Science and religion are married in the Genome (1)

‘That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched – this we proclaim concerning the Word of life. The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it…’ John 1, The Bible

‘In the beginning was the Word. The Word proselytised the sea with its message, copying itself unceasingly and forever – the Word discovered how to rearrange chemicals so as to capture little eddies in the stream of entropy and make them live – the Word transformed the land surface of the planet from a dusty hell to a verdant paradise. The Word eventually blossomed and became sufficiently ingenious to build a porridgy contraption called a human brain that could discover and become aware of the Word itself.’ Matt Ridley, Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters, 2000

‘But thou, my babe! shalt wander like a breeze/ By lakes and sandy shores, beneath the crags/ Of ancient mountain, and beneath the clouds,/ which image in their bulk both lakes and shores/ And mountain crags: so shalt thou see and hear/ The lovely shapes and sounds intelligible/ Of that evernal language, which thy God/ Utters, who from eternity doth teach/ Himself in all, and all things in himself./ Great universal teacher! he shall mould/ Thy spirit, and by giving make it ask.’ Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Frost at Midnight, 1798

‘In our culture at present, people find it somewhat surprising that an idea can be large enough to have both a scientific and a religious aspect. This is because, during the last century, our ideas of religion, of science, and indeed of life have all become narrowed in a way that makes it difficult to get these topics into the same perspective. (Here our window has become a good deal narrower that it was when Galileo and Newton and Faraday used it. They never doubted these things belonged together).’ Mary Midgley, Science and Poetry, 2003

‘Science can only be created by those who are thoroughly imbued with the aspiration towards truth and understanding. The sources of this feeling, however, spring from the sphere of religion.’ Einstein, Science and Religion, Nature, 1940

‘In the beginning was the word.’ John 1, The Bible


Science and religion are married in the Genome (1)

The Bible: ‘In the beginning was the Word’.
21st Century Science: ‘In the beginning was the word’.

Science and religion are married in the Genome.
Like lovers estranged, enemies, they have hated;

boxers in corners, belligerent generals,
scrapping footsoldiers, irreconcilable -

God hunted from existence by easier truths,
squeezed from vision - unsettlingly inexact,

inhabiting feeling and imagination -
not something you can put on a slide;

prove - though love is the greatest power -
human citadel, force, undying heart flower,

yet cannot be discerned, detected, counted,
by microscope or scan - chemical or sight.

And who had made them enemies but men,
whose minds compartmentalise, reduce -

screens and firewalls of the panicked mind;
even as the heart shouts loudly in the chest,

the soul exerts its own existence, simply -
as presence; burning with their own truths,

contribution to the bigger understanding.
Even this soul man feels inside his skin -

witnessed more clearly in any eye than lens
or cell, stolen, because it has no woven fibre;

white, silken - carbon-dated to the age of God -
when maybe tools to find such energy and light,

bright root of love and consciousness, its power,
may not yet be invented, nor even yet imagined.

As the shifting Genome sparkled still, millennia
in darkness, first root of flesh, and no-one saw -

chemicals and energy; biology, light, life,
have always been the living heart of God,

Who said everything so simply;
He is Word and Life - is Love.

And all our picky labels, selective views and fights,
have never changed a molecule, a string of DNA –

a feather is neither thing of beauty, nor object of cells,
ornament or aerodynamic calculation, but all at once -

that is its glory, whole identity; reduction is not enough
to represent - picture vividly - reality’s brilliant bones -

the whole of Botany has never yet understood a flower
more perfectly than an eye, more completely than a bee.

But love of beauty grows with wonder at such structure;
processes of photosynthesis - chemicals, sugar and light,

that make the flower be, unravelling her millennia of mysteries.
Embryology is art, to be studied, like Michelangelo, enraptured.

We made this battle by ourselves - opposition, dichotomy, war -
excised the heart of science, put a stone where once passion beat;

curtailed God’s nature, meaning of His name and words -
chose ourselves what was, or was not Him, or His domain;

because we did not understand, becoming cleverer -
that big thinking, scope, perspective, grander vision,

still exist when fractured chemistry and medicine,
fabulous astronomy and physics, solve, decipher,

hook some shining elements of knowledge,
so beautifully in symbols, theories, rules -

we are looking at a sliver cut, but a sample from one
vast picture not amenable to such selective thought -

creating partial blindness by a narrow focus - but
feeling confident to name, imprison God in words;

man-made bonds, strictures, boundaries of meaning -
thus allowing men to call the tune, re-make the dance,

that once, we realise, was free; music heard
by Earth and all her jostling creatures, even

to the last green leaf - skin molecule -
converting light, orchestrating atoms;

even if we did not recognise the notes within the tune -
understand from where such strange sound might come.


Ignorance is not bliss:
knowledge is heaven -

to read the illuminated script of a butterfly wing -
burning stripes and coals of tiger and leopard-fur;

unholy, blunt mushroom finger nudging darkness,
natural brass of the golden eagle feather - yellow

light at the sunflower’s black heart,
snow in the slow fur of Polar Bears -

is to see beauty’s shining skeleton, her plastic face -
understanding the means of stunning Earth chemistry.


The Human Genome still shines, her magic retained,
now shivering - exposed in the chill extracting palm

of science; wonder stronger, more intensified,
seeing these words revealed that are the poem

of us, of all that live upon the Earth, or ever have;
or will, in the branching future of organic family -

Time’s hair’s-breadth splitting between water
and earth - worm, fish, mammal, flower, man.


Truth is essential to God and Science;
God and what science studies are one.

Truth is not singular vision;
will not be encompassed -

simplified, stripped of its bigger,
closer, messier, blurred meaning -

and of all ironies, science is so far the greatest proof,
if proof be ever possible – desirable - that God exists.

DNA

THE DOUBLE HELIX

“We’ve discovered the secret of life.” Francis Crick, Co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, in local pub, UK, 1953

‘Moreover, the insight that the discovery [of the structure of DNA] provided into how human characteristics arise from our individual genes created a veritable super-highway of research, ushering in gene therapy for inherited diseases and culminating in the recent sequencing of the human genome.’ Adrian Hayday, Professor of Immunobiology, King's College London, UK, 2003
‘DNA is, in every sense, a modern icon. For decades, it has enthralled scientists striving to understand its molecular meaning, provided an aesthetic template for artists, and challenged society with all sorts of ethical conundrums. The defining moment for DNA was the discovery of its structure. Published in the science journal Nature 50 years ago this month, James Watson and Francis Crick described how two strands of DNA embrace to form a double helix, and sparked a scientific revolution. To convince the skeptics that DNA truly was the material of inheritance - the so-called "stuff of life" - it was necessary to show how it could be copied and passed on from one generation to the next. Watson and Crick's model immediately hinted as to how DNA might be copied - each strand of the helix could act as a template to replicate the other.’ Carina Dennis, Nature, from BBC Science, 2003

‘All warm-blooded animals have arisen from one living filament, which THE GREAT FIRST CAUSE endued with animality, with the power of acquiring new parts, attended with new propensities…and thus possessing the faculty of continuing to improve by its own inherent activity, and of delivering those improvement by generation to its posterity, world without end!’ Erasmus Darwin, Zoonomia; or, the Laws of Organic Life, 1, 1794-6

‘DNA – the most interesting molecule in all nature.’ James Watson, Co-discoverer of the structure of DNA

The only media report of the discovery of DNA, the secret of life – in 1953, the same year as Everest was climbed, and Queen Elizabeth 2nd was crowned - was in one newspaper, the News Chronicle.

WEE DNA STORY - ‘A remarkably short scientific paper, known officially as a letter, was published on 25 April 1953 in Nature, by James Watson and Francis Crick. It was perhaps the most momentous paper of the modern era, proposing a structure for the chemical, DNA (Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid), which composes the hereditary material of all living cellular organisms. The proposed structure - a double helix - rapidly became an icon, aesthetically beautiful, and stunning in its capacity to explain how DNA is replicated in order to transmit the genetic material to the next generation…Watson and Crick's paper was published without their undertaking a single experiment. Instead, the experiments underpinning their albeit inspired models were undertaken over the previous three years in the Strand basement laboratories of the Medical Research Council Biophysics Unit at King's. The prime movers in obtaining the data at King's were Professor Maurice Wilkins, who had commenced pilot studies on the use of X-rays to analyse DNA structure, and Dr Rosalind Franklin, a Fellow who arrived at King's in January 1951, and who advanced the X-ray resolution of DNA structure to a new level of clarity and sophistication. Their data were published alongside the Watson and Crick paper but because neither provided a compelling model for DNA structure, they have often been overlooked. In 1962 Wilkins shared the Nobel Prize with Watson and Crick but Franklin had tragically died a few years earlier at the age of 37.’ Adrian Hayday, Professor of Immunobiology, King's College London, UK, 2003

‘All living things reproduce; reproduction, or ‘replication’, is one of the distinguishing features of life. The easiest way to reproduce is simply to divide. This is the way DNA replicates itself…The conceptual problems is – or was – that any one body produces many thousands of different proteins, which do hundreds of thousands of different things, but DNA itself seems chemically simple. In fact a DNA molecule has only three basic componenets: a sugar called deoxyribose; a number of phosphorus-containing groups called ‘phosphate radicals’; and a set of four ‘bases’ or ‘nucleotides’ known as adenine (A), cytosine (C), thymine (T), and guanine (G). These four bases provide the only source of variation in the DNA molecule. No wonder biologists thought it was boring, and could not possibly be the stuff of genes. How could such simplicity generate such complexity, and with such precision? But, as always, nature is way ahead of us… the order in which the four bases occure in the DNA molecule provides a ‘code’ that is in principle rich enough to specify all the proteins that any living thing could ever require: an infinity of possibilities.’ Ian Wilmut, The Second Creation, Headline, 2001

‘This is now the bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh..’ Genesis, 2, The Bible

‘For many years, people who studied genetics thought that DNA wasn't complex enough to contain all of the information needed to make up a genome. DNA acts as the code, but how does it do it?...The function of DNA depends to a large extent on its structure. The discovery of the structure of DNA by James Watson and Francis Crick is one of the most famous scientific discoveries of all time. The two scientists used evidence collected by other scientists, particularly that of Rosalind Franklin and Maurice Wilkins, to deduce the shape of DNA. One of the most important pieces of evidence came from Franklin's experiments of shining X-rays though the DNA molecule and using photographic film to record where the scattered X-rays fall. The shadows on the film can be used to work out where the dense molecules lie. This technique is known as X-ray crystallography….Working out the arrangement of bases in the DNA helix was made easier by 'Chargaff's rules'…Erwin Chargaff was a Czech-American scientist who had noticed that within every DNA molecule, the number of A bases was always the same as the number of T bases, and that the number of C bases was always the same as the number of G bases.’ YourGenome.org

‘These are the generations of the heaven and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens, And every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew…’ Genesis 2, The Bible

‘..a vital propery of a gene was that it could be copied exactly for generation after generation, with only occasional mistakes. What we were trying to guess was the general nature of this copying mechanism… of course now that we know the answer, it all seems so completely obvious that no-one nowadays remembers just how puzzling the problem seemed then.’ Francis Crick, Co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, What Mad Pursuit, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1989

‘In principle the duplication of DNA is straighforward, yet in execution it is miraculous, although it happens millions of times each second, in each of us.’ Ian Wilmut, scientist

DNA

DNA – or, deoxyribonucleic acid -
a mouthful which should be a poem;

adenine, cytosine, guanine, thymine,
which should be the names of angels -

creative bond of adenine with thymine,
cystosine with guanine; A toT, C to G,

which is love,
as chemistry.

Who is this poet who can write the flower,
burning-ember leopard, in just four letters

clustered into threes; spell lily skin
and spotted fur, peacock tail, scale.

1.8 metres of DNA in each of our cells,
sparkling spiral strings, silver threads -

wound into structures less than a tenth
of a millimetre across, leaving plenty

of room on the head of a pin for angels,
invisibly clustering the space of a seed;

reaching to the Sun and back 600 times,
bundled into 23 chromosomes, paired –

three billion letters planted with genes,
nuggets of DNA, in encrypted verses –

chemical factories with magic and dancing
at the heart - realised script called to life -

creating proteins - amino acids -
which are the shared spoken word

of skin and wing - peacock and goat;
expression, mechanism of holy code

which has written itself out of nothing,
the original miracle found among stars.

Writing deducted, life deduced,
from the blindness of existence;

evidence and imagination beyond bone,
molecules of bone, to the dream of bone -

Maurice Wilkins, Rosalind Franklin’s
X-ray crystallography, which sounds

like it looks for the heart of rubies -
bone of closed stone, bright skeleton

of a diamond (which might resemble
that of a star, starfish or dandelion) -

shining X-rays through the DNA molecule,
catching the scattered pattern, recording as

a ghosthunter’s camera, authored shadows
on the film, showing the dense molecules -

James Watson and Francis Crick dreaming
the Double Helix, orderly flux; the dancing

spiral, alive with love and creativity -
artist’s shape that is neither life nor

chemistry - idea or dream - but all,
synthesised for imagining, pictured

for understanding, practicality -
as e=mc2 is expression, stripped

poem of energy and mass; so a ladder,
elegant and twisting - with something

of a swan’s neck; backboned poles
of alternating sugar and phosphate

groups – attached bases forming rungs
at each waisted twist, loyal partnering

of bases informed by 'Chargaff's rules’ -
Erwin Chargaff, the Czech-American

who noticed that within every DNA molecule,
the number of A bases was always the same

as the number of T; the number of C bases
was always the same as the number of G -

so Watson and Crick suggested each 'rung'
was composed of a pair of bases, joined by

hydrogen bonds, shackles - A always forming
bonds with T; C always forming bonds with G.

“We’ve discovered the secret of life,” shouted Francis
in the local pub - 1953, when the Moon was still aloof,

blue writing of Earth on the black space page unread -
and the Human Genome lay sparkling like the golden

Pharaoh undisturbed. Pattern and concept, sequence,
mechanism – art and beauty of the Double Helix not

a luxury, lucky add-on, but integral, essential, one,
as everything created by its spiral is a work of art –

creation; kinship residing at the heart of the idea,
making, creating - a holy mechanism, copying –

growing, multiplying; and will become the tiger,
leaf or twitching rabbit in the garden; eagle, fly,

or nomad snail – given four billion years, my child;
gene sequence, spun space, the place of the Word -

deoxyribonucleic acid, etching the words of a poem
with informative light and the blank spaces between -

writing on Earth’s wet page, the work of the blue planet;
sketches and drawings of creation, knitted on spiral pins.

Did God Know

‘Yet what wert thou to him, who knew his works,/ Before creation form’d them…’ Christopher Smart, 1722-71, On the Omniscience of the Supreme Being


Did God Know

Did God know the pattern of the zebra
would come from water, plastic mud -

did He dream the peacock feather,
starling throat, burning tiger skin -

white bear matching melting fur
with snow at the end of the world.

Did He think the lily skin,
or thistles’ Einstein hair -

new leaves blinking, shining,
palms still damp with spirit.

Did He invent poetry’s silver bones,
music’s flexible mercury skeleton -

silently breeding words, sounds, notes -
each one the product of a million years.


Was He amazed by us,
bred from His germ -

as our child’s face startles,
haunted by our very eyes -

tugging of umbilical wire -
groping passionflower arms.

Did He know these voices
would come in black night,

calling His name; pleading, trying
to surrender freedom for justice -

peace, healing, beauty, love,
company among dead stars -

not sure anymore if He had invented
them, or they Him in the big scheme.


Had He planted the seed of love -
His own heart, original life kernel

beating under earth, spawning all -
waiting anxious as a good gardener;

dreaming the flower,
inventing loneliness.