Human Body: Extra Evidence for a Generous Creator

The fictional detective Sherlock Holmes is famous for dashing around England and solving mysterious crimes with his friend Dr. Watson. Once in a while he also exerts his deductive powers on the unseen spiritual world. For example, in “The Adventure of the Naval Treaty,” he considers the higher ways of Providence. Dr. Watson narrates the scene as Holmes touches a flower and says, “What a lovely thing a rose is!” He continues:

Our highest assurance of the goodness of Providence seems to me to rest in the flowers . . . this rose is an extra. Its smell and its color are an embellishment of life, not a condition of it. It is only goodness which gives extras, and so I say again that we have much to hope from the flowers.

In this scene the literary detective rightly acknowledged that God provides in abundance. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes, was also a medical doctor. At the time, in the 1890s, Doyle probably didn’t realize the extent to which the Creator’s gracious “extras” applied to the human body. Now, after gaining over a century of medical knowledge since Doyle wrote, we better understand the extravagance of extras that extend our lifetimes up to eight times the span we need for procreation and greatly increase the comfort and enjoyment of those extra years. For example, most of our vital internal organs have at least three times—and even up to ten times—as much functional tissue as we need to survive. Even our brains have about twice as much.

If evolution were true, our bodies would produce only what we need for survival. Though evolutionists acknowledge that these “extras” exist, they have no mechanism for explaining how they came about in their evolutionary model.

Sherlock Holmes was right, and it’s really quite elementary: the many extras in our bodies point to a generous Providence—a loving Creator who gives us abundantly more than the grudging action of “survival of the fittest” (Romans 1:20; Ephesians 3:20).

1. Lungs

We can lose one of our two lungs, and while we may not be able to run races, we can live and get around. Being short of breath at rest doesn’t usually happen until we lose 65–75% of our lung tissue.1

2. Kidneys

It’s common knowledge that we can lose or donate a kidney and still get by just fine. In fact, we must lose one kidney and most of the other before we run into life-threatening trouble. Our kidneys have so much extra that we must lose 70–75% of our kidney tissue before we have kidney failure.2

3. Liver

The liver works with the kidneys to detox the body and performs many other amazing biochemical jobs. As with the kidneys, we’re able to get by on a fraction of our normal liver tissue. In fact, the liver can function at 30% capacity—and in most cases will eventually regenerate.

4. Brains

Even our brains can compensate for major loss of nerve cells, especially if the loss occurs in youth. Following hemispherectomies to treat severe seizures, children who have surgically lost half of their brains have shown amazing ability to rewire their brain-cell circuits. A researcher remarked, “The people with hemispherectomies that we studied were remarkably high-functioning. They have intact language skills. . . . You can almost forget their condition when you meet them for the first time.”3

5. Heart

The heart, often considered our most vital organ, has a more complex operation than the liver or kidneys, since it has to regularly and efficiently pump over 100,000 times a day. It also displays remarkable functional reserve. For example, in its vascular supply, at least one of the three main coronary arteries usually has to be 50–70% blocked before presenting much danger of heart attack or heart pain (angina). Some people get by on much worse coronary blood supply than that.

6. Digestive Tract

We have about 20–25 feet (6–7 meters) of digestive and absorptive bowel in our gastrointestinal tract, but we can survive on much less than that. Much of our bowel is for maximizing comfort and digestive efficiency, including accessory bowel organs like the gallbladder. The gallbladder stores bile and releases it only when we need it for digesting a meal. We can certainly live without our gallbladder and large parts of our stomach and intestines, though life without those parts is less comfortable and less healthy, as many postsurgical patients can testify.