Science and Belief: The Human Genome

If you believe in the Judeo-Christian God, then it is the most natural thing in the world to search for His hand in nature. The natural wonders all around us reinforce our belief in the Creator and encourage the search for understanding, that grand journey of exploration we call science.

One may have the opinion that the Creator used the mechanism of the Big Bang, as far as it is understood, to initiate the creation process, that He imprinted the laws of physics and the values of the physical constants onto the fabric of His universe and then allowed nature to take its course. The emergence of life could be a natural consequence of physics and chance if He wanted it to play it that way. Or like Einstein, one might be of the opinion that God would not “play dice” with the universe. Either way, the scientist delights in the discovery of God’s chosen path.

One of the grandest explorations on the frontier of knowledge is the search for the nature of life. At the most fundamental end of the exploration front is the search for the mechanism by which life first arose, as well as the very definition of life. It turns out that the definition itself is a mystery and the origin mechanism is unknown.

The most popular scientific theories of life’s origin include the following three scenarios: (1) Life began with self-replicating genetic molecules (RNA), then metabolism was incorporated later through natural selection. After a lot of trying there has not yet been an experiment that demonstrates the plausible pre-biotic synthesis of the genetic molecules. (2) Life began with metabolism, then genetic molecules were incorporated later through natural selection. In this scenario life’s first building blocks were the simplest molecules and somehow a self-replicating chemical cycle was established. (3) Life began as some sort of cooperative chemical phenomenon arising between metabolism and genetics.

Whether one of these (rather vague) mechanisms or some other natural mechanism was at work, or whether God played an active role, we’re certainly glad that life came to be.

Farther along the complexity scale is the frontier of the human genome.

Completed in 2003, the Human Genome Project was a 13-year multi-national project aimed at (1) identifying all of the 20,000-25,000 genes in human DNA, and (2) determining the sequences of the 3 billion chemical base pairs (A, T, G, C) that make up human DNA.

Recall that cells are the fundamental working units of every living system and that the instructions needed to direct their activities are contained within the chemical DNA. The DNA sequence is the particular side-by-side arrangement of bases along the DNA strand (e.g., ATTCCGGA). This order spells out the exact instructions required to create a particular organism with its own unique traits. An organism’s genome is the complete set of DNA.

The DNA in the human genome is arranged into 24 distinct chromosomes - physically separate molecules that range in length from about 50 million to 250 million base pairs. Each chromosome contains many genes, the basic physical and functional units of heredity. Genes are specific sequences of bases that encode instructions on how to make proteins. Genes comprise only about 2% of the human genome; the remainder consists of noncoding regions, whose functions may include providing chromosomal structural integrity and regulating where, when, and in what quantity proteins are made.

The Human Genome Project was one of the great feats of exploration in scientific history -- an inward voyage of discovery. The Human Genome gives us the ability, for the first time, to read the complete genetic blueprint for building a human being.

From the Times of London (Steven Swinford, 6/12/06) we learn that the scientist who led the team that cracked the human genome is to publish a book The Language of God, explaining why he now believes in the existence of God and is convinced that miracles are real.

Francis Collins, the director of the US National Human Genome Research Institute, believes there is a rational basis for a Creator and that scientific discoveries bring man “closer to God”. “One of the great tragedies of our time is this impression that has been created that science and religion have to be at war,” said Collins.

For Collins, unravelling the human genome did not create a conflict in his mind. Instead, it allowed him to “glimpse at the workings of God”.

“When you make a breakthrough it is a moment of scientific exhilaration because you have been on this search and seem to have found it,” he said. “But it is also a moment where I at least feel closeness to the Creator in the sense of having now perceived something that no human knew before but God knew all along.

“When you have for the first time in front of you this 3.1 billion-letter instruction book that conveys all kinds of information and all kinds of mystery about humankind, you can’t survey that going through page after page without a sense of awe. I can’t help but look at those pages and have a vague sense that this is giving me a glimpse of God’s mind.”

Collins joins a line of scientists whose research deepened their belief in God. Isaac Newton, whose discovery of the laws of gravity reshaped our understanding of the universe, said: “This most beautiful system could only proceed from the dominion of an intelligent and powerful being.”

Collins believes in “theistic evolution,” the theory that natural selection is the tool that God chose to create man. He argues that man will not evolve further.

“I see God’s hand at work through the mechanism of evolution. If God chose to create human beings in his image and decided that the mechanism of evolution was an elegant way to accomplish that goal, who are we to say that is not the way,” he says.

“I think that's incredibly elegant. And because God is outside of space and time, He knew what the outcome was going to be right at the beginning. It's not as if there was a chance it wouldn't work. So where, then, is the discordancy that causes so many people to see these views of science and of spirit as being incompatible?”

Science and Belief are entirely, naturally compatible.