I’m reading a recent book entitled “Ultimate Engineering” in which Stuart Burgess, who is a Christian, investigates the biomechanics of the human body. Stuart is professor of engineering design at Bristol University and believes the created world and the human body reveal inescapable evidence of God’s intelligent design. Stuart has been involved in advanced design projects including the transmission for Team GB bikes at the Olympic Games and the solar panel deployment mechanism for the European Space Agency’s ENVISAT satellite.
Stuart writes, “The human body has the best possible design concepts, the best materials, and the best control systems. There are ultimate levels of design resolution down to the molecular scale, and there are ultimate levels of fine-tuning. Engineers cannot even copy what God has achieved in the human body, let alone make any improvements.”
He gives many examples of God’s skill in the human body including human muscles that have amazing multifunctional capabilities. Stuart writes, “The 600-or-so muscles of the body are perfectly sized and located to perform the required movement of joints. Muscles also give a beautiful shape to the body. To create such perfect multifunctioning muscles requires the work of a genius.”
Engineers are greatly impressed by the human nervous system. The adult human body has been estimated to have 90,000 miles of nerve pathways. For comparison, the gigantic Boeing 747 jet has around 170 miles of wiring. Stuart writes, “One of the biggest challenges for such complex systems is to integrate the wiring so that it can reach every sensor and actuator. In the case of the human body, this task is unimaginably great. The human body has nerve pathways from the brain to every cubic millimetre of the body. It is impossible to comprehend the level of wiring detail.”
The human heart is a pump that far surpasses any pump produced by engineers. Stuart writes, “The heart pumps around 2,000 gallons of blood every day and beats more than two billion times in an 80-year lifetime. In order to deliver blood to the two circuits in the body (body circuit and lung circuit), the heart has to be a double pump with the two pumps precisely synchronised.”
The human body is indeed a design masterpiece. In Psalm 139 King David, who knew nothing of modern scientific discoveries, wrote, “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful.” If we are looking for confirmation of the existence of God, the Master Designer, we need look no further than the amazing body he has given each of us.