Blog

by Steve Risner

The human body is an astounding machine—far more complicated than any of us could ever be aware. I've recently written blogs on the brain, the liver, the circulatory system, the hand, the eye, and taking care of this marvelous temple. Today I want to just give an overview of the incredible human machine.

In so doing, I hope to illustrate the sheer silliness of the popular belief that this terrifically complex collection of integrated systems could arise through any unguided, random process of mutation.

I realize this is a strong statement to begin a blog post with, but I truly believe that if one understands the complexities of biology and reproduction then the concept of evolutionary common descent becomes simply ridiculous. There is a peculiar anti-intellectual stubbornness in forcing oneself to think that this body, built of at least 12 different systems composed of over 7,500 named parts, sorted into anywhere from 60 to 1,000 specialized organs could be the result of random natural selection. I say this because it's possible to classify each bone as an organ as well as each muscle of the body. We rapidly exceed 1,000 if we do this. I feel this is overkill. Let's limit the list to the internal or external parts that are specialized in purpose and fairly self contained or distinct. And to view the body as a bunch of isolated individual parts (mechanistic thinking) is naive and fails to see how interconnected the entire body truly is.

As stated, the body is composed of 12 systems – the nervous system, the circulatory system, the digestive system, the endocrine system, the immune system, the respiratory system, the integumentary system, the excretory system, the reproductive system, the lymph system, the muscular system, and the skeletal system. We also have the special sense organs that have their own systems. This is marvelous! It's amazing the coordination necessary to interlock and integrate all these systems together to make a breathtaking machine whose complexity is unrivaled. Let us also consider that, aside from the reproductive system, we can't really live without all of these in place and working correctly. True, we can survive for short periods with one or even a couple of these systems impaired, but rarely without lots of medication and lots of external aid.

The brain, brainstem, and spinal cord (the central nervous system) control and coordinate every function of the body. It's impossible to live without these organs functioning and communicating with ever part of the body. It's estimated that the nerves of the body, laid end to end, would span nearly 600 miles! If you removed every other tissue from the body except the nerves, you could still see nearly every detail of the human form including the details of the face. Let that sink in for a moment. Without the brain and brainstem and spinal cord, we could not exist. But wait! The brain needs oxygen. How do we get oxygen into the body? We have a respiratory system. But this is located outside of the cranium—where we like to keep our brain. How does the oxygen get to the brain? The circulatory system. However, the heart, the primary pump to move blood rich in oxygen, is not located in the lungs where the oxygen is drawn into the body. What about other nutrients? Oxygen is great, but it's far from the only thing we need to build and maintain this body. We have a digestive system to extract nutrients from food. But this has to have an interface with the circulatory system in order to get the nutrients from where they are to where they're needed. And what about removing waste products? What about protection from invaders? Our brains aren't impervious to infection. We need an immune system to protect us. This also utilizes the circulatory system as well as the lymph system.

I've hardly scratched the surface but I hope the point is exceptionally clear—these integrated systems cannot exist without each other and there is no explanation for their existence other than special creation. The alternative is that they all arose simultaneously, which is not possible at all. The number of mutations that would have to take place at the exact same time and exactly the right way is incalculable. None of these systems can exist without the others. Evolutionist: please explain.

My hope in writing this is that you will see how necessary an awesome Designer is for life to exist. I've written about the human body (very briefly). This is one type of organism in a world filled with amazing creatures each with their own remarkable integrated systems. Biomimicry is an industry that “invents” things based on copying nature. When we do this, it's rare for our designers to create the efficiency of nature—which apparently figured out much better ways than we can mindlessly.

“Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex! Your workmanship is marvelous--how well I know it.” (Psalm 139:14)