Category Archives: Jesus’ Artifacts

Jesus’ Artifacts, Part 7

Posted on by

I’m not saying one word against the truth of the Bible, even its universal absolute truth.  Believers, however, rarely argue among themselves that the Bible in all its context is the universal absolute truth.  The arguments are over someone’s understanding of some part of the Bible, in other words we argue over sermons.  I don’t even intend to argue against the absolute truth of a sermon prepared and delivered as the Lord intended for a particular congregation that has produced actual obedient results.  I am simply saying that it is not necessarily universally applicable to every other congregation on the planet any more than the absolutely correct protein for, say, a liver cell is necessarily (for that reason alone) the absolutely correct protein for eyes, skin, teeth or lungs.  So I am using my current knowledge of the DNA-RNA-protein complex as an analogy to demonstrate how even absolute truth might not be universally applicable and might appear to be completely contradictory when that universality is tacitly assumed.

So how true is this analogy?  Or, another way of saying essentially the same thing is, How binding should  this analogy be in your thoughts and actions?  Guess what?  For you, it is only as true and binding as you believe it to be.  In this sense faith (and its consequent commitments) is a protection against wild swings of trajectory or action.  So we are no longer to be children, tossed back and forth by waves and carried about by every wind of teaching by the trickery of people who craftily carry out their deceitful schemes,1 is how Paul put it.

I am working not only with my acknowledged understanding of the Bible but with my understanding of others’ understanding of microscopic physical phenomena.  That is at least two, probably three, times removed from the simple goodness of “God said it; I believe it; that settles it.”  No matter what your current belief about the validity of my analogy is, it is likely to change.  Human knowledge of the DNA-RNA-protein complex will undoubtedly change.  Our current knowledge is the first knowledge of a rather small piece of the whole genome.  As we learn more about the rest it may reinforce and exalt our current understanding, or it may demonstrate that what we now know is relatively insignificant or even fundamentally flawed.

But for me, having gone through the process, I’m going to stand for the time being by what I have learned.  Perhaps the most obvious stance I am taking is that this is not called PREACHERS DON’T KNOW MUCH ABOUT THE BIBLE, it is called WHAT KIND OF CARPENTER IS JESUS.

Well, have I learned anything about that?

I’ve already mentioned that I recognized Jesus as a cleverer programmer than I am.  (And perhaps now is as good a time as any to acknowledge that any of my inferences will be about Jesus as a craftsman in general rather than a carpenter specifically.)  I am so taken with the DNA-RNA-protein complex I would love to wax poetic in my praise of his excellent craftsmanship.  The only thing that stops me from doing that here is the recognition that it is faith that allows me to see things that way.  James Watson, for instance, looked at the same DNA-RNA-protein complex and did not conclude that it is “absolutely the best and most efficient way”2 to do things.  “‘Why does the information in DNA need to go through an RNA intermediate before it can be translated into a protein?”3 he asked.

Frankly, I’m not wise enough to criticize the Lord’s creation like this.  All I know of DNA, RNA and proteins comes from James Watson and a few others like him.  So I am compelled to fall back on my one little skill, that philosophical bent of my mind.

Watson pointed out that DNA can store information but can’t catalyze chemical reactions.  Proteins catalyze chemical reactions but can’t store information.  DNA and proteins are each dependent on the existence of the other.  RNA on the other hand “can store and replicate genetic information” and “can catalyze critical chemical reactions.”  So Francis Crick imagined an RNA world that pre-existed the DNA-RNA-protein complex understood presently.  RNA persists today as a kind of piecemeal vestige of that evolutionary history, according to Watson.  For Watson, apparently, a DNA-protein complex would be more efficient than the DNA-RNA-protein complex.  An RNA-protein complex would be out of the question because RNA is not a very stable molecule.  DNA is a definite improvement for long-term information storage.  Why proteins came into the picture is not entirely clear, except that the only chemical reaction Watson mentioned that RNA catalyzes is the bonding of the amino acids that make the chains that fold into proteins.  But remember, DNA is not able to catalyze these chemical bonds.

Even after Watson’s explanation I was left scratching my head and still thinking that the DNA-RNA-protein complex sounded like the best thing for the job at hand.  You see, James Watson and I have different agendas.  If the DNA-RNA-protein complex proves to be the irreducible level of complexity necessary for the existence of life, I’m unconcerned.  God is smart enough to handle that level of complexity from the very beginning.  Watson’s faith in the theory of evolution, on the other hand, would be called into question.  This is an awful lot to ask of chance-directed processes.  So in my opinion it is Watson’s faith that prompts him to question the efficiency of the DNA-RNA-protein complex while my faith prompts me to praise Jesus.

So while engaging in poetic praise of Jesus’ craftsmanship is a good and necessary thing for me to do as a matter of worship, here I’ll limit myself to a simple observation.  What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit,4 Jesus told Nicodemus.  We have known for nearly two thousand years that this life “born of the Spirit” had some relationship to the Bible.  We’ve argued over the details of that relationship for most of that time, but generally agree to some manner of relationship.  It is interesting to me at this late date to find an information storage and retrieval system like the DNA-RNA-protein complex in some relationship to life “born of the flesh.”

I didn’t create the DNA-RNA-protein complex out of my imagination.  In fact, I learned about it from people who might reasonably be called hostile witnesses.  Yet even in the descriptions of hostile witnesses I can recognize enough of the hallmarks of a particular individual’s craftsmanship—in both the Bible-Preacher-obedient-congregation complex’s relationship to life born of the Spirit and the DNA-RNA-protein complex’s relationship to life born of the flesh—to be willing to modify my views about the former by reference to the latter.

What kind of carpenter is Jesus?  He is the kind of craftsman whose handiwork displays the individually recognizable traits of his craftsmanship.  In other words, whatever those distinguishing features are that make it possible to recognize a favorite composer’s music, or a favorite artist’s paintings, or a favorite architect’s buildings, those features are also evident in the artifacts of Jesus’ creation—the DNA-RNA-protein complex and the Bible-Preacher-obedient-congregation complex, life born of the flesh and life born of the Spirit respectively.

1 Ephesians 4:14 (NET)

2 DNA: The Secret of Life, James D. Watson with Andrew Berry, Copyright 2003 by DNA Show LLC, published by Knopf, a Borzoi Book, August 2004, pg. 85

3 Ibid, pg. 83

4 John 3:6 (NET)

Jesus’ Artifacts, Part 6

Posted on by

Yes, systems of theology fail in their primary attempt and alleged purpose to sum up the Bible in a complete, universal and absolute way.  Every theological system I’ve encountered (or might invent) was based on favored passages of scripture.  Then a logical system was constructed around this subset of Bible passages to mute the effect of other Bible passages that did not fit well into that particular system of theology.  But, lo and behold, these muted passages from the Bible are the favored passages of another theological system and the basis of another logical structure that was used to mute the effect of the passages of scripture favored by the former theological system.

I’ll show some examples later.  For now, it should be apparent that if—and I do say “if” because I’m placing an enormous, perhaps an inordinate, amount of emphasis on a biological analogy…if this analogy has any descriptive power to illuminate the actual usefulness of the Bible to the body of Christ, the theological systems constructed thus far are wrongheaded in the extreme.  But, on the other hand, if one is looking for a functional body—a body with cellular differentiation caused by switching-off gene suites (e.g., different passages of scripture)—rather than a mass of identical cells, these same theological systems I’m calling wrong and irrelevant might be preeminently useful.

A preacher is not a blank slate.  More often than not he has been schooled in one or more of the extant theological systems.  He is less likely to emerge from his study with a sermon contrary to his favorite system than complementary to it.  If his goal is to preach universally applicable absolute truths, he was wearing blinders before he began it.  But if his goal is to preach absolute timely and necessary truths to a specific cell of the body of Christ, to fill specific needs and catalyze specific functions at specific times, well, those blinders might just be models of efficient design.  Did Jesus, efficient programmer that He is, commission these theological systems as the spiritual equivalent of repressor molecules?

And so the third and final application of my would-be sermon is that I should pray for preachers.  They are up against it.  I’m not talking difficult here, like walking a tightrope.  I’m talking impossible, like walking on water.  And I should pray for us philosophical types.  We’re going to have to find other preoccupations than biting and devouring other believers.  Of course, just telling us we’re irrelevant failures won’t change the fact that we have a philosophical bent to our minds.

As for me, I think I’m becoming convinced that the kind of universal absolute truth I’ve searched for by parsing text will remain as elusive as the DNA-RNA-protein complex was to the deductions and inferences of Plato and Aristotle.  Perhaps my point is clearer in the analogy.  Here I am, a disgruntled amino acid, reluctant to join any amino acid chains and form any useful proteins until I possess an understanding of the whole DNA molecule in all its relations with every cell in the body.  That’s what I’m saying, right?  I want a universal absolute understanding of the Bible.

Now, let’s say for the sake of argument that the Lord indulged me and downloaded into my brain all the truth I crave for a specific moment in time.  Let’s assume that my brain did not explode or melt, and that the emotional content of that knowledge did not reduce me to a puddle of tears.  Long before I could digest that information, write it down, publish it and be hailed as the greatest living philosopher among amino acids, the information would have ceased to be absolute or universal or both.  Why?  Because the body to which the truth referred would have changed.

Now wait a minute, one might say, not all of it!

True enough.  There are probably some basic life-maintenance functions common to every cell in the body.  Which ones were those, amidst this massive download of information I am assuming to be something akin to a database that lists the geographic location of particular cells, hopefully arranged by some kind of functional hierarchy akin to organ systems, the specific passage or passages from the Bible with sermon and application highlights, and maybe the need or function addressed?  Now what’s not in the download is whether the preachers actually preached the intended sermons from the correct passages from the Bible with the correct applications.  It doesn’t say whether the appropriate members of the congregation responded appropriately and filled the need or accomplished the function.  And I’m certainly assuming that a download accomplished in a finite amount of time does not include the historical, cultural and biographical dossier of every member of every cell in the body.  None of this, of course, affects one word in the Bible.  All of it affects how those words are organized, analyzed or applied in the next sermon—next Sunday!

Jesus’ Artifacts, Part 5

Posted on by

Now preachers have no more innate knowledge of the outline of the body of Christ or the needs and functions of any particular cell at any particular moment than I do.  So I hope that when they enter their quiet inner rooms to study, they are in deep communion with the Lord Jesus.  For only direct revelation—through the Bible, of course, the spiritual DNA, if you will—can give them that accurate timely sermon apart from the aforementioned knowledge that they lack.

It’s not too hard to imagine that a preacher—who goes through this intense process of preparation, delivers the sermon the Lord has given him, and then sees actual obedient results in his congregation—might mistake the content of that particular sermon for a universal truth of the Bible.  So if I return to my three hypothetical preachers, studying the laundry list of Solomon’s wealth and power from three different perspectives, and I imagine that each of them has received his sermon with its application from the Lord who is able to make him stand, and that each has delivered those sermons and each has seen obedient results in his own congregation, and each has mistaken the content of his particular sermon for a universal truth of the Bible; and then I imagine that these three meet in public and eagerly discuss this wonderful thing the Lord has done for them and through them, I begin to get a taste of what I will call the preachers’ dilemma.

I make my living recording educational sessions at conferences.  In the old days that meant audio cassette recorders.  I ran hundreds of feet of cable from a table in the hallway into the various rooms where sessions were to be presented.  Then I sat at that table of cassette recorders monitoring when sessions began and ended, that record levels were good, that the cassettes kept turning and recording audio (not a given with this particular method of recording), and I flipped the tapes over before they ran out on one side or replaced them with new tapes when full.  To stave off boredom I would leave the volume control of a session that sounded interesting up louder than the rest and listen, as I monitored the others with my eyes roving over meters and tape mechanisms.

Recording the Evangelical Theological Society meeting one year I came upon two simultaneous sessions that sounded interesting.  One was positioned to the left on the table in front of me, the other to the right.  I decided to listen to both, since both speakers were presenting on the same passage of scripture.  Both speakers presented the universal truth of the passage in question, two different, diametrically opposed universal truths.  I was troubled.  So troubled, in fact, that when conference attendees passed by between sessions and started up a conversation with the “CIA operative bugging all their conversations” or “the guy getting really smart really fast listening to all those Bible lessons at once,” I shared my troubled thoughts.  And every passerby who heard my troubled thoughts was saddened and troubled by them, too.

None of this is particularly troubling to one who has encountered these things but has little interest in Jesus or the Bible.  Such a one scoffs at my naiveté, “Come on?  It’s the Bible, it can mean whatever you want it to mean.”  But none of us, not me, not the passersby who heard my troubled thoughts, not the speaker in the session on the left side of my recording table, nor the speaker in the session on the right side of my recording table, set out to make the Bible say whatever he wanted it to say.

Our interest, the mutual desire that binds us together—the tape guy and the passersby and speakers at the conference, Bible students and teachers, pastors, preachers and professional theologians—was to understand the Bible, what it really says, what God intends to communicate to us, and through that study and understanding come to know God and share in the eternal life Jesus defined for, and promised to, his disciples.  Now this is eternal life, Jesus prayed for his disciples, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ,whom you sent.”1  What is troubling is how such good intentions pursued in such good faith can turn out so badly so often that people with little or no interest in the outcome and only a casual acquaintance with the phenomena can conclude so easily that the Bible means whatever the preacher wants it to mean.

So I’ll return to my three hypothetical preachers and imagine them sitting at lunch together.  Each is bursting to tell the wonderful thing the Lord has done for him and through him.  Each is convinced he should find more understanding and comradeship with the other two men dining with him than with any other human beings on the planet.  And each is sorely disappointed.  Each tries reasoning with the other, but to no avail.  At that point each has two basic options:  1) to part company, troubled, disappointed and confused, agreeing to disagree; or, 2) if one has particularly strong commitments to the universal applicability of the absolute truth of his individual experience, he curses the others and their congregations with condemnation to fiery destruction.

Application two of my would-be sermon is that I should forgive preachers this minor fault, like a speck of dirt in the eye, and beg their forgiveness as well as the forgiveness of every person on this planet for the plank in my own.  You see, I cause these problems.  Not alone; I am a member, the least member perhaps, of a class of people with a philosophical bent of mind.  I am the true believer in universal absolutes.  And I and those like me are they who goad preachers into intellectual straightjackets of our own devising by holding them up to public ridicule if they don’t jump through our hoops and pay homage to our intellectual prowess, our systems of theology, our autopsy reports and our post-mortems of autopsy reports.

So do I mean to say that all systems of theology are wrong?  Yes…and no.

Jesus’ Artifacts, Part 4

Posted on by

Now to get back to where I started:  How does all this information about the DNA-RNA-protein complex expand the context of my biblical understanding and prohibit me from calling this narrative PREACHERS DON’T KNOW MUCH ABOUT THE BIBLE?

When a child is conceived, the beginning is one fertilized cell.  That cell divides and becomes two, then four, then eight, and sixteen and so on.  But there is no body there; all the cells are identical.  At some point in this process of division, differentiation begins.  Some cells become blood inside blood vessels, or muscle, or bone.  Organs begin to form, like eyes or a liver.  The differences in the cells in these different organs or structures are accounted for by the different proteins, which catalyze, or facilitate, different chemical reactions which do different things and make the cells, well, different.

With my admittedly small understanding of the DNA-RNA-protein complex it is exciting to consider that different proteins are produced by different sections of the DNA chain unzipping, being transcribed and translated into protein.  Which section of DNA unzips?  Well, part of the answer is related to which sections are free to unzip and which are held fast by a repressor molecule.  Suddenly I can speculate—and it is still a guess, but an educated guess—that it is “possible to think of development—the process of growth from a single fertilized egg into a staggeringly complex adult human—as an enormous exercise in gene-switching: as tissues arise through development, so whole suites of genes must be switched on and off.”1  And, I will add, at the right place or location in the forming body, and at the right time, or in the correct sequence.

Now, since I believe the DNA-RNA-protein complex is an artifact of Jesus’ creation, everything I just discovered and speculated on becomes an analogy for me about another body, the body of Christ.  For just as the body is one and yet has many members, and all the members of the body2 – though many – are one body, so too is Christ.3  The preacher, not unlike messenger RNA, seeks out a quiet inner sanctuary, like the nucleus of a cell, where he can spend time alone with a passage from the Bible, like a section of DNA.  His sermon is not an exact copy of the Bible, but more like a mirror image reflecting the Bible and the times and circumstances of his own congregation.  He preaches his sermon to the congregation along with an application: “in the light of these things this is what should be done.”  Now, unlike the amino acids in the cell, individual members of the congregation have a choice whether or not to heed and act on the preacher’s admonition.  Those who act, form the protein, if you will, which catalyzes this particular function of this particular cell of the body of Christ.  And the different functions catalyzed by the different sermons are the very things that differentiate the congregations, or cells, from one another.

For in fact the body is not a single member, but many, Paul wrote the Corinthians.  If the whole body were an eye, what part would do the hearing?  If the whole were an ear, what part would exercise the sense of smell?  But as a matter of fact, God has placed each of the members in the body just as he decided.  If they were all the same member, where would the body be?4  Remember that mass of identical, undifferentiated, cells we all start out as?

So the laundry list of Solomon’s wealth and power might unzip, as it were, for a particular preacher, who produces a timely sermon that touches the hearts of certain members of a specific congregation, who in turn catalyze a specific function in a specific cell of the body of Christ.  All the while, it is completely possible that another preacher studying the laundry list of Solomon’s wealth and power and God’s promise to bless Solomon with the wisdom he asked for and the wealth he did not ask for might produce an entirely different sermon that results in the accomplishment of yet another function in another cell of the body of Christ.  Still another preacher may study the laundry list of Solomon’s wealth and power and compare it to the list of things God forbade Israel’s kings, and produce an entirely different sermon with entirely different results.

Though it is highly unlikely that any preacher would hold all three passages before his congregation, plus an illustration from the DNA-RNA-protein complex, in the twenty minutes or so allotted to him before Sunday dinner burns, even this has become a meaningful sermon to me.

I will sooner understand where and when to switch-off gene suites in the developing human being than I will grasp even the vaguest outline of the body of Christ, let alone a specific need or function of a specific cell at an appropriate time.  My criticism of preachers’ sermons, therefore, whether good or bad, is completely irrelevant, because it is not based on any knowledge of the needs and functions of any specific cell of the body of Christ, but on the preachers’ apparent affirmation or contradiction of the current state of my understanding of the Bible.  And though the process through which I arrive at my abstract truth is very vibrant and alive to me, any written results are little better than an autopsy report.  Future like-minded investigators may be able to study my autopsy report to point out where I went wrong.  But neither they nor I will help a single preacher find a single timely sermon by writing autopsy reports or post-mortems on autopsy reports.

So then, application one of my would-be sermon is something like: “Hey, Dan!  Lay off the preachers!  Who are you to pass judgment on another’s servant? Paul wrote the Romans rhetorically.  The explicit context was in reference to relations between the strong and weak in faith, that they should not despise or judge each other.  Before his own master he stands or falls, Paul continued.  And he will stand, for the Lord5 is6 able7 to make him stand.8  Would I be stretching the context too far to offer this same courtesy to priests, pastors, preachers and Bible teachers all over the world?

 

 

Addendum: January 17, 2019
Tables comparing 1 Corinthians 12:12 and Romans 14:4 in the NET and KJV follow.

1 Corinthians 12:12 (NET)

1 Corinthians 12:12 (KJV)
For just as the body is one and yet has many members, and all the members of the body – though many – are one body, so too is Christ. For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body: so also is Christ.

NET Parallel Greek

 Stephanus Textus Receptus

Byzantine Majority Text
Καθάπερ γὰρ τὸ σῶμα ἕν ἐστιν καὶ μέλη πολλὰ ἔχει, πάντα δὲ τὰ μέλη τοῦ σώματος πολλὰ ὄντα ἕν ἐστιν σῶμα, οὕτως καὶ ὁ Χριστός καθαπερ γαρ το σωμα εν εστιν και μελη εχει πολλα παντα δε τα μελη του σωματος του ενος πολλα οντα εν εστιν σωμα ουτως και ο χριστος καθαπερ γαρ το σωμα εν εστιν και μελη εχει πολλα παντα δε τα μελη του σωματος του ενος πολλα οντα εν εστιν σωμα ουτως και ο χριστος

Romans 14:4 (NET)

Romans 14:4 (KJV)
Who are you to pass judgment on another’s servant?  Before his own master he stands or falls.  And he will stand, for the Lord is able to make him stand. Who art thou that judgest another man’s servant? to his own master he standeth or falleth.  Yea, he shall be holden up: for God is able to make him stand.

NET Parallel Greek

 Stephanus Textus Receptus

Byzantine Majority Text
σὺ τίς εἶ ὁ κρίνων ἀλλότριον οἰκέτην; τῷ ἰδίῳ κυρίῳ στήκει ἢ πίπτει· σταθήσεται δέ, δυνατεῖ γὰρ ὁ κύριος στῆσαι αὐτόν συ τις ει ο κρινων αλλοτριον οικετην τω ιδιω κυριω στηκει η πιπτει σταθησεται δε δυνατος γαρ εστιν ο θεος στησαι αυτον συ τις ει ο κρινων αλλοτριον οικετην τω ιδιω κυριω στηκει η πιπτει σταθησεται δε δυνατος γαρ εστιν ο θεος στησαι αυτον

1 DNA: The Secret of Life, James D. Watson with Andrew Berry, Copyright 2003 by DNA Show LLC, published by Knopf, a Borzoi Book, August 2004, pg. 80

2 The Stephanus Textus Receptus and Byzantine Majority Text had του ενος (KJV: of that one) following body. The NET parallel Greek text and NA28 did not.

3 1 Corinthians 12:12 (NET)

4 1 Corinthians 12:14-19 (NET)

8 Romans 14:4 (NET)

Jesus’ Artifacts, Part 3

Posted on by

I came to computer programming later in life.  The first time I did some programming on my own it occurred to me that this DNA to RNA to protein process was a lot like a subroutine.  Now any user input I was trying to program for, passed through a whole lot of repetitive computer code before the appropriate subroutine could be identified and activated.  Was it possible, I wondered, that junk DNA was like that repetitive code, analyzing inputs to determine the appropriate subroutine to activate?  Repressor molecules, at least part of the answer, proved to be far more efficient and intelligent than my meager programming skills.

In E. coli bacteria lactose is broken down into two simpler sugars by an enzyme called beta-galactosidase.  A repressor molecule binds to the DNA near where the recipe for this enzyme, a protein, is coded.  The DNA can’t unzip; transcription can’t take place.  Lactose also binds to the repressor molecule whenever it is present in the cell.  So when lactose is present the repressor molecule binds preferentially to lactose rather than to the DNA strand.  The DNA recipe is free to unzip.  The recipe for beta-galactosidase is transcribed into messenger RNA, exported from the nucleus, translated into an amino acid chain that folds into a three dimensional shape, becomes an active enzyme and breaks lactose down into two simpler sugars.  The repressor molecule is itself a protein—an object, I thought?—coded somewhere presumably in E. coli DNA.

Suddenly, object oriented programming made a lot more sense to me.  There was a whole chapter on it in the book I read to learn programming.  I understood the basics of how to do it.  I didn’t grasp why.  My point here is simply that had I known about repressor molecules before I started writing code, I might have understood why I should use object oriented programming more than I did.  (And the cost bidding software I wrote to do my job better might have run more efficiently.)

“While E. coli is a relatively simple system in which to investigate gene-switching,” Watson wrote, “subsequent work on more complicated organisms, including humans, has revealed that the same basic principles apply across the board.”1

Perhaps my larger point is that my faith that Jesus is the creator of the DNA-RNA-protein complex makes it easy for me to learn something about computer programming from DNA.  I respond to the mind behind the artifact, and can freely acknowledge that He is a cleverer software engineer than I am.  Now to some it might seem that my faith and its consequent bias against the theory of evolution blinds me to the fact of evolution.  I want to set this matter straight.

I am persuaded that the fact of evolution is, for all practical purposes, beyond the realm of serious debate.  But those facts make the theory of evolution very difficult to swallow.  One fact of evolution is simple, straightforward and right before our eyes, sickle cell anemia.  This genetic disease is selected for in certain environments because it so disfigures the red blood cells they are not healthy enough to be infected by another fatal disease; namely, malaria.

While the horror of that sinks in, I will go on to say that every genetic disorder and disease is a fact of evolution.  Sickle cell anemia at least gives one some protection from malaria.  But it is difficult to see any selective advantage in genetic diseases like Huntington’s or cystic fibrosis.  We—as a people—spend the lives of our most brilliant researchers and millions of hard-earned dollars searching for cures and palliations to the ravages of evolution against our genome.

So the fact of evolution—that time, chance, cosmic rays and copying errors make alterations to a complex information storage and retrieval system like the DNA-RNA-protein complex—is, I think, well beyond dispute.2  But the theory that these same or similar random processes are also responsible for the creation of this complex information storage and retrieval system in the first place, not to mention the information stored in that system, information which is being destroyed by evolution at a rather alarming rate, is a leap of faith I can’t make.  I will admit to being a pessimist by nature, but this is optimism to the point of absurdity in my opinion.

 

Addendum: December 9, 2021
Tables comparing Ecclesiastes 9:11 in the Tanakh, KJV and NET, and comparing the Greek of Ecclesiastes 9:11 in the Septuagint (BLB and Elpenor) follow.

Ecclesiastes 9:11 (Tanakh) Ecclesiastes 9:11 (KJV)

Ecclesiastes 9:11 (NET)
I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all. I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all. Again, I observed this on the earth: The race is not always won by the swiftest, the battle is not always won by the strongest; prosperity does not always belong to those who are the wisest; wealth does not always belong to those who are the most discerning, nor does success always come to those with the most knowledge—for time and chance may overcome them all.

Ecclesiastes 9:11 (Septuagint BLB)

Ecclesiastes 9:11 (Septuagint Elpenor)
ἐπέστρεψα καὶ εἶδον ὑπὸ τὸν ἥλιον ὅτι οὐ τοῗς κούφοις ὁ δρόμος καὶ οὐ τοῗς δυνατοῗς ὁ πόλεμος καί γε οὐ τοῗς σοφοῗς ἄρτος καί γε οὐ τοῗς συνετοῗς πλοῦτος καί γε οὐ τοῗς γινώσκουσιν χάρις ὅτι καιρὸς καὶ ἀπάντημα συναντήσεται τοῗς πᾶσιν αὐτοῗς Επέστρεψα καὶ εἶδον ὑπὸ τὸν ἥλιον ὅτι οὐ τοῖς κούφοις ὁ δρόμος καὶ οὐ τοῖς δυνατοῖς ὁ πόλεμος καί γε οὐ τῷ σοφῷ ἄρτος καί γε οὐ τοῖς συνετοῖς πλοῦτος καί γε οὐ τοῖς γινώσκουσι χάρις, ὅτι καιρὸς καὶ ἀπάντημα συναντήσεται τοῖς πᾶσιν αὐτοῖς
Ecclesiastes 9:11 (NETS) Ecclesiastes 9:11 (English Elpenor)
I turned, and I saw under the sun that the race is not to the nimble, nor the battle to the strong, nor, indeed, bread to the wise, nor, indeed, riches to the intelligent, nor, indeed, favor to those who are perceptive, because time and chance will happen to them all. I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor yet bread to the wise, nor yet wealth to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of knowledge; for time and chance will happen to them all.

1 DNA: The Secret of Life, James D. Watson with Andrew Berry, Copyright 2003 by DNA Show LLC, published by Knopf, a Borzoi Book, August 2004, pg. 82

2 Again, I observed this on the earth: the race is not always won by the swiftest, the battle is not always won by the strongest; prosperity does not always belong to those who are the wisest, wealth does not always belong to those who are the most discerning, nor does success always come to those with the most knowledge – for time and chance may overcome them all.  Ecclesiastes 9:11 (NET)

Jesus’ Artifacts, Part 2

Posted on by

I’m not fooling anyone.  There is probably a strong suspicion that I’m going to shape things in such a way that I can come to the conclusion that Jesus is a pretty good carpenter.  A typical approach would be for me to establish the criteria—a good carpenter does A, B, C—and then examine some samples of Jesus’ carpentry, and say, look, Jesus’ carpentry shows A, B, C, and so I conclude that Jesus is a good carpenter.  Few would believe that I had actually established the criteria before I looked at the samples.  And, frankly, I don’t want to put myself in the position of being the judge of Jesus’ carpentry.  But the real rub is, and this was a little bit of a surprise, I searched the internet and didn’t find even one disputed artifact that anyone claimed was the handiwork of Jesus.

In the second century Justin Martyr claimed that Jesus made plows and yokes.  If He specialized in working tools for working people, it might not be so surprising that these necessary items were used for their intended purposes rather than preserved for posterity.  And it occurred to me that my surprise may be little more than an illusion created by looking back through the lens of Roman veneration of holy relics.  Jesus’ customers were descendants of Israel, with many centuries of cultural training in the evils of idolatry.  The owners of Jesus’ artifacts, whether they were his followers or not, may not have had the instinct for, in fact may have had a counter-instinct to, preserving those artifacts.  At any rate piety and practicality embrace each other here and demand that I infer what kind of carpenter Jesus is from other things He has made.  But where will I find these other things?

Here I have what scholars call an embarrassment of riches.  The Apostle John described Jesus like this (John 1:1-3 NET):  In the beginning was the Word (λόγος), and the Word (λόγος) was with God, and the Word (λόγος) was fully God.  The Word (οὗτος) was with God in the beginning.  All things were created by him, and apart from him not one thing was created that has been created.  This is the Word that became flesh and took up residence among us1 as the Lord Jesus.  So the whole world, the whole universe, the entire cosmos and everything in it is an artifact left by Jesus and fit material for my consideration.  The real question was, what shall I choose?

I let Matt Ridley, the author of GENOME, choose for me.  “In the beginning was the word,” he wrote.  “The word proselytized the sea with its message, copying itself unceasingly and forever.  The word discovered how to rearrange chemicals so as to capture little eddies in the stream of entropy and make them live.  The word transformed the land surface of the planet from a dusty hell to a verdant paradise.  The word blossomed and became sufficiently ingenious to build a porridgy contraption called a human brain that could discover and be aware of the word itself.”2

The word for Matt Ridley is not Jesus in this quote, but RNA, specifically the “chemical substance that links the two worlds of DNA and protein.”  So, I want to consider the interactions of RNA, DNA and proteins as an artifact of Jesus’ creation.

Now with my porridgy brain I only grasp the function of a very small percentage of the DNA molecule.  And so, obviously, I will be considering that very small percentage of the whole.  The level of detail present in that portion of DNA is such that it only allows one to distinguish between human beings and chimpanzees by a very small percentage of difference.  The far larger mass of the DNA molecule—called junk DNA, presumably because no one yet has a clue how it works or what it does—is where the level of detail that will convict a man of a crime in a court of law (while at the same time exonerating his father, his brother and his son) is found.

I assume most of us are familiar with the spiral staircase shape of the DNA molecule, its double helix structure deduced by James Watson and Francis Crick in 1953.  The business end of the molecule, as far as we know, the stairs, are constructed of pairs of four chemicals:  adenine (A), thymine (T), guanine (G) and cytosine (C).  And these chemicals comprise the four letter alphabet of the genetic code.

In his book DNA3 James Watson described how RNA makes the link from the code stored in bone marrow DNA to the production of the protein hemoglobin.  First, the hemoglobin gene, a segment of bone marrow DNA, unzips as it were.  The chemical pairs making up the stairs separate from each other.  One strand, one half of the stairs, is copied with the help of an enzyme called RNA polymerase.

Well, the process is actually called transcription.  And you don’t really get an exact copy, it’s more like a mirror image.  You see, adenine (A) and thymine (T) always pair up together, and guanine (G) and cytosine (C) always pair up together.  So in the process of transcription wherever the strand of DNA contains cytosine (C), for example, the RNA polymerase strand will contain guanine (G); wherever the DNA contains thymine (T) the RNA will have adenine (A) and so forth.  When transcription is complete the resulting messenger RNA is an exact copy, not of the strand of DNA it was paired up with, but of the other strand, the one that had unzipped from that strand where all the action seemed to take place.

And I must apologize, it’s not an exact copy of that strand either.  RNA is not entirely the same language as DNA.  In the language of RNA uracil (U) is substituted for thymine (T).  So, where adenine (A) occurs in the DNA strand, uracil (U) rather than thymine (T) occurs in the messenger RNA.  Then the messenger RNA is exported from the nucleus into the cell, and the DNA in the nucleus zips itself up again.

In the cell outside the nucleus the process of translation begins.  The recipe encoded in the messenger RNA is literally translated into an actual string of amino acids called a protein.  Now, this is not chemistry in the sense that the chemicals adenine, uracil, guanine and cytosine transported as messenger RNA combine in various ways to produce the twenty amino acids that make up proteins.  It is language.  The translator, if you will, is a molecular machine called a ribosome, which is itself composed of RNA and protein.

“Amino acids are delivered to the scene,” Watson wrote, “attached to transfer RNA” (pg. 78).  The amino acid is attached to one end of yet another kind of RNA, and three letters of the genetic code (some triplet of adenine, uracil, guanine and cytosine) are attached to the other end.  If the messenger RNA triplet inside the ribosome reads GUU, for instance, a transfer RNA molecule with CAA at one end and the amino acid valine at the other will lock in place.  Why?  Because guanine (G) is always paired with cytosine (C) and uracil (U) is always paired with adenine (A).  If the messenger RNA reads AAG then a transfer RNA molecule with UUC at one end and the amino acid lysine at the other will lock in place.  Remember, adenine (A) is always paired with uracil (U) and guanine (G) is always paired with cytosine (C).

The two amino acids (valine and lysine) are glued together to begin a chain.  The ribosome continues down the length of the messenger RNA, reading coded triplets.  The appropriate transfer RNA with the appropriate amino acid attached at one end is locked in place.  The new amino acid is glued to the growing amino acid chain.  This process continues 141 or 146 times and the end result is one of the four chains of protein that fold together into a complex three dimensional shape with an iron atom in the center of each twisted chain to make hemoglobin.

Pretty cool, huh?  The thing that caught my attention when I first heard about it was that the protein, hemoglobin in this particular case, was predetermined by the segment of DNA that unzipped.  So what made that particular segment of DNA unzip?

1 John 1:14 (NET)

2 Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters, Copyright 1999 by Matt Ridley, published by Harper Perennial, October 2000, pg. 11

3 DNA: The Secret of Life, James D. Watson with Andrew Berry, Copyright 2003 by DNA Show LLC, published by Knopf, a Borzoi Book, August 2004

Jesus’ Artifacts, Part 1

Posted on by

While I am asking—“What is truth?  What is faith?  Who is God?  What is He trying to say to us?”—trying to come to some understanding of Bible passages in their complete contexts, millions of priests, pastors, preachers and Bible teachers all over the world open their Bibles on their own and construct sermons and homilies and Bible lessons, complete with life applications, every week without even consulting me.  The vast majority of them don’t know who I am or what I’m trying to do here.  While I, with my philosophical bent of mind, endeavor to construct an abstract truth of the Bible, real people are doing real things with the Bible, in real space and real time.  They come to real conclusions about Bible passages—if this is so then we should do thus and such—and they are having real success gathering others around them who think and act in accordance with their teachings.

Now I’ve heard, admittedly, a very small fraction of the sermons, homilies and Bible lessons presented by a handful of the millions of priests, pastors, preachers and Bible teachers who prepare these things every week.  And when I’ve done so I’ve been a bit like the dinner guest who, as the hostess serves a succulent pork roast, all he can think about and speak about is cholesterol, hardening of the arteries, heart attack and stroke.  No matter what portion of scripture the preacher chose to expound upon, that same kind of expansion of context that I’ve been following here, went on in my head.  Sometimes, it’s true, the expansion only served to reinforce the preacher’s point.  That was a good day, a Sunday I didn’t need a week to recover from.  But far too often the expansion of context that ballooned uncontrollably in my mind severely limited, if not completely refuted, the preacher’s point.

On those days, I didn’t want to sit and listen to a sermon.  I wanted to stand and make a dialogue of it, and not some postmodern-happy-go-lucky-all-points-of-view-are-equal dialogue.  I mean a good old-fashioned Socratic brawl of a dialogue where I played Socrates and the preacher played the bumbling Sophist, and at the end of it, it would be clear to everyone present—including the preacher—that he doesn’t really know what he was talking about.

So why call this WHAT KIND OF CARPENTER IS JESUS?  Why not call it PREACHERS DON’T KNOW MUCH ABOUT THE BIBLE? or something like that?  I won’t say I haven’t thought that or even said it before.  It’s just that whenever I thought or said it, I couldn’t get away with it.  The same expansion of context that created the problem for me also solved it.  To consider that solution I’ll need to take my first direct look at the question, what kind of carpenter is Jesus?