The January 22 anniversary of Roe v. Wade is an appropriate time to renew our wonder at the miracle of human reproduction, or any biological reproduction. On a new episode of Secrets of the Human Body, systems engineer Steve Laufmann and physician Howard Glicksman consider the details of development, from one cell to two trillion, including 200+ different types of cells.
There are many mysteries here. How do those cells “know” what to become? Where does the information reside that shapes a human in the womb? Is it somehow all contained in the initial fertilized egg? Or does it come from somewhere else? Laufmann admits he’s not sure which possibility is the more intriguing. (In Plato’s Revenge, I explain the scientific evidence that suggests the information is coming from outside our physical reality.)
What Laufmann and Glicksman call the theory of biological design points away from purposeless shuffling, asserted by Darwinian theory, as the explanation of life. Each pregnancy poses the profoundest question. As Laufmann says, a “cascade of problems needs to be solved pretty much all at the same time, or else this new baby won’t survive. In fact, if this didn’t work, the mother wouldn’t have survived her birth either, or her mother. This may be the hardest chicken-or-egg problem we know of.”
Says Laufmann, “In effect, our bodies are shouting that we were intentionally made. Maybe it’s time that we listen to our bodies.” But, asks Dr. Glicksman, “If intention is required to overcome the causal hurdles, who did the intending? What kind of engineer could envision life before it existed and then make it so?” That’s a question that should prompt us to respect — and more, to stand in awe of — the process that gave life to each of us. Watch: