Planning Our Fingers and Toes

We may not spend time thinking about our digits, but pay attention the next time you are carrying an awkward load or doing something else that requires manual dexterity. There are times I get some unusual grips on things like groceries and am glad to have opposable thumbs.

Our toes may receive even less thought except when we injure them. Then we realize that they are important to walking, balance — and helping us make loud vocalizations when we kick a chair in the night.

Adult hands and baby feet, Unsplash / Manuel Schinner

In images of a developing human fetus, fingers and toes do not look anything like the final product. More like webbed things. That's where planned cell death comes in, which is called apoptosis. The Master Engineer designed a system where apoptosis is on standby, held by other biological functions. At the right moment, it goes to town and we get our fingers and toes after a spell. This is yet another display of design by our Creator, and evolutionists are left stammering out excuses.

Have you ever wondered how our fingers and toes form during embryonic development? Our digits are, in fact, sculpted from a paddle-like structure in the embryo through the process of apoptosis — that is, programmed cell death. During early development, the hands and feet begin as solid, webbed structures. Through carefully controlled apoptosis, the tissue between them is eliminated, facilitating the separation of the digits. As one paper put it, “the role of apoptosis can be compared with the work of a stone sculptor who shapes stone by progressively chipping off small fragments of material from a crude block, eventually creating a form.”1 Apoptosis, of course, serves other important biological functions as well — such as eliminating old, damaged, or infected cells.

Although somewhat technical, this article from an Intelligent Design site is quite interesting. The rest of it is found at "The Formation of Our Digits Points to a Process with Foresight."