later being chided for misspelling a word? Man writes poems and makes speeches that become the heirlooms of nations. Man has a bent for music; there is no real music in any other earth-creature. Of course, many birds make musical sounds, and so do the toads, but similar motives prompt the donkey to bray, the crow to caw, the turkey to gobble, and the cricket to chirp. Bird songs are instinctive. The man who tries to get a four-part harmony out of a zoo will get his name in the Sunday papers, whether he succeeds or fails. HIS LOVE OF TII BEAUTIFUL Man revels in the beautiful. He loves to see flowers, sunsets, rainbows, and landscapes. He adorns his lawn, his house, and his person. Could you, even in a delirium, imagine any beast carrying a bouquet to its mate or wearing a many-colored basket on its head at a rakish angle? I know that it is argued by some that the colors of birds help them to get mates. This is certainly untrue in many cases, and as far as I have observed, it is untrue in all cases. The flamboyant rooster has no advantage over his dull-colored rival—it is a question of spurs and battle. I have experimented with pigeons, putting those that were snow white with others beautifully colored by nature, and adding some that were colored with brilliant dyes and the matings were settled by battle. Where males engage in battle, colors do not decide the matings. Birds are not more beautifully colored than many caterpillars, and caterpillars do not mate. Many marine creatures that do not see are radiantly beautiful. Why are they beautiful? I do not know, except that God chose to make them so. Man makes pictures, carvings, statuary. Even a savage can scratch the sand with a stick and convey information to another. No beast on earth can make a picture—not even a cubistic picture. Man is an inventor. Not in a million years would a family of apes make a bow and arrow, use a lever and fulcrum, or move heavy objects on rollers. Evolutionists have overlooked something. If they had credited some of the ancient arrowheads, crude pottery, and cave pictures to the apes, their pronouncements would have been accepted by the credulous as incontrovertible evidence of a missing link. DO ANIMALS MEDITATE? Man thinks things out. It is doubtful if any other earth creature really meditates. Animals sometimes learn by accident or imitation, and in many cases they can recognize one linkage in the chain of cause and effect. They may be taught many things and do many things by instinct, but thinking out a contrivance is beyond their mental range. A small child will move a chair and climb on it to reach the cookie jar and put the lid back on the jar to escape detection, but whoever heard of a cat that moved any object to put it in reach of the canary, or hid the feathers to remove the evidence of the crime? Even savages use fire, metals, pottery, traps, needles, thread, looms. fishhooks, weapons, money, boats, garments, tents, drugs, laws and courts. All these uses were arrived at by contrivance and continued by one person learning from another. Birds build nests, beavers build dams, spiders set traps, hornets make paper, wasps build with mud, but they did not learn to do these things. They are moved by instinct which is as much a part of them as are legs and wings. A pair of Eskimo children removed to another land will not build like their parents: a pair of beavers will. In sharp contrast to other creatures, man was given DOMINION over the earth and a commission to subdue it (Gen. 1:26-28). God put the fear of man upon all other creatures (Gen. 9:2). If some theorists do not know that, the animals do. If beasts are not wounded, or starving, or their young in danger, they will not attack man. There are rare exceptions where wild and domesticated animals have learned that they are physically superior to man, but the fact remains that an unspoiled lion will flee from a man. But whoever heard of a lion running from an ape? You can’t fool a lion with a theory as easily as you can a man. MAN’S BELIEF IN SPIRITUAL FORCES Man has a sense of God—he is inwardly aware of the supernatural. Because of this, there is more difference between man and ape than there is between monkey and mushroom. Since the first seducer came to the garden of Eden, traducers of God and seducers of men have led families and nations into combed and uncombed paganism, but however far man may get from the true God, there remains with him the conviction that there are spirit forces he must reckon with. Subjectively speaking, these gods may be good or bad, and men may frighten them, bribe them, wheedle them, cheat them, or sacrifice to them, as the witch doctors and medicine men direct. Among civilized men, those who have not committed themselves fully to the God of the Bible, stand in awe of black cats, umbrellas, ladders, mirrors, and rabbit’s feet, and a hundred other undefined forces called Luck, jinx, mascots, charms, and hoodoes. Even the stars are credited with shaping the destiny of humans. Man hungers for life after physical death. Animals have no theories of either life or death. Because man is God-like in origin and potentiality, he has paternal, fraternal, and filial love. It would he difficult to prove that animals have any other love than the instinctive urge to provide for the safety of the family. Consider that only a small fraction of earth-creatures know a family life. No one would look for love in an oyster or a toad: and among those creatures that have a family life, that which passes for love continues only so long as it contributes to safety. Parental concern for offspring abates amazingly when the young are old enough to shift for themselves. A hen with twelve chicks will be just as happy when eleven are taken away, if no alarm is sounded. The most intelligent cat I ever knew purred contentedly after four of her kittens were chloroformed and two were given away, because her protective instinct was not aroused. In three months she was not even polite to the remaining kitten. All the robins in the neighborhood will make frantic commotion when a young robin is caught by a cat, and papa robin may be singing again in an hour. Man’s sense of God is evidenced by the fact that he has a conscience and knows shame and remorse. No such emotion is possible in animals. The domestic animal may know what pleases or displeases its master, but it does not know moral right or wrong. It has been urged that a dog will manifest a sense of guilt. But the dog would manifest this sense of guilt if he dragged a drowning child from the water and his master scolded him for it. The creation of man supplies the motives for all previous earth creation. Until man appeared, earth might have been a museum for angels—a place to come and marvel that God could mingle life with dust in a million forms, all different, and nor use all His patterns. Can you imagine anything more wonderful than a fish carrying a lantern on the end of a pole? Whether or not angels were interested in a world being prepared for man, they became ministering spirits to the heirs of salvation when man appeared. MAN’S GOD-PLANNED LIFE I confess that any advantages brutes have that man does not have, will weigh against the claim that man is a superior creation, unless, it can be shown that the brute advantages would be disastrous to man. Let us paint the supposed disadvantages of man as black as the facts will warrant. Man has a long juvenile period—immaturity of body and mind. Imagine a girl baby and a heifer calf born on the same day. That calf may become a great great great great great great grandmother before the girl has her coming out party. How it would simplify matters for poor folk! How it would have helped my grandfather in the forest wilderness of Pennsylvania if five years after he built his log house, he could have had two full grown sons to help him, and five years later grandmother could have had two full grown daughters to help her. With a very few notable exceptions man is the least prolific of all creatures. Three fourth’s of the creature families of the earth that are big enough to see would have been extinct long ago if it took as many year and as much toil and trouble to bring as small a family to maturity as it tokes with humans. Why did God handicap humans in that way? The answer will be easier if you consider what it would have meant to morals and culture if humans were mature when yearlings. And you might reflect on how many wars and famines and pestilences it would have taken to have kept the population down to where all could have at least half rations. The human baby is about the weakest creature on earth during the first year of its life. When I held my first baby in my arms for the first time, the grandmother rushed to the rescue of the baby with the cry, "You’ll break her neck" It had not occurred to me that my baby could not hold her head up. It had not occurred to me that I wanted a helpless baby. I had not considered how annoyed I would have been if, when she was a week old, I had to leave my work and run her down when her mother wanted to wash her hands. Indeed, I would have been much disappointed if when I first saw her she had been sitting on a tricycle, chewing gum, and she had said: "Well, I suppose you are the old man. As soon as you find it convenient, I would like to discuss what nights I may have out and what my weekly allowance will be." "AS ONE WHOM HIS MOTHER COMFORTETH" I wanted a baby that needed me—a baby over whose sleeping form I could clasp the mother’s hand and pray to our Father to make me a good father. I wanted to watch her grow and guide her first baby steps. I wanted her to come to me when tired with play and be rocked to sleep I wanted to hear her first prayer at her mother’s knee, and when she was hurt with a fall, I wanted to see the smiles come back when her tears were wiped away. That is why the childless woman with the mother heart will borrow the neighbor’s baby to cuddle. Thai is why the little girl with a budding mother love will tenderly nurse her dolly, giving it imaginary medicine for imaginary ills and wrapping it well against imaginary cold. Because God made man in His own image, I know He is a loving God. Because Jesus said, "How often would I have gathered thy children together, as a hen doth gather her brood under her wings. . ." I know he is a yearning God. Without instinct, earth would likely be a desert. Without instinct that keeps insect eaters from extinction, worms would likely have eaten the vegetation up long ago. But God left instinct out of man. This will be disputed, but man does not have instinct, unless the word is used in an elastic way. The fact remains that a bee can find its way home when a man cannot. A five-year-old boy will pick up a bee: a five-day-old duck will not, I know, because I was the boy and in after years I watched the ducks. Why did God leave instinct out of man? Because freedom of choice and instinct do not go together. Instinct guides creatures as rails guide a locomotive. God created humans to be members of His family—not living machines. God wanted to fill Heaven with humans who had been first created in his image and then, after having the right to choose, wanted us to continue forever in his likeness. God wanted to guide his own children. The statement that God left instinct out of man, has been challenged. I have been reminded that certain "authorities" say that man, has instinct. It all depends on what the "authorities" mean by instinct. I asked a brilliant young school teacher who challenged my statement, to define instinct: "Instinct is an inner urge" she replied. Indeed, humans arc born with many inner urges and some of them are so bad that unless they are subdued or eradicated by being born again, we can never see the kingdom of heaven. The Lord Jesus is authority for that. Lest these urges destroy all that is worth while in youth, teachers and parents exercise discipline, and when they fail, the penitentiary may take over the task. The instinct I am talking about is an inner guide. Instinct guides the creatures and guides them right, unless man has devised some kind of trap that instinct cannot recognize. Instinct is not always a match for invention. It is urged that a baby has the instinct to suck. The tendril of a grape vine will curl itself about a wire, a string or the stalk of another plant but I am not aware that anyone credits the tendril with having instinct. Tie up the long branch of a raspberry bush so that the underside of the leaves is turned to the sun, and in a few days the stems will grow themselves into a twist that turns the shiny side of the leaves to the sun. Is that instinct in the stems? I once raised a young robin that had fallen out of its nest. When it reached maturity, it showed no fear of dogs or rabbits, but was freaked with fear when a cat in the door yard passed the window. That is instinct, and a thousand amazing manipulations of the inner guide in creatures could be cited. However, God has not left us without guidance,—there is the Bible, the Holy Spirit, and inspired teachers. How unfortunate is that youth, who has neither instinct nor God to guide him. God did not fill man with impersonal pulls and pushes, because man was designed to be the temple of the Holy Spirit—the abiding place of the Trinity. What an insult to God, what a tragedy for man, when Deity is crowded out! Let me illustrate this with a parable. A son of the far-wandering tribes of Adam, eternity bound was wrecked and washed ashore on a strange land. He built for himself a house of mud and made alliance with neighbors in like condition. The king of that country had pity on the squatters, and said to the squatter: "I will adopt you into the royal family. I will live with you until you have learned the ways of royalty, then you shall live in the palace with me." But the tenant answered, "Every room in the house is taken, but you may move into the lean-to." I have known men who gave much of their lives to vocation and avocation. To escape monotony, they found thrills in a dozen forms of sport. In an already crowded life, they squeezed lodges and clubs, committees and societies, and wondered why God was not satisfied with what was left. God invested in man. All that God did with dust for uncounted ages was to make a place and a dominion for man. All that God has done since (that we know of) has been to make an eternal place and kingdom for man. Angels are ministering spirits, and "devils fear and fly." Yet there are men, living in these dust structures that are already falling apart, who are BORED WITH GOD. It is sobering to read the words of the Lord Jesus that the dust buried cities shall give up testimony against the heedless in the day of judgment (Matt. 12:41: Luke 9:5). Dust! Formed of the dust; returning to dust; raised from the dust: facing the testimony of dust in the day of judgment. When one of my babies was old enough to talk, she slept in a small bed by the side of her mother’s bed. Sometimes she awakened, and the darkness and quiet left her in doubt as to the nearness of her mother. At such times she would call. "Mama, are you there?" And the answer came. "Yes, dear, Mother is here." "Mama, let me take your hand off to sleep." Then little hands pressed the mother’s hand to her baby breast and she drifted into slumber-land again. Let me covet for my readers that the presence of the brooding God may ever seem real to you, and when you are tired with the journey, when evening shadows deepen, when dust calls to dust, may you take His hand off to sleep. THE SANTA CLAUS OF BIOLOGY Consider the lilies. Matt. 6:28. Not all biologists believe In Santa Claus. To such I offer apology. I am discussing the theories of those who do. All living things plants and animals, have equipment that enables them to deal with their environment and wrest from it material that is used to grow, shift growth, and multiply. Some text books speak of these items of equipment as ADAPTATIONS, thus assuming that in the far past plants and animals lacked such equipment, but Santa Claus brought them. The Santa Claus in this case was Father Time. The ages relieved the distress of unadapted plants and animals with scarcely perceptible modifications that continued until they reached consummation at ADAPTATIONS. I will not object to the word if it is made to mean that God created all living thing to fit their particular environment and habits of life. The millions of cells in millions of plants build the plant and its adaptations according to a predetermined pattern. If Father Tame revised the ancient unadapted patterns how did the cells know the details of the patterns? Adaptations must be built at the right time, in the right place, of the right material. No human builder could do it without a brain and a blue-print, and cells have neither. To manufacture hard fiber, soft fiber, pollen, stigma, color, nectar, perfume, fruit, and seeds out of sap, sunshine, and atmosphere, there must be chemical laboratories set up at the right places and operated at exactly the right time. To assume that some master cell or convention of cells in the far past revised the original pattern and impressed the revision on millions of cells not in existence, requires a boundless imagination and a child-like credulity. If a plant could revise itself, IT COULD WORK ONLY ON THE BASIS OF UTILITY. It could never modify itself for the sake of beauty of symmetry of form. Can you imagine that plants would invent sex and put pollen and stigma some distance apart, so that flowers, nectar, and perfume would be necessary to bribe the bees to bring them together? without sex and separation there would be no flowers, perfume, or honey. Can you imagine that plants would revise their structure, just to be UNLIKE other plants and thus spare humans the monotony of seeing all plants alike? In making a world to please man, God would attend to just such
details. How would the millions of cells in a corn plant know that the tassel must be above the ear? How would it know that if the ear were placed higher, it would break the stalk’ how would it know that the weight of the growing ear would bend the stalk to the ground unless brace roots grew out of the bottom joint? On the other hand, why is the pollen put so far from the silk that it takes a thousand times as much pollen to insure fertility? And why are the leaves so very long that sap must travel ten times as far as in a round leaf? The answer is that God wanted symmetry and diversity, as well as utility. Vines will climb a string or a thick pole and where there is no pole, they will sometimes combine and thus support each other. That is adaptation, but it requires no change of pattern or chemical laboratories. Some go around a pole one way: some the other way. That shows stubborn fidelity to a fixed pattern. If seeds fell under the parent plant, they would have small chance to grow into mature plants. To insure the spread of plants, God has provided many devices for GIVING THE SEEDS A RIDE. The squirrels carry away and bury nuts and forget many of them. Dandelions, thistles, and milkweeds hitch balloons to their seeds. The tumble weed shapes itself like a ball. When snow flattens the surrounding grass, it detaches itself from its roots and the winds roll it across the prairie scattering its seeds. Mahogany seeds grow in a hard pod that is built in some way that its halves are put under great strain like a bent bow. Only a resourceful God could do it. When the seeds are ripe, the pod lets go with a sound like a pistol shot and flings its seeds far away. Burdock seeds have hooks and thumb rides with passing cow’s tails. Maple seeds have wings and go far in the wind, Berries resort to bribery. They supply fruit to birds for carrying away the seeds. Mistletoe has a most difficult problem. Its seeds will grow only limbs in the top of a tree. They must be fastened there, unmoved by wind or rain. To do this, the seeds are wrapped in delicious glue. When birds eat the berries, seeds stick to their beaks and are scraped off with difficulty, by wiping them into tiny crevices in the bark of a limb—where they stay glued. Can you believe that the mistletoe experimented for ages, until it tried glue and since then, it has survived? Within limitations, a plant will adapt itself to immediate needs.
This is manifest in grafting, cross pollination, and growing new plants
from branch tips, but the revision is in a human mind or an accident,
and in no case is It because the undisturbed plant lacked adaptation
(hat it was trying to supply. Any observant youth may see about him plants and animals that have items of equipment that were never acquired to meet a need, The whisk broom on the breast of a turkey gobbler, the meat beads on his neck, and the annoying appendage that hangs from his nose, are no more necessary to his happiness than eye-winkers on a wart. The tiny curled feather in front of a drake’s tail, is no more an adaptation to meet a need than the whiskers on a goat or the laundry marks on a blackbird’s egg. It pleased God to give marks, odors, flavors, habits, appendages, and identifying characteristics to all living things. Some equipment handicaps more than it helps—fortunately. The resplendent beauty of sea-shells is not an adaptation, yet involves more engineering skill than putting a curve in a hawk’s bill. What about the marvelous designs in a snowflake or the frost pattern on a window-pane? Are they adaptations? There can be no design without a designer—no adaptation without an adapter. Two stubborn facts must be obvious to any observing student of biology with an open mind. (1) The simplest forms of life have enough of the so-called adaptations to grow and multiply. The amoeba can find food, digest it, eliminate waste, multiply, and in drouth, encyst itself. The paramecium can do all this except encystment, and uses weapons in defense. If a simpler form of life desires to be some other form of life with a different flavor, shape, and equipment, it must first build different chemical laboratories to revise itself. To assume that it has a plan and knows how to follow it, requires a credulity only equaled by the assumption that it has no plan and revises itself like a colony of ants on a hot platter. (2) There never could have been a life that continued without a chemical laboratory to transmute something that was not itself into something that was itself. If you know what a cipher is, without a rim around it, what a bunghole is without a barrel, what color is without light, then you may know what a lifeless life is. Life is so commonplace that preoccupied folk overlook its unfathomed wonders. There is little that a miracle could do as not comparable with what life is doing every day. Conscious life may go dreadfully wrong: God testifies to that—Gen. 6:12. Whether the manifestations of life are beautiful as in flowers and birds, or dominant as in giant redwood and frowning Caesar, it ends in death. The life that is wrapped in dust, gives back the borrowed dust. There is a life that never dies. WHAT I LEARNED FROM A HEN Behold the fowls. Matt. 6: 26 In the days of my youth there were no l0¢ stores, and my childhood was not littered up with gimeracks. I played with living things—lambs, kittens, little chickens, and baby ducks. One favorite was a lamb with much bone in his head and a sad look on his face. To my immature mind sadness suggested piety, and I named him "Parson." However, he saved me from the charge of irreverence by growing into a sheep that was reckoned approximately perfect. I would not leave the impression that when I was a child, I made a scientific study of living things on the farm, but I did observe them and in later years realized that my youth had been surrounded by wonders that great thinkers are unable to explain. I choose to speak of a hen, because hens have less intelligence than any other fowl I have observed. This one was a fluffy chick that grew to henhood under my watchful care. It took only seven months to do this and she was a grandmother before I was too old to sit on my father’s knee. In some respects I envied her. She could sleep on a limb of a tree without falling out of bed. Of food within reach, she ate what she pleased, where she pleased, how she pleased, when she pleased and did what she pleased between meals. When half grown, she could eat one-third of her weight in succulent food in one day. On the same ratio, in the same time a husky boy could eat 12 pies, two watermelons, and a half peck of green apples. What more could a boy want than to be free to rest under a shade tree by a deep pool, with a fish pole, a wheelbarrow load of strawberry shortcake with whipped cream and chicken-like capacity? With her appetite the boy could be happy with a bushel of corn and a quart of broken oyster shell. Timid folk were called "chicken hearted" and I didn’t want a chicken heart, butt Oh for a chicken gizzard—my size! No toothache, no stomach-ache, just a gizzard with a lining that could wear out gravel. I used to wonder what law of survival gave a gizzard to chickens and little boys had to take stomachs and castor oil. And then there were teeth to be pulled. Have you considered how a poor family could pay its installments on a high priced automobile, IF they could grow their own garments, sleep in a tree, and live all summer on a load of chicken feed and a broken grindstone. After more mature reflection. I am most happy that my family was not chicken-like in appetite, growth, and numbers. If, from birth, I had doubled my weight as often as the chicken did, I would have weighed 512 pounds before I was weaned. If there had been as many half brothers and half sisters in my family as in hers, the disaster would have been appalling. Really. I am glad that God gave personal attention to the creation of man. IF GOD HAD GIVEN MAN THE PHYSICAL EQUIPMENT OF ANY OTHER CREATURE ON EARTH, even if he had added the mental and spiritual gifts that man has, the result would have been a calamity. Little as a hen knows, It is surprising how much she knows without learning. From the time the chick is old enough to leave the nest or incubator it understands hen language. A hen has two ‘words’ to caution her brood. One means hush, the other means hide. She is more vehemently vocal with other cries when fighting in their defense, or caught by the foe. As a lad, I learned to imitate a mother hen and found much entertainment in bidding them. "Hush" and "Hide" A hen knows when it is likely to rain. She knows her feathers ought to be waterproofed. She knows where there is an oil fountain on her body and proceeds to smear her face with oil and use her feathers for a towel. When my hen reached maturity she announced it with a song—a hen song.
Choir leaders will not understand how he did it the first time perfectly
without rehearsal. Having heard other hens sing the same tune. I made
her a nest in a secluded place and put her on it. She sat for perhaps
three Next day, she really laid an egg and we both cackled, or, to be more exact, we both made much ado over it. As she could not count up to two, I took the egg and left the door knob in the nest. As long as it was in the nest, she never missed the eggs. To celebrate the event, I gave the egg to mother to make into a birthday cake—the egg’s birthday. After about four weeks, she again did what she had never done before. She clucked. Up to that minute, she had never tried to chick, and then—she couldn’t stop clucking, except when she was on the nest. A new urge possessed her. She wanted to do what would be punishment for a hen without the urge. Over night she had become what we called a "settin’ hen". One might think it would be a torture to sit on hot eggs in hot weather for three weeks, but it is punishment to restrain a hen that wants to. A happy Christian life is assured, when God gives to believers a want-to that matches the ought-to of their lives. With my mother’s consent, I traded eggs with neighbors who had different breeds, so that my hen would have chicks that were black, white, striped, and spotted; and so they were. After the brooding had been going on for a week. I took a newly hatched chick from another hen and slipped it under my hen—just to surprise her. I surprised her and she surprised me. If I had not quickly removed it, she would have killed it. She had the urge to sit on the eggs, but THE URGE TO HOVER MOVING CHICKENS HAD NOT YET ARRIVED. After the urge arrived, she was a good mother. After Pentecost, the apostles were great preachers. Millions of saints have been happy in death because God made the pull of heaven stronger than the pull of earth. When the chickens hatched, that hen was a bundle of self-denial wrapped in feathers. She had been raised among cats—cats that knew chickens must not be disturbed, but she never allowed her barnyard education to smother the conviction that God put in birds, that creatures with claws, cannot be trusted. Rabbits and lambs could inspect her chickens but she staged a feathered blitzkrieg if a playful kitten came near. She knew from God-given knowledge, which ones had claws. There is given to humans a conviction that there is a God to be reckoned with. Any education that dulls that conviction, has eternal significance. When the chickens no longer needed the shelter of her wings, she drove them from her. In a single day they learned that it was dangerous to be near her. So far as I could see, the only interest they ever had in her was wholly selfish, and her interest in them ceased when they could care for themselves. Only man was made in the image of God with a capacity for eternal fellowships, and that image has been sadly marred by sin. Hens change their clothes once a year, if they discarded their old feathers all in one week, the chicken yard would be hike a nudist camp—a bad example for humans. Because the body temperature of fowl is normally higher than that of humans, a cold wave might destroy naked fowls. Birds that depend on flight to secure food and escape foes will neither eat nor escape if they discard many wing feathers at a time. It takes week’s for the new feathers to grow, and seldom have I seen more than two feathers missing from a wing. By some wise provision, a fowl will give up all tail feathers when the tail is caught by a foe. Piecemeal replacement of feathers could not evolve: it had to happen with the first birds. Speaking of feathers, millions of people have crossed the continent to see wonders, yet they never looked at a feather through a microscope. Thousands of years before man invented zippers, God had them working in feathers. As I write. I have before me the wing feather of a gull. Hollow quill, curved and tapered shaft with a pithy center, the silky strands of the vanes locked together with zippers. One vane is five times as wide as the other because exactly that ratio is needed. It is a marvel of engineering, with the greatest strength and durability with the least weight. I estimate that this feather has been used in five million wing beats and has lost about 10% of its peak efficiency. At the base of every feather on a fowl is a feather factory that can make a feather of exactly that shape, length, and color. Alter the feather is made, the factory closes down for another year, unless by accident the feather is pulled out. Marvelous as it is that a feather factory can make the kind of feather that is needed, when it is needed, from a stream of blood that is brought to it, yet a more profound mystery lies back of it. Who made the feather factory? The man who is waiting to see a miracle to convince himself that there is a personal God, has overlooked many things. If you are convinced that there is a God, do not rest ‘till you know Him. Something supernatural must happen in a man, before he can know a supernatural God—that is what regeneration means. If you are interested, read the words of the Great Teacher. Matt. 7:13-14. Getting into the family of God is worth the investment of your whole self.
My hen was white. The chicks were multicolored, but she never suspected that they were not her very own. If I had put hawk’s eggs in the nest, she would have mothered young hawks. I colored one chick with dyes and she disowned it, but I put it under her at night and next morning she owned it because it came our of her nest. Human minds, especially during the formative or brooding years of youth are incubators. A man will say. "I have a right to my own opinion." He regard his opinion as the hen did the chicks, though they have the markings of some teacher, text book, movie hero, or cult leader. The Lord Jesus said, "Take heed what ye hear." If you heed His warning, you are not likely to hatch a brood of opinions that are alien to God, SHADDUCK TOC |
