By Laurent Belsie (belsiel@csps.com) Staff writer of The Christian
Science Monitor
The past four
centuries have not been especially kind to religious believers.
Every time
scientists have peered through a microscope or a telescope, their
findings have usually challenged popular notions about God. Religious
authorities have often fought back. But the latest discoveries
about the human genome have produced no such backlash.
At least,
not yet. This week's revelations, published in the journals Science
and Nature, have produced more scientific questions than religious
consternation. But how society perceives the Creator will depend
on how broadly the new genetics explains creation in years to
come.
"Every
age, every culture has articulated its belief system or philosophy
within some kind of a framework," says Tom Shannon, author
of "Made in Whose Image? Genetic Engineering and Christian
Ethics." "That happened with Copernicus. It should have
happened with Darwin. And we have that same opportunity again.
What we're being given here is a new paradigm."
Perhaps the
biggest reason for the lack of religious hostility stems from
the relatively humble stance that many genetic researchers are
taking. They reject the notion that genes explain what makes man
tick.
"It is
a delusion to think that genomics in isolation will ever tell
us what it means to be human," writes Svante Pääbo
of Germany's Max Planck Institute of Evolutionary Anthropology
in this week's edition of Science. "The history of our genes
is but one aspect of our history, and there are many other histories
that are even more important."
For example,
the ancient Greeks contributed only a tiny portion of man's genetic
pool, he points out. But their ideas about architecture, science,
technology, and politics have had a powerful influence on Western
culture.
Even revelations
that man possesses only about 30,000 genes - not that many more
than fruit flies or worms - have caused little religious hand-wringing.
"Biblically,
everything's made from the earth," says Norbert Samuelson,
professor of Jewish philosophy at Arizona State University in
Tempe. So the finding that man's genetic makeup looks similar
to a roundworm's seems logical to him. For Jews, he adds, man's
uniqueness depends on his relationship with God, not his material
origin.
Similarities
with animals
The similarity
of the genetic codes of man and animals poses problems for Christians,
but perhaps not insurmountable ones, theologians say.
"The
church has played up the uniqueness of the human person. [But]
there's a continuity between humans and other forms of life,"
says Lou Ann Trost, program director for the Center for Theology
and the Natural Sciences in Berkeley, Calif.
The genome
finding may prove positive, she adds. Perhaps it may lead to a
stronger Christian basis for environmental stewardship.
Even conservative
Christians who take the biblical account of creation as literal
fact say the latest genetic findings don't pose a roadblock to
faith. In fact, many evangelicals argue that the new research
points out the implausibility of Darwinian evolution. Adherents
of a movement called Intelligent Design claim the findings support
their beliefs - though most genetic researchers reject these views
as bad science.
The central
idea behind Intelligent Design is that life looks too elegant
to be explained solely by Darwinian evolution. An intelligent
designer or Creator must have gotten the ball rolling. Thus, the
key discovery of the new genetics is that DNA is literally an
information-carrying molecule.
"That
has very powerful implications when you begin to think of the
origin of life," says Stephen Meyer, director of the Center
for the Renewal of Science and Culture in Seattle. "Information
in our experience is a distinctive product of mind.... We can't
really prove therefore that there is something called a spirit
or a soul in a way that you can prove things in a laboratory.
But we do have this first-person awareness of our own consciousness."
Here, paths
diverge between strict creationists, who hold that the world was
formed some 6,000 years ago, and those like Professor Meyer, who
believe that a Creator's work has taken place through more gradual
and lengthy change.
"What
we're doing is saying ... what if naturalism isn't true?"
Meyer says. "We want to go back to that great 19th-century
question and say: Maybe they were wrong.... If there's evidence
of real design, then the God question may be back on the table."
To be sure,
many leading genetic researchers don't believe their work excludes
God. They reject notions that genes explain all, or even most,
of what makes man tick. But they - and more mainstream Christian
thinkers - do hold that the accumulating genetic evidence does
point to evolution as a key process through which man developed.
But once God
created the process, perhaps He or She left it alone, some Christian
thinkers say. That would suggest that man's appearance was accidental
rather than predetermined.
"What
we're discovering is that what God created was a process and that
process has a lot of play in it," says Mr. Shannon, the author.
"There's elements of surprises and spontaneity."
An accidental
creation?
Other Christian
thinkers reject the idea that man's creation was purely accidental.
"I believe that God is somehow guiding the process,"
says Professor Trost of the Center for Theology and the Natural
Sciences. And "there's still a sort of unique relationship
between God and human beings. Despite all these genes [in common],
we don't see worms creating culture."
It is this
sense of culture and, really, self-aware consciousness that may
point to something unique about man. "It's a myth that science,
with all the power of its reductive methods, can give us an understanding
of the great products of human self-reflection, culture, knowledge,"
says Phillip Sloan, director of the Program in Science, Technology,
and Values at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Ind.
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