1-30-14
“Men go abroad to wonder at the height of mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of the rivers, at the vast compass of the oceans, at the circular motion of the stars, and pass by themselves without wondering” – St. Augustine. Phillip Bishop used this quote to introduce his article about the evidence of God in human physiology. He discusses three topics to help prove his point: 1) the complexity of man and what it suggests about man’s origins, 2) the efficient and versatile operation of man compared with machine, 3) the depth of our ignorance about how man’s physiological systems operate. In his first topic, Bishop affronts the idea that human existence was a product of pure chance. He explains some of the more intricate details about how our hearts supply the correct amount of blood flow for all life styles, and how some of these tiny details in the circulation of blood is so important that if it were altered in the slightest way, the organism would eventually die. He also points out how if one is technically speaking, the human body is neither the fastest nor strongest among the animals and reproduces at a slower rate than many smaller animals. And, this being true, would raise the question of if evolution and the “survival of the fittest” were true, why hasn’t a faster reproducing species taken over humans yet? In the final two topics, Bishop says that man has always been more amazed at what he can create than that of his own creation. He criticizes man’s pride in thinking we can create such fine things with our technology, yet we cannot recreate a being as complex and well functioning as ourselves. The belief that there is no creator, he says, shows the ignorance of man in thinking that because we are unable to recreate ourselves, our existence must be by chance. Reading this article has provided me with a very good feel for what I am going to learn in this Human Physiology