I like to learn about what makes people tick; it’s fascinating to discover why I and everyone else do the things we do. If you become a good student of these things you can gain a lot of influence to make people do the things you want. Plus, it’s fun to laugh at our oddities and easier to accept our difficulties when you understand what’s going on.

The ‘Lizard Brain’

For sure if you go into business and marketing you’ll hear about this one; you can see it straight up from Seth Godin. It’s the most common evolutionary idea I hear from people trying to teach me to sell books and get you to visit my website (and sign up to hear from me each week).

Here’s the story (as based on NPR):

Millions of years ago, our ancestors were reptiles. They had tiny brains just coming together from the scattered neurons of the jellyfish that they developed from. All they cared about was survival and pure enjoyment.

Flashy is good. Give me more!

Loud is dangerous. Go something!

Later, our mammal brains added other things, giving us memory (like elephants), higher emotions (like love), and the ability to think rationally.

This Idea Works

If I put up a blinking sign (or a sliding popup) on my website, you are going to notice it. If I were to put up a video of a grizzle bear attacking, you’d notice that too. Before you can get people to care, you have to get their attention. Before you can invent the next amazing thing, you have to deal with your fear of being laughed at.

But, I’m a Creationist

The Bible tells us the only thing I have in common with a lizard is the same Creator and the day our first ancestors were made. Does this mean I throw out the teachings on lizard brains? Or, maybe should I start to doubt the Bible since the evolutionary explanation works so well?
Of course not.

Everyone has a story outline

No one sat down on some other planet, considered the evolutionary history of human development, and predicted that modern people would still have remnants of their lizard parents.
People who had already decided they wouldn’t accept God’s history of our creation sat down to explain what they already saw. They saw that the brain has a section properly called the limbic system and decided to compare it to a supposed ancestor.

The lizard brain isn’t a prediction of evolution; it’s an explanation that fits their worldview.

Everything about us has to fit what they already believe, or they either ignore it or invent a story to make it fit.

That article from NPR had some outrageous things to say about our brain like:

“From one perspective, the human brain is a masterpiece. From another, it’s 3 pounds of inefficient jelly.”

“And that means it’s very slow. Linden says getting a simple message from our feet to our brain can take a remarkably long time.”

“Our brains are also limited by design features we share with lizards, Linden says.”

“In one sense, we’ve had to pay a heavy cost for our big, inefficient brains: Childbirth is difficult, childhood is long, and our brains consume 20 percent of the calories we eat.”

Our brains are slow? inefficient? lousy?… Seriously?

You know what’s sad: the professor they are talking about and the author of the article believe it.

If that professor spent a few years studying computers and other engineering fields he’d have a much better grasp of the challenges God faced putting us together.

Here’s the truth

The Telegraph: “The most accurate simulation of the human brain to date has been carried out in a Japanese supercomputer, with a single second’s worth of activity from just one per cent of the complex organ taking one of the world’s most powerful supercomputers 40 minutes to calculate.”

The Blue Brain Project: “With its 100 billion neurons (brain cells) and its 100 trillion synapses, the human brain is a complex multi-level system. The connections among the neurons form a hierarchy of circuits, from local microcircuitry up to the level of the whole brain. Meanwhile at a lower level, every neuron and every synapse is a complex molecular machine in its own right. It is the interactions between these levels, which give rise to human behaviour, human emotion and human cognition.”

Scientific American: “Yet the Internet’s servers worldwide would fill a small city, and the K sucks up enough electricity to power 10,000 homes. The incredibly efficient brain consumes less juice than a dim lightbulb and fits nicely inside our head. Biology does a lot with a little: the human genome, which grows our body and directs us through years of complex life, requires less data than a laptop operating system. Even a cat’s brain smokes the newest iPad—1,000 times more data storage and a million times quicker to act on it.”

biology.stackexchange.com: “Brains do well what computers do poorly, and vice versa. The HP12C calculator on my desk, made in the early ’80s, can do many sorts of mathematical calculations faster than I can, because brains aren’t really optimized for doing, for example, compound interest calculations. But my brain, or my dog’s brain for that matter, can do all the ‘calculations’ needed to process a stream of images, recognize that they show a ball, predict its path, and catch it – while simultaneously processing visual, auditory, olfactory, and kinesthetic inputs for obstacle avoidance and threat recognition, and (in my case, anyway) perhaps thinking about how to solve complex programming problems.”

How long have the brightest minds in the world been focused on developing computers and their abilities to calculate, recognize, and process information?

And they want me to believe that mutations plus time produced my brain?

Based on what the Bible tells us, here’s what creationists expect to find:

As we study and learn more about living systems, whether the eye, immune system, or brain, we will find more and more evidence that there is no better possible way to have designed them. Much as evolutionists try to find problems with our brain, we predict they will be proven wrong over and over.

And those lizards? Think about it

Jesus wanted both the lizards and people to be able to survive in a fallen world. Just as the lizard needs to run or fight when a predator attacks, so a human needs to defend themselves from danger.
No creator in their right mind would invent a being that would have to consciously think through what to do each time something happened;

you would be lunch before you’d decided whether to run or act scary!

Why should it be “primitive” to find shiny and bright things attractive? Many of the things we find the most fun in the world are based in the part of the brain labeled “lizard” by the evolutionists. Every amusement park in the world is based around bright, colorful, and loud “attractions”.

Why should I have to live a dry, logic based life all the time to look ‘designed’?

The God who created us also created the peacock, stars, and the dragonfly. He likes colorful. He likes… fun.

When I learn about the limbic system, I see how different God is from the idols of the people. He created me with a spirit to worship Him, a soul to think, choose, and feel, and a body with everything it needs to survive.

I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvellous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well. Psalm 139:14

For more check out:

Answers in Genesis: Experiment: The Brain—Your Nimble Noggin

Institute for Creation Research: Your Brain Has More Memory than the Internet

Answers in Genesis: Have Evolutionists Found the Root of REM Sleep (bearded dragon lizards sleep like us)

Answers in Genesis: Brain: Shaped by Experiences