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You are exceptional
"An average healthy human brain contains some one hundred billion nerve cells connected to one another through hundreds of trillions of synapses (one synapse can contain about 1,000 molecular scale microprocessor units). The studies’ results showed a single human brain has more information processing units than all the computers... on earth."
Dr Jeffrey P Tompkins quoting E A Moore on CENET Nov 17 2010
Can you believe it? All that between our ears!
(see Gallery 'The accidental brain')
Obviously most of us do not use our brains to anything like their full capacity, but now and then exceptional individuals give us a glimpse of the marvels our brains are capable of.
In the evening of September 7th 2018 the pianist Sir András Schiff sat down alone at the piano on stage at the Royal Albert Hall in London. For the next two hours he played music by J. S. Bach entirely from memory and without a break. The work was the 24 Preludes and Fugues, Book One of Bach’s ‘Well-tempered Clavier’.
The audience in the Royal Albert Hall, London
Part of Bach's original manuscript
To play from memory, the performer has to remember the key and time signatures of each of the 24 pieces, the pitch and length of each note, how each note stops and starts and how it relates to other notes either side and above and below it.
This is just one page of the entire work of about 120 pages.
One year later he did the same again, except that this time the music was different: Book Two of the same work, of similar length and complexity.
If the pianist’s performance was phenomenal, the ‘performance’ of the audience was also remarkable. For two hours 5,000 people sat in complete silence, listening to every note, absorbing this mountain of information, allowing it to stir their emotions and challenge their minds. Afterwards they were able to talk about it with their friends, to go home with memories which maybe would last a lifetime, so that in years to come they would be able to recreate and relive some of those unique moments.
Meanwhile our supposed nearest relatives, the Great Apes, continued to swing from tree to tree in the forests of Africa.
cheekylorns/ istock
Methusalape has good reason to feel pleased with himself. He has just thought of a theme for his 10th Symphony.
We are exceptional.
No matter how much the high profile atheists of our day may dislike and disguise the fact, we are totally different from the animals who are supposed to be our immediate ancestors in the evolutionary line of descent. And those differences are quite inexplicable in terms of the ‘survival of the fittest’.
Of what purely practical value is the gift of composing music, or the astounding manual dexterity and mental processing of the performers who bring it to life? Is the fact that we can question the very meaning of our own existence of any value in the struggle for survival? Probably the reverse. Acute intelligence is of very doubtful value if all we need to do is survive. "It is not clear that intelligence has any long-term survival value" says Stephen Hawking.
The book of Genesis gives us a satisfying and life-changing explanation of why we are so different. Mankind was and is a special creation by God, made, unlike every other animal, "In the image of God" (Genesis 1.27). As a reflected ‘image’ of our Creator, our unique abilities are a reflection of His. Our extraordinary creativity in so many different ways reflects His creative power, the skill which brought our universe into existence and designed its myriad life forms. He has given us the gift of speech, our unique power to communicate, and when we speak, we do what He does; when He spoke in the beginning, He spoke the world into existence:
'Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light.' Genesis 1: 3
When God gave us these remarkable gifts, He gave us something else: freewill, the power of choice, the capacity to weigh up different courses of action and choose one from another, the power to choose just how we use these remarkable gifts that He has given us.
"We are unquestionably a unique species – the only species capable of even contemplating ethical issues and assuming responsibilities – we uniquely are capable of apprehending the difference between right and wrong, good and evil, right and improper conduct"
Wesley J. Smith, author of ‘The war on humans’
We have a choice to make. Do we recognise the One who gave us these great gifts, who made us so exceptional, and follow Him, or not? The great Old Testament prophet Elijah spelt it out to the people of his day:
"How long will you falter between two opinions? If the LORD is God, follow him; but if Baal, then follow him"
I Kings 18: 21
Most people, then and now, have rejected God and followed the idols (‘Baals’) of their day, with terrible consequences for humanity. God’s great gifts to us are squandered and perverted, to the point where we threaten our own future on this planet.
You can make a different choice. You are exceptional.
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Intelligence and purpose in the natural world
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