The Genetic Case Against God

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Upon the completion of the first draft of the Human Genome Project in 2000, United States President Bill Clinton called the three billion letters that compose the human genome “the language in which God created life.” Indeed, the head of the HGP, current director of the National Institutes of Health, and devout Christian Francis Collins alludes to genetics as the “language of God”—the same title of his book-length presentation of supposed evidence for Christianity—and “God’s instruction book”.1

If there was any branch of science that could have ever vindicated the doctrine of vitalism (the belief that something nonphysical is the force behind the phenomenon of life), it would have been molecular biology and its study of the genetic and chemical underpinnings of life. It would also have been the prime candidate for debunking On the Origin of Species, which was published a hundred years before Avery, McLeod, and McCarty provided Darwin’s theory with DNA as the hereditary unit of life2 and Watson and Crick discovered its double helical structure3. A failure of molecular biology to reflect the wastefulness of natural selection and its reliance on ad hoc solutions for survival would have been proof positive that a physical description of the basis of life is intrinsically impossible. If genes were found to be too complex to have been the product of simpler parents, materialism would instantly cease to be a viable perspective. Scientists would then be forced to let go of their naturalistic premises. And yet, with junk DNA4 and genes co-opted for other functions5, we clearly see the fingerprints not of an intelligent God that deftly sculpted life, but of random chance whittled down by billions of years of natural selection.

Unfortunately for the religious intelligentsia, materialistic biology has only brought the hammer down more strongly against metaphysical and supernatural conceptions of life and consciousness. This is not to say that the religious have not tried to put on the white coat and the credibility of science in a counterintuitive attempt at showing that their beliefs are based on evidence and not on faith claims. Science is currently being assailed by unscrupulous hucksters and obscurantists trying to peddle the Bronze Age hokum of the Bible as scientific—thinly disguised as nondenominational under “Intelligent Design.” Less delusional believers adeptly see through this canard and rely on the self-refuting “theistic evolution” to ease their doubts about Adam and Eve while paying lip service to scientific consensus.6 Today, the claim that life and the human mind has no basis on physical events and the neurophysiology of the brain, respectively, is on par with the belief that demons are the generative cause of epilepsy. In this stage of human scientific progress, it is safe to announce that vitalism and its variants are intellectually indefensible and thoroughly deserve the muffled laughs they elicit. Despite its use by respectable scientists such as Dr. Collins, the “language of God” metaphor used for DNA is no less ridiculous. And, as we shall see after an inventory of genes and genetic disorders, believers may want to refrain from implicating God as the writer of the mess we call the human genome.

After the sperm and egg meet

The development of a human embryo involves a complex interplay between the genes it inherits from the much obsessed about union of the 23 chromosomes of the father’s sperm and the 23 chromosomes of the mother’s egg.7 These genes direct the development of embryonic structures at specific points in time and in specific amounts. Any error in the process will derail the entire endeavor and will have catastrophic consequences. Now, it often escapes the religious mind how such an intricate crosstalk between genes could ever have arisen by itself without the forethought of a designer. Of course, as the watchmaker argument goes, this failure of imagination necessitates that God must have carefully designed each gene to turn on at the right time and at the right amounts in order to produce each one of God’s precious little children. As Rick Warren says, “[God] carefully mixed the DNA cocktail that created you.”8 However, a moment’s additional thinking will reveal the vacuity of such an argument. Alternatively, what will be revealed by a little critical thinking is that God is either inept or cruel.

Once the embryo develops into a child, is born, and the doctor hands off the child to the mother, the next step, after a well-deserved embrace, is to look over the child for obvious defects. The parents check if the child has all its toes, if its head is round, and if its face possesses all the standard features. Once inspection confirms a healthy child, the parents breathe a sigh of relief over their little bundle of joy. This image is the best-case scenario for expectant parents. This is what happens when everything goes well with the 46 chromosomes of the child. However, in spite of the omnipotence and goodness of God, the alternative happens a little too often for someone who doesn’t make mistakes.

As much as 20% of all recognized conceptions result in spontaneous abortion—also known as miscarriages.9 This number does not include women who never even knew they were pregnant. Miscarriages occur for many reasons. Some of these reasons are embryonic developmental problems such as those involving errors in the inheritance of parental DNA (e.g., missing chromosomes, embryonic fatal genetic mutations, etc.). These problems arise by sheer chance because of the nature of DNA. Right at the get go, God’s perfect design seems to fail at least 20% of the time, without discrimination. And since the Catholic Church claims that the soul enters the embryo at the point of conception, then the Church must concede that God is the most prolific mass murderer of all.

Divinely mandated seclusion

While miscarriages are horrifying for expectant mothers, there is at least a modicum of comfort to be had in knowing that the fetus, lacking the neurological structures, did not suffer its own death. If a random mutation is lucky (or unlucky, as the case may be) enough to cross the threshold of birth, a human child with a functioning capacity for suffering will be involved in its ravages.

Severe Combined Immunodeficiency (SCID) is a genetic disease that is caused by various mutations, one of which involves the mutation of a gene on the X chromosome that codes for a protein that recognizes cell signals.10 Having this variant of SCID means that mothers that carry this mutation will pass it on to 50% of their offspring, since females carry two X chromosomes. Because of the two X chromosomes of females, they are unaffected by the disease since the defective copy on one X is compensated for by a working copy on the other. Therefore, the mutation is recessive, which means that since males only carry one X chromosome, males will have no functioning copy of the gene and will absolutely have the disease, regardless of environmental situation. The result is that the child with these genetic errors will have such a crippled immune system that he will need to live in an aseptic plastic bubble for all of his brief years on God’s green Earth. He will never even feel the touch of his mother’s uncovered skin until his body begins to fail catastrophically due to a chance infection and the sterile equipment that protects him is discarded as it will be of no use in a few minutes.

The curse of Huntington

 

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Some genetic diseases remain benign until a certain point in adulthood. While many of these are largely environmentally determined such as heart disease and certain forms of cancer, some are completely deterministic. If you happen to have inherited a particular mutation in your huntingtin gene from your parents, there is no amount of vitamin C or exercise that will prevent you from becoming a quivering and demented shadow of your former self. This is Huntington’s chorea, a neurodegenerative disorder that affects adults at around 35 years of age. If it sounds familiar, it may be because the character Olivia Wilde plays on House has it. Huntington’s is caused by several repetitions of a DNA base triplet of CAG in the huntingtin gene. The more CAG repeats in your copy of huntingtin, the earlier the devastating effects of Huntington’s will be for you.11 You just need one disordered copy of the gene since the disease is dominant. This means that carriers of the mutated gene have a 50/50 chance of passing on their dreadful disease to their children. Many people who have a history of Huntington’s in the family opt not to be tested for the gene. Since there is no cure for the disease, many people would rather not have a ticking time bomb alert them of their guaranteed dementia and prefer to live in ignorance until the symptoms finally kick in.

This is but a sampling of the horrific genetic mishaps that follow the indifferent laws of statistics. They affect the lives of conscious creatures through no fault of anyone but chance. There are about 25,000 genes in the human genome.12 All of them are subject to mutation and failure. Most mutations are fatal; a tiny few are beneficial. This is the raw material in which evolution works.  This is how cruel natural selection is. The facts can’t be ignored by anyone defending the Christian idea of God. It takes a colossal amount of callousness to square evolution with a benevolent Creator. It takes an even greater amount of doublethink to use genetics as evidence for a loving God.

References

1 Collins, F. S. The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief.  109 (Free Press, 2006).

2 Avery, O. T., MacLeod, C. M. & McCarty, M. Studies on the Chemical Nature of the Substance Inducing Transformation of Pneumococcal Types: Induction of Transformation by a Desoxyribonucleic Acid Fraction Isolated from Pneumococcus Type III. Journal of Experimental Medicine 79, 137-158 (1944).

3 Watson, J. D. & Crick, F. A structure for deoxyribose nucleic acid. Nature 171, 737-738 (1954).

4 Ohno, S. So much ‘junk’ DNA in our genome. Evolution of Genetic Systems 23, 366-370 (1972).

5 Fraser, G. J. et al. An Ancient Gene Network Is Co-opted for Teeth on Old and New Jaws. PLoS Biology 7, e1000031 (2009).

6 Trese, L. J. The Faith Explained.  50-52 (Sinag-Tala Publishers, Inc., 2003).

7 Gilbert, S. F. Developmental Biology.  (Sinauer Associates, 2000).

8 Warren, R. The Purpose-Driven Life.  235 (OMF Literature Inc., 2001).

9 Griebel, C. P., Halvorsen, J., Golemon, T. B. & Day, A. A. Management of spontaneous abortion. American Family Physician 72, 1243-1250 (2005).

10 Davis, J. & Puck, J. X-Linked Severe Combined Immunodeficiency, <http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/bookshelf/br.fcgi?book=gene&part=x-scid> (2003).

11 Watson, J. D. DNA: The Secret of Life.  323-324 (Arrow Books, 2003).

12 ibid., p. 201

11 comments

  1. Life exist as in there is a creator(supreme being), who created us as one beautiful precise species, the intelligent designed is one of the concrete explanation that even small animals have a very unique characteristics and don't have to do with natural behavior and naturalistic point of view, in a sense that the complexity of the anatomical maps for this species are really the aspects of life to exist. there is no such thing that complex species are came from naturalistic point of view in terms of scientific discoveries but in the sense that there is a creator who designed and created us all-what is true for science today is not be true for tommorow,and I don't have much faith to become an atheist.

  2. This is so wrong. If science cannot explain something, then it seems the only "saner" explanation is by supernatural means? To give up on naturalism and espouse ID is a cop out. That is not any better from how a born again Christian saying, i don't understand, therefore, god did it. If evolution is false, you are not forced to acknowledge ID as it's not a scientific alternative in itself. You are presenting it as if ID is as credible with the theory of evolution which is not the case.

  3. I have both books "The Language of God" and "The God Delusion". For me, both books have their flaws and disappointments. Collins' book was basically a "God of the Gaps" explanation; Dawkins' book was heavy with ranting and grandstanding. The thing about both sides that disappoint me is that neither side seems to realize the futility of using science to prove or disprove the existence of the theistic god. We can pronounce as knowledge something that we can demonstrate. If we're going to call it knowledge, we would have to be able to run an experiment on it that is repeatable. But we can't run an experiment on whether God exists or not. So we can't really say anything about it as knowledge. We can believe in a position (whether God exists or not) if we want to, whatever grabs us, if we feel we are "called" in that direction, if we have a subjective experience of that kind… whatever it may be. But I don't think we can call it knowledge.

    • Theistic religions make specific claims about the nature of reality, which are addressable by the best attempt by humans to understand nature: science. Some of these claims include those regarding the efficacy of prayer, existence of witches, and the possibility of demonic possession. These can be tested. So, I disagree with your thesis that science is futile in tackling the God hypothesis, which, by my lights, is an entirely investigable proposition. The specific claims of most, if not all, major religions have been so thoroughly repudiated by modern science that they have reached a point of utter untenability.

      This is not to say that I know that there is no God. "God" is too hazily defined. But, I think science has progressed far enough to say that there is no Yahweh, just like we have progressed enough to say that there is no Thor or Zeus.

      • We can investigate the claims pointing to explanations behind natural phenomena. When theists account, say, the formation of the rainbow to a deity’s act… science can and has shown to offer better explanations that are both testable and repeatable. However, there is just no way to investigate the question on the existence or inexistence of something that is not testable. I’m afraid absence of evidence is not evidence for absence. Actually, I don’t even think that there is any scientific study right now (or ever) or even scientific discipline that is dedicated and focused on investigating the existence or inexistence of a deity or deities. The progress of science on explaining natural phenomena may grab us to take a position on the existence of god or gods. But as I said, I don’t think we can offer any direct evidence or even perform any empirical testing on its (or their) existence or inexistence.

        • While your skepticism is admirable, it is simply not consistent with anyone's working model of going through life. Do you think leprechauns have not been proven to be a fairytale? Do you think nymphs might actually be in your garden? At some point in human progress, specific God hypotheses (such as those for Yahweh) became so devoid of sense that it is now embarrassing to assert that they are even remotely plausible. Science has diminished the possibility of Yahweh to a non-zero but infinitesimal probability, as it has for other mythological creatures. The probability is so small that it is safe to say that he probably doesn't exist. But, we can change our mind if evidence to the contrary appears. The absence of evidence for God does suggest his absence from the universe because the God hypothesis necessitates that his fingerprints be found all over the world, something that is clearly not the case.

          • I don’t think it really matters what I think. What matters is what we can prove. Have we proven that leprechauns, YHWH (Yahweh is actually a wrong name to use), Zeus, unicorns, and the flying spaghetti monster exist or not? Anyway, you are correct, the issue is probability. However, I am just wondering how we can really arrive at any figure on this. On the basis of what probability can we determine this infinitesimal probability? And when does probability determine whether something actually exists or not? I, for one, am just inclined to abandon the question on the theistic god’s existence as I do not see it being tested on empirical grounds. Sure we can subject theism to ridicule and scientific grandstanding… but personally, I just don’t see the point for it.

          • As long as religions make claims about the natural world, such as those regarding the efficacy of prayer or the ability of the dead to appear to the living, science can empirically test religious claims made in the name of their Gods.

            For as long as religions sow division and ignorance, there is always a point for "ridicule and scientific grandstanding."

          • I’ll tell you what, Garrick. We’ll agree to disagree on this one. But this correspondence of ours has given me some inspiration to write something along the lines. I’ll try to draft something, submit it and hopefully get it published here in the near future. Take care!

      • By the way… I agree…. definitions on "God" are generally inept. Actually, even if I were to wear a theist hat, I don't even think "God" can really be defined. To offer a definition on God is to suggest capturing God. How can God still be God if it is conquered or limited to a specific definition? I don't think we can really define what God is… we can only offer explanations on our "God" experience, if we think we have them. These experiences don't even necessarily point to any definitions on God, let actual proof of God's existence.

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