Every once in a while, you can run across an attempt to “create” a better human body. I do not mean a “better body” as in “living your best, healthiest life now,” I mean actually recreating the human body into something different, something better. “Something better” meaning “without evolutionary flaws or constraints.” These “build a better body” thought experiments always approach the subject by presuming that the human body is the result of a long evolutionary process. Supposedly, that evolutionary process put constraints on the human body. As a simple example, the first fish to conquer the land had four fins, so all of its descendants, all vertebrates living on land, are constrained to having four limbs. Sure, limbs can be lost, but the maximum possible limbs a terrestrial vertebrate can have is four, because that was the number of fins our fishy ancestors had. These “build a better body” experiments attempt to redesign the human body by ignoring those evolutionary constraints.
Naturally, these “build a better body” experiments are steeped in the theory of evolution. The whole premise, that the human body has unnecessary constraints, is a sibling to the “bad designs” arguments that are periodically trotted out to “debunk” creationism. Those “bad design” arguments are interesting topics to tackle, and I may do that in some future posts, but for now, I want to focus on one particular example of “build a better body” and why the thinking that went into it is not only flawed, from a Biblical perspective, but is also pretty arrogant.
The “build a better body” experiment I want to talk about it one conducted by Alice Roberts at the Science Museum in England. In this particular experiment, Alice Roberts, an anatomist at the University of Birmingham, took her own body (they actually took scans of her body as a starting point), created a “wish list” of improved designs, and then had an artist create a sculpture of her body with these improvements.[1] The result is an elf-eared, long legged, big-eyed, pouched… thing. We can call it human for the sake of argument.
On the Science Museum website, Alice explains some of the “improvements” made to Alice 2.0. I do not want to critique every one of these “improvements”: that would be a long post. However, I do want to highlight some of the more audacious “improvements” and highlight how they are just not really well thought out.
Let us start with the legs. Here is what Alice 1.0 has to say about the legs of Alice 2.0:
Our ape legs make us great generalists – we can walk, run and climb. But when you try to do too many things at once, you can end up with problems. The human knee is complex and prone to failure in a variety of ways; there’s a lot of muscle mass low down in the legs which makes moving them fairly inefficient. If we focused on one thing, we could streamline the design. I’ve taken my inspiration from ostriches – which are bipedal, like us, but extremely good at running. Muscles move closer to the centre of the body, leaving the feet light and easy to move. Large tendons provide shock absorption.[2]
Putting aside, for a moment, the obvious evolutionary bias, notice how she opens her description: our current legs are great for a generalist. Yet, she seems to feel that it is best to focus on one thing, so she focused the legs of Alice 2.0 on running.
Why?
Seriously. Why? Why are legs devoted to running superior to generalist legs? This is not a facetious question. Why are legs focused on one ability superior to legs that are good at doing a variety of things? Alice does not explain why. I guess we just take her at her word.
But I will not do that. Instead, I will consult the Creator of the human body and see what He has to say about the matter. In Genesis 1:26, we are told,
Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”
Human were created for the purpose of governing the whole Earth. The Earth has a wide variety of habitats within it, so if humans are to govern all the Earth, they will have to be adaptable. In other words, they need to be generalists. Alice Roberts admits that human legs are generalists legs, which is the very thing we are supposed to be! To change human legs into the legs of a dedicated runner does not improve humans, it takes humans away from their purpose!
I see Alice’s attitude as arrogant. Rather than settling for what humans are, for the way humans were designed by God, she seems to think she has a better vision of the human body. She actually thinks she knows better what a human is supposed to do than the One who created humans in the first place.
Now I know, Alice Roberts may very well not acknowledge God at all. After all, she thinks the human body is riddled with design flaws that are the result of human evolution, so she clearly does not think that God directly designed the human body. Yet, I cannot talk about the design of the human body without talking about the purpose for which God made humans, so in my view of the world, she is arrogant, regardless of what she thinks of herself.
Once we accept that humans were created for a specific purpose, then it becomes easier to find flaws in other parts of the design of Alice 2.0. Here is another one:
Our long, flexible lumbar spines are great in many ways – they help us to run efficiently, for instance – but they have their drawbacks. The lumbar vertebrae are under great strain and, as we age, the ligaments that hold the pulpy centres of the intervertebral discs in place dry out. The pulp can be pushed out – and the herniated disc can press on nerves and cause back pain and sciatica. As a sufferer of a slipped disc, I’d like to opt for a ‘chimpanzee fix’ here – reducing the lumbar spine from five to four vertebrae, and building up the iliac wings of the pelvis to stabilise the spine even more. I’m sacrificing my waist here, but I think the biomechanical advantages are worth it.[3]
Alice admits to sacrificing her waist (I believe she is referring to losing a thin waist), but seems fine with losing “flexible lumbar spines” that are “great in many ways.” Does her “improved” chimpanzee back have the same flexibility as a human lower back? Can the back of chimpanzee, which is a quadruped and habitually carries its back horizontally, actually be a good model for a biped that habitually carries its back vertically? Probably not, yet Alice is ready to sacrifice a little vanity (her waist) for a supposed improvement. She arrogantly thinks she is making a noble sacrifice while ignoring the admitted loss of efficiency and flexibility our spines already have.
As an aside, I have always found the argument that the human-spine-is-faulty-because-it-breaks-down to be peculiar. The argument eventually boils down to, “as the human body gets older, the spine gets worse because it has been under stress its whole life.” Well obviously. The lumber vertebrae are the vertebrae of the lower back: they hold the weight of the entire torso, arms, and head. Naturally they will eventually wear out from a lifetime of carrying that weight. It just seems like the problem is that body materials don’t last forever, not that the spine has a bad design. You can even see it in Alice’s quote above. Notice what she admits is the cause of the problem: “as we age, the ligaments… dry out.” It sounds like the problem is drying out of the ligaments (a result of aging), not the vertebral column itself. Yet, she wants to rework the human spine, modelling it after a quadrupedal chimpanzee, rather than admit that old things wear out.
As another aside, the fact that the human body wears out is likely a consequence of sin. After all, in Genesis 3:17-19, God tells Adam that he will return to dust. No amount of reworking the human body can possibly make it last forever, because we are cursed to die a physical death because of Adam’s sin. The problem of the lower back wearing out simply cannot be avoided.
Let us look at one more example for good measure. Here is what Alice says about the esophagus and trachea: the throat and the windpipe:
There’s an obvious design flaw here, as the airway and the passage for food share a short but important section of pipeline in the head and neck. The nasal cavity opens into the pharynx, which, lower down, communicates with the back of the oral cavity. Then the ways divide, with air passing forwards into the larynx and thence to the lungs, and food passing backwards, down into the oesophagus. At least – that’s what meant to happen, but the usual set-up allows food to go down the wrong way – towards the windpipe, while air can get swallowed. How ridiculous. Let’s separate the airway completely from the passageway for food and avoid choking.[4]
I should point out that the purpose of pharynx works perfectly fine. The part where Alice says, “At least — that’s what meant to happen,” actually happens most of the time. In other words, it works pretty well. Sure, people choke occasionally, but more often than not, we swallow food just fine without food going down our windpipe. So she is trying to solve a problem that really isn’t a problem: people do not eat their food in fear that the next swallow might be their last. People are not ready at a moment’s notice to perform a Heimlech maneuver whenever we see something chewing food. Sure, a Heimlech maneuver can save a person’s life, but how many times have you used it? It just isn’t necessary most of the time because most of the time, we can swallow just fine.
Nevertheless, Alice apparently wants to remove that rare opportunity for a person to choke on food. So her solution is to have completely separate passageways. There is no pharynx: air goes straight from the nasal passageways to the trachea and food goes directly from the oral cavity to the esophagus. That way, there is no chance that food can accidently go down the wrong tube.
What else would we lose with such a redesign? Think about it. Think about it carefully. What possible purpose can we have for exhaling air through our mouths?
To speak!
If we didn’t have a pharynx, if we had no way for air to pass from our trachea to our mouths, we would have no way to form words. Sure, vowel sounds are formed in the trachea in the voice box, but the wide range of consonant sounds are all formed by a combination of lips, teeth, and tongue. The design of Alice 2.0 removes one of the most fundamental ways we communicate with our fellow human being: Alice 2.0 cannot speak! Going back to the idea that humans were designed to govern the Earth, the Earth is a big place, and it is necessary for humans to share information about the Earth with fellow humans. Some means of communication can last long term, such as writing, some communication is quick and instant, like talking. Yet, the great and wise Alice Roberts believes that human communication should be limited, that speaking is removed as an option, simply to prevent the occasional choking.
The more I read about these “build a better body” experiments, the more I come to believe that the people who do them are shooting in the breeze. They have no idea how well their resigns will work in a real, living body. And that is perhaps the last take-away. Alice 2.0 is a sculpture, a non-living thing. Alice 1.0, the real Alice Roberts, is an actual, living human being made in the image of God. One of these designs has been tested and tried for millennia. The other is a figment of Alice’s imagination. Which one do you think is actually the better design?
Thoughts from Steven
[1]Roberts, Alice (2018) “Making the ‘Perfect Body'” Science Museum Website, retrieved from https://blog.sciencemuseum.org.uk/making-the-perfect-body/ on March 14, 2024 and RadioTimes (2018) “This is What the Perfect Body Looks Like – According to Science” RadioTimes.com, retrieved from https://www.radiotimes.com/tv/documentaries/this-is-what-the-perfect-body-looks-like-according-to-science/ on March 14, 2024
[2]Roberts, Alice (2018) “Making the ‘Perfect Body'” Science Museum Website, retrieved from https://blog.sciencemuseum.org.uk/making-the-perfect-body/ on March 14, 2024
[3]Ibid.
[4]Ibid.
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