Evidence of Design

As we saw last time, bones are amazing structures. They give our bodies shape, support, and protection. But were it not for joints, bones would eliminate our mobility.

For every motion our bodies make, two muscles are needed- one to move it, and the other to return it. So, for example, to move the arm, we need the triceps muscle to extend it, and the bicep muscle to bring it back. Of course some bones are only protectors, like the skull. But it is significant that adults have over 600 muscles but only 206 bones.

The body contains four different kinds of movable joints. The ball and socket joint at the shoulders and hips allow a great deal of motion in most every direction. The hinge joint allows motion in only one direction, as a door on a hinge. This is found in the elbows, knees, fingers and toes. If we had a ball and socket joint in these places instead of a hinge joint, we would either be much weaker, or we would need many more muscles to support these bones. The limited movement of the hinge joint gives us greater strength.

The pivot joints found in the vertebra have decreasing freedom from the neck to the back. This means we can move our head from side to side but have greater strength in our back for support. Finally, gliding or saddle joints in the feet and hands allow us to move them up and down, back and forth. All the moving bones are held together by cartilage that is both strong and flexible.

Of course, we also have immovable joints between the plates of the skull. A baby’s skull contains five separate plates that compress slightly to make childbirth easier. They also allow the growth of the brain but eventually fuse together, usually by age 2.

Notice that from the shoulders and hips down, joints allow less and less freedom and bones provide increasing strength. There is an amazing parallel between these types of joints and God’s laws found in the Bible. The less freedom a law allows, the more important it is for the strength of an individual and a society. I commend you to search it out.

Imagine the bone structure of a person evolving without joints, with the wrong types of joints, with immature joints, or without cartilage. This might end the human race before it got started! It is so much easier to believe our bones and joints were designed by a Master who knew just what we would need.

Our Amazing Bones

Several years ago I was told the chassis mounts on my car were rusted out. It was time to replace it. In thinking back on the faithful auto, I wonder, “Wouldn’t it be great if I had a self-repairing car chassis? If something broke, it would fix itself. Cars could last indefinitely!”

Our body chassis (skeleton) can do just that. This is because bones are living organs, filled with blood vessels and nerves. Take, for example the femur (thigh bone). This long bone consists of an outer covering called the periosteum. It is made of dense bone tissue. Beneath this protective cover are the osteons, made of mineralized, layered cylinders. This are laced with small, bubble-like spaces containing living bone cells. In the center is the spongy bone containing marrow. Blood vessels run through the osteon and spongy regions to deliver oxygen and remove wastes. In children, this marrow is actively making new red and white blood cells. However, by adulthood, this job is largely done by the hips, ribs, shoulder blades, breastbone, collarbone, and spinal vertebrae. The long bones then contain yellow marrow which is largely fat. But if the need for a large quantity of blood arises, the kidneys send a chemical signal to these long bones to convert yellow marrow to red marrow to make additional red cells.

The structure of a bone is both light-weight and strong, stronger than equivalent steel. But obviously, it can break and severed nerves and swelling cause pain. When a break occurs, an amazing series of events takes place to repair it. The first step is the clotting of broken blood vessels. Then the area is penetrated with blood vessels that were not severed to provide oxygen for the living cells and needed materials for repair. Two types of cells are active- osteoblasts that form new bone cells, and osteoclasts that remove unwanted bone tissue. Thus, the area of the break is built out with a callous, but remodeled eventually to remove any trace of the break. This process, and the bones themselves, all declare to those who are willing to see it that they are designed by an infinitely wise Creator.

Though our bones are all internal and, for most of us, no one ever sees them, we couldn’t function without them. Some bones, like the skull and ribs, serve as protectors, while others, like hips, arm and leg bones, support us and give us our shape. Bones are great restrictors. They limit where and how far we can move. For example, we can only move our legs at the hips, knees, and feet. Even these motions are limited by the types of joints we have, but we will discuss these next time.

There is a lesson here from our Designer. Limitations are good. They provide structure and greater freedom. Yes, that’s right; limitations provide freedom. Without structural bones, we would be a mass of organs rolling from one place to another. We could move each limb freely but this freedom would result is greater restrictions.

God has established laws of right and wrong. Those who refuse to submit to His ‘restrictions’ in the name of greater freedom ultimately find themselves in bondage. Jesus promised, “And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” John 8:32

What do these animals have in common: chipmunks, ground squirrels, echidnas, possums, hedgehogs, hamsters, skunks, bats, prairie dogs, marmots, and badgers? Answer: they all hibernate. This means they endure cold temperatures by sleeping through them. Ground squirrels and woodchucks are true hibernators. When the winter comes, their body temperature and heart rate drop to the point of unconsciousness. It will take hours to wake them.

Hibernation is not limited to mammals. Some fish, amphibians, and even insects survive the winter by this means. Cold-blooded animals also deal with extreme heat through a similar process called estivation. This often involves burrowing into the mud for protection but their metabolism is also reduced.

The bear, however, is unique. In fact, some scientists are not willing to admit they hibernate in the true sense. Instead, they call their method of tolerating the winter denning. During this time, bears do not eat or drink, and avoid bathroom visits by chemically changing their own wastes back into proteins. But though their metabolism slows during winter, it doesn’t slow to nearly the same degree as most other hibernating animals. In fact, they awaken several times during the winter and the females often give birth. Humans who come upon the ‘hibernating’ bear learn how quickly the animal can be fully awake!

If we humans lay around for several months, our bones and muscles atrophy, i.e. they wear away because of disuse. (This is why proper exercise after an injury is so important.) Another danger is that dissolved bones could increase calcium in our blood to a fatal level. However, bears remain strong and healthy during this extended inactivity. Recently scientists have discovered a chemical they think causes the bears to lose no bone or muscle fiber during hibernation. The hope is that it could be used in treating people suffering from osteoporosis.

Here is yet another example of reverse engineering. Scientists look to nature for ways to solve problems. If they cannot solve them with purposeful experiments, how is it logical to think the problems were solved by random accidents as evolution teaches? How much easier it is to believe that our wise God masterminded everything in nature as it is!

For 13 years we lived in New Brunswick, Canada just off of the St. John River that flows into the Bay of Fundy and the Atlantic Ocean. Every April the water in our bay would rise several feet as the snows melted. At that time we could count on fishermen setting up several eel traps in the bay. The traps would remain there for a month. I wondered why they wanted eels in the first place but found that this amazing fish is a delicacy in Japan, China, and now in the western world. In fact, some countries have overfished eels and reduced their population 99%! Yum, yum!

Eels are indeed amazing creatures! Some scientists agree that the American eel has the most diverse habitat of any fish in the world. American eels are the only catadromous fish in North America. This term means they spawn in salt water and mature in fresh water, the opposite of salmon that are anadromous.

Exactly how they spawn is still not known. It seems that eels lay their pinhead-sized eggs under seaweed three miles deep in the Sargasso Sea, part of the Atlantic Ocean. The eggs float and are caught by the currents, traveling 1000 to 3000 miles either toward the US or Europe. As they do, they hatch into a transparent, ribbonlike creature with no eyes or mouths. These juveniles gradually lose their transparency and develop eyes and a mouth. (They still haven’t eaten). When they reach land, their bodies adapt to fresh water and they swim up rivers and start to eat anything in sight, dead or alive. “With their relatively weak jaws and many small teeth, eels have developed an unusual feeding process with food that cannot be consumed whole or readily broken into pieces by jerking or pulling. 
  Holding on with their mouths, adult eels spin their bodies to break apart food, and have been recorded at six to fourteen spins per second. In comparison, Olympic ice skaters can spin five times per second.”

“American eels can absorb oxygen through their skin as well as their gills, making it possible for them to travel over land, particularly in wet grass or mud, which may help them move around barriers in streams. Eels also can cover their entire bodies with a mucous layer, making them nearly impossible to capture by hand — ‘slippery as an eel’ is more than just a figure of speech.” (fws.gov)

For the first 8 years of their lives they are sexless. Then they develop both male and female organs. Now, apparently, they never eat again but concentrate on returning to the Sargasso Sea and salt water again. When they arrive, one or the other set of sex organs shrivels up and they become male or female long enough to reproduce and then die.

To explain the still mysterious life cycle of the eel by evolution is complex and speculative. To explain it as another example of the remarkable work of our Creature is satisfying for the Bible says “All things were made by Him.” (John 1:3)

One of the necessary doctrines of evolution is the denial of a world catastrophe such as the flood of Noah. This is because such a disaster would obviously cause the earth to appear to be much older than it is. Without a very old world, there is insufficient time for evolution to occur here. Clam fossils present embarrassing evidence for such a flood.

Clams are known as bivalve mollusks. Clams are similar to the Venus Flytrap which we discussed in another article. They both have two valves, hinged, with the ability to close tightly very quickly. This makes it difficult for predators to get the clam itself. Clams eat by filtering plankton out of the water as it passes through. They are prey to sharks and squid. If they survive that, clams will live 40-60 years. They grow quickly in the first ten years but slow down to only 1 mm per year after 35.

Most clams are a few inches long. However, in the Pacific and Indian Oceans are found giant clams called the bear’s paw clams. Each weighs over 500 pounds and can be 4 feet long! This is larger than the giant clam shell fossils found in Papua New Guinea that are a little over 3 feet long and weigh 220 pounds. These are estimated to be 400,000 years old. Clams haven’t changed much over the years, have they?

When a clam dies of natural causes, within hours, the shell opens. This is why shorelines contain so many single shells for collectors to find. So if a buried clam shell is found closed, it would indicate that the clam was buried suddenly without time to open.

All over the world fossil clam graveyards are found containing millions of clams tightly packed together with the shells shut. In one such fossil graveyard in Halkirk, Alberta, Canada, these clams are buried in sheets of ironstone. Such fossils are also found at higher elevations, far from the natural environment of clams today.

What does this all mean? Clam fossil beds speak of a catastrophe that would bury millions of marine creatures quickly. The Bible calls it the flood of Noah. Since these fossil clam beds are found all over the world, and high above their natural habitat, it can only mean that a global catastrophe such as described in the Bible has shaped the earth’s geography. As a result the earth appears much older than it actually is. In other words, there isn’t enough time for evolution to have occurred, if it can occur at all.