Some Theological Implications of Genetic Programming
When I was in high school I was something of a slacker. I didn’t apply myself like I could have, preferring to waste time reading novels and other stuff. Even in class I was prone to squander the opportunities I was given, such as in my senior high computer class. My long-suffering teacher was a kindly old Czech woman named Dr. Nosal, who was decidedly out of her depth teaching the class. It wasn’t her fault; she was a brilliant woman, with a Ph.D. in mathematics. She taught math and calculus most of the time, and moonlighted at the university, I think. The school had needed a computer teacher, and evidently someone had thought that she, being a math and numbers expert, would take quite naturally to computers. Makes sense, right?
Things don’t quite work that way. Dr. Nosal didn’t really know the first thing about computers, and as a result most of the substantial teaching in the class fell to one of the Grade 12 students. This ill-considered decision left Dr. Nosal at the mercy of kids like me. I was beginning to fiddle with programming at that time, in QBASIC if I recall correctly, and was learning how to play with the settings in MS-DOS. (I feel old just writing that – anyone remember DOS prompts?) I’ll never forget her leaving the class, fearing the worst, to pull her Grade 12 assistant out of another lecture because I had changed the “C:/” DOS prompt on several of the computers to read “YOU HAVE A VIRUS!!!!:/” instead.
It took me until I was 25 years old to develop a real academic work ethic, to my everlasting shame. Youth is a terrible thing to waste…
I thought back to this incident this week when I noticed something in the news. A group of people who evidently were far more dedicated and disciplined in their own studies than I ever was succeeded in creating what’s being called by some as “artificial life.” That’s something of a misnomer, but what they’ve basically done is created a string of synthetic DNA using a computer, implanted it in another cell, and “booted it up.” DNA, in simple terms, is a chemical “code” that contains all the genetic information for the cell and its activities, and which is copied each time the cell reproduces. The resulting hybrid cell – natural cytoplasm and man-made DNA – can reproduce itself like any other cell.
The story tells us that initially, the scientists couldn’t get the cell to reproduce:
The team scrambled to find out why, creating a genetic version of a computer proofreading program to spell-check the DNA fragments they'd pieced together. They found that a typo in the genetic code was rendering the manmade DNA inactive, delaying the project three months to find and restore that bit.
How were they certain that the “daughter” cells that had been produced were in fact genetic copies of the scientists’ synthetic version? Times Online explains that “several inert DNA ‘watermarks’ were added to distinguish the synthetic genome from the natural version.”
Some observations, then, from my admittedly unscientific point of view:
1) It’s remarkable how precise DNA needs to be in order to work. One “typo” in the genetic code – that is, one wrong nucleic acid out of millions – messed it all up and rendered it inoperative.
One implication is that in order to work, a DNA strand for even the simplest cell has to be assembled in toto right from the start. There is no possibility that the DNA “evolved” over time from, say, three or four nucleotides to multiple millions. You couldn’t have a succession of more and more complex strands over millions of years, since a strand that didn’t have all the necessary information will not “boot up” its cell. The whole thing has to be right from the start. How would evolution explain the first strand of DNA, then? Millions of nucleotides just happened to line up at exactly the right time and in exactly the right sequence, inside a cellular cytoplasm that just happened to helpfully assemble itself for the occasion?
2) The scientists “watermarked” the DNA to know which strands were copies of their own work. This helps not only themselves, but the scientific community, verify the reality of “intelligent design” from the experiment.
Yet many in the scientific community, perhaps even some of these scientists themselves, would reject divine creation/intelligent design as an explanation for the question I posed above. This, despite the repeated and persistent analogies throughout the stories, and even in the words of the scientists themselves, comparing the DNA to computer software – definitely an artifact of intelligent design. Look at the links yourself and see the computer comparisons. See, DNA is very much like the operating system (i.e., Windows, MS-DOS, Mac OS) that runs the “hardware” of the cell; the nucleic acids that pair up and link into DNA strands form a “programming” language much like BASIC or C++. Notice that the scientists did not write their own programming language here – they used the language already in operation in the cells. They copied the DNA of another organism – moved the “OS” of another “computer” onto a blank “computer.”
The scientists’ inert tagging of the DNA is, following the analogy, exactly what I did to MS-DOS in my computer class – leaving a harmless identifier (“YOU HAVE A VIRUS!!!”) that has no impact on actual operation but is obvious to those looking at it. Yet many would recognize that inert “tagging” as design while simultaneously denying that the DNA “OS” or the protein “programming language” are the product of intelligent (divine) design.
This story and its reception in the scientific community betrays the double standard and displays the hypocrisy. It’s like someone took the computers I fiddled with, copied their MS-DOS operating system into other computers, and then acknowledged the “YOU HAVE A VIRUS!!!:/” prompt as an example of software design while stubbornly denying the existence of Microsoft and claiming that MS-DOS and C++ are random accidents.
So this story has two lessons for us as believers. First, the complexity and precision of our genetic “programming” is a tribute to the wisdom and power of our Creator. Truly, it should move us to worship, as it did the Psalmist:
For you formed my inward parts;
you knitted me together in my mother's womb.
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works;
my soul knows it very well.
My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
intricately woven in the depths of the earth. (Psalm 139:13-15)
Second, the double standard that this story exposes reminds us that unbelief is not fundamentally an intellectual problem. The unbelievers in the scientific community are not stupid people; they’re certainly smarter than I am! I can hardly read this story and say, “I could do that. I just don’t want to,” could I? Scientists are people who have incredible intellectual gifts, and yet many of them refuse to acknowledge what is so brutally obvious to others. Why? Because, the Bible tells us, unbelievers actually know the truth; they just actively repress that truth:
For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools… (Romans 18:22)
But for the grace of God, there we are as well. So let’s humbly thank God that he has rescued us from such darkness by replacing our old, stubborn, stony hearts and giving us new ones that are open to the truth. And let’s pray for those who are still in darkness even as we proclaim the truth, for without a miracle, they cannot believe.
*UPDATE, May 23: I changed "proteins" in the original to the correct "nucleic acids" and "nucleotides." DNA is not composed of proteins but gives instructions on how to build proteins. We're blessed in our church with someone studying biochemistry at a doctoral level, who pointed out my error. Thanks!