HAS GOD REVEALED HIMSELF IN THE NATURAL ORDER?
When something is designed, it may be possible to find some sign or evidence of the designer in the work itself. An example is a painting, where people can sometimes recognize the artist by the style or subject of what is painted.
Let us enquire in the ensuing pages if we can find any sign of the fingerprints of God in the natural world.
The Common Ant
Consider a common ant found in many parts of the world and greatly enlarged below. Its actual size is about this big: --
Observe in regard to this tiny creature, which can lift something like fifty times its own body weight, amongst other things:
It has a brain in its head, which enables it to process the faintest data coming from its antennae, eyes, joints and body hairs.
It has a throat (oesophagus) that takes liquid food to a stomach in the abdomen. Most ants do not eat solid food, although their larvae do. They live on a liquid diet from their prey.
It has a heart, not like ours, but more like one of our veins, starting in the head and running through the thorax into the abdomen. Fluid, which does not carry gases, is pumped throughout the body in one direction to bathe the internal organs.
It has muscles which almost fill the head to control the powerful jaws and the mandibles, as well as the pharynx to aid the movement of food into the oesophagus. Elsewhere, it has muscles that operate the legs and the wings in the queen. {2}
Do you think the ant is designed?
The Human Knee
The knee joint is formed where the thigh bone (femur) meets the shin bone (tibia). A smooth cushion of articular cartilage covers the ends of both these bones. Healthy cartilage absorbs stress and allows the bones to glide across each other smoothly. This cartilage is kept slippery by the joint fluid (synovial fluid) made by the joint lining (synovial membrane).
Note the configuration of the knee:
Note the internal ligaments of the knee structure pictured schematically below.
Running between the femur and the tibia in a space formed between the downwardly directed condyles on the knuckle of the femur, are two ligaments that cross over one another, the anterior cruciate ligament, and the posterior cruciate ligament.
When the knee bends, there is both a pivoting and sliding action between the two main leg bones. This rolling action is guided by the cruciate ligaments which remain taught and shift their centre of rotation as the knee bends.{3}
If it is healthy, the knee is a joint that bends easily. It absorbs stress and allows pain-free movement. It enables us to walk, run and perform a host of activities over a lifetime.
Considering the human knee, does it look as though it has been designed?
What about the human hand, which can wield a sledgehammer in one instance, and perform eye surgery in another?
The Human Ear
To enable us to hear, sound waves at given frequencies pass along the ear passage, causing the eardrum at the other end of the passage to vibrate at the same frequencies. Three tiny bones known as the hammer (malleus), the anvil (incus) and the stirrup (staples) pass the vibration of the eardrum on to a device called the oval window which leads into the inner ear, where these tiny bones, or ossicles, serve to amplify the vibrations of the eardrum some twenty-fold and also to modify them.
So, we have three tiny somehow positioned to amplify and transfer vibrations at certain frequencies into the inner ear.
Here it becomes more complicated.
What reaches the inner ear are amplified and modified mechanical vibrations corresponding to the sound waves which first entered your ear passage. The vibration of the oval window causes vibrations in the form of waved movements in fluids within the membranous labyrinth of the inner ear.
The vibrations transform into waved motions in fluid within the inner air.
And more complicated.
The wave movements cause the basilar membrane to vibrate on which hair cells are located. The excitation of the hair cells causes a mechanical stimulus which is translated into an impulse which passes through the cochlea branch of the auditory nerve, to the cerebral cortex where the sensation of sound is produced.
An airwave movement across the eardrum lasting one millionth of a second is immediately translated into intelligible sound by a process involving some thirty thousand nerve centres contained in an area of a fraction of an inch.
Through the human ear, the faintest sounds can be heard, but also the massive sounds of thunder, the exquisite sounds of music and all the other inventions of human ingenuity. {4}
This is the briefest summary of the human ear. It is a subject that medical science continues to advance. The question is, how did mankind get its hearing?
The Human Eye
As we know, the human eye allows us to see.
It must of course be able to process light for us to see, while at the same time regulating the amount of admitted light to our brain. Light itself is quite an amazing entity but that is a subject for another date.
The eye must also be capable of controlled movement to enable us, literally, to look around. The inner layer of the eye, or retina, lines the interior of the eyeball except where the lens system is situated. It consists of at least ten layers of cells of which the photo- receptors, consisting of rods and cones, lie in the ninth layer.
There are approximately one hundred and twenty million rods, and seven million cones, in the photo-receptor layer. Incoming light passes through the cornea, aqueous humour, lens, vitreous humour and the several layers of cells in the retina before it reaches the light-sensitive retinal cells.
The incoming light causes a breakup or splitting of the photo-chemical pigment contained in the rods and cones, which in turn gives rise to an impulse in the attached optic nerve neuron. The impulse passes via the optic nerve to the visual cortex of the cerebrum where it is interpreted by the brain, giving rise to the sensation of sight.
Again, this is but a hint of the complexity of what is happening here.
To obtain a clear image, rays of light must be focused onto the retina. Distant objects can be focused onto the retina by the normal eye. However, for near objects, the curvature of the lens must alter if a clear focus is to be achieved. This happens by the ciliary muscle contracting, moving the ciliary body closer to the lens. The tension on the suspensory ligaments slackens, resulting in the elastic lens bulging and the rays of light being bent and refracted by the thicker lens, which achieves a sharp focus of the image.
Again, a hint of the complexity.
Interestingly, colour vision is possible because there are three different kinds of cones. All respond to light, but each responds best to a specific wavelength. The visual purple of rods is bleached by strong light, making the rods inoperative in strong light. Visual purple must be re-synthesized when the light is again of poor intensity, so that one can see better in the dark.
It has been stated that the human eye can handle five hundred thousand messages simultaneously.
As can be expected, human eyesight continues to exercise the research activities of medical scientists.
The question again is how we obtained the incredible facility of eye sight?{5}
The Amazing Living Cell
This is a schematic illustration of a living human cell, of which there are many different types and shapes such as nerve cells, blood cells, muscle cells, hair cells and so on, organised in different tissues and organs of the body.
The cell shown above is very small and, depending on what kind of cell it is, ranges in size from about 9um to 120um (microns). If you were to make a tiny hole with a pin in the paper on which this text appears, millions of these cells would fit into the little hole! Because living cells are so small, the number of cells making up the human body is difficult to estimate. In a recent estimate, it is said that there are about thirty-seven trillion cells that make up the human body, that is, about thirty-seven thousand billion cells.{6}
Each cell is encapsulated in a cell membrane that regulates what passes in and out of the cell. But the membrane is no ordinary wrapping – it is itself quite complex as shown in the illustrative cross-section below.
The living cell contains various organs known as organelles that carry out complex functions. The organelles are shown schematically in the illustration, including a nucleus that harbours its DNA. {7}
Let us look next at the amazing molecule known as DNA.
The Discovery of DNA
In 1962, two scientists were honoured for one of the greatest scientific discoveries of all time. A complex, double helix molecule called DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) is responsible for the functioning of all life on earth. James Watson and Francis Crick won the Nobel prize for their discovery.
Notice in this illustrative picture:
The little double circle on the left represents the living cell shown earlier, the inner circle being the nucleus of the cell.
In the nucleus of the cell resides the DNA, the operating system so to speak, of all living things on earth (outside of bacteria and viruses).
How Does a Living Organism Begin?
The living cell is the fundamental unit of life on earth in all its forms. In mammals, the life process commences when a male sperm meets a female ovum in the female oviduct. The sperm enters the ovum and the male nucleus fuses with the female nucleus to form a single cell called a zygote. This means that you and I started life from a single cell and everything that we physically consist of was produced by cell division from this one cell.
The same applies to reproduction in flowering plants. The male cell in the pollen grain is brought within reach of the female cell in the ovule by the process of pollination. The pollen grain grows a microscopic tube which carries the male cell to the female cell for fertilization. The zygote then grows to form the seed.
As noted above, the cell from which you and I started life is miniscule in size. Yet it carries within it the DNA, or genetic code, for how the trillions of cells that make up your body will grow and function to make you into the living human being that you are. Moreover, each of the trillions of cells itself carries the same complete genetic code!
Every living thing, whether it is a tiny ant of a giant fish or a flowering plant, has its own unique genetic code.
The genetic code dictates the very order of life throughout nature. As seen above, genes are arranged in their vast numbers in the thread-like chromosomes contained in each living cell. It is your genetic code which dictates what you look like, the sound of your voice, the colour of your hair and everything else of which you are made.
What Does a Living Cell Do?
Generally, the cells that make up the human body provide structure to the body, take in nutrients from food, convert those nutrients into energy, and carry out numerous specialized functions. It is like a miniscule complex factory. The nucleus serves as the cell’s command centre, controlling all functions that the cell undertakes. As noted above, it contains the cell’s DNA, or genetic code, packaged into the thread-like chromosomes shown above. The DNA in the cell nucleus directs the cell to perform its functions, reproduce, and die.
As noted above, human DNA consists of about 3 billion base pairs arranged in the helical strands of each DNA molecule. The order, or sequence, of the base pairs determines the information available for building and maintaining an organism, similar in the way in which letters of the alphabet appear in a certain order to form words and sentences.
The cell’s genetic information enables it to produce almost 100 000 different proteins, each with a different function. This is done by a process called gene expression, depending on signals from inside and outside the cell.
Despite the massive information pack that chromosomes carry, they are so small that they are not visible in the cell’s nucleus, not even under a microscope, when the cell is not dividing. However, the DNA becomes more tightly packed during cell division and then becomes visible under a microscope.
An important property of DNA is that it replicates itself, in which the double helix strand serves as a pattern for duplicating the acid base pairs of the DNA molecule. This is essential when cells divide because the dance of life requires that each new cell must have an exact copy of the DNA present in the parent cell.
Cells constantly die and need to be replaced for growth and repair of your body. It is estimated that an adult male loses approximately 96 million cells per minute. At the same time, roughly the same number of new cells forms. Cells live for different periods. White blood cells live for about thirteen days, cells in the top layer of your skin about thirty days, red blood cells for about one hundred and twenty days and liver cells live for about eighteen months. {8}
Let us consider this a bit more closely.
Cell Division
New cells are continuously formed by cell division. The process of cell division is called mitosis. In a simplified form, it works as follows:
A cell is shown schematically with chromosomes appearing just before the cell divides.
Do you, dear reader, find these arrangements remarkable? Who made it possible for living cells to replicate in this way, not only to build a complex organism, but to maintain and sustain it? Who determined that the basic unit of life in all living things should contain a 50% inheritance from its male and female ancestry?
Can these arrangements have been made by themselves?
We noted earlier how a single male sperm meets a female ovum and their nuclei fuse to start a new life. Now, since the male and the female cell each contains forty-six chromosomes, does it not follow that the new living cell formed by the fusion of the two must contain ninety-two chromosomes? No, remarkably, when the male and female cell nuclei fuse, the new cell still contains the same number of chromosomes as each of the male and female parent cells individually contain.
How is this possible?
This happens because the male cell does not deliver its full complement of forty-six human chromosomes, nor does the female cell deliver its full complement. Each delivers only twenty-three. This is because, when the reproductive cells themselves are formed, they do so by a different process of cell division called meiosis. In this process of cell division, each of four daughter cells produced ends up with only half the normal complement of chromosomes. Simplified, it works as follows:
The same applies to every other living thing on earth whether it is a rabbit, a fir tree, or a sea urchin. Each living thing has a fixed number of chromosomes. For example, each cell of your body contains forty-six chromosomes, that of a mouse, hyena, mango and peanut, forty each, and that of a rat, giant panda and oats, forty-two each. A few more examples: spinach and broad bean, twelve each; snail, melon and rice, twenty-four each; giraffe and American mink, thirty each; starfish, red panda, meerkat and earthworm, thirty-six each; silkworm and strawberry, fifty-six each; grey wolf, dog, dingo and coyote, seventy-eight each; African hedgehog, ninety, and catfish one hundred and four. {11}
From the brief description above, it is worth noting the following:
This mechanism of genetic recombination makes it possible for there to be limited variation amongst the original created kinds. It is limited because virtually all variations are produced by re-arranging of genes that are already there.
The amazing biological transaction of genetic recombination can be simplistically represented in the following image:
Notice how end sections of the male and female chromatids (the single strands) have been exchanged.
Who made these amazing arrangements? Do you think they could have been made intelligently?
Could they only have been made intelligently?
Is there a Designer who made them?
The Miracle of the Womb
Let us go back a step. With some exceptions, all living creatures in their vast numbers on earth are split down a gender line, male and female. In mammals, females have the biological resources to harbour within them and to nourish an embryo which grows in them until it reaches a size when it can emerge from the female body as a living replica of its parents. In the case of reptiles and some other creatures, females produce an egg from which such a living replica will emerge.
Have you considered how remarkable this is? Not only do we have the multitudinous diversity of living things on earth, minute to massive, they are arranged male and female, each pair with the capacity of the female to replicate her kind. Not only to replicate her kind, but to bring forth a replica which grows, in some cases quickly, in other cases over decades, to the same order of size and with the same features as its parents. And the mammalian female is in most cases also endowed with the ability to produce the nourishment required for her young to set it on course for adulthood.
Did you know that the heart of a human baby starts forming two weeks after conception? By the fifth week of the gestation period, a bare three weeks after conception, the heart starts beating and dividing into chambers. At this time, the baby is no bigger than a sesame seed or a grain of rice. At six-week gestation a baby’s heartbeat can be found. At seven to nine months of pregnancy, the baby’s heart pumps over 1000 litres of blood per day. {12}
Are you, dear reader, quite prepared to hold that this amazing set of circumstances, the miracle of the womb, was established by chance?
Just another question. How was the gender line established? According to the proposal of evolution, after simple life forms sprang up from the non-life, inorganic compounds and substances of the earth, these life forms evolved in small incremental, generational steps into the vast array of life on earth. Now it is evident that for the gender line to work, male and female reproductive mechanisms must have developed to co-operate with one another in joining together to form a new living cell, and hence the start of a new life. But in so developing, the male and female mechanisms, for example, the male sperm and the female ovum, could hardly have developed prospectively, that is, thinking ahead of what was required of each of them. In other words, without their own intelligence, they could hardly develop in anticipation of what was required of each to interact and co-operate with the other in future to form a new living cell.
Is the answer that they were designed and made so to interact and co-operate?
We shall turn to this subject shortly as a side road.
What we have discussed above is but a tiny glimpse into the beginnings of the complexities of the functioning of the natural world.
Is its provenance a product of chance, or a most remarkable design?
Have you, dear reader, discerned some of the fingerprints of a wise and wonderful Creator?
Lastly, let us look at what may be the most remarkable creation of all.
The Human Brain
The human brain is complex beyond measure and science knows comparatively little about it. It is a biological, electro-chemical system utilizing approximately one hundred billion living cells called neurones.{13} The brain has been described as the most complex and orderly aggregation of matter in the universe.{14} lt functions to manage and control the complex web of actions and interactions which enable us to live as thinking human beings.
Of course, the brain houses the faculty that we refer to as our minds. Does the human mental capacity not set us apart as a unique species with amazing characteristics?
Our minds grant us intellect, enabling us to be self-conscious, to communicate by language, to think rationally and logically, to perceive and reason, to interpret, to be critical, to understand, to gain knowledge, to remember, and to know that we are human beings. No computer knows that it is a computer. lt cannot contemplate the reason for its existence or the possibility that God exists. Where did man get his intellect from?
Our minds grant us a will. We have the ability to be wilful and to perform what we determine to do or say. By our will we largely proceed through life. Who gave us the power of a will?
The mind encompasses the dimension of emotion. Where does the human mind get the ability to be emotional? Who gave us the ability to experience joy, sadness, happiness, sorrow, tenderness, compassion, laughter, love?
The mind is capable of appreciating beauty, and of creating beauty. What kind of faculty is this that can perceive, appreciate and create the aesthetics of music, speech, art in all its forms, architecture, and other things?
The human mind has the faculty of imagination. How did we get the ability to conjure up pictures and images which can have the quality of reality or of fantasy? Is it not our imagination that enables us to plan, to design, to anticipate, to employ symbolism, and to look ahead to things to come?
The mind has the ability to grasp that man is a moral being, a being that is able to distinguish between good and evil, and right and wrong. Man's morality transcends anything contained in any other living creature on earth. Man's moral conscience enables him to perceive evil, to act against wrongs, to show kindness and compassion, and to do things that are quite absurd in a natural world dictated by survival.
How and why did man attain the remarkable attributes mentioned above? We are confronted with a unique being who is who is intelligent, who is self-conscious, who has the