DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) is Gods way of blessing His creation with the means to achieve His design for humanity to – be fruitful and multiply. DNA’s unique design and complex information system allows God’s creation of life to contain all of the genetic instruction that causes all of the functions and development of all known living organisms. It’s the basic hereditary material in human beings and other life forms that replicates itself by design. Think about that.
For us it includes DNA from both our father and our mother. If you have a large nose that means it was in the DNA that you inherited. You have no choice over what you will look like as it all stems back to the combined DNA of your mother and father. You are patterned from them. And they were patterned from theirs and on and on it goes. And the wonder of it is that all of humanity is patterned after God as he created man in his own image’ (Genesis 1:27).
The following excerpt from the book “Eternal Sobriety”, Chapter Five, Made in His Image, provides some additional insight into what this means.
“We can understand our self better if we can define what that image is and what it represents. Theologians and laymen alike have attempted to provide that definition since the Genesis account first existed. The search of scripture yields only partial clues and there are varied interpretations and theological debates are still going on. We do know that we are a special creation of God and He created us lower than angels but higher than other earthly creatures. (Psalm 8: 5) This gives us special dignity in God’s entire created world. Human dignity reflects our ability at a creature level to reproduce within us a reflection of the holy ways of God. We will not elaborate on a comprehensive theological discussion about the image of God except to say that the image includes an intellectual, moral, and a volitional (having a free will) likeness to God. This gives us a God-like capacity for knowledge, thought, and action. God’s image in us also includes our body and soul where the image of His attributes of existence and power reflect themselves. In addition, God designed us to have communication with Him so we also have a degree of spiritual likeness.”
In Genesis 2:7 we find that…God formed man from the dust and gave him life by sharing His own breath (Genesis 2:7). Man is unique among all God’s creations, having both a material (physical) body and an immaterial soul/spirit. This means he designed us to have self-consciousness, not just consciousness like animals have but self-consciousness. We are able to have cognition–that is, the awareness of self and our surroundings with the ability to rationally process information, to have intelligence. He designed us to have a form of creativity as He is the creator of everything. It’s amazing to look around the world and see the immense creativity of man. Put simply, we were created to have the image or likeness of God. So God’s design for humanity via the miracle of DNA and His breath of life created man in His image with self-consciousness, personality, rationality, intelligence, creativity, and the ability to form relationships. There is no randomness to the creation of man. Gods purpose was so that man could bring up out of this intelligently designed habitat, solar system, and universe, immense demonstrations of man’s God-given marvelous abilities. And it is through human experience that this happens.
Lets briefly look at man and the experience of life he has, that displays evidence of intelligent design. We begin with the abilities we have from God’s design of our human mind. The mind can be viewed simply as two central parts. One part is our “memory.” This part stores everything we know, experience, and believe. It is where our entire belief system with all of its extensions of information is maintained. In many ways, our mind is like a computer. A computer also has a central storage area to store information and to house the instructions needed to run a program. The other part of our mind we will refer to as the “thinker.” This is not an industry term but you get the idea. Everybody has one whether we use it properly or not. It is similar to the processor in a computer where we sort/execute the instructions on the data stored in memory.
Our memory, thinker, and physical abilities are a biological computer. The main difference between a computer and us is that we can do special things with our thinker that computers cannot do in their processor! Our memory is where individual belief systems and principles are stored. These derive themselves from information in our memory that defines our personality, attitude, desires, and abilities. We will classify this information as experience, knowledge, skills, qualities, values, morals, and our own perception of human needs.
Experience, as a general concept, is knowledge of, or skill in, or observation of something, or some event gained through involvement in, or exposure to that thing or event. Our individual experience is a set of lifetime recordings of events and situations. They are things we have done, seen, heard, felt and so forth. These experiences play a role in determining individual beliefs we may have. Knowledge is information that we have learned through study or experience. Skills are intellectual and physical abilities we gain through the practicing of that knowledge in our lives. Qualities describe special characteristics or attributes that we might have. Values are deep-seated enduring beliefs we have, which relate to our life goals and our modes of behavior. Morals are practices or teachings derived from the religious, social, and cultural environments we live in. Finally, within the beliefs are our individual perceptions of the human needs we mostly relate to.
The thinker is an amazing piece of work. This is what makes us different from all the rest of God’s creation. God designed us with special abilities. The thinker has the functions of decision-making, reasoning, recalling, visualization, imagination, and creativity. God blessed us when he designed us with a free will. Our decision making process allows us to carry out free will. It is where choice becomes a reality. Life is abundant with choice. Everything we ever do, think or say is a choice (except involuntary actions). The main barrier preventing us from always seeing the right choices is the lack of truth and knowledge in our belief system. Reasoning is drawing conclusions from information and facts in our belief system. Our senses are a part of that information. If we have the right information and facts, we will usually draw the right conclusion. Visualization and imagination are complementary functions. Visualization is how we form a mental picture in our mind about someone or something. Imagination applies to the ability to visualize believable pictures and ideas of things that have never happened. It uses creativity, which means to bring into existence something new and different.
All of these things work together and influence both our will and behavior. To others, our behavior represents our attitude. An attitude is an individual’s prevailing tendency to respond favorably or unfavorably to an object, person or group of people, institution or event. Attitudes develop over time through a process called conditioning. Many attitudes arise early in life and tend to persist or be influential throughout life. Attitudes can be visible at times and hidden at other times waiting to be triggered by specific events or situations. Attitudes reflect outwardly to our environment as our character or personality. The world has a diversity of different attitudes that exist. Our parents and society’s moral attitudes have habituated us. This diversity of conditioning can be due to ethnicity; nationality, education, religion, culture, and individual family environments. Conditioning is everywhere. It comes as both positive and negative. It comes as both error and truth. For us, the recovering alcoholic, it translates as a major living problem.
We live in a world where error is abundant. Our own experience is based upon many factors and it is in the results of our own human experience itself, where proof of an intelligent designer is most clearly identified. All of humanity is riddled with error. This error explains all of the evils we find in our world. The evils of the world are due to belief systems that lack truth and belief systems are what drive us to live. It is the lack of truth that creates moral defects and ignorance. It is the lack of truth that gets us into anger, fear, and selfishness that drives us to seek after primarily selfish benefits.
Should we blame God for designing the world and us to contain error? Is God not perfect? I think not. We have to have faith that God is perfect and designed us to be susceptible to error for a simple reason. We are an incomplete design without His truth in us. He created us and it is only on the path that he created for us to walk while in the human experience will we find peace and serenity. This itself is the proof that an intelligent designer created us and in such a manner that we would search for Him, the Creator. Only an intelligent designer could create us with our ability to have the experience of being human and as well perfect a plan for us to find Him. It is truth that moves us toward that goal. And it is truth that sets us free.
So how does Alcoholics Anonymous, which is often expressed as a design for living, move us forward in the process of seeking truth and help us to find our Creator? That is the topic of the final article titled “Design Demands a Designer – AA and its 12-Step Program.”