Your Designed Body

by Steve Laufmann, Howard Glicksman

Consider your body. Every day it must solve hundreds of hard engineering problems simultaneously, or else you’ll die. While you’re going about your daily business, your body stores, retrieves, translates, and manages software for thousands of proteins, switches, setpoints, thresholds, feedback loops, coordinate systems, counters, and timers. It disassembles thousands of different complex molecules, converts them into their building blocks, absorbs the building blocks, then reassembles them into the legions of chemicals and proteins that keep you going.

Your body also safely transports hazardous chemicals to where they’re needed, without spilling them in places where they’d do harm, and employs them as it orchestrates thousands of complex processes and movements, some nearly instantaneous. At the same time it defends itself against threats large and small, and reproduces its own parts to replace those that are wearing out. And this is only a tiny portion of what your body must do to remain alive—all without conscious input from you.

In Your Designed Body, systems engineer Steve Laufmann and physician Howard Glicksman explore this extraordinary system of systems encompassing thousands of ingenious and interdependent engineering solutions. They present a compelling case that no gradual evolutionary pathway could have achieved this, and that instead it must be the handiwork of a masterful designer-engineer.

Genres: Science

539 pages, Kindle Edition

Published November 22, 2022

Reviews

[Max Beitel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book. Much of it is difficult to read (for people like me who know nothing about biology) but very rewarding. This book makes the theory of evolution look childish, not because of its arguments but simply because it reveals the absolute mastery behind the engineering of the human body. The coherent systems within systems within systems within the human body are evidence enough to make the theory of evolution akin to an elaborate fairytale. Little argument is needed, the facts speak for themselves. This book simply exposes the facts.

[Bill Griffin · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is written by a medical doctor and an engineer. Together, they make the case that the human body possesses a design that solves (what amounts to) a large number of engineering-like problems. Sample problem to solve: “Provide every cell in your body with a steady supply of oxygen.” The solution is not trivial. There are over 30 trillion cells. Oxygen needs to be routed to each of those. Solution?: An elaborate system of plumbing. Complete solution? No.
Related Problem 2: That oxygen needs to be pushed through that plumbing. Solution?: A fan or billows? Nope.
Problem 3: Oxygen simply compresses when pushed through narrow pipes, and stalls. It won’t arrive. Solution?: mix the Oxygen into a liquid (water), which doesn’t compress. Still no good.
Problem 4: Water can’t directly carry enough dissolved oxygen to feed all 30 trillion cells. Solution?: Find a molecule that can carry large quantities of oxygen and also dissolve in water. (Hemoglobin). Still not done.
Problem 5: Hemoglobin needs iron to work. So the body needs to ingest iron in foods and harvest it and place it into hemoglobin. Done yet? Nope.
This book list dozens of related problems (to enable life) and describes their solutions. Each of the solutions is remarkably engineering-like in character. The each have requirements for success, sensors to determine the current state, information processing to determine the best course of action, actuators to execute the actions, and feedback loops to inform the rest of the body that the action has been completed.
Laufmann and Glicksman then make the pretty compelling case that engineered solutions require intelligence to piece together. And the harder the engineering problem, the greater the intellectual investment. It’s a book that suggests that the design of the human body was not the product of millions of years of random mutations, but rather the product of a super intelligence, setting it up intentionally.
For those who tell themselves “that can’t be true; random mutations are capable of generating even the most elaborate solutions”, I think they will be challenged to continue to feel that way after reading this book.

[Rafael Ramirez · Rating 5 out of 5]

Maravilloso libro que te fuerza a mirar la realidad de una manera radicalmente diferente.

El propósito fundamental de los autores es describir el funcionamiento del cuerpo con una visión ingenieril, es decir, como un conjunto de sistemas diseñados para lograr un propósito, sujeto a numerosas restricciones. De ese modo, pretenden mostrar de manera científica cómo el funcionamiento de los diferentes sistemas que componen el cuerpo humano no puede ser resultado de un proceso de selección natural de mutaciones aleatorias, como propone Darwin, sino que muestra todas las características propias de algo que ha sido diseñado por alguien con un propósito.

Una de las principales características de todos los sistemas del cuerpo (ya sea el respiratorio, el circulatorio, el gástrico, etc.) es que son irreduciblemente complejos, es decir, tienen numerosos componentes que interactúan entre si, y absolutamente todos deben funcionar en perfecta armonía (mecánica, química, biológica). Si alguno no lo hace, el sistema simplemente no funciona. Al mismo tiempo, los diferentes sistemas están relacionados entre sí, aplicando el mismo principio. Dada esta característica, es imposible que hayan evolucionado poco a poco en base a pequeños cambios hasta llegar a su estado actual, ya que sólo son viables precisamente en su estado actual.

Además, estos sistemas no son estáticos, sino que, de alguna manera cuentan con un mecanismo de desarrollo a lo largo de la vida en base un plan preciso que permite su sostenimiento desde la concepción hasta la edad adulta. Todo esto sugiere que el cuerpo en cada una de sus células, de algún modo que no alcanzamos a comprender, parece seguir un manual de instrucciones sumamente precisas (más allá de la información contenida en el ADN) que debe haber sido diseñado por alguien.

Estos y otros muchos argumentos presentados en el libro nos permitirán tener una mejor comprensión del maravilloso funcionamiento del cuerpo humano y de cómo éste nos habla de la necesidad de un diseñador más allá de la naturaleza.

[Glen Johnston · Rating 5 out of 5]

System of systems

No amount of hand waving or wishful thinking can make these problems disappear. The evolutionist has to make a case. The evolutionist has to show how these systems could be created without intent or a goal. No more just so stories like in Yuval Noah Harari’s horrible book Sapiens. So much of evolutions evidence is like that. Show me how a cell can form from nonliving elements. Show me how a biologically useful protein can form by random chance. It can’t be done. Evolutionist know it and I know it, that is why they have to make up stories.

The coherence, interdependencies and shear complexity of the human body require real explanation not silly stories and wishful thinking.

Every high school biology student should be required to read this book.

Excellent work. I recommend this book.

[Ralph Osgood · Rating 5 out of 5]

I just finished this marvelous book. I always looked forward to the time that I had set aside for reading it each day. 
The authors, Steve Laufmann and Howard Glicksman MD, have laid its parts out in a thoughtful and ordered manner that eases comprehension. This is especially helpful because some topics have very technical vocabulary and explanations. 
I found myself marveling at the wonder of the human body - the intricacies of its systems and subsystems - the interdependencies from one system to another. 
The arguments that they lay out for Intelligent Design are cogent and convincing. If you are curious about the topic of Intelligent Design, this is the book that you want to read. 

[Katie Corbeill · Rating 2 out of 5]

reads like a biology textbook with a less than convincing argument presented toward the end

[silver_book · Rating 3 out of 5]

interesting and really scientific

[Collin Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this. The authors show that it's not easy to find an example of something in the body that could be explained by small successive changes over time, and there's a countless numbers of ways to be dead but only a few ways to be alive. That anything ever goes right in biology is itself a miracle.