In the Beginning Was the Word

What is the longest word in the English language? It is not antidisestablishmentarianism! It is, as the Oxford mathematician John C. Lennox likes to say, the 3.5 billion-lettered word in DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) in every human cell! A word in the human cell? Scientists are wrestling with the idea “that information and intelligence are fundamental to the existence of the universe and life.…”[1] But from where has this information come? How did words get inscribed in DNA? Philosopher of science Stephen Myer calls it the “DNA enigma.”[2] Where did the four-character digital code stored in DNA come from?

And you may be wondering: What does this have to do with Advent? Think of the intriguing connection with the Christmas text of John 1: 1, 3: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God… All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being.” Consider this in tandem with the text of Hebrews 11:3, “The world was created by the word of God.”

The discovery of information in the cell in our lifetime is fascinating. In 1953, Crick and Watson demonstrated the structure of DNA. DNA consists of parallel strings, a double helix. These parallel strings are connected like a twisting ladder with rungs that are chemical words. These chemical words function like digital characters in a computer software section. Bill Gates says, “DNA is like a computer program.” These chemical words are arranged to convey particular information. I can arrange letters: tttooooeernb; or I can rearrange them: “To be or not to be.” So, depending on how they are arranged, these DNA strings give instructions for making the parts to build tiny machines in each cell.

Within the cell, extremely sophisticated exchanges of information occur. DNA strings instruct these cell machines to haul cargo; turn on and off cellular switches, and wait for another machine to arrive. At the end of the day, the arrangement of the chemical words of the DNA strands and their instructions contribute to the difference between Samson, Henry VIII, and Marilyn Monroe, The “DNA enigma”! From where do the different words, the genetic instructions, come?

Is it chance? Science journalist Clifford Longley writes that saying it’s random chance is like thinking Shakespeare’s works could be written by a billion monkeys sitting at a billion keyboards typing for a billion years. The monkey argument was put to the test in 2003 in Plymouth, England. Some museum curators put typewriters in the cage of some macaque monkeys. The best they could get out of them, before they “did their business” on the typewriters, was to repeat the ‘S’ key. There simply is not enough time in the history of the cosmos for chance to formulate complex cellular messages.

How about random mutation and “natural selection”? There is not enough time in the history of the universe for random mutation and natural selection to locate extremely rare genetic sequences of chemical words capable of building cellular machines. Stephen Meyer compares it to a bike thief trying to pick a bike lock with 10 dials. The thief would have to search through 10 billion possible combinations to unlock it. Devoting a lifetime to unlocking the bike lock would prove fruitless. There has not been enough time since the origin of the universe for random mutation and natural selection to construct even a single gene.

From where do genetic instructions come? Was it quantum tunneling? Can the possible existence of an infinite number of universes explain it? No matter which of materialism’s and naturalism’s arguments, they come up short for the same reason. They cannot adequately explain how new genetic, biological information necessary to produce new biological life-forms arose from nothing.

There is a better argument. This argument assumes letters arranged in intelligent sequences of meaning imply a sentient mind. Ink and paper do not produce the Oxford English Dictionary. Egyptian hieroglyphics, Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, or Microsoft Office; they come from conscious, mental activity. In our human experience, information is always a product of an intelligent mind. Moreover, not only does mind produce the information, but it also guides and orders information’s selection to an ultimate, purposeful, and moral end. How is this achieved? Where is the power to accomplish such an end?

Might the scientific discoveries of cellular words lead us back to Genesis and John? God in his creative act speaks his word issuing information. “Then God said, ‘Let there be light’.” When Francis Collins stood next to the President and announced the decoding of the human genome, he said, “This is the language of God.” The Word who speaks has informed each living cell. Furthermore, he has the power to direct the information to a purposeful and moral end: “And there was light.” As Hebrews 11:3 says, “The world was created by the word of God.” Before mass-energy was, “in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God … all things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being” (John 1:14).

This is absolutely stunning! We celebrate this Advent the Word which not only dwells in the constitution of every human cell, but who himself became “flesh” and seeks to dwell in every human heart!

[1] John C. Lennox, God’s Undertaker: Has Science Buried God? (Oxford: Lion Hudson, plc, 2007), 167.

[2] Stephen C. Meyer’s recent book is the major resource for this article; see Stephen Meyer, The Return of the God Hypothesis: Three Scientific Discoveries that Reveal the Mind Behind the Universe (Harper One).

Making Sense of Morality: Shifts from the Scientific Revolution

Editor’s note: R. Scott Smith has graciously allowed us to republish his series, “Making Sense of Morality.” You can find the original post here.

Introduction

Like we have seen with Thomas Aquinas, the Scholastics’ Aristotelianism in the Middle Ages stressed metaphysics, especially real, immaterial, and universal qualities. This applied not only to human nature, but also to virtues and moral principles. As universals, many particular, individual humans can exemplify the very same quality (a one-in-many).

The Shift

With this stress upon universals and their essential natures, Aristotelianism lent itself to a more a priori (in-principle), deductive approach to science. But, this position started to shift with William of Ockham (d. 1347). Ockham rejected universals, and in its place embraced nominalism. Unlike universals, nominalism maintains that everything is particular. For instance, while we may speak of the virtue of justice, each instance of justice is particular, and they do not share literally the identical quality. Now, Plato’s universals, which held that universals (or forms) themselves are not located in space and time, and this would fit with their being immaterial. But, nominalism rejects that view. On it, all particulars are located in space and time. That implies that they are material and sense perceptible.

About two and one-half centuries later, two key philosophers in the early modern period, Pierre Gassendi (d. 1655) and Thomas Hobbes (d. 1679), embraced nominalism. Gassendi also revived Democritus’ atomism, on which the material world is made up of atoms in the void. Hobbes and Gassendi also adopted a mechanical view of the universe: it is a large-scale machine, and so are the things within it. These views shift away the reality of immaterial things and embrace instead materialism.

These philosophers helped set a basis for natural philosophy (science) in the emerging modern era. Johannes Kepler (d. 1630) adopted the mechanical view, and scientists such as Francis Bacon (d. 1626), Galileo Galilei (d. 1642), Robert Boyle (d. 1691), and Isaac Newton (d. 1727) endorsed mechanical atomism. Yet, there was a key difference in the atomism of this period from that of Democritus. Probably due to the influence of Christianity in Europe in this time, people tended to think that atomism applied only to the material realm, but not the spiritual one. They still had room for the reality of minds, souls, angels, and God.

The qualities of matter (e.g., size, shape, quantity, and location) were thought to be primary qualities. In contrast, the qualities of the spiritual realm (e.g., colors, tastes, or odors) were considered to be secondary qualities. Secondary qualities either were subjective qualities in the mind of an observer, or words that people used. In other words, they did not exist objectively.

Here, we must note something of immense importance. It was not scientific discoveries which drove this shift away from universals and a dualistic view of reality. Instead, it largely was due to the adoption of philosophical theories, namely, nominalism and mechanical atomism.

The Rise of a New Scientific Methodology

What is the significance of this shift? Boyle illustrates it well; he thought secondary qualities and Aristotelian universals were unintelligible due to what he conceived to be real in the material world. Of course, that conception was informed deeply by mechanical atomism and nominalism.

Instead of the Aristotelian paradigm, a new scientific methodology developed. It stressed empirical observation of particular, material things. On the new paradigm, things did not have essences that necessitated certain causal effects. Instead, the new scientific methodology focused on contingent causes and induction. While Aristotelianism had encountered empirical problems (e.g., the discovery of new species of which he did not know), the new methodology provided an advancement. Instead of relying overly on metaphysical theories, it emphasized the importance of empirical observation of the world.

Conclusion

These shifts in the nature of what is real, and how we know it, became deeply entrenched, and they affected ethics too. Next, I will look at Hobbes’s ethics. The key question will be: can his ethics preserve core morals?

For Further Reading

Alan Chalmers, “Atomism from the 17th to the 20th Century,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/atomism-modern/

Eva Del Soldato, “Natural Philosophy in the Renaissance,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/natphil-ren/.

Galileo Galilei, Il Saggiatore [The Assayer], in Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo. https://www.princeton.edu/~hos/h291/assayer.htm#_ftn19. Jürgen Klein, “Francis Bacon.” https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/francis-bacon/

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R. Scott Smith is a Christian philosopher and apologist, with special interests in ethics, knowledge, and seeing the body of Christ live in the fullness of the Spirit and truth.

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Mailbag: The Science of Morality?

Question Hello professor, I hope you are doing well. I have been looking at some of your work and I think you could answer a question I have in regards to ethics. If you have time that is. If you don't have the time you can just ignore my email. My question has to do with an article I have been reading recently that is titled the science of morality. In the article the author states that morally good is identical with flourishing well being and the morally bad is identical with misery. I read some reviews of the articles and other scholars state that the author was just redefining moral goodness with well being and argument was circular. But why believe that objective goodness cannot be identical with flourishing of human well being? What makes the argument invalid?

Thank you for your time,

Bill

Answer

Hi Bill,

This is a deceptively hard question! The topic of goodness is quite complicated. Usually when we say that someone is morally good, we're talking about traits of character and various virtues the person shows. Somehow the goodness inheres in the person. We speak secondarily of various states of affairs being good, but it's almost a misnomer to call a state of affairs morally good. This is why Kant was of the view that the only truly good thing is a good will--an attribute of a person.

We might come across an awful state of affairs, but what's morally bad is, most likely, the person or persons (if there is such a person or are such persons) culpably responsible for bringing it about. To say a hurricane is bad is not to say it's morally bad. It just is what it is. Calling it morally bad is anthropomorphism. Of course it's nonmorally bad, in that it produces, potentially, a range of undesirable consequences, but you asked about moral goodness in particular. Often when goodness gets contrasted with bad, the focus is on nonmoral considerations that pertain to things like pleasure and pain; but when good gets contrasted with evil, the distinctively moral features come into view.

So flourishing is a perfect example of something that's nonmorally good. But it doesn't get us to the heart of moral goodness. The effort to define moral goodness by appeal to human flourishing is a rookie mistake. It's a deflationary attempt by folks who want to domesticate the concept to reduce moral goodness to something other than itself. It's thus an attempt to define moral goodness in terms that aren't moral at all. But moral goodness can't be reduced or explained away in such a manner. The effort falls prey to the naturalistic fallacy, for one thing. For another, it just leaves too much out.

Suppose you are asked a question and risk being shot to tell the right answer. The morally good thing to do, you're convinced, is to tell the truth. But still, you tell the truth and immediately get shot. How on earth can an appeal to human flourishing be adequate to account for the moral goodness of your choice in such a situation? Rather than conducing to survival and flourishing, it ensured your immediate death.

Now, just because there's not an analytic reduction of "moral goodness" into "human flourishing" doesn't mean there's no connection between them. To the contrary, I think there's an airtight (synthetic) connection between the two, but that's quite different from saying moral goodness just is human flourishing. Ultimately, on a Christian worldview, moral goodness comes about by way of right relation with and transformation by God entirely into the image of Christ--a righteous and holy life--and with such a life will come complete fulfillment and satisfaction. But that doesn't mean morality and happiness are the same thing; they're not. But a good God can and will ensure their ultimate correspondence.

Best,

djb