It is all very ingenious and , the way researchers have discovered the code of life. Of course, evolution is given all the credit for the code, something that is less ingenious. We Jehovah’s Witnesses have become used to those videos highlighting similar extraordinary marvels elsewhere in life, followed up with the question: ‘What do you think? Did the (fill in the blank) simply evolve? Or was it designed?” (the most recent being the red blood cell system for oxygen transport)
Die-hard evolutionists choke at this phrasing. ‘You just can’t ask people such a question point-blank,’ the grouse. ‘You have to lay a proper foundation so they know it didn’t happen that way!’ Do you? For most plain people, Hebrews 3:4 will resonate just fine: “Of course, every house is constructed by someone, but he that constructed all things is God.” Should you try to talk them out of it?
“Of course!” the verse begins. It accords with their entire experience, with their common sense, and even with laws of thermodynamics that says order tends towards disorder, not the reverse. They will regard it as a scam when supposedly learned ones assert that the most complex ‘house’ of all was not constructed by someone, but assembled itself. They might even suspect that those trying to foist such a scam on them fall into the ‘educated fools’ category.
The way these evolutionists carry on, you would think life owing its start to creation would leave Bible scriptures behind when it died instead of fossils. Most facts claimed to support evolution equally support an original designer. If you find a prototype that works, you incorporate it into many things. It is evidence for evolution no more than for original creation. The capability of living organisms to adapt over time through mutation and selection of the most robust also need not be regarded as exclusive to evolution. It could just as well be a designed system—and must be unless abiogenesis can be established.
The literalists that clobber me would surely not clobber Walter Isaacson, author of The Code Breakers, for they recognize he is on their side. Not that he is trying to pull a fast one on readers; he just buys into the same dogma that all the rest of them do. “The concept behind [certain derivatives of CRISPR] was a brilliant one, although in fairness I should note that bacteria had thought of it more than a billion years ago, he says. I would be promptly ‘corrected’ for such a statement; instructed that bacteria does not ‘think’—it evolves. He gets a free pass; it’s obvious he’s speaking figuratively. I don’t begrudge it of him, but isn’t he falling into the Hebrews 3:4 ‘trap’ of a designer who ‘thinks’ of things?
Another scientist explains: “The CRISPR treatments come from reprogramming a system that we humans found in nature.” (P 457) Yeah, they just ‘found’ it, like you might find a quarter on the sidewalk.
‘Oh, come on, Tommy. (aside to self) Don’t grumble so much. It is impressive—knocks your socks off what these scientists are doing. When Doudna speaks of a major innovation, “an actual human-made invention [by fusing together two RNA strands], not merely a discovery of a natural phenomenon,” (pg 135) don’t compare it to the Batmobile—that just because it exists doesn’t mean it isn’t simply jazzing up existing cars. Why be such a grumbler? What’s next—posting signs to ‘Keep off my lawn!?’
The suspicion to justify all this grumbling is that—does it make a difference in the caution scientists exercise? We are speaking the code of life here. Make a change in the DNA and it gets inherited by all future generations to the end of time. Maybe, just maybe, the background supposition of evolution plants a reckless attitude. ‘How hard can it be to improve on a process that is just haphazard to begin with?’ is the thought. Nor is it reassuring to hear such words as, “If scientists don’t play God, who will?” (James Watson to Britain’s Parliamentary and Scientific Committee, May 16, 2000, pg 333) Have these researchers been reckless?
In fairness, it doesn’t seem they have been at this level. They play fully conscious of the potential to cause harm as well as good. They call conferences at which ‘ethicists’ weigh in. A consensus arises among them that non-inheritable DNA-tinkering should be okay—and even that is within cautious limits—to take down diseases as Huntington’s, for example, and maybe sickle cell anemia, but anything permanent (‘germ-line editing) is a line that must not be crossed [yet].
When one of their number does cross that line in 2018, the rest react in shock: “When He Jiankui produced the world’s first CRISPR babies, with the goal of making them and their descendants immune to an attack by a deadly virus, most responsible scientists expressed outrage. His actions were deemed top be at best premature and at worst abhorrent.” (pg 336) The Code Breakers tells how China initially lauded their scientist for beating out the West. But later, when it became clear that his feat was so universally condemned, they sent him to jail,. This later development of prison time is not in the Isaacson book; it may have occurred as it was going to print. As with many aspects of our times, things move so quickly as to make new writings promptly obsolete.
So the scientists appear to be responsible. One of their number going maverick cannot be held against them. Some of our people go maverick, too. At this level, that of the basic researcher, driven by curiosity, they are most responsible. But are there other levels at which they are not so responsible?
To be continued:
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