Probably the most interesting facet of biology, the field of the sciences now refered to as "genetics," occupies an area of science overlapping the study of biology proper with information theory. DNA, which abbreviates "deoxyribonucleic acid," makes up the discreet units of information responsible for the development and functions of all living organisms.
The wisdom of God revealed in the creatures, which forms the primary focus of wisdom in the so-called "wisdom literature" of the Older Testament, shows up in all manner of creatures because God has put it there. This wisdom, it turns out is a kind of code. Geneticists everywhere compare it to a kind of "blueprint" or set of "blueprints". These few chemicals make up sets of instructions.
Solomon associates wisdom with instruction throughout the Proverbs, and general revelation shows them closely associated as well. However, the notion of blueprints offers a fairly remote analogy, and this shows the sometimes inflexible thinking of well-trained scientists. Blueprints only show you what the house should look like. DNA also does the building, with the help of RNA and a few other chemicals. If DNA is analogous to a blueprint, we must think it a hyperactive schematic, with too many friends.
Language, you might say, does not build things either. But this ignores the obvious point of Genesis about DIVINE language. When God utters, things happen. His original commands, which formed DNA, were all performative utterances (sayings which accomplish the thing they command or say, as when a bride says, "I do." Here the saying IS the doing.) DNA is a set of linguistic instructions which contain and execute performative utterances, which togther work to fulfill God's original command, commonly called the "dominion mandate," when he blessed the creatures.
Ironically, just because they are so well trained, they think according to a specific set of instructions they have received from their professors, textbooks and other members of the scientific community, with whom they work on a regular basis. But this fact should have tipped them off to the better analogy. Their textbooks did not come as blueprints, but as a set of instructions and descriptions, using the syntax of ordinary languages. This fact yields the better analogue. In light of this, they should assume that DNA is carrying out instruction sets, just as they are, in studying it. But this implies creationism (not evolution). Since they were trained (told what to do), this implies DNA was told by someone what to do. Perhaps this is the source of their blind spot.
The principle of efficient causation tells us that the effect will always be like the cause in certain respects. God is wise, so His wisdom shows up in the created order. God called everything into existence from nothing, with the exception of Adam - whom He formed from the dust of the earth, and Eve whom He formed from Adam's side (rib).
This does two things of immediate importance. First, it puts a distinction between humans, and all other living creatures, setting them apart as rulers of the rest (Adam and Eve were created as King and Queen of earth). They have a royal and priestly status the others do not. Second, this shows that the basis of all life stems from language, God's speaking which brought forth each [creature] according to its own kind, with its seed in it. The wise ordering of things proceeded upon God's wise speaking and acting.
This special, and repeated, description of the creation, of course, turns out to be precisely correct. But the ability of each animal to replicate its own kind is due to the genetic information it contains. Genesis thereby implies that the best kind of analogy we should be using for DNA derives from the syntax and use of ordinary human languages.
Recall that Genesis shows a distinction between the way the other animals were created and the way God made mankind. One of the consequences of this difference means that humans use spoken language in ways other animals do not. Language use forms the primary functional difference most obvious between "us" and "them." So we eat THEM, not us.
DNA represents then, according to the Bible, a language-based code, not an architectural blueprint. Notice that the first analogy employs the kind of thing found in the SOURCE (cause) of the DNA (language), and the second the EFFECT of the language-based code, its building and developing a new animal after its own kind.
This difference might seem slight at first, but the distinction carries important implications. When doing scientific research, students encounter all sorts of this for which we need some kind of analogy to use, in order to determine how we should think of it in order to better understand what it is and does.
The more accurate and precise the analogy, the better the results of further study, since they set the pace for how further research will proceed, and what kind of experiments will, or will not, occupy studies in that field. The omissions might be far more important than the experiments that lead nowhere because of assumptions used in research, which stem from unwarranted (faulty) analogies.
Special revelation could have come in a different form that it has. God could have used a single prophet to write a book in a special, technical or scientific language. He chose to use ordinary, human languages, and the Bible compares the general and special revelation repeatedly. If one wishes to think of genetic information as a blueprint, he ought to add, "a blueprint specified according to a syntax which is analogous to human language uses, which scientists call "natural languages."
Consider this. Genesis describes the original creation in terms of a Temple throughout the narratives of Genesis, and those of the Psalms and Proverbs, which reflect back upon the earliest Genesis narrative, and employ Temple-analogy language throughout. Now king David, it turns out, WAS GIVEN A SET OF BLUEPRINTS by God for the development of the Temple. But these came in Hebrew. And the description of these blueprints, and of the Temple itself, come to all God's people in Hebrew. God could have included diagrams and pictures to help us. But He chose not to do this.
DNA is a form of language-based blueprint, responsible for all (created) living things. The Proverbs tell us that the tongue (even human tongues) have the power OF LIFE and death in them, and those who love it will eat its fruit. When Jesus asked Peter if He was considering deserting Him, Peter answered, "Lord to whom shall we go? You have the 'words of life'."
DNA uses various proteins in combinations as a pen, to write out and order the building process by replication of cells -- over and over. But this comes from divine language, the words of life. Geneticists, indeed all men, ought to think God's thoughts after Him, including what the words of Genesis imply for the study of genetics because, not only is this their duty, but it better enables the progress scientists seek in performing their research and work. This enables discoveries not otherwise likely to follow from misguided or inadequate analogs, used as the basis for further study.
Both general and special revelation have a linguistic source. The wisdom of God found in general revelation is non-verbal. But that does not imply that it has no verbal analogue. It simply means that it employs a different kind of pen and paper, where the pen is chemical and mineral (and atomic) structures, and the paper is the entire cosmos interacting as a unit, forming together what we simply call the natural world, or else "reality" (what you experience each morning after the coffee kicks in).
In order words, special revelation comes by the hand of kings and queens (humans), and general revelation comes from all the lower creation. Again, the two kinds of revelation then show that same distinction found originally in Genesis -- by the two different ways these were created - humans one way and the lower creation another.
Thus, by the testimony of three witnesses has God firmly established the matter that Darwin was badly mistaken. His theory, and its modern counterparts (Neo-Darwinism and punctuationism) both imply the denial of a special status in the animal kingdom for humans. They are only different in degree of advancement, not in radically and fundamentally distinguished KINDS -- as with Genesis. These differences in KINDS form the basis for prohibiting bestiality and other like sins of degrading humans by pretending they are nothing more than animals of the same kind -- but only are different in degree from other animals.
General revelation and special revelation distinguish humans as the source of the better form, and the lower creation as the source of the less clear and comprehensive version. Genesis tells us that the original creation proceeded differently (Specially) for humans, and not for the lower creatures.
But in each case, language forms the source -- language which can be expressed in Hebrew and Greek (the first being the language of God's holy people uniquely, and the second being the international Lingua Franca of the Gentiles - "First to the Jew and then to the Gentile" is how special revelation came to all men).
This implies that the sciences should proceed on the basis of what has the syntax of natural languaes in all their studies and reports. For this most closely matches the nature of that which they study, as well as those doing the studying, for a better understanding of the world about us, and for the better progress of the sciences themselves.
A theory need not be true or accurate to work well; but theories which are true will tend to work well in the majority of cases where they are rightly applied (Some theories are trivial and will do anything significant simply for their accuracy, since they do not seek to solve a significant problem). In other words, progress proceeds faster and better with only true theories, even though false theories can also yield scientific progess (where that progress is measured only in terms of technological innovation and usefulness to get stuff done).
This in no way implies that people should not do math, or use symbols to bring about a kind of shorthand, for doing logic or math more efficiently. It simply means that these should always have a counterpart in ordinary language, which one can understand easily when we convert the symbolic tongue back into its natural language form.
The proposition "2 + 2 = 4" is a technical expression meaning "When a person adds two items to two more items, he ends up with four items total." After writing out the natural language version, it waxes immediately evident why we might want to use the symbolic shorthand -- namely because it is MUCH shorter. And, once you know the axioms or rules for counting this way, it is easy to read and clear in its symbolic form.
So technical languages CAN have great value. They can help speed things up, by making it much easier to calcuate and show relationships between ideas (i.e. 4 is twice as big as the number two) in just a few pen strokes. This is the same reason we use computers. Faster is better since it saves time, and shorter is better because it makes ideas clearer to those who know the rules to the technical tongues (longer expressions are harder to follow, unless you put them into a more familiar format).
Natural languages develop by people speaking in communities, who have problems to solve. And they use language to do this. The more uses they find for it, the more it grows. This means that greater dominion requires a greater vocabulary. A vocabulary resulting from one's ability to speak many langauges is much more dominion-friendly than that of the monolingual person.
Both natural and technical languages, however, should share the same structural features, so that translation from one to the other comes easily, and so that the technical langauge remains attached to the real world, by remaining analogous to natural languages. For these grew up by interacting and adapting to the real world, such that they correspond to it -- somewhat, well, "naturally." There, I said it.
DNA is the immediate effect of divine language and work, and which forms a unique, but natural, language that is no exception to this rule. It represents a unique portrayal of God's wisdom in creation. "Wisdom has built her house," said Solomon. And so DNA builds according to God's original sets of instructions (words of life). When the science proceeds, it ought to do so in ways consistent with ordinary languages.
This lesson brought to you by Genesis, special revelation, and the entire cosmos.
To learn more about DNA, see the wikipedia entry at http://wikipedia.org. Just type "DNA" into the search window, and on you go.
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