Human Senses Defy Evolution, Affirm Creation

People tend to think of having five senses, occasionally pondering the possibility of a sixth sense when they feel something will happen or unexplained things occur. For that matter, a sixth sense has been attributed to various critters showing awareness of danger.

Actually, animals can be sensitive to vibrations, smells, and other things in their basic senses. So are we. (This child suspects that some things attributed to the supernatural are often our forgotten or suppressed senses being active.) Some researchers think we have about thirty-three senses!

Baby Reaching For An Apple, Mary Cassatt (1891)

Believers in descent-with-modification seek function, such as survival advantage. The senses under investigation do not always provide a survival advantage. Indeed, what is called cross-domain associations occur; senses in different areas must have come into existence at once — and they are active in children. What is observed points to the work of the Master Engineer and defies the piecework inherent in evolution.

Liu and Lupyan’s work reveals that our experience of the world is not confined to the five-sense model (originally articulated by Aristotle), but rather is characterized by a rich, overlapping tapestry of sensory and conceptual domains. Their research suggests that humans may possess between 22 and 33 distinct senses, all blending seamlessly into a unified perceptual experience.

From an intelligent design perspective, these findings highlight the remarkable integration underlying human experience. They also raise significant questions for evolutionary explanations that rely on incremental adaptation and chance co-option. Instead, they point to a purposeful architecture, where human minds and bodies were designed to integrate extraordinary complexity into coherent unity.

If this has your spider-sense tingling, you can read the full article at "Our Multiple Senses Cooperate."