Genes ‘R’ Not Us

When medical studies suggest prayer works

Who started the idea of a conflict between faith and science?

Disarm the logic bore—before he bores you to death

God, man, and chess-playing computers: What next?

Genes ‘R’ Not Us

(Christian Life in London, December 2003)

Those who think that human beings are meat puppets have received a severe setback from the mapping of the human genome. Here’s why.

by Denyse O’Leary

When the Human Genome Project announced the completion of its map in 2000, one curious fact stood out. Fewer than 30,000 genes were responsible for organizing an entire human being—about one-third of previous estimates of 80,000 to 100,000. In other words, human beings were said to have about twice the number of genes of a fruit fly.

You have probably heard the conventional interpretation, roared through the mainstream media. This is supposed to be quite a “comedown” for arrogant humans: Just think how lowly we are—not a little lower than the angels but a little higher than the fruit flies.

As journalist Tom Bethell recalls the scene (American Spectator, April 2001), it took several days after the Human Genome press conference for the true meaning of the discovery to sink in. There followed a “kind of appalled silence,” then whispers, alarms, and hastily revised explanations.

The true meaning of the discovery is that we are not our genes. If we have only a few more genes than a fruit fly, there are just not enough genes to “be” us. Contrary to materialist expectations, we must look elsewhere to find out what a human being is.

Since then, there has been a great reduction in roaring from the mainstream media about what the human genome proves. The recent sequencing of the chimpanzee genome showed estimates of 1% difference from the human genome. This might have been expected to lead to an overwhelming din of materialist lectures on the insignificance of humans, but it didn’t. Again, that is because the similarity presents a problem to the materialist. Anyone can tell the vast, obvious differences between a human being and a chimpanzee. So, goodbye Gattaca. We are not our genes.

Things got worse, actually. In 2003, the number of human genes was revised downward to just under 25,000, a few more than C. elegans, the tiny soil-dwelling roundworm that survived the destruction of the Columbia space shuttle.

And worse. Says Prof. David Thaler of Rockefeller University in New York City. “For now, we don’t have any way even to quantify what fraction of all you’d like to know about an organism is in its genome” (Wall Street Journal, May 30, 2003). Even deciding how to look for the missing information will present challenges for decades to come.

So what does this mean for society today? Gone are the hopes of finding a “violence gene,” a “gay gene,” or a “fat gene” that would take the hit for our behaviour. After an apparently endless run, the “Meat Puppet Show” is just about off the air.

Here is what we now know about the human genome: Our genes work together in complex combinations, talking to each other constantly as they direct the building of a bewildering variety of proteins—the machines that carry out the operations in each cell that keep us alive.

The really tough part is that, instead of having only four building blocks, as genes do, proteins have 20. They are arrayed in three-dimensional machine-like structures of dazzling complexity, hundreds of molecules long. Plus, there are probably ten times as many proteins as genes.

Anyone who wants to study DNA, the language of life that utters living beings, must learn the languages of the proteins, to see what genes translate into.

Certainly, genes can provide some answers. But no simple, reductionist answers. Trust me, if they had provided such answers, you and I would still be hearing plenty from the stars of theMeat Puppet Show.

As Christians, we should have expected this outcome. In Psalm 139:14, David implies it, saying, “I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made.” David didn’t know the thousandth part of the complexity when he was inspired to write that.

And here is the really interesting part: As we survey the ruins of materialism and reductionism, the mystery of human life persists. But there is a very big difference between the nature of the mystery today and the nature of the mystery in David’s time. Many things were a mystery to David because he just didn’t know. Many of those same things are a mystery to us because we doknow. We stand before an ocean of complexity, wondering where to start surfing.

It is good news for both faith and science when mystery is not the child of ignorance, but of knowledge. Far from being fearful of science discoveries, young Christians should enter the sciences with confidence, knowing that our faith in the marvellous nature of creation will be fully justified when we study it.

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When medical studies suggest prayer works

ChristianWeek June 25, 2002

So prayer works ... but what does that really mean?

In November 2001, media reported on an interesting study at an in vitro fertilization clinic in Seoul, Korea. Women who were prayed for by charismatic Christian groups were twice as likely to get pregnant as those who were not (September 2001, Journal of Reproductive Medicine). Said MD Rogerio Lobo, a study author, “I’m the first to say we don’t know what it means.”

I don’t either. But my reasons for uncertainty may differ from Dr. Lobo’s.

Science explains how the laws of the universe work when they are working in a normal way. That explains why science is not—and should not be—concerned with miracles.

But do let me clarify one thing: Science, properly speaking, does not say that miracles do not occur. After all, how would one go about proving such a contention? I suppose one might try to show that no events have occurred that should not have occurred within the life span of the present universe. I, for one, would not want to referee the controversies that would likely ensue. However, science does say—again, properly speaking—that miracles are outside the bounds of science. They are not subject to study, hypothesis, or replication in a laboratory, so science does well to keep out of the way of a genuinely miraculous event.

However, the relationship between science and miracles such as answered prayer became complicated in the late 19^th century by the growth of the philosophical movement known as methodological naturalism. Methodological naturalism taught that science must insist that miracles do not happen and that prayer does not work. It taught that we live in a closed universe where such things cannot happen in principle.

Prominent scientists often espoused this belief and promoted it to the public as a logical outcome of science. But it isn’t. Science operates on the basis of the things it can study. It can’t prove or disprove anything about things it cannot study. For example, whether the universe is closed is, shall we say, an open question. The universe does not tell us whether it is closed, so the scientist has no more information on that subject than anyone else. Methodological naturalism assumed that the universe was closed purely as an act of faith.

Contrary to what some suppose, science does not operate by assembling boatloads of facts. Facts, by themselves, do not prove anything. They can be a trove of information that does not lead anywhere. Therefore, science relies on the “hypothesis”—a proposed explanation of how the laws of the universe might work in a particular type of situation. Of course, the hypothesis must be supported by the available facts. A hypothesis that is well supported by facts becomes known as a theory or a law.

Thus, for a research scientist, the problem with answered prayer is, what is the hypothesis? Can the prayer of the Christian believer be linked—in a way that science can study—to the survival of a human embryo implanted and precariously clinging to life in his/her mother’s fallopian tube thousands of kilometres away? Perhaps so. But how, precisely? That is the question for the scientist. The link between the prayer and the child might be clearly identified, but the scientist cannot proceed without a hypothesis.

For a Christian like myself, studies of this kind raise other issues as well. What do we gain by proving that prayer works? God sometimes grants even the prayers of his avowed enemies, intending to bring good out of their evil purposes—invariably a good that they did not foresee. We observe this, for example, in the book of Job in the Bible (1:9 and 2:4). God granted Satan’s prayer that Job should suffer, but he did so for the express purpose of refuting Satan’s philosophy. (See also Matthew 8:31-32 for a New Testament example.)

The whole situation points up an important principle of faith and science dialogue: If science validates prayer, most issues for the orthodox Christian will be pretty much the same. We pray in order to have a relationship with God. Getting what we want may or may not be a good thing. We don’t know because we can’t see the big picture or the long term. In the end, we must still live by faith.

(Note: This column won the Canadian Christian Writing Award for a column written in 2002.)

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Who started the idea of a conflict between faith and science?

ChristianWeek March 30, 2004

Just about any third-rate hack, asked to bang off a quick 750 words on faith and science, will assume that they are in conflict. You know the sort of thing: “Faith is about blind feelings and science is about brute fact. How can they be reconciled?”

Well, the truth is, they can’t be reconciled. Blind faith can’t even be reconciled with sanity, let alone with science. And whether the facts of the universe are indeed “brute” (in other words, meaningless) is precisely the point in dispute. One cannot both concede that the universe is only brute fact and claim that the nature of the universe is an open question at the same time.

Puzzled by the endlessly churning stream of nonsense, I decided to find out who actually started the trend toward assuming that there is some conflict between faith and science.

First, let me tell you who can’t have started it. Not great scientists such as Pascal, Newton, Faraday, or Kelvin. These guys were all devout Christians. They must have been pretty good scientists too because basic measurements in science (pascal, newton, farad, kelvin) were named after them. It can’t have been Albert Einstein, who was always talking about God (even though he is said to have been an atheist), until finally physicist Niels Bohr told him, “Albert! Quit telling God what to do!” It certainly isn’t modern Christians in science such as human genome mapper Francis Collins or quantum chemist Fritz Schaefer III.

Well, it turned out that the “warfare” thesis about the relationship between faith and science was started by otherwise obscure American academics at key universities at the turn of the twentieth century. These “warfare” works included John William Draper’s History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science and Andrew Dickson White’s A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom.

These men’s works gained a wide following among academics, which was ironic because there was no significant contention between faith and science at the time. As historian Edward J. Larson notes in Summer for the Gods, their widely read works, “neither reported the growing harmony between theologians and evolutionists nor noted that most great physical scientists of the period, from John Dalton and Michael Faraday to Lord Kelvin and James Clerk Maxwell, were devout Christians.” Evolutionists such as Asa Gray, who arranged for Darwin’s Origin of Species to be published in the United States, were often devout Christians as well.

But, taking a cue from the academics’ warfare thesis, much popular mythology began to portray religion as preventing advances in science. One outcome was that religious believers began to find themselves under attack at universities. So, if you have been under attack for your faith at a university or know someone who has, forget the Middle Ages. Your problem has nothing to do with the Middle Ages. You can trace it back to the turn of the twentieth century and stop right there. That is where the warfare thesis got started.

Colin Russell, Professor of History of Science and Technology at the Open University in England and Vice President of Christians in Science, describes Draper’s and White’s works as “pseudo-history,” remarking: “My first encounter as a young scientist with White’s book led to deep suspicion; the book did not describe any scientific attitude I had ever met and its thesis seemed inherently improbable.” (Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith (March 1993), 45: 219–21).

Now, that is an interesting observation. Consider the following: The warfare thesis could easily have been refuted by a careful historian or journalist. All the facts were available. Yet it was a reigning orthodoxy for many years, and refutations never became popular knowledge. The thesis only began to fall during the 1990s, when the icons of the twentieth century (Marx, Freud, and Darwin) were starting to come under sustained intellectual attack. That says more about the temper of the twentieth century than it does about either faith or science.

So, if defending your faith at a university, remember that the warfare thesis re science and religion is fashionable nonsense, fading away. On the other hand, there is real warfare out there. It is, and always has been, between the powers of darkness and the power of Light (John 1:5).

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Disarm the logic bore—before he bores you to death

ChristianWeek September 30, 2003

We can learn a lot of things, but exhaustive knowledge is no more likely than airtight proof of everything.

If you are going back to school or to bookish social events, you risk encountering the Logic Bore. He won’t believe anything unless it can be proved. Usually, he is convinced that science is close to proving everything. If you don’t defend yourself, he will explain it all till the wee hours. Here is your self-defense kit:

Logic Bore, meet Kurt GÖdel, an Austrian mathematician. In 1931, GÖdel showed that mathematical statements exist that are true but not provable. To demonstrate that, he created a mathematical statement that is the equivalent of the following sentence: “This statement cannot be proved true.”

If the statement is false, it can be proved true, but that is a contradiction. If the statement is true, then it cannot be proved at all.

When GÖdel wrote that, he disappointed many mathematicians and philosophers who were hoping for an airtight logical system of mathematics that would mean that you never have to take any statements on faith. In fact, you have to take some statements on faith in order to begin the process of learning. So if we can agree on what to take on faith, we can have a conversation. Otherwise, we can’t.

Oh, and, by the way, I’d also like to introduce you to Sir Stephen Hawking. In 1996, Hawking looked forward to a grand unified theory in physics that would enable us to know “the mind of God” by providing a complete statement of the laws of physics. However, by 2003, he dampened expectations by telling fellow physicists at a major Cambridge conference, “Maybe it is not possible to formulate the theory of the Universe in a finite number of statements.” In other words, there probably cannot be a Theory of Everything in science. We can learn a lot of things, but exhaustive knowledge is no more likely than airtight proof of everything.

So, you must be wondering, how do I know whether an idea is scientific or not? Karl Popper (1902–1994), a philosopher of science, pondered this question deeply. Popper lived in early twentieth century Vienna, when Freud dominated psychiatry and Marx dominated politics. These two towering figures had one thing in common: Supporters insisted that their theories werescience, and that any dissent was unscientific.

Talking to the proponents of Freud and Marx was a waste of time, Popper discovered. Anyone who pointed out that there was no hard evidence for Freud’s theories was told that he “unconsciously” rejected them because he needed mental help. Anyone who pointed out that there was no hard evidence that Marx’s “scientific” economics had produced anything but starvation was told that she belonged to the smug middle classes. Popper recognized these evasions as intellectual short circuits. But how could he explain clearly what was wrong with them?

One day, he attended a lecture by Albert Einstein, and was struck by an important difference between Einstein and Freud or Marx. Freud or Marx could provide evidence that supported their theories. Lots of people proclaimed that Freud had cured them or that Marx had liberated them. Einstein did better than that. He provided evidence that, if found, would disprove his theories. In other words, his theories were falsifiable. This, Popper realized, is the key factor that identifies a scientific theory. Of course, Einstein’s theories were actually verified—shown to be true—in the proposed experiments, which is why we study him in science today, not Marx or Freud.

Is there a difference between taking a proposition on faith and claiming that it is unfalsifiable? Yes, certainly. When we go on vacation, we take on faith that the destination to which we set out actually exists. Our belief can be falsified, but, given the evidence we have, it probably won’t be.

According to the author of Hebrews (11:8–10), Abraham did not know exactly where he was going when he set out to look for the city that God would give him. But he did know the character of God, so he knew that God keeps his promises. Thus, it was reasonable to take God’s promise on faith.

In the catalogue of the faithful in Chapter 11, the author never suggests that faith is a blind leap. It is an assumption, based on experience, about the character of God … uh, Logic Bore, where are you going?

Oh, I see, he’s gone off to trap someone who knows little about either science or the Bible.

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God, man, and chess-playing computers: What next?

ChristianWeek, April 27, 2004

“Machines are stupid by nature” announced Russian grandmaster Garry Kasparov, as he prepared for his fourth and final match against IBM’s Deep Blue in 1996. Newsweek wasn’t so sure, and called his battles with chess-playing computers, “the brain’s last stand.” In 1997, Kasparov lost to Deeper Blue, but in 2003, he tied the dramatically more powerful Deep Junior.

Kasparov, a bit chastened, described the chess battle between grandmasters and computers as “species-defining.”Many pundits claim that thinking computers are just around the corner, that the success of chess-playing computers proves it, and that the human brain will soon be obsolete. Are these claims realistic? No, and lets look at why they are not.

Chess is a good game for a really big machine because, like tic tac toe, it has strictly defined problems, but chess is vastly more complicated. The 32 pieces and 64 squares provide an astronomical range of options. According to philosopher Timothy McGrew, based at Western Michigan University, the number of possible plays for the first ten moves is “in excess of the number of fundamental particles in the universe.” As Kenneth Silber notes in Tech Central Station (2004 04 06), chess has long been “a touchstone for the progress of artificial intelligence.”

Generally, a chess-playing computer relies on its enormous parallel processing power to sort through a vast memory to evaluate millions of moves and choose the best one. A typical position on a chess board allows 38 possible moves. Any chess computer can evaluate far more moves than a human being. Kasparov probably evaluates two to three moves a second, but Deep Junior powers through up to three million possible moves per second.

Well, that raises an obvious question, doesn’t it? Why does Kasparov ever win? Shouldn’t he always lose? As McGrew puts it, “Something is going on in the grandmaster’s mind that is not only radically different from what Deeper Blue’s program does, but also inconceivably more efficient. It is a kind of computational miracle that humans can play chess at all.”

The answer seems to be that what Kasparov is doing when he is thinking about his next play is different in kind from what Deep Junior is doing. Kasparov himself said, “Whatever [programmers] Shay and Amir say about Junior’s ability to run through millions of possible strategies, I, by contrast, might consider only a few strategies in any one game. But you can bet your life they will be the very best ones.” Essentially, machines don’t form or follow plans, and do not have overarching ideas, nor do they use analogy or metaphor—and there is no way currently proposed to make them do so.

Chess-playing computers are better at tactics than strategy. The difficulty is that, as computer pioneer John Holland points out, “... there are many artificial intelligence problems that cannot be solved by simply performing more calculations.” As a result, he doesn’t expect “conscious” computers any time soon.

Plus, in a surprising development, the grandmasters are actually getting better! According to Silber, they are getting better at playing computers. He adds, “This is a disappointing state of affairs for enthusiasts of artificial intelligence. Chess, with its demands for calculation and memory, is an activity seemingly well-suited for computers. If computers are making only moderate progress in chess, what prospect is there for them to develop such capabilities as common sense and consciousness—let alone the superhuman intelligence that some experts predict?”

Well, maybe the solution is to recognize that the human brain is nothing like a computer. An ancient heresy proposes a split between the body and the mind. In the modern version, the AI expert sees the human brain as a computer—a huge calculating machine—separable from the human body of which it is a part. Scripture, of course, teaches the opposite. Remember that, after his resurrection, Jesus was at pains to stress that he was still inseparably both mind and body, not a “ghost.” And so shall we be in glory. (See, for example, Luke 24: 37–43.) So if the AI folks don’t want to pause to learn more about what a human being actually is, they can try another strategy, I guess: Recruit dumber grandmasters.

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