Fifty years have passed since I took my first college biology course. In 1967, the genetic code had just been deciphered. For the first time, I watched an animated filmstrip of the dance of life on a projector screen: ribosomes moved along a messenger RNA with tRNAs jumping on and off; a chain of highly ordered amino acids emerged from the ribosome, each precisely positioned according to instruction in the mRNA molecule. Unbelievable. The most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.
It was also the year when I met my first evolutionary biologist—the professor of my introductory course. I grew up in a sheltered family and church community, so I thought that people like him were constantly scowling or even had horns. I liked him. He was a kind and gentle man. I wondered how someone who I assumed didn’t believe in God could be just like the people in my church—kind and considerate. I led a devotional in my church that semester, and I raised the importance of the genuine and consistently loving nature of our faith. If even an evolutionary biologist could display the fruit of the Spirit, we as followers of Jesus ought to be able to do so even better. I think I based this devotional on 1 Peter 3:15, “But in your hearts revere Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect” (NIV).
Fifty years later, knowledge in biology as a discipline has taken us way beyond anything we could have dreamed. We have decoded all three billion bits required for the emergence of the human body from a single fertilized egg, and through new gene editing technology, anyone with very little training can alter the code of life. Synthetic biologists are able to construct cells with a new genetic code, allowing the production of engineered proteins, which contain never-before-used building blocks, to make nano-machines geared toward particular highly specific tasks. As neuroscientists map connections in the human brain, we are on the cusp of being able to manipulate its inner signals to change behavior and even personality.
Sometimes I wish I could go back and whisper in the ear of that college student (me) who was so spiritually moved by the dancing ribosomes. “You haven’t seen anything yet,” I would whisper. Now though, with genetic engineering and the potential to alter who we are in full swing, human beings are setting themselves up to do things previously done only by God. Since human beings are not God, the power we are about to wield is scary. Come to think of it, I don’t think I want to whisper in his ear—let him enjoy his heavenly experience of watching the ribosomes and tRNA dance. There is another world about which Christians need to be concerned, but he’ll find out about it soon enough.
More Than Molecules
In fifty years we have moved from discovering the code to rewriting it. These advances will be used primarily to relieve human suffering brought on by various diseases. They will be enormously helpful in cancer therapy, in fighting malaria, and in curing various inherited diseases, some associated with terrible suffering. These advances will bring much joy to broken lives, as did the work of Jesus, making this work a very appropriate activity for those who are created to reflect Christ in today’s world.
However, some people are likely to use this information to enhance their own characteristics or those of their children. Some will pay for genetically enhanced children, leading to a deeper gulf between the “haves” and the “have-nots.” Aspects of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and George Orwell’s 1984 could easily be just around the corner. Can we think of any countries today in which the leader would like to use these techniques to build a new, improved breed of human beings? The technology for such a thing is in place for genetic enhancement to be used for more than relieving suffering.
The past fifty years of biological advances have also given us the tools to ask deep questions about what it means to be human. Recently, Daniel Dennett, a New Atheist and a brilliant thinker who should be engaged by Christians, published From Bacteria to Bach and Back. He maintains that humankind is the product of two algorithms. The first is natural selection—an algorithm through which all of life in its wondrous diversity has emerged. Natural selection’s seminal product, he would say, is the human mind. The second algorithm is human culture. It emerged to dictate only Homo sapiens’ life history and only for about the last one-hundred-thousand years. Culture’s influence exploded with the advent of language. Cultural forces, partnering with the force of natural selection, he would say, have taken us from using stone tools on the savannas of Africa to flying in rocket ships.
Just as the gene is the unit of natural selection so, he says, there is a sort of unit of cultural selection: the meme. This cultural unit that shapes who we are can take the form of an idea, a concept, or even a word. A meme can spread through a mind much like a virus through a body. Together these two algorithms, genetics and culture, give rise to our minds. Dennett says, “That is the triumph of the memes invasion: it has turned our brains into minds—our minds—capable of accepting and rejecting the ideas we encounter, discarding them or developing them for reasons we can usually express, thanks to the apps installed in our necktops” (315).
Interestingly, Dennett fears that the line between the human mind and the “thinking skills” of our machines is getting too fine. He is deeply concerned for the future of humankind and fears that we will be duped into trusting the intelligence of our machines and will lose human uniqueness forever. He goes so far as to say that it ought to be a crime (with jail time) to have robotic machines that imitate human communication. Dennett believes that we must always know whether we are communicating with a machine or a person. Unless significant precautions are taken, he is afraid that his algorithmic view of human nature may end civilization as we know it.
If ever there was a need for young people whose lives are centered in Jesus to be moving into careers in science, it is today. Dennett’s algorithm arguments are persuasive. However, if Christ is raised from the dead, it changes everything. Christian scientists need to be actively engaged in explaining why Dennett’s persuasive arguments are wrong. For Dennett, human beings have come about only through algorithms acting on carbon-based molecules, and these algorithms have taken us to the edge of the cliff he thinks we’re on. It is not the algorithms that have taken us to this edge, but humankind’s self-centered desire to exclude God from our existence. I wonder if followers of Jesus need to take our calling as scientists more seriously than we have. Dennett is wrong at a very fundamental level, but we Christians have much to do to show his millions of followers (i.e., much of the academic world) why he’s wrong.
Beyond Human
Another influential book, published in 2015, is Sapiens by Yuval Harari. It has now been translated into forty languages. Sapiens is purported to be the biological history of our species, and it has been acclaimed by such leaders as Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, and Barack Obama. The book ends with this statement: “The future masters of the world will probably be more different from us than we are from Neanderthals. Whereas we and the Neanderthals are at least human, our inheritors will be godlike” (411).
Fittingly, the title of his new book is Homo Deus—God-man. He summarizes his theme with this statement:
Both books received massive attention by reviewers and quickly moved onto the New York Times bestseller list. Most reviewers of Homo Deus comment on Harari’s penchant for hyperbole, but even if we dampen his predictions, we’re still left with a future for humankind that followers of Jesus need to think carefully about. He and other authors like him are suggesting a new way of thinking about what it means to be human. This takes us not only beyond theism but beyond humanism to “data-ism,” where machines call the shots and we humans need to find out how we can best fit in.
As discussed earlier, our world faces several dilemmas as a result of tremendous scientific advances. Each has the potential to redefine who we are. Dennett wants human uniqueness to be protected because it is a product of an algorithm developed over 3.5 billion years—that’s what makes us special. Followers of Jesus believe we are created to bear the eternal love of God to all of creation. These visions are as different as day and night, light and darkness.
Harari and others like him stress that human beings are becoming godlike now. With the aid of machines, we will have the intelligence and the power to bring us into a new era with a whole new set of values. These values will be grounded in human divinity, power, and longevity. (The director of engineering at Google, Ray Kurzweil, has stated that he thinks the first person to live to 1,000 is alive right now.) If Jesus really was raised, and there are good reasons for thinking that he was, then we don’t have to yield to the temptation to set ourselves in God’s place. We can bear God’s image by living in relationship with Him. The power that really matters is pictured best not by Homo Deus but by the image of the self-giving love of Christ, who is fully God. As Paul says so profoundly in 2 Corinthians 12:9, “‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that the Christ’s power may rest on me.”
That is the power we yearn for, and nothing could be further from it than Harari’s Homo Deus.
Followers of Christ
Believers who study science and then work in the sciences are science professionals. But our identity as followers of Christ is much more central to who we are. Scientists who are also Christians have a unique and important call today.
As scientists, we understand what DNA is, how our bodies are made, and even a little about how the brain emerges from material processes. We know about natural selection, about genes and memes, and more or less about how God’s processes have led to our arrival as a species. I don’t think we have to disagree with any of that. But we also know that the view of atheistic genetic engineers, philosophers, and transhumanists are pulling humankind toward another tower of Babel. And it is our job to say why and to pave the path toward a better day.
I still have my fifty-year-old biology textbook as a reminder of the beauty of life that I still find exciting whenever I talk about it. I also lay some scary books alongside of it: Frankenstein, Brave New World, and 1984. Overarching them all, however, is the book that reminds us who we really are. We’re children, but we’re children of the almighty God. And that makes all the difference.
Works Cited
Dennett, Daniel C. From Bacteria to Bach and Back: The Evolution of Minds. Norton, 2017.
Harari, Yuval Noah. Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. Harvill Secker, 2014.
———. Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow. HarperCollins, 2017.
Darrel Falk (PhD, University of Alberta) has served as professor of biology (1988–2012), dean of education and vice provost of graduate studies (2001–2006) at Point Loma Nazarene University and president of the science/Christian faith organization BioLogos (2009–2012). He is now Emeritus Professor of Biology, Point Loma Nazarene University and senior advisor for Dialog at BioLogos. He is a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Genetics Society of America, and the American Scientific Affiliation. Falk is the author of Coming to Peace with Science: Bridging the Worlds Between Faith and Biology.
