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Wonders of Creation 71
Many years ago,
some intelligent person designed and produced a device called a mercury
thermometer. The thermometer uses the expansion of a fluid and the compression
of a gas, both sealed within a glass tube, as a means of displaying a
temperature, and after some time, some equally clever people connected this
principle to many other machines. Depending on the temperature some machines
will switch themselves on or off, such as the central heating in a house, the
ring on a stove, the electric blanket or an electric jug.
The human body has
a similar system of temperature registry connected to various responses. The
normal temperature for internal stability is 37 degrees. This is what’s known
as the “core temperature” and all the internal machinery in your body is geared
to maintain that temperature. This is because 37 degrees is the best
temperature for blood circulation, breathing, digestion and all the billions of
chemical reactions which go on all the time to keep you healthy. If a human
body is chilled, it becomes sluggish, and all the processes of metabolism slow
down – which is why some people think the secret to long life is to be cold –
but who wants to be in such constant discomfort just for a few extra years of
life?
There are three
ways the body keeps its temperature at the right level.
First is metabolism.
This happens when digestion breaks down nutrients such as fats, carbohydrates
and proteins into simpler materials and uses them for energy. Most people
notice how warm they feel just after a good meal, and how easy it is to stay
warm when they eat hot food. The heat from food is used by the body, and the
food is also converted into heat.
The second way is
through the skin. This all-round layer of insulation also soaks up heat
and transfers it to the blood, which distributes it through the rest of the
body. In cold conditions the arteries move closer to the veins, transferring
heat to them as they carry cold blood towards the heart and making it easier
for the body to warm the incoming blood, and the skin also contracts, closing
off capillaries at the extremities like fingers and toes. In hot conditions all
these reactions are reversed.
The third way is
muscle activity. Up to 90% of our body heat can come from muscles. Most
people have seen sports-people playing in rain on freezing days without showing
signs of feeling cold, or children running about madly in bare feet and skimpy
clothes, hardly seeming to notice that it is a dreadful winter’s day. When
people start to cool down they often begin stamping, or flapping their arms, or
they shiver. Shivering begins in the skin, when receptors send a signal to the
brain to alert it about temperature conditions. The brain then sends a signal
back, telling the muscles to vibrate.
If our core temperature
drops to 30 degrees most people become unconscious and if the temperature drops
to 24 degrees they usually die. In a similar way, if our core temperature rises
by a few degrees we may also become unconscious and soon die.
Of course if you
are rich enough, you can defeat the heat and the cold by plugging something in,
or lighting a fire, but this is not how things were done for thousands of years
before our ‘modern world’ appeared on the scene. Up until the time when fossil
fuels were exploited in a grand scale, people used to burn animal fat, or animal droppings (such as dried cow pats), straw, or
wood. But then, only a few hundred years ago the wonderful benefits of coal
were discovered.
Oil and natural
gas were discovered only about 200 years ago, and in that short time almost the
whole world has become dependent on coal, oil and gas for heating, cooking and
running machines. Man is rapidly using up Earth’s supply of these natural
resources, and some estimates have predicted that at the present rate of use,
all Earth’s sources of oil will be gone in just 35 years. Where do these fossil
fuels come from?
Evolutionists say
fossil fuels such as coal, oil and gas come from the remains of “prehistoric
plants and animals . . . very slowly, over hundreds of millions of years, the
bodies of dead plants and animals piled up layer upon layer. They were
gradually changed by pressure and by chemical processes. Because the bodies
were once living things, they had heat energy from the sun stored in them, and
that heat can be recovered when oil, coal and gas are used as fuel.” (‘You are
the Earth’ by David Suzuki, page 60, published by Allen and Unwin,
2000)
The usual
explanation is only half-correct and extremely vague on the details. Fossil
fuels do come from the remains of dead plants and animals, but they were not
accumulated over millions of years. The process of gradually building up layers
of dead things does not happen today, and it has never been observed anywhere
today, so there must be some other explanation for the presence of fossil
fuels. The Bible supplies that answer – fossil fuels were formed quickly and
suddenly by a global flood, which drowned and buried plants and animals so
quickly normal decomposition did not take place. If the fossils fuels were
really “hundreds of millions” of years old, the oil and gas deposits would have
long ago seeped away and the coal deposits would have eroded into nothing but
dust or sand.
So the next time
you feel a bit chilly and switch on a gas fire, or start the oil burning
furnace, or light up the coal range, think about where this fossil fuel came
from. The great irony is, our ‘modern civilization’
depends almost entirely on the energy it draws from the remains of a former
civilization.