Some folks attempt to disprove the existence of God by pointing to what they believe is a poor design of the human body. An example that some critics put forth is that, in rare cases, babies are born with tails protruding from the bottom area of their spinal cord. Surely, this is proof of the Theory of Evolution, and if so, it disproves the God of our Bible. In fact, “Over a century ago, Darwin proposed that human vestigial tails are evolutionary accidents, or rudimentary leftovers from a primate ancestor that was once tailed itself.” We are told, “In the 1980s, scientists took this theory and ran with it. They argued that a genetic mutation, evolved by humans to erase our tails, could sometimes revert back to its ancestral state.” The sad truth of the matter, however, is: “As it turns out, that’s based on an outdated theory that has been contentious for decades now. The reality for these children may be much darker, and they deserve medical attention, not our morbid fascination.”[1]
Still, another complaint is that we have so many “dead genes” in our bodies, which are readily functional except for the last stage of their composition. They’re usually called pseudogenes. While many scientists like to label some dead genes as genes whose evolutionary traits are no longer needed, there are also those, which some label as zombie genes, meaning they can resurrect and function again, but why would we want that to happen, especially, if we’ve evolved beyond our need for them? Some scientists theorize some genes were “resurrected” to give us a large brain, and who knows what other features could be triggered on or off to make life better? In fact, “we have a whole graveyard of dead genes in our genome that could potentially be resurrected one day” to perform a needed task.[2]
There are other reasons that folks put forth as errors in the construction of the human body that, if taken into account that God cannot err, prove that such a God cannot exist. For example, why does our appendix prove to be so useless to us, and except for minor usefulness that has been more recently discovered, is more of a threat to our lives than useful? The appendixes in animals are larger and perform a useful function for them, but for us, it seems, if it had been useful in the past, we’ve “evolved” to the point where we no longer need it. So, in this sense, it reveals the process of evolution rather than creation.
Another point that is brought up concerns the pain women endure during pregnancy, as predicted by God in Genesis 3:16. Why would God do that? Many women, especially prior to our modern age, have died during the birthing process (cp. Genesis 35:18-19). The head of a human baby is much larger at birth in proportion to the birth canal of a woman, than the heads of beasts in proportion to the birth canal of female species of their parents. Why would God create the woman to have such a dangerously small birth canal for the body of her babe? This appears to be a ‘mistake’ which only evolution could make. Certainly, a God who cannot err would never create this kind of body for the female of mankind.
It seems, therefore, that there are either errors in creation or the evolutionary process has been made errors, which might be expected, if we owe our existence to evolution. However, errors cannot be allowed, if we owe our existence to an Almighty Creator God, who cannot err. What can be said of these things?
Errors have also been made in our understanding of the word of God. For example, God doesn’t kill men and woman who eat fruit from trees (Genesis 2:17), nor does he slay folks, because they simply pick up sticks on the wrong day of the week (Numbers 15:32-36). There are explanations for these things. There is also an explanation for why parts of our bodies appear to be too small for the usefulness of the task they were meant to perform.
Paul wrote to the Thessalonians praying that the God of peace would preserve the whole spirit, soul and body blameless to the coming of Christ (1Thessalonians 5:23). Therefore, according to the Bible, we have a spirit, a soul, and a body. However, when we consider the creation account, God created mankind (Genesis 2:7) and breathed into him the breath (spirit) of life, and he became a living soul. There is no mention of a body at this point in the text. Moreover, death wasn’t a consideration, unless man ate whatever the forbidden fruit was (Genesis 2:16-17). We are told that after the man rebelled (Genesis 3:6), mankind had to die. How would this happen, since, physically speaking, death wasn’t introduced into mankind prior to eating the forbidden fruit? What changed in our parents’ lives that brought death upon them, and us (Romans 5:12)? The text tells us that God made them coats of skin (Genesis 3:21). In other words, they were given bodies that God took from the beasts and clothed mankind with the appropriate gender of the kind of beast he slew (cp. Genesis 1:24-25), life for life (Genesis 3:21). Thus, death entered humanity (Romans 5:12). It wasn’t our destiny from the beginning, but we were made subject to death in hope (Romans 8:19-21; cp. Hebrews 2:15).
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[1] See SCIENCE ALERT: “Some Babies Are Born With ‘Tails’, But Not For The Reason You Might Think!”
[2] See: Do Humans Have Zombie DNA? While I don’t agree with everything this website concludes, the argument they present, whether put for evolution or creation, shows that “dead genes” in our bodies are not necessarily useless, nor do they indicate poor construction.
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