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Return to November/December 2015 articles.

This article's title is Fearfully and Wonderfully Made.

I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderfully made, … (Psalm 139:14).

You may wonder why it takes so many years of schooling for a person to become a medical doctor, but that is because most of us do not understand what an incredibly complex machine the human body is. Here are some facts you might not be aware of about your own body that speak to the truth of Psalm 139:14.

An infant drooling

In your lifetime you will produce enough saliva to fill two Olympic-sized swimming pools.


A bare foot

Human feet have 52 bones making up roughly one-fourth of the bones in your body.


An exhauted emoticon

You have 500,000 sweat glands and can produce more than a pint of sweat a day. Your body gives off enough heat in 30 minutes to bring a half a gallon of water to a boil.

A stomach with flames inside

The cells in your stomach wall are replaced every three to four days, in part because the acid in your stomach is strong enough to dissolve iron.



Human lungs
Human lungs have approximately 1,500 miles of airways and up to 500 million hollow cavities giving a total surface area of about 1,500 square feet. If the capillaries that surround these cavities were unwound and laid end to end they would extend for about 620 miles.


Human fertization
The largest cell in the human body is the female egg, and the smallest is the male sperm. The egg is the only cell in the body which is visible to the naked eye.


A front view of the human skeleton

Babies are born with 300 bones, but by adulthood that number is reduced to 206 — mostly by bones fusing together.

A nose

Your nose can detect 50,000 different scents.



A child is sneezing

Sneezes regularly reach 100 miles per hour.


Human brain with arms legs and many books on hand

The human brain can hold five times as much information as an encyclopedia. The brain operates on the same amount of power as a 10 watt light bulb. Nerve impulses travel at different speeds depending on the type of neuron, but some travel as fast as 170 mph.

A finger print
Three months after conception a baby has a fingerprint.

A sick tooth crying

The tooth is the only part of the human body that cannot repair itself.


A heart flexing muscles
The human heart creates enough pressure to squirt blood 30 feet into the air. Our bodies have roughly 60,000 miles of blood vessels.



It would seem to this writer that to believe that all of this is a product of blind accidental processes selected by natural causes demands faith beyond that of any religion.

Data collected by Paul Mitchell.

— John N. Clayton

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