Biological complexity: complexity of the human body (Introduction)

by David Turell , Wednesday, December 28, 2016, 15:13 (2887 days ago) @ David Turell

The overwhelming complexity of the human body defies a chance production. It requires planned design:

http://townhall.com/columnists/robertknight/2016/12/28/the-complexity-of-creation-n2263...

"As walking miracles, we comprise trillions of cells, each of which is a marvel of engineering with its own millions of moving parts.

“'Think of the cell as a miniature society,” Reference.com offers in this accessible description. “Within its walls are factories, power plants, a leader, a packaging plant, a central gathering place and recycling stations. All work together to sustain the community.”

"Now, you can argue that this all happened as a result of random, unguided accidents, or you can make the argument for design, which rests largely on irreducible complexity. That term, championed by Lehigh University biologist Michael Behe, means something that must be fully assembled and cannot logically come together gradually.

"He uses a simple mousetrap as an example. Without all its parts – spring, platform, snap bar – it is useless. Mousetraps are an invention, the result of a guided process. How much more so are the fathomlessly complex cells whose parts must all work precisely together in order to allow our fathomlessly complex bodies and brains to function?

"In “More than Meets the Eye,” Richard A. Swenson, M.D. has assembled a mind-boggling array of facts about the human body and brain that should leave any reader in a state of awe, regardless of theology.

"The body has 10 to 100 trillion cells, with each cell having a trillion atoms. They are all coming and going at astronomical speed. “Every couple of days, we replace all the cells that line the intestine – faster if we eat Mexican food,” Swenson quips.

"That person sitting next to you? Her eyes have retinas that contain 120 million rods and 7 million cones. “The rods accomplish dim vision, night vision, and peripheral vision. The cones are for color vision and fine detail.” The human eye can recognize literally millions of shades of colors.

"Now, here’s the really astounding part: “To simulate 10 milliseconds of the complete processing of even a single nerve cell from the retina would require the solution of about 500 simultaneous nonlinear differential equations 100 times and would take at least several minutes of processing time on a Cray supercomputer. Keeping in mind that there are 10 million or more such cells interacting with each other in complex ways, it would take a minimum of 100 years of Cray time to simulate what takes place in your eye many times every second.”

"Sort of gives the phrase “in the blink of an eye” new meaning, doesn’t it?"

Comment: The real meaning is that only a superior mental capacity could create this degree of complexity. Logically it requires God, but absolute proof is lacking.