Our Christian faith teaches that we’re created or designed according to the “image and likeness of God.”
Genesis 1:26-27 lucidly states:
“God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, to our likeness. Let them rule over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, over the cattle, over the wild animals, and over all creeping things that crawl along the ground.’ So God created man in his image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.”
Now, in the light of our ultra-advanced modern science, is there anything in our anatomic or physiological makeup that can scientifically prove our being “image and likeness” of a super-intelligent being or God?
American scientist and New York Times’ best-selling author, Gregg Braden, believes so and pegs the divine code or thumbprint of God on our DNA (Deoxyribonucleic acid), a molecule composed of two polynucleotide chains that coil around each other to form a double helix carrying genetic instructions for the development, functioning, growth and reproduction of all known organisms.
On 28th February 1953, a Saturday, two men walked into a pub in Cambridgeshire, England and they announced the discovery that would forever change the world and the way we think of ourselves. At noon that day, Cambridge University scientists James Watson and Francis Crick announced to their colleagues who were having lunch at the pub, saying, “We have just discovered the secret of life!”
Watson and Crick had just made their breakthrough discovery of the double helix pattern of the DNA molecule. As humans we have 23 pairs of chromosomes in our cells; each chromosome is made of smaller, more precise regions of DNA that are called genes. The codes that are contained within the genes and the chromosomes determine everything about the function of our bodies from the regulation of hormones and our blood chemistry, how fast and to what size our genes grow, the size of our brains, the kind of eyes we have, how long we live, and so on and so forth.
With the startling scientific research and progress regarding DNA, Gregg believes that we have been purposely created or designed by a super-intelligent source, who purposely embedded a signature or thumbprint in each of us.
“Personally, I’ve always believed that we are here on purpose, that we’re an intentional species, and that we’re a product of an intentional creation that began long ago. And while I confess that I’ve never fully understood the how or the why of our existence, I am convinced beyond any reasonable doubt, by seeing the complexity of the DNA in our bodies, that we are here by design. It makes sense then that somewhere in our past, whatever or whoever is responsible for our being here, would have left us a clue to tell us that we’re here on purpose,” Braden explained.
In his best-selling book, “Human by Design: From Evolution by Chance to Transformation by Choice,” Braden postulates that, contrary to Darwin’s Evolution Theory, we did not descend from the Neanderthals, but sometime about 200,000 years ago, our chromosomes were modified to 46, from the chimpanzees’ 48 chromosomes. Paraphrasing a quote from the National Academy of Sciences’ research conclusion, Braden pointed out: “It appears that long ago, two separate chromosomes from chimpanzees, chromosomes 2a and 2b, were merged or fused into the single larger chromosome that is now our human chromosome number two.”
Human chromosome 2, according to Braden, is the key that gives us our humanness, the fusion of which must have been done intentionally by an intelligent source.
“The evidence overwhelmingly suggests that – we are a product of an intelligent form of life; that the timing, precision and accuracy of our genetic mutations and the technology required to yield such mutations imply forethought and intention of an advanced intelligence; the intelligence that carried out genetic modifications giving us our humanness had the advanced technology to do so 200,000 years ago in a way that we are only learning to do today,” Braden added.
Braden even further ventures to theorize that the tetragrammaton biblical Hebrew name of God, “YHVH” or (YaHWeH), which can be decoded from our genes, may correspond to the four elements that make all of life, thus: Hydrogen = Y(ad), Nitrogen = H(ey), Oxygen = V(av), and Carbon = G(imel).
Verily, in sum, since time immemorial we’ve been restlessly anxious to find our primordial source. From our Judeo-Christian tradition, we have established that we came from God, having been designed according to “his image and likeness.” From science, we’ve discovered the intricate and mind-boggling imprint of our super-intelligent source in our DNA. We have even tried to jump-cross into the vast interstellar space even as we claimed to have found the Higgs Boson or “God Particle” at the CERN Laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland.
Yet, in a sublime instance, we can only partake St. Augustine’s yearning when he said,
“You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.”