DNA, Intelligent Design, and Theodicy, Part Two

In the previous entry I presented one of the main points that John C. Avise made in his recent book Inside the Human Genome: A Case for Non-Intelligent Design. If God designed the world, why are there so many, and such horrific, mutations in the human genome? Not only is there a huge number of different genetic diseases, but each one of these diseases can be caused by numerous different mutations. Mutations happen so often that the same diseases keep evolving over and over and over. This presents a major challenge to theodicy, which is the attempt to justify God in a world of suffering—in this case, genetically-based suffering. Thus one of Avise’s points is that, if God designed DNA, he could have made more efficient repair mechanisms to counteract the (perhaps inevitable) mutations.

Avise goes on to make another, very important challenge to theodicy: the very structure of the genome itself is inconsistent with the idea that the genome, or the human body, or the world was designed by God. Not just the mutations in the genome, but its very structure.

The human genome is full of stuff that interferes with the use of genetic information to produce healthy and functional enzymes and bodies. First, consider the fact that only about 1 percent of human DNA codes for those enzymes. About 68 percent of the DNA consists of non-coding DNA that is between the genes, and about 31 percent of the DNA consists of non-coding DNA that is inside of the genes. This is, at best, a clumsy system, because whenever a cell divides, all of this DNA is copied, not just the DNA that the cell will use. In addition, since each gene is broken into little “exon” fragments by a large amount of internal “intron” DNA, the genetic information must be spliced together in order to be put to use. That is, to get a functional enzyme, the genetic information from lots of exon fragments has to be cobbled together. If it works, there is no problem, but the whole system is so cumbersomely complex that it often fails. Not only are many genetic diseases caused by mutations in the genes themselves, but many genetic diseases are caused by (or also caused by) failures of the cell to deal properly with the non-coding DNA and the splicing.

Much of the non-coding DNA bears the clear mark of evolutionary origin. For example, there are a lot of pseudogenes, which are old genes that are not used anymore. Some of them are extra, duplicated copies of genes, complete with their introns (unprocessed pseudogenes); others are DNA copies of RNA transcripts, from which the introns have been removed (processed pseudogenes). There are also lots of mobile genetic elements, which either have or had the ability to move around among the chromosomes. Some of them are transposons, which can “cut and paste,” to use Avise’s metaphor, moving from one place to another. Some of them are retrotransposons, which can “copy and paste,” with one copy being left behind and the other going to a new place in the genome. Many of these retrotransposons are old dead viruses. We know this because they still have major chunks of the reverse transcriptase enzyme, an enzyme used only by certain kinds of viruses! Retrotransposons cannot actually become viruses anymore, because they have lost the genes that allow them to make protein capsules. Another evolutionary pattern is that species that have the most similar genetic DNA also have the most similar non-coding DNA, which makes no sense if they do not share a common evolutionary ancestry. You see, we know where much of this non-coding DNA came from, and it is not part of a system designed by a God.

There are even examples of some genes fighting against other genes. Some mutations cause a gene to over-represent itself in the next generation (“selfish genes”), which is harmful to the organism that carries it; and there are other mutations that suppress those selfish genes. So not only does the genome contain a clumsy load of non-coding DNA, but even DNA that fights against itself.

We know that such complexity of non-coding DNA is not necessary for the function of a genetic system, because bacteria do not have any of this: no introns, no pseudogenes, no transposons. They get by just fine without them.

The more we learn about DNA, the more we see that there is really no place for a Creator or Designer to fit in. It looks like, in Avise’s words, the Creator’s “primary role was to set into operation natural evolutionary forces.” Yes, you can believe that God designed evolution, and then let evolution do everything. But this would be like saying that angels push the planets around the sun by means of the laws of gravity and momentum. To slip God into an invisible realm behind the operation of natural laws, including genetic processes, seems more and more like fantasy.

And it sets God up for culpability for an immense amount of human suffering. Mutations of genes (previous essay) and malfunctions of genetic operation (this essay) cause human misery and death, in addition to killing perhaps one-third of fertilized egg cells. If God is behind the processes of human genetics, says Avise, then God is the “world’s leading abortionist and mass murderer.” Does this offend you? Then you need to reconsider what you believe about the role that God might play in the universe.

Creationists often claim that all of these mutations and flaws have occurred just since the Fall of Man. There is no Biblical basis for this belief. Genesis says, cursed is the ground, not cursed is the chromosome. Some creationists insist that the pre-Flood world had few if any mutations, which is why people lived to be over nine hundred years old. Either way, this entire burden of bad genes would have accumulated just in the last few thousand years. Mutations are not accumulating that rapidly today. Some creationists believe that Satan designed all the bad things in the genome. This is, needless to say, also without any scriptural basis. In no part of the Bible is Satan depicted as being smart enough to have redesigned the entire architecture of the human genome.

Don’t miss my new book, Life of Earth: Portrait of a Beautiful, Middle-Aged, Stressed-Out World, just published by Prometheus Books.

DNA, Intelligent Design, and Theodicy, Part One

John C. Avise published a book last year entitled Inside the Human Genome: A Case for Non-Intelligent Design. I would like to share some ideas from this book for your consideration. I am also posting a version of this essay, with a little bit more scientific detail, on my evolution blog. In this blog, I will consider how the author applies his ideas to the age-old question of theodicy (why a good God would permit suffering).

Avise’s main point is that if the world were designed by a loving intelligence (which Intelligent Design proponents publicly hesitate to call God), the DNA system shared by all organisms from amoebas to humans would look a lot different from the way it is. And his first set of examples is the sheer number and horror of mutations that fill the human genome.

Many mutations are neutral, or can be easily overcome by technology. And some of them cause a great deal of psychological suffering, such as the mutation that causes trimethylaminuria, which is physically harmless but causes the victims to smell like rotten fish no matter how clean they are. But many other mutations are deadly or, worse yet, can cause a person to have a lifetime of suffering. Perhaps the most disturbing mutation is the one that causes Lesch-Nyhan syndrome. This one mutation, of a single amino acid in a protein, causes the victim to have an uncontrollable compulsion for self-mutilation: they chew their own lips and fingers, and find sharp objects to stab their faces and eyes. The victims are fully able to feel their pain and they know what they are doing, but cannot control it.

But there is more to the story. Most of these genetic syndromes have come into existence many times. Consider glycogen storage disease, in which a defective enzyme causes glycogen (animal starch) to build up in tissues throughout the body. A childhood friend of mine has this disease, which he inherited from his father; by middle age, he was almost constantly incapacitated by this disease. I do not know if he is still alive. Geneticists know of 86 different mutations that can disrupt the enzyme and cause this disease. That is, this genetic disease has mutated into existence 86 separate times. The author directs our attention to several databases, one of which is the Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man (OMIM), which lists over 18,000 genes, three-quarters of which have documented mutations. And these are just the single-gene defects!

The author’s first point is that an intelligently-designed genome would not have such a stunning number of mutations. If God designed the DNA to make us adapted to the world we live in, could God not have done a better job? Evolution, in contrast, is dependent upon random mutations, upon which natural selection acts by eliminating the bad ones (that is, disfavoring and perhaps killing the individuals who express them) and favoring the good ones. The existence of a large pool of mutations, which natural selection has not completely gotten rid of, is consistent with evolution but not with Intelligent Design.

One answer that Intelligent Design proponents have to this problem is that the Designer created a mutation-free set of human DNA when our species came into existence, then abandoned the system to take care of itself. But if this is the case, the system was so poorly designed that it could not, in fact, take care of itself.

The connection to the problem of theodicy is obvious, and Avise makes it. Defenders of God (which is the meaning of theodicy) claim that God allows bad things to happen as an inevitable consequence of free will. Their platitude is that if fire did not burn, then it would not be fire. I can understand why God would not automatically give all of us a perfect set of genes; limitations, including genetic ones, are necessary for character development, to show God on judgment day what kind of people we are. But Lesch-Nyhan syndrome? Potentially deadly mutations in three-quarters of human genes? Isn’t this a bit excessive?

I will summarize some of Avise’s other points in later entries in this blog. Please post your comments and/or send the link to this blog to others who might be interested.

Religion and the Fate of the Earth

The force of religion has governed the courses of nations and led to migrations that have opened up continents to civilization, as well as decimating the native inhabitants of those continents. It has literally inspired humans to do things that have transformed and degraded the planet—more so than perhaps any other force or adaptation. The underlying brain processes are here to stay, but the time has come to get rid of some of the memes. If we take charge of our minds, to the extent that we can, we might be able to get rid of the bad religion memes and keep the good ones.

Perhaps the most powerful meme is the idea that humans are the masters of the planet. This meme is most predominant in Western religions. True, countries dominated by Buddhists and Hindus have environmental problems also. The Ganges is one of the most polluted rivers in the world. But at least people in the Eastern religious traditions do not think that it is the will of God when they cut down forests or pollute the waters. The Hindus believed that the Ganges makes everything that enters it, even corpses, pure—and their religion made them ignore the obvious stench of cognitive dissonance. Frans DeWaal speculates that human cultures that evolved in tropical regions could not invent a religion that placed humans, and humans alone, at the apex of creation, since they were surrounded by very human-like apes and monkeys. Perhaps only in desert regions, where Jews and Arabs dwelt with obviously less intelligent cattle, goats, sheep, and camels, could a religion of human superiority have evolved. A religion based solely upon the words of Jesus of Nazareth would more closely resemble an Eastern religion than the hierarchical and oppressive Western religions supposedly based upon them.

Christianity is the western religion that has created the most environmental destruction. For most of Christian history, and in most of Christendom today, the followers believe that the first chapter of Genesis has given them permission to subdue the Earth, to transform its forests and plains into cities with churches. Perhaps most Christians choose to believe this rather than the second chapter of Genesis, in which God tells Adam and Eve to take care of the garden in which they live. Most Christians have treated the Earth as if they were its father, disciplining it, rather than as if they were its mother, nurturing it. Christianity will remain a force of environmental destruction unless or until it embraces an idea that was best expressed, I believe, by Jerry Deffenbaugh, a Disciples Church minister. He said the Earth needs some mothering; it has had just about all of the fathering it can take.

This essay is part of my forthcoming book Life of Earth: Portrait of a Beautiful, Middle-Aged, Stressed-Out World, just out from Prometheus Books.

Evolutionary Advantages of Religion for the Human Species

Something as apparently dysfunctional as fundamentalist religion would seem to have nothing to contribute to evolutionary success. But clearly any tribe that had a stronger religion could prevail in war over a tribe with less religious zeal. A tribe of religious zealots could always whip a tribe of religious philosophers, the Stone Age version of Unitarians and Quakers. All of the people in the prevailing tribe, and all of the genes in their bodies, would likewise benefit.

And there is another possible reason that religious memes have proliferated. The human mind desires the experience of beauty. While religion memes have fed the worst of human feelings and actions, it has also fed the best of them. We have a natural, and probably irresistible, passion for the beauty of nature, and for its green and flowering and chirping inhabitants. To scientists, this is an evolved human emotion Edward O. Wilson called "biophilia." To pagans, it is the power of the gods and goddesses of earth and forest and ocean. To monotheists, it is the presence of God within the observer. Religion is not the only medium for this feeling, but it is one of them.

It is easy to be inspired by the beauty of interesting landscapes, mountains and waterfalls and soaring birds and leaping whales and teeming jungles (so long as you are not actually walking through them and swatting the mosquitoes and pulling off leaches that fall on you like rain). But biophilia is an important force in helping people to love the places that are hard to live in. Consider these examples.

I taught a class at a field station one summer. One of my students was a young lady who grew up in western Kansas. The entire landscape of western Kansas is utterly flat and is devoted entirely to wheat. Granted, there are beautiful places in Kansas, but this was not one of them. I had just driven through this young woman's hometown to arrive at the field station. She said, regarding western Kansas, that it was the most beautiful place in the world.

I grew up in the San Joaquin Valley of California, which was beautiful at one time, before all of its natural wetlands were drained and almost all of its oak forests were cut down in the twentieth century, transforming it into farmland. In my childhood it seemed inexpressibly beautiful. It is a feeling I still get, if only a little, whenever I visit it.

Before we dismiss believing in the beauty of western Kansas or the San Joaquin Valley as delusion, let us briefly consider what humans have had to endure. Much human misery has come from the seeming indifference or even hostility of the environment. Floods, volcanic eruptions, droughts. But the successful humans were those that loved their lands zealously, no matter what nature did to them, and endured. Their religious memes may have told them that there were evil spirits in the storm winds, but the Great Spirit prevails to make the world into a cosmos in which we can continue to live. We love the land in which we grow up. This is biophilia. Biophilia has been one of our adaptations to survival. Enshrined within the memes of some religions, biophilia has helped to keep us going.

This essay is part of my new book Life of Earth: Portrait of a Beautiful, Middle-Aged, Stressed-Out World, published by Prometheus Books.

A Recurring Pattern

(My struggle with computer and biological viruses continues, hence continued delays.)

There is a clear recurring pattern in the history of religion. Even when a religion is founded by a sincere person who has no aspirations to wealth or power, this person’s followers quickly establish a religious hierarchy.

The example best known to most of us is the Christian church. Jesus of Nazareth owned nothing of his own, and had to depend on his followers. He had the most tenuous of hierarchies: twelve disciples and seventy assistant disciples. He also did not say very much (in the quotations attributed to him) about theology. After his death, “The Twelve” followers quickly established a governing council in Jerusalem, led by Simon Bar-Jonah (whom Jesus had nicknamed “Rocky” (Peter)). Their theological proclamations were fairly minimal, such as telling the church members to stay away from sexual sins and from blood. They did not like being pestered by an outsider named Saul of Tarsus who renamed himself Paul and claimed to be an apostle like The Twelve. Paul went around the Mediterranean world preaching, and found that there was a tremendous variety of religious practices in the different, independent Christian congregations. His letters, especially to the Corinthians, represent powerful attempts to bring ecclesiastical order into a chaos of religious fervor. But it was not until the fourth century that Christian doctrines were standardized into creeds. Only after Roman emperor Constantine recognized the power of religious memes that he made Christianity into a Church that had authority over people, and he often abused that authority.

Dissatisfied with abuses of power and the deadness of a religion that was used only to dominate the minds and spirits of people, Francis of Assisi started his own movement. Within a century, the religious order started by a man who rejected all possessions and wealth became as abusive and acquisitive as the ones preceding it.

The Reformation was a rebellion against abusive Catholic authority, but soon the Protestant churches also became tools of repressive governments. A group known as the Puritans left England to escape from the authority of the Anglican Church. They found freedom of religion in the Netherlands. But freedom for everybody is not what they wanted. They wanted the freedom to impose their religion by law. So they sailed to Massachusetts, where they established a religious dictatorship that sometimes massacred the native inhabitants. Pilgrim leader William Bradford describes the way the colonists surrounded a Pequot village at sunrise. They set it ablaze and killed anyone who fled. Bradford wrote, “It was a fearful sight to see them thus frying in the fire and the streams of blood quenching the same, and horrible was the stink and scent thereof; but the victory seemed a sweet sacrifice, and they [the colonists] gave praise thereof to God, who had wrought so wonderfully.” (I quoted this passage in an earlier blog entry.)

Religion is still the fountainhead of political power in many places. The Islamist (as opposed to benignly Islamic) movements, such as the Taliban and Al Qaeda, are examples too well known to require description here. Fundamentalist Christianity is famously powerful in American politics also. Many people assume that the Constitution created a wall of separation between church and state, but this is not quite the case. The first amendment states that Congress cannot establish a religion. But a state, apparently, can. If a state did so, the federal government would immediately cut off its funding. But in many states, fundamentalist Christianity remains the unofficial religion. In my home state of Oklahoma, religion is the single most important deciding factor in political elections, and people with extremely repressive religious beliefs are repeatedly elected to state office. At the university where I work, the major official functions begin with overtly Christian prayers, and even our Muslim faculty members bow their heads in acceptance of this unalterable fact.

This essay is part of my book Life of Earth: Portrait of a Beautiful, Middle-Aged, Stressed-Out World, recently released by Prometheus Books.