sels receiving 20% of all the blood pumped from the heart. If the blood flow is interrupted for 15-30 seconds, unconsciousness results. If blood is cut off to the brain for longer than 4 minutes, brain damage results. Four major arteries carry blood to the brain as a sort of "fail-safe" system. And, the brain is protected from damage by not one, but three major systems: (1) the outer skull bone; (2) the `dura mater' (Latin for "hard mother"--the protective lining around the brain), and; (3) the absorbing fluid, which keeps the brain from hitting the inner skull. With the brain properly functioning, all the other body systems (hormones, circulatory, digestive, reproductive, etc.) can be overseen and controlled. Are we, as Dr. George Gaylord Simpson of Harvard stated some years ago, "an accident in a universe that did not have us in mind in the first place"? Or, are we created "in the image of God" (Genesis 1:26,27)? Sir Isaac Newton once said, "In the absence of any other proof, the thumb alone would convince me of God's existence." How much more, then, should the cells, the brain, the lungs, the heart, the reproductive system, etc., be shouting to us that `there is a God, and He is not silent.' As the psalmist so well said, "I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made" (Psalm 139:14). Or, as Imogene Fey has observed: "The birth of every new baby is God's vote of confidence in the future of man." Dr. Lewis Thomas, the renowned medical doctor and author of `The Medusa and the Snail', commented in that work about the "miracle" of how one sperm cell forms with one egg cell to produce a single cell that will, nine months later, become a new human being. His conclusion: "The mere existence of that cell should be one of the greatest astonishments of the earth. People ought to be walking around all day, all through their waking hours, calling to each other in endless wonderment, talking of nothing except that cell.... If anyone doe...
