Psalm 94:8-9 “Understand you senseless among the people. And you fools, when will you be wise? He who planted the ear, shall He not hear?”

The Babylon Bee is a Christian website that will make you laugh. The satire they put into their articles is worth the time to read. Take this title: “Holy Spirit unable to move through congregation as fog machine breaks”. Or how about this one: “Mountain Climber recovering after decision to let go and let God.” Or my favorite: “Local family attending church on Easter just in case God is real”. Ok, maybe not that funny.

But since I really enjoy apologetics, I just have to expound on their latest article (April 19th) about local atheist ‘free thinker’ Jared Olson and his question ‘What Has God Ever Done For Me?’. Within their article are several allusions to God’s personal involvement in our lives, from the precise design of the earth for life to the amazing biochemistry of the human eye to the intricate precision of the human ear. Let’s break down some of these clear evidences for the reality of God’s existence and see if you agree with the Bee.

Their article begins like this: “Sources confirmed Tuesday that local freethinker Jared Olson called into question the ‘absurd’ idea that God had ever done anything for him… ‘The idea of ‘god’ is really just holding us back,’ Olson opined, addressing the other members of the philosophy club at Edmonds Community College, as the membrane across his larynx vibrated to modulate the flow of air from his lungs, making his speech audible to the people listening, whose intricate ear structures then instantly transformed the invisible sound waves into abstract thought in their brain’s nervous tissue.”

So let’s start by examining the Bee’s claim that it is God who is responsible for Olson’s intricate ear structure. Your ear converts sound waves into electrical signals that can be ‘heard’ by your brain via the auditory nerve. The reason ‘sound’ happens at all is because of the design of the ear, not the energy in sound waves. A noise loud enough to pain the ear measures only 0.01 watt of energy, and the faintest sound audible by the ear has a pressure of 0.0002 dyne/ cm2 (1 dyne = push of a healthy mosquito). The system that enables you to hear is unimaginably complex, made of different structures that have been carefully designed in the minutest detail. We can describe this complex system in six simplistic steps.

Step 1: sound waves are collected by the auricle and then hit the eardrum, which sets the bones in the middle ear vibrating (so sound waves are translated into mechanical vibrations). In Step 2, these inner ear bones (hammer, anvil, stirrup) vibrate the ‘oval window’. In Step 3, the ‘oval window’ sets the fluid inside the cochlea in motion (here, the mechanical vibrations are transformed into nerve impulses which will travel to the brain through the vestibular nerves).

In Step 4, inside the cochlea, canals filled with fluid contain the ‘organ of corti’, which is the sense organ of hearing. This organ is composed of hair cells. The vibrations in the fluid of the cochlea are transmitted to these hair cells through the basilar membrane, on which the organ of corti is situated. In Step 5, the inner and outer hair cells vibrate according to the incoming sound frequency, so I can hear different sounds. Outer hair cells convert sound vibrations into electrical impulses and send them to the vestibular nerve.

And finally in Step 6, the information from both ears meet in the superior olivary complex of the brain. The auditory pathway organs are the inferior colliculus, medial geniculate body and the auditory cortex. Both cochleas in our ears send signals to both hemispheres of the brain. I hear simultaneously with my brain, in perfect unison, from both ears.

I think the Babylon Bee is right. While Jared Olson defiantly asks the question ‘What has God ever done for me?’, the evidence says otherwise. This system of hearing, where a sound wave is first be transformed into a mechanical vibration so it can then be translated into an electrical signal so that the brain (our Central Processing Unit) can then interpret it as a noise, is an engineered design. If there is someone out there who can provide a scientific explanation for how the process of hearing arose by a random, unguided process, I am “all ears” (sorry – I couldn’t resist).

In our verse this week, God explains where this engineering marvel of my ears came from. He actually claims to have “planted”, i.e. made, my ears just for me. This, Mr. Olson, is only one example of what God has done you for both you and I alike. I choose to sing His praises for my ears.