Take a look around you, at each other. We are very different from one another in our looks, aren't we? Hair, noses, eyes, some with wrinkles showing, some with young skin. And we are at varying stages of maturing; some of us are vertically challenged, like me. We are of various skin tones and skin colors. Yet we are related: We are of the same genus and species: Homo sapiens. The word "homo" is the genus name and the word "sapiens" is the species name.
We are related because between 100,000 and 200,000 years ago a small group of our ancestors living in eastern Africa, perhaps as few as 20,000 people, constituted the population from whom we are all descended. Paleoanthropologists named us "modern humans". This is not an air-tight conclusion, but the solid genetic evidence today points toward it. Our basic body plan was set more than 100,000 years ago. Our physical characteristics have changed slightly.
In Steve Olson's book Mapping Human History, I found so much information about humans and our ancestors that I literally could not put the book down. To quote Olson: "Every single one of the 6 billion people on the planet today is descended from a small group of anatomically modern humans who once lived in eastern Africa. The group occasionally came close to extinction, but it never died out completely, and eventually it began to expand. By about 100,000 years ago they made their way along the coastlines of India and southeastern Asia and sailed to Australia. About 40,000 years ago, modern humans moved from northeastern Africa into Europe and from southeastern Asia into eastern Asia. Finally, sometime more than 10,000 years ago, they made their way along a wide plain joining Siberia and Alaska and spread down the length of North and South America." That wide plain we call a land bridge is today underwater and is known as the Bering Strait.
Olson describes many other humans living at the same time as modern humans 100,000 years ago, but they were elsewhere in Africa, Europe and Asia, and were noticeably different from us. "Their forehead slanted backward toward a low, bunched skull and a heavy visorlike ridge protruded from just above the eyes. These people would never pass what anthropologists call the subway test-that is, if you gave them a shave, dressed them in modern clothes, and seated them on a subway car, they could never hope to blend in. The other passengers would inevitably look at them and say, "That's a mighty strange-looking human being."
More than 1 million of these so-named archaic humans may have been scattered across the Old World. However, they were an evolutionary dead-end. The last one died many thousands of years ago, after successfully occupying the earth for hundreds of thousands of years. According to the available evidence, the two groups interbred very little, if at all. Perhaps they were so different genetically that they were unable to produce offspring, or the hybrid offspring were so different-looking that they were not accepted into the bands of modern humans. As Olson so aptly put it: "We just don't know."
Professor Brian Sykes of Oxford University wrote in his book, The Seven Daughters of Eve, that DNA samples from cheek tissues of modern Britons match the DNA which was taken from the mummy-like corpse dubbed "Iceman". DNA as you may know is the abbreviation for the molecule deoxyribonucleic acid. It is THE molecule of inheritance; it is often used synonymously with the terms chromosome and gene. Not technically correct, but for lay persons in this discussion we accept it in order to avoid a very detailed explanation.
The Iceman was discovered in the Tyrolean Alpine glacier on the Austrian side of the mountains by 2 climbers on a warm day, September 21, 1991. He was frozen, 5300 years ago, complete with an ax with a metal blade, a longbow, finely-stitched leather clothing, and boots stuffed with grass. Brenda Fowler, who chronicled the Iceman's story in her book by the same name, recounts in the Prologue that the body was "melting out of the glacier, deep in Austria's Otzal Alps, near the Italian border".
Bryan Sykes, a leading world authority on DNA and human evolution, was called in 1994 to examine the withered and desiccated remains which were kept frozen since their discovery. Sykes worked with recovering DNA from ancient human bones using mitochondrial DNA. This DNA is found in organelles called mitochondria which function within almost all of our cells to make the energy and then send that energy out to the rest of the body. It is this DNA which is used to trace back in our maternal line generation before generation.
Sykes could hardly believe his luck in discovering that the DNA from the Iceman matched with a particular sample from an Irish friend of his who had donated a couple of strands of her long red hair for the cause of science two years earlier. Her sample was stored as "LAB 2803". When he verified the number he found it was from Marie Moseley who lived in Dorset in southern England. A reporter from the Sunday Times asked to publicize it, and Marie agreed at once. "The next edition of the paper carried a piece on her under the headline 'Iceman's relative found in Dorset'."
An interesting aside to the story is this and I will quote from Brian Sykes book: "...Marie began to feel something for the Iceman. She had seen pictures of him being shunted around from glacier to freezer to post-mortem room, poked and prodded, opened up, bits cut off. To her, he was no longer just the anonymous curiosity whose picture had appeared in the papers and on television. She had started to think of him as a real person and a relative—which is exactly what he was."
There had been an unbroken genetic link between the Iceman and Marie's mother. That is how the mitochondrial DNA is inherited: through the women to their children. Think of this: each woman sitting here this morning carries the mitochondrial DNA of thousands of women before her. If you are a mother of daughters you have passed the inheritance on to them. If you are without daughters, the mitochondrial genetic history ends with you. To our best knowledge, your sons will not pass on much of your mitochondrial inheritance in their germ cells, because most of it will be used in the energetic activity of the spermatozoa in their quest to impregnate an ovum. However, they will store it in their body cells and that is how we know the relationships of ancestors to us.
I brought a few books that were valuable in my research. You are welcome to peruse them later. I am grateful to Denver Weil for lending me his college course textbooks in genetics and molecular biology. They explain the inheritance of complex traits, the genetic basis of cancer, mutation in portions of genes or whole deletion of genes which can cause problems in a developing fetus or later in a maturing child or adult.
I will be quoting from several scientists, some well-known and deceased, and some not as well-known, perhaps, but very much alive and working in their professions, about how science affects their spirituality. I will tell you when it is my own opinion. For the benefit of visitors, I do not speak for other Unitarian Universalists. We are free to espouse our theologies and opinions and have respect for those who are following their own spiritual paths.
Throughout my adult life, and even as a teen, questions about the compatibility of religion and science have whirled around in my gray matter. I went to college twice, once as a 17-year-old, and later as a 31-year-old, and finished my degree in 1973. I taught Biology at Joppatowne High and became fascinated with Genetics when teaching and following along with three of my classes in studying the inherited traits of Drosophila melanagaster, or fruit flies. Those pesky little flies which love to nest in bananas or land in your wine have only 4 chromosomes, but all the information needed to begin and continue their lives are in those 4 little pieces of DNA.
In contrast, generally speaking, humans have 23 pairs of chromosomes and 2 sex chromosomes. Males have sperm cells with either one X-chromosome or one Y- chromosome. Females have only X-chromosomes in their ova or egg cells. So when an ovum is fertilized by a sperm the resulting offspring is XX (female) or XY (male).
Matt Ridley discusses gender roles in his book Nature via Nurture, as this: They "are at least partly automatic, blind, and untaught…Hormones within the womb trigger masculinization, but those hormones originate within the body of the baby and are themselves triggered by a series of events that begin with the expression of a single gene on the Y chromosome." This happens very early in the fertilization stage. We must be aware and proceed carefully at this point, because not all evidence is in for the explanation of homosexuality, or most recently, the term used is sexual orientation. We have a way to go before we will fully understand the "whys" and "hows". Consequently we have a way to go to be fully able to explain it to the believers of the Old Testament. And we know that some people will never believe the explanation.
You may be familiar with the terminology that I use, but please bear with me while I briefly review. There will not be a test! DNA is composed of 4 bases. The arrangement of the 4 bases is in a ladder form known as a double helix which twists around, and then compacts itself and scrunches down into the nucleus of every cell in our bodies: A major feat which boggles the mind even today with the electron microscope, in itself a fantastic tool, which enables us to look into the DNA molecule and discover its secrets in creating and maintaining life of a human, other animals or a plant.
That's enough of the technical jargon for now.
The discoveries made in the Human Genome Project since its creation in 1990 have enlightened our understanding of many diseases and conditions. To explain, the Human Genome Project began as a 15-year, multi-disciplinary endeavor to map and sequence all human DNA which carry the instructions for our development. Dr. Francis Collins is the director of the federal government's efforts.
Among one of the mapped diseases is Cystic Fibrosis which is the most common lethal genetic disease afflicting white people. According to Robert F. Weaver, in the textbook Molecular Biology, "it is caused by an autosomal-recessive mutation carried by 1 in 20 people of European descent (over 12 million people in the United States alone). This means that 1 in 400 white couples will both be carriers, and 1 in 4 of their children will have the disease." Over 1,000 children are born with CF every year in the United States.
Based upon what I have said thus far, the word "relative" assumes a deeper meaning between human beings, doesn't it?
"Science and religion are engaging in more active dialogue and debate, but a survey suggests that scientists' beliefs have changed little since the 1930's, and top scientists are more atheistic than ever before." This quote begins the article titled "Scientists and Religion in America" by Edward J. Larson and Larry Witham published in Scientific American, September 1999.
"What does the typical scientist hope and believe?" they asked.
Bryn Mawr College psychologist James H. Leuba sought the answer to that question in 1914 and again in 1933. He surveyed American biological and physical scientists on their views regarding what he described as "the two central beliefs of the Christian religion": a God that influenced by worship and an afterlife. His opinion was that without these "fundamental dogmas" Christianity could not survive. He asserted that it was appropriate to inquire about these beliefs among scientists because they "enjoy great influence in the modern world, even in matters religious."
Larson and Witham repeated Leuba's survey "in 1996 and in 1998, asking American scientists two of his questions: Do you believe in (1) "a God in intellectual and affective communication with man…to whom one may pray in expectation of receiving an answer" and (2) "personal immortality. Yes, no and don't know or agnostic were the only options offered. Responses were strictly anonymous."
As you may expect, respondents wrote their own questions, such as, "Why such a narrow definition of God?" Another: "I believe in God, but I don't believe that one can expect an answer to prayer." Still another: I consider it quite possible to be a deeply religious person while rejecting belief in a personal God or in personal immortality."
The authors recount Leuba's defense of his questions in response to similar complaints: "I chose to define God as given above because that is the God worshipped in every branch of the Christian religion."
Their survey reports these observations: Leuba expected religious disbelief to grow among both American scientists and Americans in general. In 1999 scientists no more jettisoned Christianity's "two cardinal beliefs" than their counterparts did in 1914. Gallup surveys suggested the same about the general population.
However, in Leuba's second part of his survey, he polled the scientific elite, those "greater" scientists, as he called them. These "greater" scientists were less accepting of the supernatural than were the "lesser" scientists because of their "superior knowledge, understanding and experience" he decided.
Larson and Witham begin their own observations with this: "Measured by religious belief, professional science is like a pyramid or a three-tiered ziggurat. At the top is acute disbelief. Scientists in the middle are significantly less believing (by more than half) than citizens in general. The wide and heavy base is more firmly sunken into religious America—evidence suggests that there is more personal religion among physicians, engineers and members of other technological occupations that involve applied science."
In light of this report, I present my unscientific and very small survey of scientists. First is Albert Einstein, one of the "greater" scientists. His life has been chronicled by hundreds of books and articles. He "fled from the secular horrors of Nazi Germany because of his religious heritage." He never ceased musing about religion. Late in life he concluded, "In their struggle for the ethical good, teachers of religion must have the stature to give up the doctrine of a personal God."
From the 19th century, Charles Darwin is an example of the scientific spirit. "Patiently, Darwin doubted and tested his theory of evolution for 20 years before he published it. He fretted even longer over religion before opting for agnosticism." To quote Darwin: "I feel most deeply that the whole subject is too profound for the human intellect… A dog might as well speculate on the mind of Newton. Let each man hope and believe what he can."
Along with Einstein from the last century is Richard Feynman, one of my favorite physicists, who once spoke at a UU General Assembly. In reading his life story I am in awe of his teaching elementary physics to his younger sister Joan. She succeeded in the man's world of geophysics for 4 decades and recently retired as a senior scientist in NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab. Her son Charles Hirshberg wrote in Popular Science about her career and ended with this wonderful tribute: "Beyond this, however, my mother's career illustrates the enormous change in how America regards what was, only a few decades ago, extremely rare: a scientist who's a woman and also a mother."
For those who may be unfamiliar with Richard Feynman, his accomplishments include quantum theories, the atomic bomb project with Robert Oppenheimer and others, of course, and, he was a member of the space shuttle investigation commission which was appointed to investigate the Challenger explosion after liftoff in 1986. It was he who discovered how the "o-rings" failed and precipitated the shuttle's death with 7 astronauts aboard. He demonstrated before the investigating committee with a glass of ice water that the o-rings would crack and become brittle. What a supreme science teacher!
I quote from Feynman's Rainbow, written by Leonard Mlodinow, who was a post-doc at Caltech in the early 1980's. Mlodinow taped sessions with Feynman as the great scientist was fighting for his life against his cancer. Feynman is speaking about his view of death. Arlene, of whom he speaks, is his one and only wife who died of tuberculosis many years before. He and Arlene met when he was thirteen. Their friendship and love grew until they married 13 years later. We pick up on the conversation after he discusses her illness.
"So for instance, science has an effect on my attitude, say to death. I didn't get mad when Arlene died. Who was there to be mad at? I couldn't get mad at God because I don't believe in God. And you can't get mad at some bacteria, can you? So I had no resentment and I didn't have to look for revenge. And I had no remorse because there was nothing I could have done about it.
"I'm not worried about my own future in heaven or hell. I have a theory about that that I believe does come from my science. I believe in scientific discoveries and therefore have a view about myself that is consistent. Now I've just been to a hospital and I don't know how long I have to live. It happens to all of us sooner or later. Everybody dies. It's just a matter of when. But with Arlene I was really happy for a while. So I have had it all. After Arlene, the rest of my life didn't have to be so good, you see, because I already had it all."
Let's talk now about the living scientists and their views. A young woman, who is a local scientist and friend of mine and whom I greatly respect for her career achievements in science as well as being the mother of 2 sons, is Jessica Dang, a molecular biologist. She said, "As a scientist, I would say that spiritually I am guided by part of the medical oath "to do no harm". I think almost any scientific endeavor is legitimate as long as it is for good. I believe God gave us the freedom and intellect to pursue intellectual quandaries. Why is it that we are the only animals who have the physical and mental capabilities to question things and try to find an answer?
In terms of genetic research, I think anything is a go except to clone actual people for either fertility reasons or organ harvest. I think it is OK to take undifferentiated stem cells and provide the chemical signals to produce organs, skin, nerve cells, etc… I feel a "presence" in everything I do and try to act accordingly, and because that thought is so integrated into everything that I do, I don't think of spirituality and/or God specifically in relation to my work."
Another scientist, also working in the Genetics discipline is Dr.Jason Lieb. Yes, Jason is the son of Marlene and Rob Lieb, and many of you know him. On page 327 of the August 2001 issue of Nature Genetics an article was published with Jason's name listed first of the four authors. The article concerns studies in the yeast genome using the organism Saccharomyces cerevisiae. It is a very impressive article to this lay-person's eyes!
Jason agreed to share his thoughts with us: "My view on this is fairly straightforward. There is no reason to invoke a god, a "higher being", or a master plan of any kind, and therefore I assume none exists. Our existence can be plausibly explained as a matter of simple chemistry that was allowed to develop in an undirected way over an incomprehensibly long period of time…The rich conditions that allowed life (us) to emerge are probably uncommon, but certainly not unique in the universe. So, living things are (to paraphrase from a popular textbook) "curious, intricately organized chemical factories that take in matter from their surroundings and use these raw materials to make copies of themselves".
Although some people seem to be deeply offended to be described in these terms, to me, this does not diminish any aspect of my humanity. The simple profundity of that realization, in fact, elevates it."
Jason spoke to a graduating class at his alma mater Joppatowne High School a couple of years ago and I quote from his text in which he was describing how very important the Human Genome Project will be in their future, this new century:
"The completion of the genome project will have profound long-term consequences for health care and medicine. Already the sequence has lead to important advances in understanding and treating mood disorders, Alzheimer's disease, and asthma…It will change the way we think about arbitrary societal constructions, like race. For example, there are fewer genetic differences, on average, between a white person in this audience and someone of African descent, than there are between two people of African descent. Our genome confirms that our perceptions of race are outrageously superficial...
Understanding and wisdom will be required to ensure that the benefits of our advances are implemented broadly and equitably, and that science and statistics are not misused by people with racist, political, or financial motives."
So we have come full circle in discussing the gene pool and God. Or have we? Are there questions left unanswered? Yes. Will I give you the answers today? No. I leave you to find the answers for yourself, on your own spiritual path, because as for me, I, too, am evolving.