The War Beneath Your Skin

SEARCH AND DESTROY!

If the initial defenses were your body’s “ground troops,” these threat-specific defenses are the “special forces.” For instance, when the antibodies specific to that invader reach the site of infection, they attach to the foreign body, disrupting the invader’s functions in many ways. Antibodies can cause harmful bacteria to clump together, making them ineffective. They can clog the moving parts of dangerous cells, immobilizing them. Antibodies interfere with the functioning of viruses in ways that prevent them from attaching to healthy cells and reproducing themselves. And antibodies mark the dangerous microbes and identify them more clearly as targets for quick destruction.

It is an efficient process—and one that actually gets more efficient the longer infection lasts. When the specific pathogen has been identified, the cells that produce those antibodies not only begin producing more, but also begin “experimenting”—producing slight variations of the same antibody to see if the antibody’s attachment to the microbe can be improved. Over the course of time, the immune system “learns” how to attach molecules to the invader more and more efficiently, not only speeding up the destruction of the invading substance, but also improving the immune system’s library so that it can defeat the enemy even more quickly the next time it shows up.

BEYOND EVOLUTION’S GRASP

The idea that a stunningly complex system like this could have simply “evolved” through tiny, incremental steps—even over thousands or millions of years—is simply unreasonable. Our immune system is an example of what Intelligent Design theorists call “irreducible complexity.” It cannot develop gradually over time, for if a fundamental, complex piece were even partially missing, the entire immune system would become either useless junk or a dangerous disaster.

As biochemist Michael Behe wrote in his seminal work Darwin’s Black Box,

Diversity, recognition, destruction, toleration—all these and more interact with each other. Whichever way we turn, a gradualistic account of the immune system is blocked by multiple interwoven requirements. As scientists we yearn to understand how this magnificent mechanism came to be, but the complexity of the system dooms all Darwinian explanations to frustration (p. 139).

Our immune system did not evolve. It bears all the hallmarks of planning and design—created by One with an intelligence and power far greater than our own.

Until Jesus Christ returns and ushers in “the times of restoration of all things” (Acts 3:21), our world will remain a mixture of blessings and dangers. But God has not left us defenseless! And, like King David, we can rest assured that He has not forsaken the works of His hands (Psalm 138:8).

Article Appeared @https://www.tomorrowsworld.org/magazines/2018/march-april/the-war-beneath-your-skin

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