Is our DNA something one needs to relate to religion?

I don’t think god has anything to do with DNA

I’m going to say that in my opinion it’s a “nurture” thing, but really my answer is just a cover so I can say: @Simone_De_Beauvoir, FANTASTIC username!

Meh, it’s an opinion.
One I think is seriously flawed.

@adreamofautumn
weren’t you once on wis.dm…i remember your avatar
and thanks

If one believes that God or a god is the creator, then of course one would believe ‘god made our DNA.” However, many people either don’t believe that, or are unsure of what to believe. I don’t think that necessarily means they cannot relate to religion.

I have also heard about recent discoveries indicating a ‘god gene’, making human beings predisposed to believe in a higher power. That’s another avenue to venture down altogether!

@Simone_De_Beauvoir I most definitely wasn’t, didn’t know it existed until they all showed up here, but there may have been someone else from the website theicarusproject.net that felt the need to use the same avatar! :)

@adreamofautumn
well I’ll be damned
I met the icarusproject founders when I was @ NYU
they sometimes came to the LBGT office there

@augustlan
yes the predisposition to make up gods can be a survival mechanism, certainly…makes it easier to go through life when you have or think you have a suitable explanation (got has a plan, etc.) I, however, think it makes one remain a child always, always thinking there’s no reason to explore further in some ways

@Simone_De_Beauvoir what?! I’m so jealous! They rival the Fluther Gods (err…creators, mods, etc) as my heroes!

@adreamofautumn
you bet, this was years ago (well more like 5 years ago) and some of my friends were part of the group that held meetings…I read some icarusproject’s publications, too…

I’m flawed in several different ways so I have a hard time thinking God made my DNA and me blaming all of those flaws on him just doesn’t seem right. This is all dependent on whether I even believe in God too, of course.

I am an atheist, so first and foremost I acknowledge that my opinion in invariably biased.

It is a commonly held belief that God is the creator of all and inhabits everything around us. In that respect, a christain would most certainly believe God made DNA and is in DNA, along with everything else in the universe.
I think this is said by people who see DNA as a pillar of evolution, science and everything stereotypically opposed to religion, and attributing God for it’s existance in an attempt to draw the ‘trump card’ on it.
“Look at this, you think that God isn’t in charge of designing new life and that DNA did instead? Well God made DNA, so there”
Sorry if I have offended any religious readers, this is purely my own opinion :)

I don’t think so. Not religion, no. Maybe we/God created it, but it has nothing to do with religion, as religion has more to do with man made rules than anything else, me think.

Belief in God means you would necessarily wish to explore further

Perhaps the need to believe in something like God is in (some of) our DNA in this sense.

“God is in our DNA” doesn’t necessarily correspond to “God made our DNA.” A belief in a Deity can provide an edge as far as survival goes, if it helps you in some way – whether God is real or not.

I don’t believe this at all. To me, DNA is an object of science, not religion.

@dynamicduo: I think that the two are intermingled, because they deal with a lot of the same questions, but that religion answers “Why?” and science answers “How?”

The perfect example is evolution versus creation. A lot of Christians seem to think that acknowledging the how of evolution means denying the why of creation. I don’t see them as incompatible at all: an omnipotent, omniscient God is perfectly capable of slamming two molecules together in primordial soup and knowing that hundreds of millions of years later humanity will evolve.

@cwilbur – I agree with your underlying point. My ultimate answer to the question “why” is “there is no reason, it was a freak random occurrence”. This is much less friendly and warm-fuzzy-feeling giving than “God made it happen.” I accept that coldness. In fact, I take comfort in it, even more so after being introduced to the character The Comedian from The Watchmen. Once you figure out what a a joke everything is, being the Comedian’s the only thing that makes sense.

The reason I take steps to distinguish religion from science is due to religion’s past persecution, denial, and dismissal of science. No one would have thought up the DNA sequence simply by reading the pages of the Bible, it required tons of work and effort and theorizing and contemplating to get there. And some people who did such work were persecuted for going against the teachings of the Church.

It is nicer hearing of such things such as the Pope supporting evolution. Again, it does relate back to your point, evolution is not necessarily the why, but it is the how. Maybe the Church was scared of science finding the how and thus the Church being somewhat discredited or hindered at least. I mean, let’s be honest and real here, the Church is a huge organization that wields/wielded a lot of power, and such organizations never want to willingly give up power.

However the statement “god made our DNA” is not representative of the science/religion duality of how versus why. If evolution is to be believed, then DNA occurred via natural selection over millions of millions of years. Thus a more appropriate sentence would be “evolution made our DNA into what we are, but God started the ball rolling”. And then of course we start trickling back and back until we are at the start of the cosmos and at the start of this question again. :)

@dynamicduo: just as many scientists are dismissive of religion because they think that science is the more important study, many religious people are dismissive of science because they think that religion and faith are the more important study.

They’re complementary. The problem is that some people—scientists and religious people alike—use them in the other domain. Science can do an excellent job of answering “how?” but does a poor job of answering “why?”—but some scientists invest themselves so much in science that they insist that it can answer “why?” And vice versa for religions. And so when you’re invested in a religious answer to “how?”—such as the seven-day creation story—and science comes along with a better answer, you have to divest yourself from religion to some degree or reject the scientific answer.

“There is no why” is a poor answer to “Why?” only if there is a Why. If there is no Why at all, then it’s the best answer possible.

@laureth: Except that science doesn’t say “There is no why.” It says, “Er, this whole intellectual edifice is much more focused towards how, and we can’t come up with a falsifiable hypothesis to test why something happens.”

Where do you think DNA comes from?

@dalton where it all came from
the big bang and evolution

Yes indeed. But what started the big bang?

What started God? It’s infinite turtles, all the way down…

@dalton
who knows
i dont profess to know

The thing about science is that people don’t just say “the big bang did it” and stop looking – there’s always new research (one example) going on to find out what caused that, and what caused what caused that. To find all the turtles that we can find, so to speak.

Most people I know that believe “God did it” seem content with that, and say you can’t look back any further. My curious nature has never been satisfied by just laying it at the feet of a God.

@augustlan

Huzzah for obscure Pratchett quotes!!!
* high fives *