Humans, Viruses and the Genome: Our Colony Grows

With all the pronouncements that scientists are prone to make, it's sometimes catches us off guard just how much science does not know. For example, a few years ago I read a chart that detailed where atmospheric methane, a potent greenhouse gas, came from. 6%, they said, came from cows, from their waste and flatulence.

Just a week later, the report came out that rain forests produce methane, something which had been unknown to science prior. In fact, they said, methane from tropical areas may produce up to 30% of the methane in the atmosphere.

Really? How come, if science was ignorant of 30% of the methane production on earth, it was confident enough to nail down 6% as the amount of methane produced by cows? What other sources of methane are we ignorant of?

The fact is, we have no way of knowing.

Learning

Now, I'm not complaining about scientists' lack of knowledge. I love learning, and the scientific method is one of the best methods for learning. What science has accomplished in the last two centuries is truly astounding.

But when scientists and avid scientific wanna-bes on the internet start making proclamations about how they know there's no God, then it's time to roll our eyes at the incredible arrogance of those who have so thoroughly underestimate their ignorance.

Viruses and the Genome

Anyway, I read a fascinating article on viruses in the genome today. It turns out that about 8% of our DNA may come from viruses.

Think about this. About 8% of your DNA did not come from your ancestors. Though it's now become part of being human, it was not originally human, nor even mammal. Shoot, it's not originally animal; possibly not even living.

Viruses are just strands of DNA. They can't reproduce. They have to hijack living cells in order to reproduce.

They can't think. They can't really do anything except invade a cell, enter the DNA of that cell, and thus throw off the "marching orders" of that cell, making it produce more viruses.

In the process, they've integrated themselves into our genome, and they now constitute 8% of it.

If you were worried about possibly being descended from a lemur, how about being a direct descendant, with no intermediaries, of a virus!!!

DNA, Evolution, and Christianity

Richard Dawkins is one of those over-arrogant scientists.

A brilliant man with incredible writing, speaking, and reasoning skills, he's let whatever offense he has with Christians color his thinking when it comes to God, and he's become unreasonable and arrogant concerning theism.

Not to say that his offenses aren't reasonable. Those probably are reasonable. It's too bad he's let them make him reject the God who reveals himself to men's hearts.

Anyway, Richard Dawkins is correct, in my opinion, when he says that DNA pretty much ended any reasonable argument about evolution. The discovery of DNA made it an open and shut case. Boom, Darwin was right, mechanism found, evolution true. Simply inarguable.

So why do Christians object so strongly to it.

Well, obviously because it makes Genesis literally inaccurate.

I'm not sure why that matters, though. Genesis was literally impossible as soon as we found out the moon is a quarter million miles away, the sun 93 million miles away, and the nearest star about 24 trillion miles away.

Genesis says the sky contains the sun, moon, and stars and there's water on top of the sky.

That's impossible and false, and even you, as a Christian, believe it's impossible and false.

Okay, given, you don't want to admit it. You have made up an impossible theory about a vapor canopy, which violates science because its pressure would have boiled the oceans into steam, and which violates Genesis because it's below the sun, moon, and stars.

You already don't believe Genesis one is literal, so you might as well give up using that as an objection to evolution.

Evolution, Humans, and Monkeys

Christians also object to having descended from animals. We want to be different from the animals. We are "fearfully and wonderfully made."

Do you really think that when the inspired Scripture—and yes, I think even Genesis one is inspired—say that we are fearfully and wonderfully made, it's talking about our sweaty armpits?

No, sir! Our body is our enemy. By the Spirit we're supposed to put to death the deeds of the body (Rom. 8:13). The flesh wages war against the spirit (Gal. 5:17; 1 Pet. 2:11). We're supposed to be groaning in our eager desire to be rid of this body (2 Cor. 5:4).

You worry about this flesh being descended from a monkey (though we're not actually descended from monkeys, but from a lemur-like common ancestor with monkeys), but Peter says it worse than science does: worse than being like animals, he says you're body is like grass! (1 Pet. 1:24).

Actually, now science does say it worse. You're descended from viruses as well.

You are not your body!

Yahweh God formed man from the dust of the ground, and he breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. (Gen. 2:7)

If you hope to live forever, as I do, and you are a Christian, as I am, then your hope is not to live forever in this body. You are going to put on a new body, a tabernacle not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.

A Word to Atheists

I know that atheists who think I'm a fool read this blog. I know, too, that they think mixing Jesus with evolution is bizarre because there's evidence for evolution and there's no evidence for Jesus.

The evidence for Jesus is neither historical nor scientific. The evidence for Jesus is the real-life experience of people who have encountered Jesus.

The best evidence against Jesus is also neither historical or scientific. Whether the decapolis is 30 miles from the Sea of Galilee, contradicting Mark, or whether there's anachronistic names in Genesis, or whether Josephus' references to Christ are original—all these things don't matter a whit. The evidence for Jesus is that people still believe in him because they've had real encounters with him, and none of those things touch that evidence.

The ultimate evidence against Jesus is the devil's counterfeits.

Now what I'm saying is directed at Christians, too. Jesus has a proof that he is the Son of God. It is the incredible unity and love of his disciples (Jn. 17:20-23). It renders the mockers and scoffers speechless. They become scared to say anything because their words are meaningless and useless.

But Christians are not united because they're too busy fellowshipping with and believing the propaganda of the devil's counterfeits. They've become lovers of doctrine rather than lovers of God. They've abandoned the doctrine which is according to godliness for the doctrines which are according to argument, pride, envy, worldliness, and malice.

When we quit fellowshipping with the devil's counterfeits, joining ourselves only to those who are part of the foundation of God—that those who name Christ depart from iniquity—gathering on no other basis than the unity produced by the Spirit of God in those who obey Christ, then atheists will be speechless.

Until we do that, then the atheists, agnostics, mockers, and scoffers are right. The evidence for our faith is small. It's a "little light" here and there, when in fact Jesus meant to show them "a city set on a hill."

I've seen gathered Christians. I've seen their power. I've seen the mockers silenced, having no one to listen to them because the light was too powerful.

In fact, I still see it.