"The Christian Science Monitor"
Wednesday, February 14, 2001

So far, new genetics leave plenty of room for faith

Religious scholars are unfazed by this week's announcement of the genetic code.

By Laurent Belsie (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 Paabo 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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