- Series:Evolution’s Mistakes, Humans, Transcript English
We have for so long been led to believe that early man evolved from the animal kingdom and, thus, began with little intelligence. But is our mental capacity today really the result of evolution from brute beginnings?
From time to time, individuals display a mental capacity that far exceeds their need of it. This anomaly presents a serious challenge to the theory of evolution. Consider the example of George Koltanowski, International Chess Grandmaster. In 1960 he played against 56 other chessmasters simultaneously, winning 50 games and tying 6. He took about 10 seconds per move and was blindfolded throughout the entire nine-hour marathon! This is an incredible achievement of the human memory. Evolution is said to depend upon chance mutations that give the individual a survival advantage, but it is difficult to see how this would explain George Koltanowski’s extraordinary memory capacity.
It is sometimes suggested that most of us only use part of our brain capacity, while a genius uses almost all of it. But why would an evolutionary process have given us all this capacity in the first place? A far more reasonable argument is that today’s genius is simply an unusual retention of ancestral brain capacity that reminds us that God created man in His own image.
Genesis 5:1
“This [is] the book of the generations of Adam. In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made he him.”
Prayer: Dear Lord, please help us to recognize that You created us in the beginning in Your perfect image. Sin has caused us to fall a long way from that perfection, but You have provided a way through Jesus to make us whole again. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.
Notes: Hooper, J.R. & A. Whyld. The Oxford Companion to Chess. Oxford University Press, p. 206. Photo: George Koltanowski playing many games of chess simultaneously, doe-oakridge, PD.
