Design,
Design, Design:
You are amazing; you are a walking miracle.
You are amazing; you are a walking miracle.
AMDG
The Bodies Revealed
Exposition at the Bossard Library in Gallipolis, Ohio has only one week
left. If you haven’t seen it yet,
GO! You will receive some wondrous
insights…….not only the physiological and anatomical aspects of the dozen
systems of the human body, but also the spiritual and the philosophical.
They utilized a new means of preserving by plastinating human
organs, blood vessels, bones, muscles, tendons, etc. that freeze the body into
the position desired. Thus these
cadavers, transformed into numerous plastinates, seem to come alive doing
athletic poses. You’ve certainly seen
gymnastic events in the Olympics. How
can the human body do that…..the flips, the balancing, the jumping, the climbing,
the lifts, the running, etc.? Despite
all of the technological advances we can’t design a single robot to duplicate all
of these feats. Even if we could, how
long would the contraption last?
The hypothalamus of the brain acts
like a thermostat to maintain the body temperature at 98.6 °F. When the temperature of the body increases,
it signals the skin’s glands to emit sweat. As it evaporates, the sweat absorbs body heat. When
cold, it sends a signal to the muscles to shiver, thus generating heat.
We’re still not complete! At the moment of conception God gave each one of us a soul. The integration of body and soul makes us immortal human beings, created according to the image and likeness of God……..so magnificent that our loving, merciful, almighty, awesome Son of God humbly stooped down to became one of us to teach us how to live and save us from our sins. THAT’S WHAT CHRISTMAS IS ALL ABOUT! After the fall of man and the loss of paradise, humanity had to wait 4000 years for the Redeemer and now we can receive Him even daily into our hearts in the Holy Eucharist. After death we, our souls, continue to live.
The
human body can go on and on for up to about a hundred years with no replacement
by spare parts if we take care of it. When
the body has cuts and bruises, it’s programmed to mend and repair itself. When the body gets sick, it will usually heal
itself. Thanks to our health
professionals for helping that healing process along or helping us to compensate
for handicaps. Can a car repair itself? How long will your car last even with the
periodic replacement of parts, oil changes, and repairs?
This
magnificent creation must start out with the Skeletal System of strong
bones……206 of them five times stronger than mild steel. They meet at over 230 joints where they are hooked
up by tendons and muscles. The muscles of the Muscular System contract
or relax to move the skeleton from walking and running to heavy lifting and defending oneself against harm. The arm can throw and catch a ball. The fingers can sew, make and repair watches. In conjunction with the arms they can construct homes, make furniture, build and repair machines, paint, and do artistic work.
That
movement requires energy obtained from nutrients that combine with inhaled
oxygen of the red corpuscles, both of which are carried by six quarts of blood through
a network of some 100,000 miles of blood vessels (arteries, veins, and
capillaries) throughout the body that comprise the Cardiovascular System. A single blood cell might travel 12,000 miles
in a single day with each circuit from the heart taking 20 to 60 seconds. The ten ounce heart is the strongest organ,
pumping three ounces of blood with every beat, 2½ billion of them over 75
years, one million barrels, enough to fill three supertankers.
The inhaled oxygen to the lungs and products of this form of combustion of
nutrients is carbon dioxide that is carried by the blood to the lungs and
exhaled as part of the Respiratory System. The lungs have 300 – 500 million grape like
structures called trachea. The kidneys filter out
the other waste products in the blood and eliminate them through the Urinary
System. Go to http://www.innerbody.com/ or https://quizlet.com/3064799/12-systems-of-the-body-whats-their-function-flash-cards/, or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_systems_of_the_human_body for more detail on each
system.
The
Digestive
System, emitting two quarts of gastric juices per day with 5 million
glands, processes the food that we eat and the liquids that we drink in a great
laboratory to produce the building blocks for our body and the products that
provide energy to do physical work and to think. The small intestine is about ten feet long
with a surface area of about 1500 square feet.
The large intestine is an additional ten feet in length. Villi cells absorb the nutrients into the blood. The waste products in digestion are eliminated through the large intestine. The body produces a new stomach lining every three or four days.
The large intestine is an additional ten feet in length. Villi cells absorb the nutrients into the blood. The waste products in digestion are eliminated through the large intestine. The body produces a new stomach lining every three or four days.
The mouth and its teeth prepare the food for the digestive
system to process. Each tooth has a
particular function……to bite, to cut, to crush, to chew, etc. Our teeth are part of our smiles. If we take care of them, our teeth can last
for a century (if we live that long), contributing to the beauty of our bodies.
The jaw and the teeth can exert a
pressure of over 100 pounds per square inch.
The Endocrine System provides the hormones,
exquisite chemicals that regulate growth, metabolism, and general body
function. The Immune System helps the
other systems fight disease in conjunction with the white corpuscles of the
blood. The Lymphatic System picks up
fluids leaked from the capillaries, houses white blood cells, and supports the
immune system.
At this point we’re just ghosts…….walking skeletons with
muscles and organs. We need something to
protect these vital organs and systems.
The largest and heaviest organ of the body, the skin does this as part
of the Integumentary System as shown below. The skin synthesizes Vitamin D and is the
largest sensory organ, through which we feel external stimuli. Furthermore, it gives our bodies a great
beauty.
The Senses. Even with this new coat of
skin we’re not even zombies yet. We must
be able to sense our environment and communicate with others. We feel through nerves on the skin. The pupils of the eyes adjust for
brightness; and convert reflected light of different frequencies to give color to
an image which the lens focuses upon the retina, consisting of about 100
million rods and 7 million cones.
For speech,
the vibrations of vocal cords of the communicator in conjunction with air from
the lungs and the position of the tongue produce intelligible signals through
generated sound waves of different frequencies, emphasis, and volume. The ears transform sound waves with
different frequencies and nuances into electrical signals to the brain of the receiver. Molecules of different gases affect nerve
endings in the nose in a characteristic way which we call smell.
That’s still not enough for any kind
of creature. We need something to coordinate
all of these systems of the body; to receive and interpret sensory inputs via
the skin; the eyes into a three dimensional image in color; the ears to respond
to these sensory inputs with different volumes, pitch, cadence, and emphasis;
to think, to reason, to exercise our free will, to write, to communicate, to
adapt to new and strange environments, to compose and play music, to invent, to
create, to love.
The greatest unknown frontier in the
universe is the human brain. This
three pound supercomputer can store information equivalent to 250 million
books. Even with miniaturization, a huge
computer would be necessary. If one
would absorb one byte of information every second 24/7, it would require something
like three centuries to fill up the human brain. Yes, retrieval is often a problem. When the great genius, Albert Einstein died,
they dissected his brain and discovered that he never used most of it. For more detail go to
http://www.brainline.org/multimedia/interactive_brain/the_human_brain.html?gclid=CNL_p_eYh9ECFQIIaQod1IgD7w or http://www.livescience.com/29365-human-brain.html or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_brain.
The computer is
actually extremely stupid, a dumb machine.
The human mind invented it and must program in great detail each step of
an operation, line by line. It can only
do what the human mind tells it to do and how, spelling out each step in great
detail. Miss even a comma in the program
and the computer responds…….”syntax error” because it doesn’t know what to do. It cannot create unless told how. True, once the computer knows what to do, it’s
a fabulous tool, faster than any human, but can never replace the human brain.
We’re still not complete! At the moment of conception God gave each one of us a soul. The integration of body and soul makes us immortal human beings, created according to the image and likeness of God……..so magnificent that our loving, merciful, almighty, awesome Son of God humbly stooped down to became one of us to teach us how to live and save us from our sins. THAT’S WHAT CHRISTMAS IS ALL ABOUT! After the fall of man and the loss of paradise, humanity had to wait 4000 years for the Redeemer and now we can receive Him even daily into our hearts in the Holy Eucharist. After death we, our souls, continue to live.
At
the Last Judgment, our souls will be reunited with our bodies restored to
youthful vigor that for eternity will never get sick, break down, or wear out. We’ll all be together again with our deceased
loved ones …….free of crippling handicaps, diseases, bad habits, addictions, or
emotional and spiritual wounds. Our
eternal state of well-being, ecstasy, or high (for lack of a better way to
describe it) will be being with God. All we know is that no eyes have seen or
ears has heard what God has in store for those who love Him…….beyond our
imaginations. MAKE SURE THAT YOU GET
THERE!!!!
For the here and now that’s not all! God allows one man and one woman to become
one in a loving mutual self-giving relationship consecrated by marriage and to
participate in the creation of another human being created for eternity as the
product of that deep love. Let us not
abuse this sacred privilege! That’s
where God utilizes the Reproductive System.
A computer programmer would need thousands of
lines of code to program a lifeless robot which can only do simple
functions. Infinitely more complex is
the magnificent you. The entire program for
creating a human being, equivalent to millions of lines of code, is in the DNA
molecule and its hundreds of genes after the union of one tiny ovum and one
much tinier sperm.
By
the fifth week of pregnancy the baby’s heart is beating. By the 11th week all of the major
organs are formed, by no means a simple glob of tissue. By 40 weeks the beautiful baby is fully
formed and ready to make his/her grand entrance into our world We are ingeniously and wondrously made by a
great engineer, the master designer, the master programmer, an awesome God
according to His image and likeness.
Yet
we destroy His ingeniously marvelous creative work in forms of murder,
including abortion, a blatant and very serious if not vicious offense against
our creator. Does the mother and her
abortionist really know and understand what they are doing? May our awesome God have mercy on them!
Fascinating is watching a baby develop. He or she is programmed for each step of his/her development through adulthood.
How
can anyone say that great masterpiece came by random chance? Let us go to the exhibition with a deep respect
for each person who once occupied each human body and glorify God.
Every organ of the
body is ingeniously and wondrously made……so complex that we have doctors
who devote their lives specializing in and learning about a single body system or only one
or two organs. They are all beautifully
compacted in limited space. Take the
human eye for example…….its physics, chemistry, and biology in the refraction
of light through the lens, the differentiation of colors, the adaptation to
different amounts of light, seeing in three dimensions, etc. A good ophthalmologist has to recognize an
ingenious design in the eyes alone. It
would take a lot of mental gymnastics to rationalize all of that to millions of
years of random selection with no designer or guiding hand. According to the 2nd Law of
Thermodynamics, left alone with no guiding hand nature tends to disorder not
order.
After
I first saw Body Worlds as one with an engineering background at the famous
Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, all I could think was “design,
design, design!” I left awe-struck,
thinking: “How can anybody say that the
human body, so magnificent, came by random chance out of a collection of chemical
substances?” Even the great genius, Albert
Einstein recognized a great designer, albeit not a personal one. Evolution can be compatible with Church
teaching if and only if the hand of the great designer is recognized. Go to “Bodies Revealed” again at the Bossard
Library, but with a spiritual perspective.
You’ll come out of there praising God and giving Him glory!
You
can see a permanent exhibit of Body Worlds and many other fascinating exhibits at
Discovery Times Square; 226 West 44th St. between 7th
& 8th Avenues off of Times Square when visiting New York City (http://www.discoverytsx.com/about). For more information about future exhibitions
of “Bodies Revealed”, go to http://www.premierexhibitions.com/exhibitions/14/14/bodies-revealed/about-exhibition.
APPENDIX
For healthy living the
secular Body Worlds recommends 1) Exercise; 2) Prayer and Meditation; 3)
Proper Food in moderate amounts (80% full) low in meat; 4) Purposeful Life; 5)
Use Your Talents; 6) Exercise your Brain; 7) Life Long Learning; 8) Be active;
9) Feel Loved and important in sharing your wisdom.
Although implied above, I would add to get out of yourself
and give of yourself with humility in LOVE…….first a close relationship with
God and then serving Him by serving neighbor in whom God is present. Use your talents for others even if it is a
paid job. That will lead to a fulfilling and satisfying
job. Success in serving others leads to
personal success.
Body Works adds: “To know how to grow
old is the masterwork of wisdom and one of the most difficult chapters in the
great art of living.---- Henri Armiel
(1821 – 1881), Swiss philosopher, poet, and critic. An ager is a sugar which attaches on to
proteins. Over the age of 30, the body
needs 8% less energy every ten years.
