RATHER belatedly I have just come across a book review in the New Scientist which not only rips into creationists and “intelligent design” proponents, but criticises John C Avise – author of Inside the Human Genome: A case for non-intelligent design – for attempting to reconcile evolution and religion. Avise is an evolutionary geneticist at the University of California, Irvine.
Reviewer Michael Le Page kicks off by focusing on Lesch-Nyhan syndrome which causes compulsive self-mutilation. Children eat their lips or fingers, and stab their faces with sharp objects. They feel the pain, but they cannot stop themselves. He asks:
Why would a loving, all-powerful creator allow anyone to be born with such an awful disease?
He then points out that Lesch-Nyhan is just one of the tens of thousands of genetic disorders discovered so far. At least a tenth of people have some kind of debilitating genetic disease, and most of us will become sick at some point during our lifetime as a result of mutations that cause diseases such as cancer.
The reason? Our genome is an unmitigated mess. The replication and repair mechanisms are inadequate, making mutations commonplace. The genome is infested with parasitic DNA that often wreaks havoc. The convoluted control mechanisms are prone to error. The huge amount of junk, not just between genes but within them, wastes resources … The human genome, Avise concludes, offers no shred of comfort for those seeking evidence of a loving, all-powerful creator who had a direct hand in designing us, as not just creationists but many believers who accept evolution think was the case. If some entity did meddle with life on Earth, it either did not know what it was doing or did not care, or both.
Le Page continues:
There is a need for a popular book explaining what a botch job our blueprint is, as creationist-fuelled misconceptions abound … Unfortunately, Inside the Human Genome is not the book we need to set the record straight. For starters, Avise’s lecturing style and fondness for jargon make it heavy going. It is not going to fly off the shelves in Kansas.
Then we come to his attempt to reconcile evolution and theistic religions, which made my jaw drop. ‘Evolution by natural selection emancipates religion’, Avise writes. ‘No longer need we agonize about why a Creator God is the world’s leading abortionist and mass murderer. No longer need we query a Creator God’s motives for debilitating countless innocents with horrific genetic conditions. From this refreshing perspective, evolution can and should be viewed as a form of philosophical salvation of theology and religion’.
I’d call it emasculation, not emancipation. If there is a deity but it played no role in human evolution, why would it intervene in human affairs at all? What’s the point in praying to a being that either can’t help or simply doesn’t care?
This book, however, will not win the hearts of the few indoctrinated creationists who actually read it. And it seems to me that religious believers who accept evolution are the ones who will find Avise’s central argument most troubling. Opinion polls suggest most believers who accept evolution think their God intervened in human evolution. If you believe this, you face the dilemma that Avise highlights: why did this deity make such a god-awful mess of it, causing so much needless suffering?
If, on the other hand, you absolve this God of blame by assuming it did not dirty its appendages with evolution, you face equally troubling questions about its nature and its relations with humans. For instance, such a deity could hardly be described as the “Creator”.
Notably, Avise never comes clean about what he believes. It is not clear whether his don’t-blame-God-for-our-genome’s-mess approach is a desperate attempt to salvage something from the wreckage left when his own beliefs collided with reality, or an attempt by a non-believer to pander to the religious.
Either way, neither believers nor atheists are likely to find his approach satisfactory. Take Avise’s conclusion: ‘The evolutionary-genetics sciences can thus help religion to escape from the profound conundrums of Intelligent Design and thereby return to its rightful realm – not as the secular interpreter of the biological minutiae of our physical existence but rather as a respectable philosopher counselor on grander matters including ethics and morality’.
Really? The morality of theistic religions is inextricably intertwined with the notion of an all-powerful deity that created us. After summarising the compelling evidence from our genomes that no such entity exists, it is downright ludicrous to then turn around and suggest religious believers have some privileged insight into the morality of issues such as IVF, childcare, abortion and homosexuality.
To me, Avise misses the crucial point: Why do we still allow children to be born with hideous diseases that could be prevented? Why do we rightly glorify efforts to cure diseases such as cancer and Alzheimer’s, but still regard tackling the root cause – our dismal, degenerating DNA – as taboo?
Our ethics have been so hideously distorted by superstitious nonsense that we cannot see the clear moral imperative: we need to start sorting out the mess of a genome evolution has left us as soon as we can.
The Freethinker was founded in 1881 by GW Foote, an outspoken critic of religion. After the publication of 
April 2nd, 2010 at 9:28 pm
the biological processes that enable evolution are not “a mess†or “inefficientâ€, their so-called imperfections are actually quite fundamental to life and evolution itself.
any characterization of genetic material as efficient or not is arbitrary at best, if not downright silly. the very mechanism of evolution is precisely that the entire set of solutions is explored, stochastically, slowly, but surely. it’s not meant to be read by humans—it’s not “meant†for anything, it just works.
as an atheist, it seems clear to me that even trying to define what mutations are better or not is both gratuitous and pointless. for instance, our view of the appendix as a useless relic of evolution has been challenged recently. does that mean that we were wrong to think its “bad†when it’s really “good� no. it just means that our understanding of how life works, err, evolves.
it just looks like a mess to us.
April 2nd, 2010 at 9:56 pm
Delving into such a mathematically chaotic system is highly inadvisable, at best, with what we know now. Of course, we are merely beginning to explore the human genome. It has long been established that retroviral DNA has been incorporated into humanity in many different instances, whether through our evolutionary ancestors or through the human race itself. Furthermore, it has been hypothesized, at least, that these retroviruses were one of the causes of mutation and, therefore, evolution.
I have to agree with jean-francois here, just because it appears to be a mess now, does not necessarily mean it will appear so in the future when, hopefully, it is better understood. The so-called “junk DNA,” one of the favorite misnomers quoted by creationists and intelligent-designerists, has rather rapidly diminished in number due to new regulatory processes, protein chains, etc. being discovered. To meddle with what we think now as detritus in the DNA could actually hamstring us. Though I think his message about religion is spot-on, I do believe that the DNA we consider junk today may not be so later on, and in any case until we have a fully-functional model of all genetically coded materials, along with interactions of hormones, proteins, etc. within the body, and can basically fully model the human system from the genetic code just like it happens in nature, then we should not be talking about messing with it.
April 2nd, 2010 at 10:09 pm
Broadsword, back at you, pink floyd:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgvAwBDbuIo
Humans are not a product of a loving creator, they are a product of a ruthless sociopathic machine called “nature” or otherwise “evolution”. It’s most effective tool is “natural selection” which Darwin understood, but things happen to fuck up it’s plan, like comet strikes in the Yucatan peninsula, and enormous volcanic eruptions in India. But, it kinda knows what it’s doing, hell, it’s worked so far for mega millions of years. The worst enemy to human genetics at this point in history is modern medicine. But, as soon as you mention the word “eugenics” people flee fearing genocide of Jews, Gypsys, Blacks, and the mentally retarded.
Modern medicine is a well intentioned institution, saving lives, and they are heroes. Giving people a chance at life that previously would have had no hope. But what is left unsaid in the evaluation is that natural selection has been bypassed. And the consequences are inevitable. The preservation of defective genes passed on to future generations.
And, I know, it’s like population control, nobody wants to talk about it, but its a REAL problem staring us right in the face, NOW!!!!
NeoWolfe
April 2nd, 2010 at 10:15 pm
I had a similar discussion recently with a woman who is allergic to her own teeth. We proposed that the rebuttal to Intelligent Design be named Bloody Stupid Design.
April 2nd, 2010 at 11:03 pm
being myself afflicted with many allergies (though none as bad as that), i find myself cursing evolution and my own “faulty genes†quite often (sneezing hundreds of times a day does not help rational thought), though i’m guessing that north american obsession with hygiene and protecting children from germs might really be to blame.
April 2nd, 2010 at 11:52 pm
It’s all because of the Fall, dontcha know.
But seriously,
Amen to that!
April 3rd, 2010 at 12:10 am
Harry: I think the religiots are allergic to their own brains.
April 3rd, 2010 at 8:53 am
God works In mysterious ways indeed. I bet the religious are convinced the flaws are part of a divine plan. And we are supposed to suffer, all because of damned Adam and Eve.
April 3rd, 2010 at 11:27 am
A bit reckless of him, talking of our “degenerating DNA”. The cretinists will be sitting up and taking note of that. Watch for the quote-mine. 10..9..8…
April 3rd, 2010 at 11:36 am
The human body is like the worst of all microsoft operative systems all in one with tons of service packs to fix this and that.
If you have a failure in one part it will cause a complete critical system failure.
But often, humans simply cannot reboot.
April 3rd, 2010 at 12:50 pm
just one example – the prostate wrapping around the urethra and then slowly squeezing and squeezing and squeezing – is proof that there was/is no”intelligent design”……..nothing to see here folks, move along please
April 3rd, 2010 at 3:10 pm
Allergies, diabetes, parkinson’s, lou gehrig’s, huntington’s, down syndrome, MS… human genetics are fucked up. And that makes us no different from any other animal. An iron clad case that we are an experiment, a work in progress, of evolution.
But, I will say again, that to draw the conclusion that there is no “design” to the universe is an assumption, a leap of faith, beyond the horizons of science. That is something religions do, and something I do not.
NeoWolfe
April 3rd, 2010 at 3:39 pm
it just looks like a mess to us
Surely it is a mess precisely because it’s not a brilliant design.
April 3rd, 2010 at 11:32 pm
True enough, NeoWolfe. But it does kinda pile the burden of proof even more heavily onto the IDers, wouldn’t you say? In other words, it’s probably okay to go with the assumption that we aren’t intelligently designed, at least until the Discovery Institute, et al, can first convincingly explain away why our “design” is apparently so bad without positing an incompetent Designer and then come up with some real, positive evidence to support their assertions.
April 4th, 2010 at 3:18 am
mikespeir
From my point of view, there is no “burden of proof”. Only carefully controlled experiments under carefully monitored conditions, and like generations before us, we arrive at the facts and move ahead.
And while most advances in science begin with theory, which is then put to the test, the origen of the universe is so far into theory-land, that astrophysicists and cosmologists are stepping on each other’s dicks for a turn at the microphone to proudly crow, “I ain’t got a fuckin” clue.” And all I ask of freethinkers is to cut me the time until they do have a clue. Meanwhile, can I have an open mind?
NeoWolfe
April 4th, 2010 at 10:21 am
There’s always a burden of proof. IDers are going to have to prove their case to me, for instance, if they want me to buy it. The kinds of flaws we’re talking about do not correlate well with intelligent design; consequently, they urge against it. Even if I thought fence sitting on an issue like this was truly possible, those would be enough to keep me skeptical of ID claims.
April 28th, 2010 at 4:04 am
Why do people try to put God in a box? I’m pretty sure he’s not constrained to the same system that we are. Oh, and he doesn’t have finite knowledge like we do. You see, he was there when the world was formed, oh wait, he was the one who formed it. But of course, if you can’t rationalize it, why believe in it? What a sad life non-believers must have.