The evolution of the CD

Has the reductionist vision been falsified?

Quotes and comments; (concerning a review by Michael A. Goldman, of a book by Sahotra Sarkar in Science,¹ Molecular Models of Life: Philosophical Papers on Molecular Biology (MIT Press, 2005).

1. 'The Human Genome Project (HGP) was filled with promise. Walter Gilbert claimed in 1992 that it would bring about “a change in our philosophical understanding of ourselves... one will be able to pull a CD out of one’s pocket and say, ‘Here’s a human being; it’s me!’”

- in my view there's something deeply ironic about a materialist holding out a CD and saying; ''this is me.'' (This is a rejection of dualism with a vengeance.) The irony is that this is such a good picture of how materialism reduces man to an object; how it dehumanizes and degrades him.

2. "Nor, as Sarkar points out, did we imagine that there were so few genes, such a complex relation between genes and the protein forms they encode, and so much genetic material of unknown function."
- the moral of the story is ever the same; man is much more complex than any materialist ever imagined. It's a faith in materialism that keeps people like Gilbert ever making the same mistake of underestimating complexity. (And we can predict materialists will always make this mistake. It's the price you pay for rejecting an Intelligent creator.)

3. Walter Gilbert claimed in 1992 that it would bring about “a change in our philosophical understanding of ourselves... one will be able to pull a CD out of one’s pocket and say, ‘Here’s a human being; it’s me!’”

- only someone with strong bias against Christianity could be as foolish as to hold up a cd and say this is me. (Or imagine such a thing.) The pretense is that man is a simple machine; cobbled together by some series of accidents. (A product of accidentalism, to use Rusher's phrase.) And since he's a product of blind chance (put together by a blind and senile cobbler) he can't be hard to figure out; there can't be any real depth to him (or it I guess we should say; as m. reduces man from a person to a thing) and certainly not any impenetrable depth. Man is a like a rubic's cube; hard for some to solve, but eminently solvable. To have such a vision you have to reject the idea of a soul or a spirit in man; and you have to reject the idea he/it had an intelligent Creator. If man had God for a creator we have reason to believe he has depths scientists will never plumb.... that he has a complexity scientists will never fully understand.

- Why is the christian view of man so offensive to the materialist? Again it's hard to say, but we can offer some suggestions. There's a certain type of m. scientist who wants to lay out exactly what man is, so that he can draw political inferences from it. The HGP was a kind of inventory; a kind of survey.
If man is just a gene carrier, it's the genes that are important, not man; and if the individual is not of any importance there are political implications. If it's the genes that are important they can be carried in other ways one assumes; even on a disk. There are implications of this as well. Maybe a society (or the world) doesn't need diversity if they have it (diversity) on disk. One could ask what kind of diversity do 'we' need? Maybe a lot is meaningless and can be got rid of. I could go on but I suppose your speculations here are as good as mine... as no one really knows what will (or might) happen.

- Of course many (most?) scientists will scoff at the idea there are things mankind shouldn't know. (Roger Shattuck wrote a book on this; 'Forbidden Knowledge') But I think this is one of those things; or would have been. The idea a person could be reduced to a cd is a nightmare vision. It would give the elite a frightful power; a power no human being is capable of handling in my opinion. But we seem to have escaped this nightmare; either by luck or by providence. Man is too complex to be reduced to plastic; despite the darkly dreams of the materialists.

- It's sad to hold this picture of Gilbert holding up a cd and saying ''this is me." Sad to see a human being so deluded; sad to see a man who thinks so little of himself; sad to see someone who's had his birthright stolen from him. He might as well hold up a photograph of himself and say 'this is me.' Such is the power of reductionism to belittle man. To reject God (defined as the creator of man and the world) is to become small; and more radically man rejects God the smaller he becomes.... until he disappears. (A death of god theology gets replaced by a death of man theology.) At the end of the reductionist road man becomes an it. In the mad (suicidal) dreams of some this would be a good thing, as it would pave the way for the next stage of evolution. If this ever happens (and one has to severely doubt it) it will because men adopted the reductionistic method of doing science.

- If what Gilbert said were true, I don't suppose 'we' (or the elite) would need men at all. (All they'd need would be a cd collection.) But why some people glory in such things is hard to understand; they seem to glory in the dehumanization of man. Why they do is hard to comprehend. I think the biblical view is that this expresses the same kind of spirit Satan showed when he tried to destroy Job. Satan ever hates men, and hates the creation. Why? Not because of how it is... but because of Who created it. If Satan had created teh world and man he would ever sing its praises; but because God has created it he wants to degrade and destroy it. (And man most especially.) I realize that's not going to satisfy the non-christian or the materialist... but if it doesn't he has to come up with his own explanation of why some men are so enthusiastic about reducing man to a CD. Is it simply a love of simplicity? Is it simply a love of doing science? of winning a prize? of solving a puzzle? Or is it something more, something more ominous? I see in the project a hatred of complexity; a hatred of the idea man is a 'spiritual' (i.e. being a spirit/body duality) and eternal being.

Notes;
1. "On the upside, Sarkar notes that at “the very least, the HGP has killed the facile genetic reductionism of the heyday of developmental genetics.” His dim view contrasts sharply with Robert Sinsheimer’s recent proclamation that the project “succeeded even beyond our hopes.”
2. I came across this review at Creation/Evolution Headlines; Human Genome Project: A “Worthwhile Failure” 11/20/2005
3. I'm currently reading 'The book of Joby' (Mark Ferrarri) so I've been thinking of Job lately.