Human body
From CreationWiki, the encyclopedia of creation science
The human body is the sum of all parts of a human from the hands to the arms, from the feet to the legs and the senses that describe such things. David, in Psalm 139, declares his body is wonderful evidence of God's creative love. This article serves to provide evidence for how wonderfully designed our own bodies are, and thus, how much we owe our Creator to take care of what He has given us.
For You formed my inward parts; You wove me in my mother's womb. I will give thanks to You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Wonderful are Your works, And my soul knows it very well. Psalm 139:13-14 (NASB)
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The Human Eye
The human eye is a sphere roughly 25 millimeters in diameter that is an incredibly complex optical processing structure. The retina of the eye, which images the light, is made up of about 120 million rods which are sensitive to black, white, and grays, and about 6 million cones which are the color recepters. The Foveola, part of the Fovea, is the region of greatest sharpness of vision, containing about 15 thousand cones. The eye is more or less equivalent to a 126 megapixel camera.
Vision sharpness is measured by grating acuity and vernier acuity. Grating acuity is the distance at which you can see that two bars have a space in between, and is most related to the ability to see the difference between C and O. Vernier acuity is the ability to perceive if two line segments align perfectly or if there is an offset as you go from one line to another. Vernier acuity is related to the ability to see the difference between D and O. The normal human eye can perceive a grating accuracy of between 60 and 30 seconds of arc. Its vernier acuity is about ten times better (five to ten seconds of arc), as if the eye system were designed to especially recognize continuous lines in our surroundings.
Stereoscopic Vision
We have not one camera, but two, made to work together to provide stereoscopic vision that lets us judge by eye the distance to nearby objects. This requires good acuity but also a combination of "wiring" and "programming" that let us match what is seen by one eye with what is seen by the other.
When fixed on an object at a distance of two meters (six and a half feet), eyes eight centimeters apart differ in their alignment by 2.3 degrees. At 1.5 meters, the difference is 3 degrees, showing that perception of eye alignment must be much better than .7 degrees or we could not be sure of the distance. Juggling requires fast processing and very accurate alignment and mapping between two multiple megapixel eyes (as well as hand coordination), but most people can learn to juggle with a little practice.
Image Processing Power
A TV screen changes its pictures thirty times per second, which is faster than our eyes respond, and so we see motion rather than individual frames. This speed of change (or flicker rate) gives a general idea of the processing power of the human optical system. If we say that the human eye can process 10 frames per second, our image processing system must deal effectively with about a billion responses per second with high accuracy. Stereovision compounds the difficulty for the processing system that we were born with, yet it functions so well that we are rarely aware of glitches or errors in information transfer.
Pixel Wiring by Chance
It is difficult to imagine how the correct wiring between eye pixels and the brain could simply develop. If we think in terms of hooking a digital camcorder to a television monitor, only certain patterns of connections will form an image on the monitor. Random connections with more than just a few pixels (five or ten) would tend to be incorrect almost all of the time. Stoltzman calculated that with 7 pixels the percentage of the random permutations which have 7 pixels correctly connected would be .0074%. The number of wrong wirings possible for an 8 x 8 pixel retina is greater than the estimated number of particles in the universe. Since evolution works by random trial and error, even if a one pixel eye worked, more pixels and correct wirings must be added randomly. If 3 pixels out of twelve are correct, how can "a mutation-driven process isolate the 3 correct pixels from subsequent variations?" (Stoltzmann p. 11). It seems that evolutionary theory needs to map out how this kind of development could have proceeded.
Cornea Transparency
The cornea remains transparent because it has no blood vessels. Researchers found that the cornea is heavily stocked with a protein that halts blood vessel growth. Other processes help also, such as the enzyme that helps to degrade organelles inside lens cells so that they cause less blocking and fogging of vision. It was mentioned that in mice, failure of the enzyme leads to cataracts (white fogging of the lens).
The Human Foot
Our feet have an automatic transmission built in as part of their design. During running, the bones in our feet automatically engage during the moment the foot strikes the ground. This way the bones in our feet make lever arms which are the kept to a low gear ratio when the foot strikes, and shifts automatically to a higher gear ratio as your weight moves over the toe. This allows the calf muscle to work at a lower velocity and thus provide more power to move the body forward. It is difficult to imagine how such a precise mechanism just appeared over time.
The Human Rib
Ribs are very important to us because they protect important organs like the heart and lungs, as well as provide anchors for important muscles.
Both men and women have twelve pairs of ribs. Someone once said that since God made Eve from Adam's rib, then Adam should have one rib less. This argument doesn't make sense since if a father loses a finger, his sons will still be born with all ten fingers. There is no reason that men should have any less ribs than were originally genetically programmed for men. The article, erroneous arguments speaks to this point, and we should never use as an argument in favor of creation that men have one less rib than women, because it isn't true.
What is interesting is that the human rib has the property of regrowing itself in certain circumstances. In the regenerating ribs article we can see that ribs can often grow back completely if the bone is carefully removed leaving its surrounding membrane intact. Thus ribs are often used to supply bones for bone grafts in other parts of the body because it keeps growing back. Thus, Adam did not even need to walk around without a rib.
Human Hair
Researchers are starting to look into why human hair is so unlike fur. Fur stops growing at a certain length, but hair keeps on growing. Even on the human body leg hairs grow for five or six months and then fall out. Hair on the head keeps growing for two to six years. If a hair follicle from the head is transplanted to the leg, it keeps growing for a longer time though not as long as if it were on the head. A leg hair transplanted to the head does not grow long, so hair transplants always move hair from one part of the head to another.
The keratin protein in human hair is different from the equivalent protein in chimpanzees and gorillas, and chimpanzees never need hair cuts. Evolutionists have wondered how to explain why humans do not have body fur, and now they will need to explain how human hair developed.
Related References
- Running: The Human Foot Uses Automatic Transmission by David Kaufmann; CRSQ 32(4):220 in March 1996.
- The Specified Complexity of Retinal Imagery by David Stoltzmann; CRSQ 43(1):4-12 in June 2006.
- Eye Can See Clearly Now by David Coppedge; Creation Matters Volume 11, Number 4, July/August 2006, page 10.
- After Combing The Scientific Literature, Researchers Conclude Head Hair And Fur Aren't The Same Science Daily, 2004
