So That You Will Know
A stentor is a single-celled organism found in pond water world-wide. It is a trumpet-shaped organism and lives attached at its base to a bit of pond-bottom debris. Stentors can reach lengths of two millimeters; as such, they are among the largest known protozoa.
There is a curious thing about this tiny creature – if you poke it a little bit, it will retract. If you poke it again and again without injuring it, it will retract less and less. Eventually the stentor learns that your intent is harmless and will not react to your poking at all.
On the other hand – if you direct an acid molecule near a stentor, it will also contract. If you do that again, it will retract faster and faster. Eventually it will release its hold and float away – supposedly to a safer place. The stentor learns that the acid molecule is harmful and it reacts differently than it did to your pokings.
Here’s the curious part. We think of learning and remembering in terms of nerve cells and their connections. Yet this creature’s whole body is only a single tiny cell. It has no nerves or connections to any other cell. Neither does there appear to be any organelle inside the creature that would have the capacity to learn. How then does it learn and remember that your poking is harmless while the acid molecule is not?
It appears that something beyond our current understanding is at work. Could it be that something beyond the boundaries of the stentor itself is remembering things and directing its life?
Monarch butterflies live all over the world. One particular subspecies lives in North America and is migratory. Like most butterflies, monarchs have a life cycle with four phases: egg, larva, pupa, and adult There are usually four generations of monarchs every year. Most of the adults live only a few weeks—except one of the generations is special and lives as long as nine months. That generation migrates south and many overwinter on a particular mountain in Mexico. In the spring the monarchs return to their place of origin in the north – lay eggs and their cycle of life repeats. The round trip can be several thousand miles. How is it that only one generation knows when and where to go? They couldn’t have learned it from another butterfly. The brain of a butterfly is about the size of a pinhead so there’s not room for enough of the necessary amount of data to be stored.
It appears that something beyond our current understanding is at work. Could it be that something beyond the boundaries of the monarch butterfly itself is remembering things and directing its life?
Homing pigeons have been taken more than a thousand miles from their homes and they have found their way back very quickly. The birds appear to fly routes that are nearly straight lines from origin to destination. How does the homing pigeon do it? Theories about internal compasses have been proposed, but if such theories are true, they can only explain flying in straight lines. Such theories can’t explain how the pigeon knew which direction to fly nor how how far to fly to reach its home.
It appears that something beyond our current understanding is at work. Could it be that something beyond the boundaries of the homing pigeon itself is remembering things and directing its life?
There are countless reports of cats and dogs, ants and bees, eels and turtles and many other creatures with similar confounding mysteries in their lives. How do those creatures do it? Our most advanced levels of understanding the world fall far short of what those understandings purport to know. Then too, very little of our knowledge of the world even attempts to explain why such mysteries exist.
There is a fairly common phrase in the Old Testament that may offer an explanation. It goes like this –
“So you will know that I am God.”
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Each of us is a unique spiritual being. We are born individually, die individually and stand before God every moment of our lives as an individual. No matter how large a group we are in, our relationship with God is one on one. Therefore our worship and each of our styles of worship must be accordingly unique. That concept is developed and expanded in the book “Worshiping Alone” available on Booklocker, Amazon or Barnes and Noble If you haven’t read it, please consider doing so.
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God Everyday 