The Walking Human Pharmacy

As you begin to read this article, a host of chemical processes are occurring throughout your body and brain. You contain a horde of cells undergoing chemical reactions every second. The number of cells in the human body is estimated at more than 30 trillion; even if each cell only averaged one chemical reaction per second, that would still be more than 30 trillion chemical reactions every second. Imagining that many chemical reactions in a high school chemistry classroom, let alone one human body, is enough to give a science teacher cardiac arrest.

As you read, neuropeptides are flashing into existence throughout your brain, an army of immune factors are responding to the usual daily onslaught of environmental pathogens, stomach acids are breaking down the salted pretzels you just ate, and messenger molecules called hormones are binding to receptor sites located throughout your body. Your body is also “diagnosing” and “treating” health conditions before they are even detectable by medical professionals. Face it—you are a walking, talking human pharmacy.

Chemicals, Chemicals, Chemicals!

Even the pharmacies human beings build are amazingly complex. They must be, as diagnoses, treatments, and classification of the tens of thousands of treatable medical disorders are tremendously complex, themselves. The International Classification of Diseases is a coding tool now containing more than 70,000 codes for possible diagnoses (“The switch from ICD-9 to ICD-10: When and why,” ICD.codes, October 29, 2015).

The system is further complicated by the myriad of overlapping treatments and possible drug interactions. Medical doctors and pharmacists must complete a great deal of continuing education to keep abreast of the applications, cautions, interactions, and administration of a sea of drugs and pharmaceutical agents. To administer this vast system requires significant human intelligence—and design.

Yet your body’s orchestration of its own chemistry is even more stunning in its complexity. Like a pharmaceutical manufacturing facility, physician, and pharmacy all rolled into one, your body performs all those roles and more. Your body properly selects and distributes just the right chemicals that target the right cells at just the right time in just the right amounts. The idea of random-chance evolution creating such a symphony of chemicals is preposterous.

Harmony of Your Hormones

Many vital chemicals make up your body’s internal “pharmacy,” including its powerful biochemicals called hormones, paired with tens of thousands of receptors on various specific cells. Hormones are produced by eight major glands—a master gland in the hypothalamus and some gland-like tissues, including the intestines and heart (“Anatomy of the Endocrine System,” HopkinsMedicine.org). As does the nervous system, hormones carry messages throughout the body. But unlike electrical impulses traveling through nerves, hormones are released in minute quantities into the bloodstream. So potent are these hormones that mid-range concentrations can be one part hormone to a trillion parts blood. That would compare to a drop of blue food coloring in ten million gallons of water.

Throughout your life, your body seeks to maintain a critical balance much like that of walking a tightrope. With too much of one hormone, you begin to die; with too little of another hormone, you begin to weaken and get sick. Too much estrogen? Polycystic ovary syndrome or cancer. Too little testosterone? Weakened heart and immune system. Too much thyroid hormone? Hyperthyroidism. Too little thyroid hormone? Hypothyroidism. On and on the list goes for insulin, glucagon, adrenalin, cortisol, etc. Full of negative and positive feedback loops like thermostats on your air conditioning, hormone interactions are layered in overlapping controls. Not only do the endocrine glands function in an interdependent network, other systems like the nervous system, cardiovascular system, and immune system all work with the endocrine system in seamless harmony.

Irreducible Complexity at Its Finest

Overwhelmed? So are evolutionists! The riddles of human hormones are many and difficult for evolutionary theorists. For example, an expectant mother’s cascade of hormones is carefully timed to ensure the development of a human fetus in the womb. However, without immunological controls that protect the developing baby from the mother’s own immune system, all that complexity would be for naught. The mother’s immune system would attack what it would view as foreign material and no fetus would ever come to birth. How did these two complex systems randomly evolve to prevent humans from becoming extinct?

Just as puzzling are the seemingly unnecessary hormone-induced differences between the sexes. Sex hormones like estrogen, prolactin, and testosterone yield structural and functional changes, and not all differences are purely about reproduction. For instance, hormones induce persistent (or “plastic”) changes in brain function and structure (Pilar Vigil et al., “Influence of sex steroid hormones on the adolescent brain and behavior: An update,” The Linacre Quarterly, 2016, vol. 83, 3, pp. 308–329). Why? If these differences are seemingly unnecessary for survival, why are there such clear physical differences between men and women?

Evolutionists falter at explaining pathways and mechanisms whereby the endocrine system could have evolved. Biology and zoology texts have been taken to task for overusing “two well-worn words that are ubiquitous in evolutionary literature and explain nothing: ‘over time.’ Darwinists often use generous portions of ‘time’ to gloss over macroevolutionary problems—but this is not evidence for evolution” (Frank Sherwin, “Endocrine System Evolution: A Textbook Example?,” Acts & Facts, 2013, vol. 42, 9, p. 15).

We also find circular reasoning in evolutionists’ writings. Macroevolutionary progression of species is feebly theorized in attempts to explain morphological (or shape) changes based on descendant species’ levels of growth hormone. In the face of wild statistical impossibilities, exuberant words like “burst” are liberally sprinkled into hopeful explanations (O.C. Wallis and M. Wallis, “Molecular evolution of growth hormone (GH) in Cetartiodactyla: cloning and characterization of the gene encoding GH from a primitive ruminant, the chevrotain (Tragulus javanicus),” General and Comparative Endocrinology, 2001, vol. 123, 1, pp. 62–72).

Working Together for Good

The Bible gives answers that go far beyond attributing biological complexity to nothing more than the magic of mindless time and passionless nature. The amazing living chemistry of human hormones is one of creation’s many beautiful symphonies of well-ordered design. It was God who created man, woman, and all the hormones and genetics involved with being a man or woman (Genesis 1:27).

There is no reality in which the design of humankind can be written off as a “fortunate accident” caused by blind and uncoordinated natural forces. Rather, every one of us reflects the deliberate and purposeful hand of a Divine Designer—one of astonishing intelligence who clearly created you for a reason. After a period of chaos and darkness, “God said, ‘Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness’” (Genesis 1:26). Why in His image? John wrote, “Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like him, for we shall see Him as He is. And everyone who has this hope in Him purifies himself, just as He is pure” (1 John 3:2–3).

Your hormones, gender, genetics, and future are not the result of a random mistake or happenstance. Although you are yet a bit hormonal, you have the opportunity to become an immortal child of God. For more on your incredible human potential, order your free copy of Your Ultimate Destiny or read it at TomorrowsWorld.org.