Monday, June 27, 2011

God and wisdom teeth

The human body is amazing.  The complexities and intricacies of the anatomy, physiology, cellular metabolism, etc. are absolutely awe inspiring.  The fragility yet perfection of biochemical pathways within every one of the approximate 100 trillion cells of the human body is mind-blowing.

But Humanity in our arrogance can look at such quirky parts of the human body such as wisdom teeth and think "clearly these are primitive features from when we evolved from our primitive ancestors, and now because of our superiority we no longer need them.  Eventually useless things will naturally select out."

I remember getting my wisdom removed, and it would have been great if they had been naturally selected out rather than having to go through oral surgery.  How easy is it for me in my comfortably middle-class, First World life to look at such "primitive" features of the human body with disdain and completely ignore the fact until the advent of modern dentistry, and even then only within the last 100 years, have people not regularly lost teeth throughout their lives due to poor oral hygiene.

For the vast portion of human history tooth loss was simply a part of life.  With that in mind would it not be great to have some spare teeth built into our bodies?  Our arrogance in our medical and dental advances have numbed us to the awesome fact that maybe God built some safety features into our bodies for us, features that for thousands of years have served as humanity's defense against discomfort and decay.  How quickly we forget what life was like before modern times, and how quickly we can turn on and dismiss as primitive the things that could have had such profound effects on human life for centuries.

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