needed? Not at all. The so-called "yolk sac" is the source of the human embryo's first blood cells, and death would result without it!
Now here's an engineering problem for you. In the adult, you want to have the blood cells formed inside the bone marrow. That makes good sense, because the blood cells are very sensitive to radiation damage, and bone would offer them some protection. You need blood in order to form the bone marrow that
later on
is going to form blood. So, where do you get the blood first? Why not use a structure similar to the yolk sac in chickens? The DNA and protein for making it are "common stock" building materials. Since it lies conveniently outside the embryo, it can easily be discarded after it has served its temporary — but vital — function.
Notice, this is exactly what we would expect as evidence of good creative design and engineering practice. Suppose you were in the bridge-building business, and you were interviewing a couple of engineers to determine whom you wanted to hire. One person says, "Each bridge I build will be entirely different from all others." Proudly he tells you, "Each bridge will be made using different materials and different processes so that no one will ever be able to see any similarity among the bridges I build." How does that sound?
Now the next person comes in and says, "Well, in your yard I saw a supply of I-beams and various sizes of heavy bolts and cables. We can use those to span either a river or the San Francisco Bay. I can adapt the same parts and processes to meet a wide variety of needs. You'll be able to see a theme and a variation in my bridge building, and others can see the stamp of authorship in our work." Which would you hire?
As A.E. Wilder-Smith 28 pointed out long ago, we normally recognize in human engineers the principles of creative economy and variations on a theme. That's what we see in human embryonic development. The same kind of structure that can provide food and blood cells to a chicken embryo can be used to supply blood cells (all that's needed) for a human embryo. Rather than reflecting time and chance, adapting similar structures to a variety of needs seems to reflect good principles of creative design.
The same is true of the so-called "gill slits." In the human embryo at one month, there are wrinkles in the skin where the "throat pouches" grow out. Once in a while, one of these pouches will break through, and a child will be born with a small hole in the neck. That's when we find out for sure that these structures are
not
gill slits. If the opening were really part of a gill, if it really were a "throwback to the fish stage," then there would be blood vessels all around it, as if it were going to absorb oxygen from water as a gill does. But there is no such structure in humans of any age. We simply don't have the DNA instructions for forming gills.
Unfortunately, some babies are born with three eyes or one eye. That doesn't mean, of course, that we evolved from something with one eye or three eyes. It's simply a mistake in the normal program for human development, and it emphasizes how perfect our design features and operation must be for normal life to continue.
The throat (or pharyngeal) grooves and pouches,
falsely
called "gill slits," are
not
mistakes in human development. They develop into absolutely essential parts of human anatomy. The first pouches form the palatine tonsils that help fight disease. The middle ear canals come from the second pouches, and the parathyroid and thymus glands come from the third and fourth. The thymus prepares T cells, the immune cells destroyed by the AIDS virus, so you know how important the thymus is for human life. Without the parathyroids, we would be unable to regulate calcium balance and could not even survive. Another pouch, thought to be vestigial by evolutionists until just recently, becomes a gland that assists in calcium balance. Far from being useless evolutionary vestiges, then,
Now here's an engineering problem for you. In the adult, you want to have the blood cells formed inside the bone marrow. That makes good sense, because the blood cells are very sensitive to radiation damage, and bone would offer them some protection. You need blood in order to form the bone marrow that
later on
is going to form blood. So, where do you get the blood first? Why not use a structure similar to the yolk sac in chickens? The DNA and protein for making it are "common stock" building materials. Since it lies conveniently outside the embryo, it can easily be discarded after it has served its temporary — but vital — function.
Notice, this is exactly what we would expect as evidence of good creative design and engineering practice. Suppose you were in the bridge-building business, and you were interviewing a couple of engineers to determine whom you wanted to hire. One person says, "Each bridge I build will be entirely different from all others." Proudly he tells you, "Each bridge will be made using different materials and different processes so that no one will ever be able to see any similarity among the bridges I build." How does that sound?
Now the next person comes in and says, "Well, in your yard I saw a supply of I-beams and various sizes of heavy bolts and cables. We can use those to span either a river or the San Francisco Bay. I can adapt the same parts and processes to meet a wide variety of needs. You'll be able to see a theme and a variation in my bridge building, and others can see the stamp of authorship in our work." Which would you hire?
As A.E. Wilder-Smith 28 pointed out long ago, we normally recognize in human engineers the principles of creative economy and variations on a theme. That's what we see in human embryonic development. The same kind of structure that can provide food and blood cells to a chicken embryo can be used to supply blood cells (all that's needed) for a human embryo. Rather than reflecting time and chance, adapting similar structures to a variety of needs seems to reflect good principles of creative design.
The same is true of the so-called "gill slits." In the human embryo at one month, there are wrinkles in the skin where the "throat pouches" grow out. Once in a while, one of these pouches will break through, and a child will be born with a small hole in the neck. That's when we find out for sure that these structures are
not
gill slits. If the opening were really part of a gill, if it really were a "throwback to the fish stage," then there would be blood vessels all around it, as if it were going to absorb oxygen from water as a gill does. But there is no such structure in humans of any age. We simply don't have the DNA instructions for forming gills.
Unfortunately, some babies are born with three eyes or one eye. That doesn't mean, of course, that we evolved from something with one eye or three eyes. It's simply a mistake in the normal program for human development, and it emphasizes how perfect our design features and operation must be for normal life to continue.
The throat (or pharyngeal) grooves and pouches,
falsely
called "gill slits," are
not
mistakes in human development. They develop into absolutely essential parts of human anatomy. The first pouches form the palatine tonsils that help fight disease. The middle ear canals come from the second pouches, and the parathyroid and thymus glands come from the third and fourth. The thymus prepares T cells, the immune cells destroyed by the AIDS virus, so you know how important the thymus is for human life. Without the parathyroids, we would be unable to regulate calcium balance and could not even survive. Another pouch, thought to be vestigial by evolutionists until just recently, becomes a gland that assists in calcium balance. Far from being useless evolutionary vestiges, then,
Similar Books
