What on a breakpoint, a daily look and an ever-changing culture through the lens of

unchanging truth? For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street.

Well much of being a Christian in the modern world is urging people to see what's really there, instead of just

dismissing everything as quote unquote nothing but.

Take the human embryo for example.

Abortion advocates have long labeled humans in these early stages of development as nothing but clumps of cells.

It's a description that's kind of like calling Michelangelo's David a clump of marble.

The only difference is that while art historians know virtually every detail of this statuary masterpiece,

scientists are still unlocking the secrets of the embryo.

In fact, just earlier this month, a team of researchers with the Australian Institute for Science and Technology

published a study about the and I quote here self-organizing properties of embryos.

In the paper which appeared in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,

two scientists proposed a mathematical framework for understanding how embryos go from a single cell to a trillions of cells organism without any apparent

centralized control. What they claim is that these biological processes

often resemble pieces of a puzzle coming together. And sometimes, the pieces appear to organize themselves,

fitting into place without any external input

or centralized set of instructions.

Kind of the way a school of fish or a flock of birds appear to make decisions to move as one,

even though no individual is in charge. But in the case of an embryo,

the so-called individuals that appear to make decisions and develop as one are microscopic cells.

As one of the scientists explained, and I quote, for many steps in this developmental process,

the system has no extrinsic signal that directs it what to do.

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