Baby look at you now | thebereancall.org

TBC Staff

Increasingly, people are coming to recognize that even the earliest embryo is not just a blob of material. Rather, that embryo is a highly sophisticated entity in which each cell, starting at the single cell stage, contains a genetic code of instructions involving 3 billion pairs of chemicals. This code has been compared to a code of 3 billion letters. Since there are six letters in the average word, this code could be compared to 500 million words. With about 300 words on a printed page and 250 pages in a book, the human genetic code would make up 8,000 books--with copies contained within each cell of the embryo from the earliest stage, actively directing the growth of a human being.

Admittedly, the human embryo doesn’t look like you do now. But that embryo is exactly what you looked like at that stage in your development. From the very beginning of our lives, at the first cell stage, the code and the life were in place to direct everything. All that was needed was a hospitable environment (at first a womb, then a setting with air and shelter) and the provision of raw materials (some combination of liquid/water and nutrients/food) so that our genetically-guided bodies could use those materials to build and re-build our bodies in various ways. A self-developing living entity, a full human genetic code, a suitable environment with suitable nurture--that, biologically, describes a living human adult. That also, biologically, is a living human embryo. Both alike are human beings.

Kilner/Mitchell, Does God Need Our Help? Tyndale House Publishers 2003, pp. 69-70