In Catholic Essays, published by Christendom College Press (1990), the late Fr. Stanley Jaki warns his readers not to be taken in by scientists who indulge in “glorified loose talk”. It requires a certain amount of courage to call such scientists to task, especially those who are eminent in their field. The prestige of science, however, does not carry with it a guarantee that its representatives will never deviate from common sense. An intelligent layman need not be bamboozled when he comes across reckless theories proposed by scientists who speak from beyond their sphere of competence.
High on the list of “glorified loose talk” are statements from the pen of evolutionary biologist, Richard Dawkins. In his Christmas Lecture at the Royal Institute (1991), he expatiated on the purpose of life. “We are machines,” he told his distinguished audience, “built by DNA whose purpose is to make more copies of the same DNA.” Reinforcing his point, he added: “This is exactly what we are for. We are machines for propagating DNA, and the propagation of DNA is a self-sustaining process. It is every living object’s sole reason for living.” In an article he wrote for Scientific American in 1995, he reiterated his point when he stated that “DNA neither cares nor knows. DNA just is. And we dance to its music.”
Dawkins’ theory was hardly a fly-by-night affair. A 1977 issue of Time cited Dawkins as referring to human beings as “lumbering robots” who are the “survival machines” for swarms of genes that manipulate them from the inside. “They [DNA and the genes contained therein] are in you and me; they created us body and mind; and their preservation is the ultimate rationale for our existence.”
It was this kind of loose thinking that prompted G. K. Chesterton to refer to such a theorist as one who “does not pretend to be a human being” (Orthodoxy). We are, according to Dawkins, machines whose sole purpose is to produce more machines that contain the DNA that produces more and more such machines ad infinitum. Søren Kierkegaard referred to such an endless procession that went on and on without any meaning as a “Bad Infinity” (schlechte unendlichkeit). For the great Danish philosopher, whatever leads to God leads to, a “Good Infinity”.
Being blind to the forest, Dawkins fails to notice the individual trees. We, as individual persons, are distinct from the generations that led to our inception. We are more than the protoplasmic paste that we have in common with our ancestors. Each one of us is life renewed, life enjoyed, life enriched. Moreover, we are spiritual beings who will, love, reason, and understand, activities for which mere matter has no potential. Our purpose in life is not merely to generate more life, but to find meaning in the life we have, in our love of God and neighbor, our ability to become the person we were ordained to become. It is to reflect back on life, rather than to be engulfed by it, and experience wonder and gratitude. We celebrate life and our desire to have children is not commanded by our genes, but because we, as Plato once explained, want to reproduce the beautiful. We are not “built” by our genes. We grow in wisdom and grace when we freely choose to do what is good, an activity that is not demanded by our genes. We are ethical beings, not impassive slaves to our gene pool.
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Theodosius Dobzhansky, a geneticist who is willing to acknowledge the limitations of science, has drawn attention to the fact that there is no genetic basis for the Golden Rule (The Biological Basis of Human Freedom). “Ethics, as such,” he writes, “has no genetic basis and are not the product of biological evolution. Attempts to discover a biological basis of ethics suffer from mechanistic oversimplification.” The purpose of life requires that we transcend the limitations of our genes. Our DNA is, at best, a platform. Our purpose in life lies in aspirations that reach out toward the stars.
A mischievous graffiti artist once transposed the celebrated phrase, “‘God is Dead’, Nietzsche,” by writing on the wall of a New York subway, “‘Nietzsche is Dead’, God.” One could just as well transpose the title page of Dawkins’ best seller, “The God Delusion, Dawkins” in a similar manner: “The Dawkins Delusion, God.”
Dr. Donald DeMarco is a Senior Fellow of Human Life International. He is professor emeritus at St. Jerome’s University in Waterloo, Ontario, an adjunct professor at Holy Apostles College in Cromwell, CT, and a regular columnist for St. Austin Review. His latest works, How to Remain Sane in a World That is Going Mad and Poetry That Enters the Mind and Warms the Heart are available through Amazon.com.
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