Genesis 1:21 “God created every winged bird according to its kind.” 

Each American eats 288 eggs every year. With a US population of about 332 million people, that means each year we eat about 96 billion eggs. That’s a lot of eggs! We view eggs as simple, but most of us can’t explain what an egg is or it’s design (yes, I said “design”) so that one day a chick comes out. As we examine below how an egg “works,” you can’t miss the intelligence of God in the egg’s design.

Day 1 – Egg Shell: How does the hen form a shell with over 10,000 pores around the soft, fertilized egg? If those pores weren’t there, the chick couldn’t breathe. How does the hen know to make a shell with pores? How could evolution make such a shell? The chick doesn’t know it needs the pores in the shell to breathe until it dies for lack of air. But dead chicks can’t evolve. So, shell pores can’t be an adaptive advantage.

Day 5 – Blood Vessels: Two vessels attach to the shell membrane, and two attach to the yolk. The chick feeds from the yolk with yolk vessels and breathes through the membrane vessels. What makes those blood vessels grow out of the chick? How do they know where to go and to what to attach? If any of these vessels do not grow out of the chick or do not attach to the correct place, the chick will die.

Days 6-19 – Waste Elimination: The chick gives off CO2 and water vapor as it metabolizes the yolk. It must get rid of the CO2 and water vapor, or it will die of gas poisoning or drown in its wastewater. These wastes are carried in the blood vessels and leave through the shell pores. How did this waste elimination system come about? Can evolution explain all these crucial advancements simultaneously occurring?

Day 19 – Air Cell: The chick, now too big to get enough oxygen through the shell pores, grows an “egg-tooth” on its beak. It pecks a hole into the “air cell” at the egg’s flat end. How does the egg “know” it needs an air cell to survive? How does the chick “know” when to create the “egg tooth” to access the air cell?

Days 19-21 – Break Out of Shell: The air cell has 6 hours of air for the fully formed chick to breathe. Instead of relaxing with this new-found supply of air, the chick keeps pecking until it breaks a small hole through the shell to get to outside air. If air cell didn’t provide exactly 6 hours of air, the chick would suffocate and die. How does the egg “know” the amount of air needed in the air cell? How does the chick “know” it must keep working to break through the shell or its air in the air cell will be exhausted and it will die?

The chick will die If one step in the chick’s development is missing, out of order or takes too long. And yet,

the above steps repeat exactly the same, billions of times, every day! What’s the most reasonable explanation for the highly repeating, ordered, precise process found in an egg? Intelligent Design. And our Source for this intelligently designed process is in Genesis 1:21, our verse this week – the God of the Bible.

The Evidence of Faith’s Substance _ Article #485