The miracle of human survival

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As readers noticed, I was gone for a while. That’s because I have a new grandchild (my first) and helped for a couple of weeks. And no, I won’t provide details or a photo because the parents are extremely committed to keeping the child off the internet (and more power to them).

I can say, though, that the parents are doing wonderfully well. They have all that it takes to create a good start for a new infant. They are loving, intelligent, competent, and both have great senses of humor. What they lack in experience, they make up for with other qualities.

However, the whole experience reinforced for me the miracle of human life. I’m not just talking about this fact in the abstract—namely, that every life is miraculous. Instead, my focus is on the incredible fragility of human babies.

For those of you who have not been around newborns, what’s striking about them is how fragile and helpless they are, much more than most other mammal species, which see a baby somewhat functional within hours or days.

Only human babies have these incredibly extended periods of complete dependence on others for their survival. And at no time are they more vulnerable than in the days and weeks immediately after their birth, when their head is a giant marble, and their neck so fragile that a careless lift or jerk can kill them. Only by about six years old, and only in horrific circumstances, can children survive on their own, and even then, it’s the most minimalist way and almost always by attaching themselves to someone older.

This long period of dependency is necessary to support the growth of the human head and brain, because we have the best brain in the animal kingdom. However, when I looked at what the baby’s parents were doing to keep that baby alive, I couldn’t help but think of all the women throughout history who lacked their abilities and advantages.

My grandchild came into the world thanks to top-quality medical care, its mother learned how to nurse thanks to top-quality nursing advice, and the home into which it was brought was filled with all the things a baby needs—quality diapers, diaper creams, a beautiful bassinet, a perfect baby bathing setup, etc. Add in two loving and conscientious parents, and you cannot get off to a better start in life.

Looking at that helpless little creature, able to communicate only through screams and to survive only if someone dedicates an enormous amount of attention, energy, and calories to it, one must ask: How in the world did the human race continue? Given our uselessness and helplessness as infants, it is amazing to look across the span of history and see human survival.

But across the world and throughout time, babies have been born to women who know absolutely nothing about what to do and in circumstances of abysmal poverty, grime, and disease. Yet those babies have survived to perpetuate humanity.

Steven Spielberg, in connection with his new film, insists that arguing for the existence of alien species will cause people to question God. I find this a silly argument because nothing Hollywood does could cause any rational person to question God.

Aside from that, though, one only has to look at the miracle of human creation—which is literally accompanied by a spark of light at conception—and then look at the continuation of our species despite the odds of even one baby having an adult capable of caring for it, to realize that something in this universe wants human life on earth.

I am not a spiritual person, and, to the extent I appreciate religion, it is because I want religion to be true, not because I believe it to be true. However, the older I get and the more I look at the miracles around us—e.g., the ordinary miracle of babies surviving—I must believe that there is more going on than the nihilism that atheism supports.

Across the Western world, birth rates are collapsing. I know young people who have been indoctrinated in climate-change madness and who refuse to have children because of climate change. When I get the chance, I stump them with this question: “Who are you saving the earth for, if not humanity? After all, humans are the only ones who place value on the earth. If we stop reproducing, the earth will continue, but it will have no value to anyone capable of recognizing its virtues.” Most can’t answer that.

More profoundly, all those people refusing to have children are denying themselves a connection to one of the great miracles of life. This is a sad loss, and it is very bad for society when huge classes of people deny themselves something like this.

As always, I understand that there are people who make very rational decisions not to have children or who, because of circumstances beyond their control, cannot have children. But we have a huge problem when vast numbers of people like my children—educated, competent, loving—cease to reproduce. It means that the only ones who show up for the future are those who lack those qualities and who create generations that are likewise lacking in competence, love, and perhaps wisdom and moral decency.

Image created using AI.