EVIDENCE OF INTELLIGENT DESIGN

IN HUMAN PHYSIOLOGY

 

By

 

Cal Hunter, DC, DRS

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

 

 

 

This book is dedicated to my wife, Jean, and my church, Highway Baptist Church, Seminole, Oklahoma, for their long and faithful support of me in my studies over the past three years   

            I also want to express my gratitude to my Lord, who has not only allowed me to go back to school at my age, but has also enabled me and guided me, in every step of the journey.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

TABLE OF CONTENTS

 

 

 

Introduction                                                                                                                  

 

Chapter I: Searching For Pieces of the Puzzle                                             

                        Life on the Cellular Level                                                       

                        Molecular Machines                                                  

                                                             

Chapter II: Our Amazing Brains                                                                 

                    Amazing New Discoveries in the Brain                     

                        Lessons From Sightless Children                               

                        Brain Anomalies in Feral Children                            

                        Incredible Idiot Savants                                             

                        The Human Brain and Consciousness            

                        Our Human Soul                                                         

 

Chapter III: Physiological Homeostasis                                                      

                        Our Cardio-Vascular System                                     

                        Oxygenation of Blood                                                

                        Enigmatic Blood Clotting                                           

 

Chapter IV: Maintaining Status Quo: Our Auto-Immune System             

                    Front Line Defense Tactics                                   

                        Vestigial Organs                                                

                        Celia and Flagella                                                      

 

Chapter V: Sight and Sound                                                                        

                    The Eye                                                                      

                        The Ear                                                                      

                        The Sense of Smell and Taste                                      

 

Chapter VI: Darwinism                                                                                            

                    The Origin of Life                                                      

 

Chapter VII: Darwinism: A Flawed Theory                                               

 

Chapter VIII: The Case for Intelligent Design                                          

 

Chapter IX: Creationism: Fact or Fiction?                                                 

                        The Evidence for a Creator                                        

                        Scientific Allusions in Scripture                                

                        The Evidence of Prophesies in the Bible                   

 

Bibliography

 

Subject Index

 

 

INTRODUCTION

 

Look not on the things which are seen,

but on the things which are not seen.  For the things which are seen

are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.

                                                                                    2 Corinthians 4:18

 

 

 

When I was a student at Oklahoma Baptist University, I knew God had called me to become a minister, but as I neared graduation, I became enamored with the study of psychology and decided I could fulfill my calling by becoming a psychologist to help people who were suffering from mental disorders.

            After graduating from OBU, I enrolled in Baylor University, where I spent two years in graduate studies of clinical psychology.  The study of psychology taught me to question many things I had never questioned before.  For instance, “Why shouldn’t I get on a merry-go-round at any age if I wanted to?”  After all, unfulfilled desires are often factors contributing to personality disorders.  Soon, however, I began to question why God had not done some things differently, and if He really meant all those things stated in the Bible.  In short, I lost my faith.

            While I came to doubt many things in the Bible, I never doubted that God exists and created all things, but I did come to doubt many basic tenets of Christianity that I had been taught all my life.  My doubts were not “intellectual topics” I wished to theorize and philosophize with others; instead, they were gnawing, inescapable doubts that produced a disturbing sense of futility and despair in the very core of my being.

            The best way I can illustrate the doubts and fears I experienced in the next fifteen years is to liken it to times when I have piloted an airplane in inclement weather, using flight instruments only.  Often, when one enters dark, ominous-appearing clouds, he encounters moderate to severe buffeting from turbulent air currents.  The clouds surrounding the plane are usually so dense that the pilot cannot see the ground or the horizon; and were it not for his flight instruments, he could even be flying upside down and not know it.  In such conditions, the pilot must be well-trained to trust his instruments—not his instincts. 

A pilot always breathes a little easier when he breaks out of the dark, dense, turbulent clouds into the beautiful, calm sunlit atmosphere above the clouds.  After approximately fifteen years of living in the dark, dense, turbulent clouds of doubt, fear, and confusion, I finally broke out into the beautiful, calm, exhilarating sunshine of understanding that flooded my mind, my heart, and my soul.  An inexplicable and profound sense of peace flooded my soul, and a depth of understanding such as I had never known illuminated my mind.  One of the major lessons I learned was that I had to change my psychology—not my theology.

I did not get to complete my Ph.D. at Baylor; Baylor was denied accreditation by the American Psychological Association.   As a result, I decided I would study to become a chiropractor, and I enrolled in a four-year course of study where I earned my DC degree.

It was after I had spent eight years in clinical practice that I had this phenomenal, spiritual experience.  It was so powerful and compelling that I gave up my clinical practice and entered the ministry.  

As a result of my own doubts, the study of Christian apologetics has been a life-long passion.  One of the greatest sources of compelling evidence for my theistic beliefs came from my medical studies.  As a student, I marveled at the beauty, the perfection of design, and the complexity of functions I observed in human anatomy and physiology.  I have also learned that the majority of physicians embrace a theistic worldview.  Personally, I find it incomprehensible that anyone who has studied human anatomy and physiology could believe otherwise.

            My fervent prayer, as I write this book, is that I may help others eliminate their doubts and fears, and that they may experience a deeper sense of the reality of God, and develop a greater understanding of the truthfulness of God’s Holy Word—the Bible.

            One word of caution: since this book was never intended to be a textbook in human physiology, certain elements are described in the simplest possible terms.  My objective is not to teach an understanding of essential physiological functions, but to demonstrate the incredibly complex essentials of physiological processes that reveal the handiwork of our Intelligent Designer—God.

 

 

 NOTE:  The following manuscript was written in Microsoft Word, but when it was copied into Microsoft Front Page (which was necessary to publish it on the internet), much of the text and footnote formatting was lost; for instance, block quotations are no longer set correctly.  I apologize for this but I was unable to do any better.   

 

 

 

CHAPTER 1

SEARCHING FOR PIECES OF THE PUZZLE

 

If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.

--Darwin

 

 

 

            Since 1932, radio astronomers have aimed giant antenna arrays into outer space in search for an increased understanding of complex phenomena emanating from a number of celestial objects.  National Radio Astronomy Observatory reports, “Broadband continuum emissions throughout the radio-frequency spectrum is observed from a variety of stars (especially binary, X-ray, and other active stars), from supernova remnants, and from magnetic fields and relativistic electrons in the interstellar medium”[1]

            For a number of years, radio astronomers have been engaged in a search for

extra-terrestrial intelligence (SETI) using NRAO’s 140-foot radio telescope in Green Bank, West Virginia, a facility made possible through the efforts of Senator Robert C. Byrd.[2]  This study is focused on a search for non-random signals from outer space. 

            Non-random signals would present clear, irrefutable evidence of an intelligent source.

A good illustration of this principle is seen in Morse code.  Three short signals, followed by three long signals, followed by three short signals again would communicate “SOS,” the international distress call, whether it were communicated by visual or audio means.  While many differing signals have been detected by NRAO and other researchers, not one non-random signal has ever been detected.  The problem is, they are looking in the wrong cosmos. 

            While the macro-cosmos of outer space has proven non-productive, the micro-cosmos of human physiology provides an endless source of non-random information that strongly suggests intelligent design.   Sources of non-randomness are best viewed on the cellular level of man’s being.

 Molecular biologists today are exploring the long hidden mysteries of a newly discovered universe—the universe inside the cell.  They are discovering things heretofore believed impossible, such things as molecular factories and machinery, computers, storage facilities, and a language all its own.

 

Life on the Cellular Level       

            The human body is an organism of organisms—each organism functioning both independently and inter-dependently, and each organism being comprised of cells.  The human cell is generally considered to be the smallest unit of matter that is viewed as

being alive.  Michael Behe in his book Darwin’s Black Box states, “The real work of life does not happen at the level of the whole animal or organ; the most important parts of living things are too small to be seen.  Life is lived in the details, and it is molecules that handle life’s details.  Darwin’s idea might explain horse hoofs, but can it explain life’s foundations?”[3]                  

            The average human cell is incredibly small, approximately .001” inches in

diameter and is made up of approximately ten trillion atoms.  In Darwin’s time, little was known or understood about the cell beyond that which could be viewed by microscopes of his day.  Darwin would have been able to view cell boundaries and the small, round black dot—the nucleus—in the center of the cell, but he could not have seen the intricate structures within the cell.  The introduction of the electron microscope has facilitated new and greater insights into the mysterious cellular construction and functions of the human cell.  No doubt the most surprising thing for Darwin, if he could view the contents of the cell as we see it today, would be the intricate, complex structure and the fevered activity going on inside the cell.  He would also have been shocked because in Darwin’s day, it was believed that the more scientists would be able to see, the simpler the cell would be.

            Behe describes what Darwin would be able to see today:

 

The cell has specialized areas partitioned off for discrete tasks.  These areas include the nucleus (where the DNA resides), the mitochondria (which produced the cell’s energy), the endoplasmic reticulum (which processes proteins), the Golgi apparatus (a way station for proteins that are being transported elsewhere), the lysosome (the cell’s garbage disposal unit, secretory vesicles (which store cargo before it’s sent out of the cell), and the peroxisome (which helps metabolize fats).  Each compartment is sealed off from the rest of the cell by its own membrane, just as a room is separated from the rest of the house by walls and door.  The membranes themselves can also be considered separate compartments, because the cell places material into membranes that is not found elsewhere.[4]

 

  Michael Denton provides a poignant illustration of the newly discovered complexities of the living cell in the following manner:

 

To grasp the reality of life as it has been revealed by molecular biology, we must magnify a cell a thousand million times until it is twenty kilometers in diameter and resembles a giant airship large enough to cover a great city like London or New York.  What we would then see would be an object of unparalleled complexity and adaptive design.  On the surface of the cell we would see millions of openings, like the port holes of a vast space ship, opening and closing to allow a continual stream of materials to flow in and out.  If we were to enter one of these openings we would find ourselves in a world of supreme technology and bewildering complexity.  We would see endless highly organized corridors and conduits branching in every direction away from the perimeter of the cell, some leading to the central memory bank in the nucleus and others to assembly plants and processing units.  The nucleus itself would be a vast spherical chamber more than a kilometer in diameter, resembling a geodesic cone inside of which we would see all neatly stacked together in ordered arrays, the miles of coiled chains of the DNA molecules.[5]

 

Scientists use descriptive terms such as factories, machines, and transport vehicles to describe cellular structures.  Bruce Alberts, President, National Academy of Sciences, remarked, “Why do we call {them} machines?  Precisely because, like machines invented by humans to deal efficiently with the macroscopic world, these protein assemblies contain highly coordinated moving parts.”[6]

In 1953, James Watson and Francis Crick announced to the world that they had been successful in unraveling the structure of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), which is located deep within the nucleus of our cells.  DNA is a long, ladder-like double helix of molecular composition.  Doctors John F. Kalinich and Max Fogiel in their book The Essentials of Genetics: Unlocking the Mysteries of Life report, “The length of DNA present in one human being is 200 times greater than the distance from the earth to the sun.”[7]

            DNA is reverently referred to as the “blueprint of life,” in which all the instructions necessary to replicate the entire human body are stored in each cell.

These instructions are recorded in an unparalleled language, comprising approximately three billion genetic letters.

Inside the “ladder-like” helix extending from either side are what resemble rungs of the ladder.  These are molecules, called "nucleotides" (bases), which are designated by the initials A, G, T, or C.  All the information and instructions of life are contained in our DNA, which is written in a genetic code using these four molecules.  A single instruction is written on a piece of DNA, called a "gene," which may be thousands of letters long.  Kalinich and Fogiel report,

 

The instructions needed to specify an entire human being are six billion code letters long.  Every cell in its nucleus contains all the information needed to produce a human being.  This information is contained in many long strands of DNA, which themselves are separated into chromosomes.  The DNA of a human is found in 23 pairs of chromosomes.  Every organism that is living, or has lived, contains DNA which spells out that organism’s specific instructions for life.[8]

 

 Incredible as it may seem, the information stored in human DNA would fill twelve sets of the Encyclopedia Britannica, 384 volumes which would fill 48 feet of library shelves!   When scientists completed the Human Genome Project, their research would have filled the equivalent of 75,490 pages of The New York Times.[9] But in actual size, our DNA is only two millionths of a millimeter thick. Geneticist Francis S. Collins, who spearheaded the Human Genome Project, referred to DNA as “Our instruction book, previously known only to God.”[10]

 Michael Denton says a teaspoon of DNA could contain all the information needed to build the proteins for every species of organisms that have ever lived on earth, and still there would be room enough to store all the information in every book that has ever been written.  An astounding bit of information.[11]

           

DNA Language

 

            A recent development in information theory is that information cannot be considered in the same category as matter and energy.  Matter and energy can only convey information, but they are not synonymous with information itself.

If the content of a book were spoken aloud or written on a tablet or communicated electronically, that information would not lose anything from the means used in transporting it.[12]

Morse code uses only two units—dots and dashes—to communicate any message that can be expressed in human language.  Norman Geisler, noted apologist, refers to the relatively new science of information theory, which was unheard of in Darwin’s age:

 

Information theory is indispensable to understanding what biology is all about—information storage and retrieval systems.  These systems are analogous to the blueprints and instruction manuals that provide the know-how concerning the construction and operation of the mechanisms of life.  They specify what to do and how to do it, just as software does for a computer.[13]

 

            In our DNA structure, nucleotides are connected together in various sequential order, similar to computer language which uses only a series of non-random 1s and 0s, such as 1100011010110, to convey specific messages.         

            When one considers that using only two units, Morse code and computer languages are each capable of communicating any message which can be formulated in human language, how much more information can a system using four units convey?

            Geisler reports that Hubert P. Yockey, another writer, says,

 

Speaking about the genetic code as being the language of life is not merely an analogy.  The indescribable significance of this discovery is that the cell has a language of its own, fully equipped with rules—equivalent to a written language—that governs how it communicates.  In a more recent work, Yockey explains that information theory has demonstrated that there is a one-to-one correspondence, an isomorphism, between the logic system of the genetic text on the one hand, and communication systems, computers, and mathematical logic systems on the other.[14]

 

            The science of information theory and the science of molecular biology have confirmed that the genetic code in a human cell (A, T, C, and G) is identical to a written language.  We can, therefore, view it as communicating intelligent messages in the same way messages are communicated using human languages.  This form of highly developed information utilization has never been observed except from an intelligent source.

             

Molecular Machines

 

Protein molecules are the fundamental components of life.  In viewing the cell as a factory, we can think of proteins as machines that are engaged in the necessary  activities of the cell.  Each protein, like a tiny machine, is so small that it requires magnification of a million times in order for the human eye to see it.[15]

            Since we know that all proteins are composed of amino acids, we understand that these microscopic machines are made up of long chain-like molecules, arranged in a linear sequence of amino acids.  Amino acids consist of approximately ten to twenty atoms.[16]

            Hundreds of amino acids are known to exist, but only twenty specific amino acids are utilized in living tissue in the formulation of proteins.  The arrangement of amino acids in a protein is considered to be a sentence, consisting of a lengthy combination of the twenty amino acid letters.  Denton explains, “Just as different sentences are made up of different sequences of letters, so different proteins are made up of different sequences of amino acids.  In most proteins, the amino acid chain is between one hundred and five hundred amino acids long.”[17]

            While proteins may be viewed as working elements of a factory, the nucleic acid molecules can be seen as fulfilling the role of a library, or memory data bank, which provides all the information needed for the construction of those machines in the factory.  We can also view the nucleic acids as blueprints that contain the specific instructions for the construction of a specific protein in the cell.[18]

            Each cell in the human body is capable of repairing or replacing itself. The DNA within the nucleus of the cell contains the blueprint for every facet of the cell with instructions on how to facilitate the repair; this information is imparted to the RNA (ribonucleic acid), which carries this information to every part of the cell where the particular proteins are manufactured.  Denton says, “We can think of RNA as photocopies of the master blueprint DNA which are carried to the factory floor where the technicians and engineers convert the abstract information of the blueprint (RNA) into the concrete form of the machine (proteins).”[19]

            A human embryo poignantly illustrates the role of inherited DNA at work--a truly amazing process of cell differentiation where new cells are developed to fit into each DNA blueprint section as specified.  For instance, in the embryonic development of a finger, newly formed cells arrive on location.  Each of these cells is assigned to differentiate into skin, muscle, subcutaneous tissue, bone, blood vessels, nerve or bone tissue.  Kalinich says,

 

The ability of cells to tell directions (right and left) is important to the formation of organ systems.  It is also critical that cells can differentiate top from bottom, or head from tail.  Each of the cells of the developing embryo contains the exact same genetic information, exactly the same instructions for making a complete organism.  The question scientists ask themselves is, if each cell contains the same genetic information, how are they able to differentiate into functionally different cells?[20]

 

            It is the growth and development of living tissue according to the genetic code stored in the DNA that will dictate length of bones, color of skin and eyes, and all the other inherited characteristics of an individual.

            Many scientists believe that since it is known that human DNA is similar in some ways to the DNA of other species, that is evidence to support their naturalistic theories that man evolved from earlier life forms.  Stephen Meyers, however, sees a different origin of DNA.  “…The origin of information in DNA—which is necessary for life to begin—is best explained by an intelligent cause rather than any of the types of naturalistic causes that scientists typically use to explain biological phenomena.”[21]

            George Sim Johnson says, “Human DNA contains more organized information than the Encyclopedia Britannica.  If the full text of the encyclopedia were to arrive in computer code from outer space, most people would regard this as proof of the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence, but when seen in nature, it is explained as the workings of random forces.”[22]

            Behe uses the term “irreducible complexity” in referring to some biochemical systems.  He defines irreducible complexity as the structure and function of a system where each part must perform its task precisely and completely, in the proper order, at the proper time, to produce the desired results.   He illustrates this principle with a mouse-trap—a simple mechanism utilizing five components.  All components must function perfectly, completely, and in perfect timing with the other components for the machine to work.[23]

            The ongoing debate between creationists and evolutionists continues to mount.  Some are asking, “Can religion withstand the onslaught of science?”  However, in recent days some are asking, “Can science withstand the onslaught of religion’s intelligent design movement?”

Time magazine recently sponsored a ninety-minute debate between Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion and The End of Faith, and Francis Collins, Director of the National Human Genome Research Institute since 1993, where he directs 2,400 scientists in mapping the three billion biochemical letters of our DNA blueprint.[24]

            Richard Dawkins summed up his belief by stating,

 

For centuries the most powerful argument for God’s existence from the physical world was the so-called argument from design…but Darwin provided a simpler explanation.  His way is a gradual, incremental improvement starting from very simple beginnings and working up step by tiny incremental step to more complexity, more elegance, more adaptive perfection.[25] 

 

Francis Collins countered,

 

By being outside of nature, God is also outside of space and time.  Hence, at the moment of the creation of the universe, God could also have activated evolution, with full knowledge of how it would turn out, perhaps even including our having this conversation.[26]

             

            Many top scientists today are becoming convinced that the irreducibly complex structure and functions of the human body obviates that man’s body was built according to an Intelligent design.  Norman Geisler asks, “What kind of cause produces highly specified complexities?”

Psalms 139:13-15, reads

 

For thou didst form my inward parts; Thou didst weave me in my mother’s womb.  I will give thanks to Thee, for I am fearfully and

wonderfully made; wonderful are Thy works, and my soul knows it very well.  My frame was not hidden from Thee, when I was made in secret, and skillfully wrought in the depths of the earth. (NAS)