As you are reading this article perhaps you are smelling something. Maybe someone is cooking in the kitchen or perhaps someone has walked past you who is wearing some perfume or after-shave. If so, some of the six million smelling cells inside your nose have been stimulated. Have you ever noticed that, when you have a cold, you cannot taste your food so well? That is because the sense of smell helps to identify the finer flavours.

It is also why our noses are where they are; they help us make sure we are only putting good things in our mouths. There are tiny hairs on the smell-receptor cells inside our nose and they detect smells by their shape. Yes! I am sure you did not know smells had shapes. The different smell shapes fit into different hair sensors which then send electrical messages to the brain, where the smells are organised and analysed.

The average person can detect up to 10 000 separate smells. How could this ability to smell have evolved? How could the smell receptor hairs have evolved? Evolutionists might argue that a mutation produced a hair shape that matched the smell of a dangerous predator; so the animal survived because it could smell the predator and get away more quickly. All this might sound plausible, until you consider that this would have needed at least another 10 000 such positive random mutations. Remember, we still do not have evidence of even one positive random mutation!

As you read this, maybe you are sitting in a comfortable chair with a cushion on your lap, or perhaps you are sitting on a hard chair wishing you had a soft cushion to sit on. How do you know how to hold this magazine without letting it fall from your hands? How are you able to turn over the pages one by one without crushing them? All these sensations and actions come about because of your sense of touch.

We can detect four different types of sensation: heat, cold, pain and pressure – and these combine to give lots of different feelings. Our skin surface is constantly monitoring our contact with the environment. There are different types of receptors all over our bodies constantly taking in information about the world around us and about what we are doing. All the different signals being sent to the brain are important for our protection, pleasure and well-being. Does this sound like the work of lots of random mutations or does it sound like an intended design feature?

Perhaps, while you are reading this article you are having a snack: maybe some coke or coffee; perhaps a bag of crisps; or, if you are trying to keep healthy, an apple. Maybe you have a sweet tooth, and you like chocolate and sugary things; or perhaps you prefer savoury snacks like crisps and nuts. Whatever our personal preferences, we all recognise different tastes in the same way.

On our tongue there are over 10 000 taste buds. As food passes through our mouth, the taste buds collect molecules from the food by their shape, size or electrical charge and then send that information to the brain to be interpreted. Meanwhile other sensors detect the texture, temperature and moistness of the food. As we chew and break up the food, our saliva glands are at work producing saliva to make the food easier to swallow and digest.

There is no evidence of primitive animals with partly-formed tongues, lips or mouths. What use would a partly-formed mouth have been? And what use would a mouth have been without the food pipe to connect it to the intestines? Clearly, all the parts of the eating system would need to be formed at the same time before a person or an animal could eat and get nourishment. Yet Evolutionists have to assume that many random mutations took place over a very long period of time, and that natural selection recognised these random mutations as useful. Their theory gives rise to more questions than answers. Creationists accept that God has given us the gift of taste and that this is how He designed and created us.

The brief overview of our five senses given here demonstrates how amazingly complex and intricate our bodies are. The different aspects we have been looking at are highly complex, but the fact that they all fit together and can work in harmony for the benefit of the individual is even more wonderful. It would be good if everyone could say as David did: “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).

If people who believe in evolution would really consider how complex is the world around them, they would have problems. They would have to conclude that, no matter how many random mutations occurred, human beings could not have been produced, nor could any of the wonderful plants and animals in the world around us. The evidence from the past that is available for scientific analysis fits easily into a Creationist’s view of the world; but it needs a lot of speculation to make it fit even partially into the evolutionary view. Evolution is the only branch of science where speculation is accepted as reliable evidence.

Although it is good and right to acknowledge God’s wisdom and power as our Creator, He has given an even greater demonstration of His wisdom and power in His plan for saving sinners from their sins. So each one of us should ask God to “create a clean heart” within us (Psalm 51:10). Then we might know something of the experience which the Apostle Paul wrote about to the Corinthians: “If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new” (2 Corinthians 5:17).

We hope these articles will encourage you to read more about the evidence for Creation and against Evolution – especially if you are likely to face questions on the subject during your education or in your workplace. There are many good books on the subject, and the quarterly magazines produced by Answers in Genesis are also an excellent source of information.`