It’s clear that no creature is perfect, and in fact “perfection” is a meaningless concept when it comes to living organisms. Creatures live and at some point they start to deteriorate and eventually die (assuming that they don’t suffer a more immediate misfortune and die prematurely). It’s the imperfections in the living being that cause the deterioration.

More advanced creatures have an immune system that fights infections and disease. The immune system includes white blood cells and organs and tissues of the lymph system, such as the thymus, spleen, tonsils, lymph nodes, lymph vessels, and bone marrow. The immune system has the ability to learn and humans have found ways to fast-track that learning via inoculations, e.g. against things like polio, measles, mumps, chickenpox, rubella, diphtheria, tetanus, COVID-19, and many more. Childhood mortality was about 50% before science introduced vaccinations but is now around 3%, so a big thank you to science.

Everyone’s immune system is different and has more or less capacity to operate effectively based on things such as age, stress, environmental factors such as pollution and exposure to sunlight, existing medical conditions, sleep, alcohol, smoking, diet, medications, hygiene practices, etc. Some of these we can help, some we choose not to address, and some, like age, we can’t do much about.

As a general rule, the older we get, the less efficacious (effective) our immune system becomes. That is, our immune system finds it harder and harder to be effective the older we get. In the end, it can be something quite simple that causes us to die – something that we could have easily fought off when we were younger, e.g. the flu or pneumonia.

It’s interesting that a dog or cat has a similar deteriorating immune system to us and they weren’t made in god’s image. Looks like we are much closure to animals than the religious would like to admit.

Why, if we are made in god’s perfect image, should we have a deteriorating immune system? Surely god could have given us an immune system that does not deteriorate with age? For example, we could all have led perfectly healthy lives until our approximately fourscore years (psalm 90:10) were up, at which point we could have simply been launched into the sky and been dissolved in preparation for our judgment (or, whatever).

That strategy might also have been favored by children who died of diseases caused by poor immune systems, such as PIDs, SCID, Wiskott-Aldrich Syndrome, XLA, Lupus, Celiac Crisis, etc. By the way god, exactly what did children with those conditions do to not have been born in your “perfect” image? And there are many cases where one sibling got a life-terminating illness however their brother or sister didn’t, so how does that work if you are going to suggest the (obnoxious) sins-of-their-father theory? Was one of the siblings secretly a Canaanite and therefore deserved death?

How do people work the concept of perfection into everyday mistakes that they make? A good example is when someone decides that some sort of extreme diet is good for them. E.g. diets like not eating, or only drinking water or juice, or only eating red meat. Such diets usually come about because someone has heard that something or other is bad for them, so they extrapolate to an opposite extreme – all based on the idea that the human body is a perfect machine if only they treat it a certain way. Those people might not even be religious, however they may inadvertently have been influenced by the concept of perfection that religion has bestowed on people.

The human body has evolved to achieve certain goals:

• We have to be looked after by our parents (and others) as we grow and develop.
• We spend years learning.
• We mature sexually, find a mate and reproduce.
• We bring up our children.
• We continue learning.
• We might even help bring up our children’s children (grandkids).
• Females reach menopause and stop the ability to have children.
• We reach late middle age when most people start to develop problems related to age.
• One or more age-related problems will eventually overwhelm us and we die.

Obviously there is a wide range of ages for the above, depending on: the person, genes, lifestyle, medical care, economic circumstance, and luck. However the end result tends to be the same. The point is that, for each person, there comes an age when a deterioration begins. That truth is not commensurate with the notion that the human body is perfect.

Another mistake people might make is if they don’t take the advice of medical professionals when they are prescribed medication for illnesses that are more likely to afflict someone as they get older. After nature cuts you loose (usually in your 50s), it’s tempting to still believe that the body will bounce back to its former glory based on specialized diets, hitting the gym, and trying all sorts of unusual cures that seem feasible based on one or more YouTube clips.

It is almost always better to take the advice of a doctor after being prescribed certain drugs such as: statins, blood-pressure reducers, blood thinners, blood-sugar controllers, etc. Remember that for the average person, the body gets further from “perfect” the older it gets, so if you want to live a longer life, it’s better to listen to professional advice to address the growing list of symptoms that aging presents.

But perhaps you are raging against the suggestion that the human body isn’t perfect? Well, it’s actually a long way from perfect, and it’s a long way from the state it should have been had it been designed. See The human body isn’t perfect – part 2 (a page on this website) for more details.