Dear Theophilus, 

We saw in our last letter that we are going to look at the relationship between religion and some of the things that myths teach us. One of the most fruitful areas of religion is that of liturgy. Rites and ceremonies introduce us to actions which take place in time different from the usual flowing time that we are so familiar with and which is sometimes labelled as chronos. Actions in communal religious worship take place in what is sometimes referred to as the Great Time. We should beware of a simplistic attitude that the only real time is chronos and ritual time is merely an imaginary concept akin to fairy tales. From our previous consideration of myths and mythic events we see that there are events which cannot be pinned down precisely in flowing time but which, nevertheless, have reality. We thus ignore what liturgical worship teaches us at our own peril. Worship is important because it is one of the most powerful tools for placing us into contact with God in Great Time.

I know what you are going to ask, Theophilus. Why is it that you find communal worship rarely giving you a sense of change? Why can't you seem to accept it as real and meaningful?

This is a very important question and in order to explore it, I want you to consider the following. Suppose that you go to a theatre to see a play about a mysterious murder. You go and you get involved in the story and you follow the plot line and the clues that are offered. Finally, the identity of the perpetrator of the murder is announced and you are surprised and amused and entertained. But, underlying all this is a sense of plausibility. What is offered in the play must be believable. Thus, if the play involves some kind of strange, unacceptable twist as the direct interference of a ghost as someone who had fired the fatal gunshot, you would not accept this and the play would fail. You realize that the play you are watching does not correspond to nor does it take place in common time, yet you still require it to be plausible, you want to see actions and events that could possibly happen in the flowing time that we all experience.

Religion has a heavy burden to bear because it speaks of meaning in the world and at the same time, it spans the time that we are familiar with and touches on another time beyond our everyday experiences. To be acceptable, religion, like the play we see, must be plausible and this is where we run into problems with modern man.

Religion has the heavy burden of speaking about a meaningful world but, as our experience teaches us, and as many scientist claim, there seems to be no meaning in the universe. In order to believe, modern man must see the universe as conducive to meaning. You may think that science opens the door to meaning but this is not really the case. Many scientists see the constituent parts of the universe as related and we learn about these relationships through the study of the world, but so what, when all is said and done, the universe is pointless ending with the disappearance of life and the disappearance of the universe.

Teleology, that is the existence of purpose and goals, has become an almost untenable position and this attitude has been passed on to the common public. One of the reasons for the opposition of many scientists to teleology is that they see in this the intrusion of another form of determinism. In other words, things do not happen because of impartial laws and chance only, but because there is some kind of directive force in the universe which is pushing it to some purpose or goal.

Scientists feel that the universe is explainable with reference to impersonal laws which control its development. The centrepiece of this view in the biological science is the molecule that controls genetic development, deoxyribonucleic acid or DNA. This is a truly marvellous molecule and within the last thirty years or so, we have learned much about its mechanism of operation. The molecule itself consists of long chains of molecular pieces which themselves are made up from three easily definable portions: a phosphate group (a group which is made up from phosphorus and oxygen), a sugar molecule called deoxyribose, and one of four different bases. This long molecule, referred to as a polymer, meaning made up of many single molecules, monomers, is a long chain of the three constituents (the different bases are what differentiate the monomer pieces of the DNA), and is the basic blueprint which guides the development of life in humans and in virtually all living things. Once the DNA is there, we can explain with some degree of accuracy how the DNA functions, what genes are, and how duplication of DNA occurs and how the various proteins necessary for life can be produced by this molecule. In spite of much that we have achieved, there is still a lot of information that is missing before we can say that we have a complete picture. Maybe it would be fruitful for us to consider some of these difficulties.

There is the question of the very origin of DNA. Once we have DNA, we can propose possible, reasonable mechanisms to explain how it functions, but we still don"t know how it originated. How is DNA made? We have no answer to this question although there have been various imaginative guesses but they have not led to any solid theory of the origin of DNA.

There is also the matter of the length of the DNA in different species. In a bacterium, there are twenty million units that go to make up the DNA. In man, the length of the DNA is twelve billion, a huge difference. How is DNA lengthened? We don't really know. It is true that chemical and physical mechanisms have explained much about the functioning in organisms, but this does not mean that they explain everything.and we should not forget this important point.

There is another consideration of DNA which remains problematical when it comes to understanding the development of an organism. The DNA in an organism remains constant yet the DNA behaves differently at different stages of development of the embryo. After about sixteen cells are formed in the development of an embryo, the DNA starts the process of differentiation as specialization comes into play and different types of cells start to be generated such as nerve cells, brain cells, muscle cells and so on.

But, how can this be if the process is controlled strictly by the chemical process of interaction of atoms and the chemical composition of the DNA is the same, irrespective whether the cell is a brain cell or a muscle cell? One possible way of answering this is to say that DNA reacts differently in the presence of a different chemical environment as the embryo develops. However, consider the ramification of this proposal. The chemicals which affect the DNA in this manner, must themselves be timed to appear at a very specific point i time or the development of the embryo would be adversely affected. An alternative explanation would be that the chemicals that could produce the change start being produced immediately but it takes a certain concentration of these chemicals in order for them to be effective. This may be true but the fact still remains that this is merely a hypothesis and needs to be explored further before it is accepted as the truth. In fact, the experimental evidence suggests a more complex situation. Studies done on developing sea urchins show that certain tissues take on different functions to compensate for the lack somewhere else.

One of the errors introduced in considering biological systems is ignoring the fact that there are two aspects to biological change. There are the actual steps, the actual reactions that arise from the properties of molecules being used, but there is also the sequence of steps. The steps may be correct but if their sequence is incorrect, then problems will arise.

There is another crucial factor concerning DNA. DNA is not just some neutral molecule but it has a specific purpose and the purpose is to transmit information. DNA is coded for biological information which is necessary for the survival and growth of an organism.But, nothing can act as a carrier of a code if it is not neutral to the message being sent. Thus, rocks on a beach which spell out the message S.O.S are meaningful because rocks do not spontaneously form this message on their own. Someone is using the rocks to transmit information and therefore, we pay attention to those rocks. If ink bonds to paper through specific chemical forces, then the ink is not neutral and instead of passing along the desired message, it will merely conform to the meaningless patterns of ink arising from the reaction between ink and paper. It is specifically because units in DNA do not have to be arranged in a specific sequence because of chemical or physical forces, that DNA can act as a carrier of a code. Do you see what I am driving at? If DNA is strictly governed by physical laws, then it cannot act as a carrier of a message. But, we know that it does carry very specific information. We are therefore drawn to a conclusion that to explain DNA strictly on the basis of chemistry will lead to problems. We have to look for an alternate explanation and this is what we will do in our next letter.

Sincerely,

Bar-Abbas