A Question of Throats

Image by FotoFyl / Erifyli Tsavdari

Sometimes answering anti-Christian questions on Quora doesn't require any special knowledge of biblical scholarship or Jesus' teachings. Sometimes it just requires a little logic. And this time it seemed like some people might take my answer more easily if I approached it the way an evolutionary biologist might, then transpose it into the key of Christian belief. That may make it a bit easier for the questioner to see why we aren't "bothered" by God's design of the human throat.





Q: Why aren't Christians bothered by the fact that God made man with a throat that is used for breathing and eating? It’s a highly inefficient design.

A: From an evolutionary viewpoint, regardless of our opinions of the efficiency of this design, it's widespread development in numerous animal groups (e.g., birds, reptiles, mammals, etc.) suggests that it’s a dependable, tried-and-true mechanism. Although other designs are found in nature (e.g., the spiracles and air sac design found in bees), natural selection has seemingly chosen the ”throat design” for most land animals, including humans.

Therefore Christians who see humans as designed by God needn't worry. Although their God may not have chosen a design favored by modern engineers, he has installed a mechanism in his birds, reptiles, and primates, including humans, that has proven over time to be quite satisfactory.

Not a Ghost

God born through a peasant girl. What kind of being did that make Jesus of Nazareth? Here's how the early Christian movement described it.

___________________

The Voice took on flesh and became human and chose to live alongside us. We have seen Him, enveloped in undeniable splendor—the one true Son of the Father—evidenced in the perfect balance of grace and truth.

(Gospel of John 1.14, Voice)

Believe then that this only-begotten Son of God, for our sins, came down from heaven to earth and took upon himself this human nature with the same emotions and urges as we have. He was begotten of the Holy Virgin and the Holy Spirit, and was made human, not seemingly or as a mere show, but for real. And not by passing through the Virgin like a stream, but through her becoming actual flesh. He was actually nursed on milk, and actually ate and drank as we do.  For if the incarnation was a just a ghost, then salvation is a ghost as well.

The Christ had two natures, human in what was visible, but God in what was invisible. As a human, actually eating like us, since He had the same feelings in his body as us, but as God feeding the five thousand from five loaves. As a human actually dying, but as God raising a man [Lazarus] that had been dead four days. Actually sleeping in the ship like a human, and walking upon the waters as God.

Cyril of Jerusalem (AD 313 - 386)
Catecheses number 4 section 9