Bones: A Study in Design

I have often been asked if I teach creation in my medical school courses. In a sense, every instructor in the medical school teaches creation, whether or not they realize it. Perhaps more than anyone, medical students have an opportunity to see how wondrously designed the human body is. For this reason, I have chosen to give a lecture to M.A.C. on the subject of bone, which is based on the type of lectures I give to medical students.

Why bones you ask? Well, the elementary structure and function of bones are perhaps more quickly understood by the layman than many other organs we might talk about because we are all familiar with them. Also, bones, or casts of bones, in the fossil record are really the only tangible historical evidence for the speculations of evolutionism. Convinced that "form follows function" in importance, we will first consider the functional importance of bones for our very survival. We will learn that on a scale of importance, the mechanical function of bones are not really their most important function for life.

Then we will examine several human bones from the smallest to the largest. Do you know what the smallest one is? Evolutionist claim that one of these small bones of our body evolved from the reptilian jaw! Since human skulls and teeth are the single most important fossil specimens for speculating on the origin of humans from apes, we will look at these as well. Special attention will be given to how bones grow and yet maintain their shape proportional and appropriate for their function. We will look at the marvelous structure of bone joints and see how the moveable ones are lubricated.

Photos will be shown of specimens of bone as seen in the light microscope, and the scanning electron microscope. At high magnification we will see the very cells that lay down new deposits of bone and still other cells that literally sculpt or carve the bone of our bodies. These two remarkable classes of cells working together in a precisely coordinated way produce the change in shape that occurs during growth and repair of bone. An almost immeasurable imbalance of the activities of these two kinds of cells can in the course of time produce osteoporosis which cause the bones of many older women in particular to be very fragile.

Suffice it to say, you will be amazed that anything so incredibly complex and highly integrated as our skeletal system could ever have been designed, let alone evolved, and that it can continue to perpetuate its precise structure in every developing baby and go on to sustain and repair itself in adult life. You will see why it is that the "old preacher" said nearly 3000 years ago: "As you know not what is the way of the spirit, nor how the bones grow in the womb of her that is with child; even so you do not know the works of God who makes all" (Ecclesiastes 11:5).