THE EVIDENCE FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD PART 4
So far in our study of the evidence for the
existence of God, we have briefly examined the cosmological argument, which
states that ever creation must have a creator, but the majority of our lessons
have been based on the teleological argument, which states that every design
must have a designer. We have briefly examined our universe and how everything
in our galaxy is mathematical precise and how earth has just the right placement
to sustain life. We examined many facts about our earth, its atmosphere, its
oceans, and its geology to show that everything is too complex to have just
happened by some random chance. We also looked at some of the scientific
foreknowledge of the Bible.
In this lesson, we are going to continue to
use the teleological argument. We are going take a look at the human body
because it too defies evolution. As the ancient scholar Augustine said:
“men go abroad to wonder at the height of the mountains, at the huge wave of the sea, at the long course of the rivers, at the vast compass of the earth, at the circular motion of the stars; and they pass by themselves without wondering.”
Sometimes we get so caught up in looking at the beauty and complexity of the universe and other living things around us that we forget to think about how marvelous and complex we are. Those who do not want to believe in God simply try to explain away our origin by saying that we some how magically evolved from that first creature that crawled out of the water into the complex creature we are today all by chance.
The more we learn from our modern science of just how complex we are, the more ridiculous the evolutionists look. Even evolutionist cannot deny the immense complexity of our bodies. As one evolutionist said:
When you come right
down to it, the most incredible creation in the universe is you – with your
fantastic senses and strengths, your ingenious defense systems, and mental
capabilities so great you can never use them to the fullest. Your body is a structural
masterpiece more amazing than science fiction (Guinness, 1987, p. 5).
Can anyone honestly describe a human as being a structural masterpiece and then in the same breath say that masterpiece just happed by luck, or does it make more sense that the masterpiece had an artist? To me the answer is simple, God is the artist that created us, and every part of our body down to our cells screams intelligent design and not some lucky mutation over a long period of time.
For simplicity’s sake, we can break the body down to four areas:
When you examine these 4 areas of the body and how they make the body live and function, it becomes quite clear that our bodies were designed. As Wayne Jackson said:
“It is therefore quite
clear… that the physical body has been marvelously designed and intricately
organized, for the purpose of facilitating human existence upon the planet
earth.”
First, let’s consider the complexity of a cell. It has been estimated that an average adult has 100 trillion cells in their body. If our cells were put end to end, they could encircle the earth 200 times. Our cells are different shapes, sizes, and have different life expectancies depending on what they do. For example, our red-blood cells are saucer-shaped and fairly flat, which makes it easier for them to transfer the oxygen and carbon dioxide they carry through the body, while nerve cells have long, thin extensions to transmit messages (Pfeiffer).
Before we had the technology to examine a cell closely, some thought the cell was nothing more than a blob of protoplasm. As Lester and Hefley put it:
We once thought that
the cell, the basic unit of life, was a simple bag of protoplasm. Then we
learned that each cell in any life form is a teeming micro-universe of
compartments, structures, and chemical agents.
A single cell can be broken down into three major categories:
The membrane
recognizes with its uncanny molecular memory hundreds of compounds swimming
around it and permits or denies passage according to the cell’s requirement.
Though scientist like this can see such complexity in the cell that is uncanny, they have to continue to chalk it up to a random mutation that happened over time. Just this one layer of our cell shows that it was intelligently designed.
I ask you, do you think that amount of information which is stored chemically in such a small package could happen by some random mutation, or do you see it like I do as something that had to have been intelligently designed?
Consider what Wayne Jackson says about the structure of the DNA:
A DNA molecule is
composed of units of nucleotides. These are chemical combinations of
sugar-phosphate and four bases – adenine, thymine, guanine, or cytosine. These
bases bind the nucleotides in the spiral DNA molecule. In a strand of DNA the
nucleotides are arranged in a specific order, along what sort of looks like a
twisted ladder. The order of arrangement forms the “blueprint” that regulates
the production of all living things.
It does not matter if you are looking at the cells of a tree, a mouse, or a human, the DNA is the blueprint that tells the cells what to be. The DNA code is like having a program for a computer. If you install Windows on it, then it will be a windows based system, but if you install Apple on it, it will be an apple system.
Let me ask you question. Did the code that makes widows or apple work just happen or did it have a creator? It had a creator. Same thing is true when you look at our DNA or the DNA of other creatures. The code did not just appear, no, it stands to reason it was created by an intelligent designer which we know is God.
In their book “The Mystery of Life’s Origin” the authors ask an interesting question:
“… an intelligible
communication via radio signal from some distant galaxy would be wildly hailed
as evidence of an intelligent source. Why then doesn’t the message sequence of
the DNA molecule also constitute evidence for an intelligent source?”
Dr. James Coppedge has this to say:
“By all the rules of
reason, could there be a code which carries a message without someone
originating that code? It would seem self-evident that any such complex message
system, which is seen to be wise and efficient, requires not only an
intelligence but a person [behind it].”
One more fact about DNA is that yes it contains the code of life, but it cannot implement the code directly to produce things. Instead, the DNA produces an acid called RNA, which takes the blueprint from the DNA and makes it a reality. To put it another way, DNA is the contractor and RNA is the worker who does the building. So, DNA and RNA must work together to assemble the human body. Again, these complex things working together to form the human body are a clear testament to the fact that we are designed by God.
I agree with David who said:
Psalm 139:13 For You
formed my inward parts; You covered me in my mother's womb. 14 I will praise You, for I am
fearfully and wonderfully made;
So far, we have only
examined one of the smallest parts of our body: the cell, and we have already
seen how complex it is. The cell by itself defies evolution for me, but as we
continue to look at how our bodies work and how things have to be just right
for them to work together proves beyond a shadow of a doubt to me that there is
no way we happened by random mutations that happened over millions of years.
Now let’s examine some of
the details from the second category of our body the tissue. I will begin by
highlighting the muscle system. There are more than 600 muscles in the human
body, which make up about 40% of our weight.
According to Dr I. MacKay
Murray, a professor of anatomy:
The muscles are the “engines” of the body,
providing the power for movement.
Thus our muscular system is the engine of our bodies. When have you ever found an engine that happened by accident? Again, our muscular system and all that it does offers more evidence of intelligent designs.
Some of our muscles are very tiny such as the ones that regulate the amount of light that enters our eyes. Others are very large such as our leg muscles. Our muscles are classified as voluntary and involuntary. One must think and send a signal from the brain to make voluntary muscles move such as your arms, legs, and hands. However, involuntary muscles are not controlled by us thinking, they work with no thought on our part such as our heart and our intestines. We also have some muscles that are both voluntary and involuntary such as our eyelids and our diaphragm.
Many our muscles work in pairs such as biceps and triceps which allow us to bend and straighten our arm. These muscles are attached to our skeletal system, which is an engineering marvel itself. Our muscles make it possible for us to move around quickly and to move with precision.
Each muscle has its own stored supply of high-grade fuel, which mainly comes from sugar that we have eaten. Just as an engine creates a spark to ignite the vaporized gasoline to make its pistons move, Miller says:
A muscle cell
performs the functions of both the spark and the piston; the cell itself splits
a molecule of fuel and also exerts the resulting physical power.
Even an evolutionist named Dr. Lenihan writes:
The body’s engines
[muscles] … demonstrates some surprisingly modern engineering ideas.
Who was the great engineer that made the engines of our body possible? Again, I must say it was God and not evolution. When we consider how our muscles are controlled by our nervous system by precise signals and how some muscles like our stomach are stimulated chemically by the hormones in our bodies, it shows how complex and precise things are in order to make our muscles work throughout our body.
I also find it interesting how our muscles work with our bones. The more you work out your muscles, the stronger your bones become to support your new muscle mass.
In his book, Human Design, an evolutionist William Beck wrote:
The intricate
structural organization of the muscles and the tendons in the hand, are capable
of such a wide variety of actions.
He also said that this phenomenon was:
One of evolution’s
most remarkable achievements.
Also consider the following snippet from an article in the magazine, Today’s Health, which was saturated with evolution including saying that our hand was evolved from a fish fin. Yet note what even they concluded about our hands:
…If the most gifted
scientist cudgeled their brains [try to comprehend] they probably could not
have come up with a stronger or more perfect tool for grasping and delicate
manipulation as the human hand. And seen from an engineering standpoint, the
loveliest hand actually is a highly complex mechanical device composed of bone,
tendon, fat, and extremely sensitive nerve fibers, capable of performing
thousands of jobs with precision (Wylie).
Think about what these evolutionist have admitted. They called the hands a remarkable achievement and spoke of their intricate structural organization, and how they are a highly complex mechanical device that not even man could have came up with. Though they want to cling to there their beliefs, their statements disprove the idea that something like our hands just evolved by accident. They are way too complex to have not been designed.
Consider what Alan Gillen wrote concerning the design of the hand:
The movement of the
hand and fingers of a concert pianist is an awesome sight. The necessity of
coordination, timing, and order to play Beethoven’s “Fifth Symphony” or Bach’s
“Jesu. Joy of Man’s Desire” is a feat that is not accomplished by chance. There
is a marvelous skill not only in playing the music, but also in the 70 (35 in
each hand) separate muscles contributing to the hand movement of the keyboard.
The hand has been
described as the most sophisticated “tool” in the body. It looks like it was
crafted for maximum dexterity and strength in movement. The hand is capable of
58 distinct movements. These movements allow for dexterity and power for a
diversity of actions ranging from piano playing and threading of a needle to
holding a jackhammer. This amazing diversity of functions is accomplished with
the help of muscles in the forearm and wrist.
The fingers have no muscles
in themselves; the tendons transfer force from muscles in the forearm and palm…
Orthopedic surgeons could write many manuals suggesting various ways to repair
hands that have been injured. Yet, there has never been a surgical technique
that succeeded in improving the movement of a healthly hand. It frequently
takes over a dozen muscles and tendons working together with the opposable
thumb to accomplish one movement.
No wonder Sir Isaac Newton once said:
In absence of any
other proof, the thumb alone would convince me of God’s existence.
When you really think about your hands and all they can do, it is absolutely amazing and shows how we are wonderfully made by our Creator. Even evolutionist will agree that while we share similar muscles and movements with animals, we stand a part from them in different areas. Such as two evolutionists wrote:
Only man can combine
muscles with intelligence and imagination, plan and purpose, to plow and plant
a field, to create a museum masterpiece or the “
Isn’t it interesting that men like this can admit to the complexity of the human body and what we can do that other animals cannot, yet they want to say we evolved from some lower life form? What this shows is that we did not evolve from any animal because we are different than the animal kingdom.
Another example of this difference is the 28 muscles found in our face that allows us to make facial expressions to either be silly or to express our mood. It has been estimated that we can make a quarter million different facial changes. Unlike animals, humans are the only ones that can smile. I know some will look at a dog or a primate and say look they are smiling, but according to Cosgrove:
Primates may appear
to be smiling when their lips are drawn back with their teeth showing, by this
is actual an expression of anxiety.
Even our two evolutionists agree:
Many animals can
produce a grimace or a snarl. But only man is equipped with such an exquisitely
differentiated set of muscles – the mimetic musculature of the face – with no
other function than to express and communicate feelings (Miller &
Goode).
In conclusion, we have taken a brief look at just how complex our bodies are. So far we have only examined our cells and our tissues like muscle. These by themselves have shown that they are way too complex to have evolved over millions of years because too many things had to be in place at the same time in order to make the human body function and move like it does. While we will not have time to look at every area of the human body, I hope you will join us for our last lesson in this series because we will take a look at some more of the design of the human body, and we also take a quick look at a couple of God’s creatures that defy evolution as well.