God and genetics

Faith & Science Conversation
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Thank you Frank. I sit here just outside the fireball radius of our very own three quarter megaton city killer. I’d see the downstream flash before the wall exploded on me. Rationally God is meaningless, impossible, unnecessary. But I sat in a circle with the dispossessed this evening and thanked God for that, for them, for us. Lived in that as-good-as-it-gets moment. I was asked to lead in prayer, by the most excellent, inspiring, faith renewing for that duration young mum who leads, which I easily do, I was asked for my opinion on Jesus’ first miracle, which I love, the mother of God blowing His cover. I find Him completely credible. I just gave Him a wave-salute and felt a solar plexus pulse that made me grunt and tear up. I miss him. My too little too late flowering intellect has deconstructed God and I can’t put Him back together again. And counter-examples actually make it worse : )

But thank you, I know that is the secret to happiness. Gratitude. Right up to the incandescently bursting wall. God bless you Frank.

Martin

PS Lewis, Collins didn’t pursue truth. They pursued meaning. Jesus is the only candle of meaning in the infinite, eternal night of meaninglessness. Not mere atheism which is childishly mischaracterized as theophobia; active exclusion, hatred, refusal of God. God does not work. Yet Jesus beguiles. Awes. I defy you to find anyone who has a meaningful, necessary God without Jesus.

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30

Thank you, Klax.
I’ve read through your reply once, fairly quickly. I’ll let all that filling settle a bit and think on it more. Then I’ll reread.
Thanks for taking the time to answer my questions thoughtfully. It helps me understand the thoughts behind your replies and posts elsewhere.
Kendel

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God is called our father, and a father does not design his children.

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I think I would too. But I would draw line somewhere between disease and the uniqueness of a human being wouldn’t you? I also don’t think the word “tinker” is the right word in the former case. What aspects of their character are to be called a disease? How far do you go in using genetics to control and make them what you want them to be?

Oh? And what are your reasons for doing so?

So there is no difference between living things and machines? It is just about making them fit the design specifications you want? You only love them for what they are when they are what you wanted them to be?

Anyone can be both a designer and a shepherd. The point is that the former applies to non-living objects and the latter to living things.

I think that is only possible because there are limits to what you can do. Since God has no such limits (not by nature), I think this means He must impose limitations on Himself. He does if He wants a real relationship. And the fact of the matter is this fits the facts of the world we live in. Either He imposes limits on Himself, or such an all powerful loving being simply doesn’t exist – not one who is involved in our lives anyway.

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Those sure seem to have an adversarial, confrontational tone. Is that an example to help me be any more gracious? It’s also not a great welcome to a new forum participant.

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You can call me on that @jpm. I can explain it scientifically as long as your arm. God does not come in to it. Not theistically, as He only does that in Christ and by the Spirit. The Spirit interacts with human spirits. Not homozygous sex plumage colour genes.

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Nay lass, He’s our Father. But yes, He designs nothing except incarnations.

36

And maybe carnations?

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37

Since evolution is doing such s great job in creating mallards and other beautiful ducks, God does not need to intervene. It is bad to guild the lily so to speak. When humans intervene to “improve” nature, we often make a mess that we now have to try to clean up.

God has not intervened to make Putin stop his nasty war, but God has “intervened” to inspire Ukrainians to stand up to naked aggression, and inspired others even Russians to stand with them.

God does not intervene in our lives, but God does give His people love, compassion, peace, courage, and faith.

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Maybe you have not been reading thoroughly.

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Did you know that our food crops are a result of artificial selection?

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Seeing as you asked @jpm.

One hundred years ago, the great, remarkable J.B.S. proclaimed:

When in the F1 offspring of two different animal races one sex is absent, rare, or sterile, that sex is the heterozygous sex (heterogametic sex).

In mammals males are heterozygous (XY), females homozygous (XX).
In birds males are homozygous (ZZ), females heterozygous (WZ).

Biology being biology there are rare exceptions that prove the rule.

So, cross a male and a female bird from two closely related species resulting in viable (they hatch) offspring. In birds, by Haldane’s rule, the heterozygous (WZ) female will be sterile or otherwise maimed: hybrid breakdown, the opposite of vigour.

Avian respiratory protein (rp), nuclear chromosomal (Z,W) and mitochondrial (m) genetics:

Homozygous Male - father - bird (Z.(i).rp x Z.(i).rp(a) + Mm(c).rp) → sperm (Z.(i).rp)(a)
x
Heterozygous Female - mother - bird (W x Z.(i).rp + Fm.(j).rp(b)) → daughter egg (W + Fm.(j).rp(b))
'=
Daughter bird ((F)W x ((M)Z.(i).rp(a) + Fm.(j).rp(b))

A daughter bird gets some critical respiratory protein (avian haemoglobin) genes from her father’s nuclear Z chromosome (a) and some from her mother’s mitochondrial genes (b). The W female sex chromosome has no respiratory protein gene. Mitochondria (eukaryote discrete powerhouses with their own minimal set of maternal genes (j) AND maximal set in the nucleus inherited from their father (i)) are practically entirely inherited from mothers, in their eggs, throughout all sexual species (biology being biology there are always outlier exceptions as above, yer know multiple sigmas out). Male respiratory protein genes are never passed on from male mitochondria; eggs consume sperm. The compatibility of respiratory protein genes is absolutely critical for respiratory protein function, the slightest mismatch results in an inviable embryo - if it hatched, it couldn’t fly, effectively if at all, so why hatch? Flight (muscle) is incredibly demanding of respiration (burning fuel with oxygen). Such mismatch is so deleterious it’s headed off at the pass. Killed by apoptosis - suicide - before hatching. It’s not mysterious. Flight muscle is maimed; its metabolic demands cannot be met.

Why? Because the respiratory protein specified by the critical combination of male sperm nuclear gene (a) and female egg mitochondrial gene (b) is maimed. Because mitochondrial biogenesis is from male nuclear (i) and female mitochondrial (j) genes remember. They must be 100% compatible. That’s entirely down to the mother.

Here it gets hypothetical:

The mother must select her mate with extreme care if her daughter is to hatch. If the detailed pattern of the plumage including its behavioural display signals the mitochondrial type, the female has something to go on. It’s not a big if. Most colour pigments are synthesized in… mitochondria (c).

Science will tell.

So where can God anthropomorphically infantilize this fully evolved process? And why?

PS Mitochondrial organelles are descended from among the oldest bacterial symbionts, 1,500 of their biogenesis genes have been absorbed by the homozygous nucleus in endosymbiotic eukaryotes. Awesome what blind, purposeless stochastic processes have achieved cumulatively at every level isn’t it? Here they are describing themselves!

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Being somewhat literal minded and therefore not going with the joke, no. He is so powerful He doesn’t get intentional with what He grounds autonomous apart from when He partakes of it.

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Maybe I have not been reading What thoroughly?

You said that God interferes in the lives of humans, which is not true God does not come into our lives without our permission, which is what interfere means. God does not save us if we do not allow God to do so which is Putin’s problem.

In a sense God intervened in the life of Saul of Tarsis because God knew that Saul did not know that Jesus was the Messiah.

As one who believes in the Jesus Christ the Logos, the Word of God, I take the meaning of words seriously since God does. Maybe you think that I will understand what you are saying because I know how God works because I am a Christian. I know that God’s activity in my life is not interference, but my choice.

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You belie yourself.

You are making my point about not reading thoroughly, my words and even your own words, because now you are saying interfere, where earlier you said intervene. A loving Father will absolutely intervene to protect his child. Even giving good gifts is ‘intervening’.

 

*I said no such thing.

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Maybe you should reread, thoroughly, Rich Stearns account. God’s ‘interference’ in his life was not something he chose. (Maybe his is an instance where ‘interfere’ might be appropriate, but in a shallow and selfish sense when the big picture considered.)

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Sometimes he gives us hard things to strengthen us. (I think I have read that somewhere. ; - )

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Dear Klax,
I’m quite certain that I have nothing rational or even valuable to add, but I do want to thank you for your reply and time and efforts in writing it.

And one has to do all the work oneself. The following is therefore futile. It cannot be transferred to you. One has to dig, plough one’s own furrow. This is only mine. It can never be yours.

I agree that this can never be mine, and if it were, I don’t know how I would bear it. Certainly not rationally.
I will thank God I have borne other sorrows that crushed me but not entirely.

First filling (jam=jelly)

It’s a bitter fruit that made this jam/jelly/marmalade/preserves/Konfitüre.
Certainly, stuffing God into spaces we can’t figure out how to fill with knowledge of nature is absurd. He is not caulking, or jam. I’m not sure that it makes things infinitely worse, but it certainly answers no questions helpfully about nature or our part of it to squish God into that gap like a failed baker, attempting to give shape to a sunken cake.

The only, the one hope is Jesus. Nothing else in reality can be posited as requiring God. But God stepping in to nature.

Let’s hold onto hope in Jesus right now, Klax. This is something quite different from us filling gaps with God. Perhaps Jesus, who tells us he is God, is filling gaps and cracks and holes in us with something much more precious than jelly. That bread and wine are a wonderous filling, working from our insides out.

Despite that, despite everything, despite the absence of prophecy by modern rational criteria, I want Him to be for real.

I am surely not a very rational person.
My dear husband is an economist, trained to assume people are rational. The last 6 or 7 years in the U.S. have undeniably demonstrated to him that people are NOT as rational as they believe if at all. Our mid-scale minds can deceive us of their powers.

Collins and Lewis WERE definitely looking for meaning. You and I yearn for it, too, even if it’s not rational to do so.

When I listen to Credence, and the harmonies my brain has been culturally trained to enjoy, I am not concerned with rationality, although I praise God for the meaning he has allowed me to assign to and the pleasure he allows me to experience at hearing a number of frequencies blended at a certain time and in a certain way. And yet, in itself, the music is purposeless. It’s irrational. It’s ok.

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47

About the only point in Language of God by Collins that I disagreed with was indeed the point that God is not needed once the evolution process is begun.
Ironically, physicists now theorize that the universe consisted of multiple possibilities and it was the human observation of the current one that resulted in our reality. Why then can’t God be the observer?
Even CS Lewis suggested in his book Miracles that if quantum physics is true then that gives a door for the supernatural or subnatural into the natural order.
Our God is a sovereign God which means he is active overseer of all processes per his will. Some things are set in motion and then happen naturally such as diversification of species types. But others may not be, such as a man with a moral code. Even WHEN we do discover proof of how new unique species DNA sequencing is created in a scientific way, the hand of God will ALWAYS be a possible explanation through the potential of God’s observation of quantum events that can impact (tweet) DNA sequences for reasons we might not understand.
In summary, if you believe in a sovereign God, you must believe He always has His hand in the process, and because of quantum physics it will appear that God’s actions are impossible to us to see as they can be explained away scientifically.

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48

My dear Kendel.

I value everything you say as for many others here, each from their own hard won foxhole. We’re calling out to each other, trying to find out the situation. Some are too wounded and can only rave.

As for rationality (logos), some of the greatest exponents of it in morality, like Kant and Bentham, lack the other two legs of the rhetorical stool. Ethos and pathos. Is it right, fair and how does it feel. Which is why my favourite philosopher is Hume, “reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.”. That puts rationality in its place.

We’ve all had to bear unbearable loss, life, eventually, sooner and later, is loss. Rationality can be a surprising companion in that. We, the lucky survivors, have learned through suffering. Although sleep, rather than learning, would not have been unwelcome. (In all the weakness and finding things out about myself I’d rather not, I have experienced unbelievable physical pain : ) I knew I couldn’t stay sane in it. But I did. : ) That was something… worth discovering.)

It’s a bitter fruit that made this jam/jelly/marmalade/preserves/Konfitüre.
Certainly, stuffing God into spaces we can’t figure out how to fill with knowledge of nature is absurd. He is not caulking, or jam. I’m not sure that it makes things infinitely worse, but it certainly answers no questions helpfully about nature or our part of it to squish God into that gap like a failed baker, attempting to give shape to a sunken cake.

Excellent. Thank you.

Let’s hold onto hope in Jesus right now, Klax. This is something quite different from us filling gaps with God. Perhaps Jesus, who tells us he is God, is filling gaps and cracks and holes in us with something much more precious than jelly. That bread and wine are a wonderous filling, working from our insides out.

Nice. Really.

I am surely not a very rational person.

Thank God!

My dear husband is an economist, trained to assume people are rational. The last 6 or 7 years in the U.S. have undeniably demonstrated to him that people are NOT as rational as they believe if at all. Our mid-scale minds can deceive us of their powers.

But that is the finding of… rationality! I love the paradox. It’s in Hume I feel.

Collins and Lewis WERE definitely looking for meaning. You and I yearn for it, too, even if it’s not rational to do so.

In existential terms, it’s perfectly rational. Beyond Seneca, Hume, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Sartre, Frankl, Husserl, rationality, for me there is Rogers. You’re worth it. We’re worth it. All are worth it. Let’s find a way. Even if there is no transcendence. Even if Jesus were not God incarnate, He would still be the moral lever to move the world.

When I listen to Credence, and the harmonies my brain has been culturally trained to enjoy, I am not concerned with rationality, although I praise God for the meaning he has allowed me to assign to and the pleasure he allows me to experience at hearing a number of frequencies blended at a certain time and in a certain way. And yet, in itself, the music is purposeless. It’s irrational. It’s ok.

When we were neritic fish we bathed in music. Is beauty rational? I was playing on Creedance as in Clearwater Revival I’m afraid! I realized you must mean Christian music. I’ve searched but cannot find it. Do you have a link?

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