Mary Shelley: call your office!

The classic 1931 production of “Frankenstein,” starring Boris Karloff as the monster, ends with a sweeping condemnation of fear driven by ignorance. The local authorities and peasants, outraged and terrified at Dr. Frankenstein’s achievement, grab their pikes, rakes, pitchforks, scythes, and torches and burn the evil genius, his monster, and his lab to ashes.

I can only wonder how long it will take for certain evangelical pastors to start reaching for their torches and rallying their troops in cries of indignation and outrage, once they hear the news that scientists have now manufactured life – new life, a new species – in their labs.

The May 22nd issue of The Economist reports on the achievement of Craig Venter and Hamilton Smith, two American biologists, in creating a new living organism – one without a parent – from strands of DNA nurtured to life in the carcass of bug. The first paragraph of the lead article begins, “To create life is the prerogative of gods.” The paragraph ends, “It may come as a shock, then, that mere mortals have now made artificial life.” In view of the achievement of Drs. Venter and Hamilton, we must not make the mistake of conflating these two ideas.

The details of this important achievement are sketched out in the article, “Genesis redux.” It’s hard to miss the religious language sprinkled throughout these two articles. The remarkable achievement of Drs. Venter and Smith is likened to what religious people have always insisted was a work only God could do.

What these biologists have done is really quite remarkable. Using basic chemicals and chemical procedures, they brought to life a new creature, without any contribution from a parent. As The Economist put it, “Craig Venter, Hamilton Smith and their colleagues have done for real what Mary Shelley merely imagined. On May 20th, in the pages of Science, they announced that they had created a living creature.”

I’m not prepared to reach for my pitchfork or torch over this matter; humans, after all, have been making new creatures from the beginning – right along with every other creature under the heavens. And we’ve even pioneered technologies, some potentially quite useful, which bypass or short-cut the usual life-making process. Drs. Venter and Smith are but two of many scientists who are exploring ways of bringing new kinds of creatures into being through DNA science and technologies. While, as The Economist notes, this is a way that could lead to problems, it’s also a very promising new development in the practice of science.

What I object to is the way the process is described. In that respect, the last sentence of the opening paragraph cited above is the more accurate reportage. Drs. Venter and Smith have, indeed, made a new creature. This is not per se a thing from which we should recoil.

They have not, however, created life – at least, not in the way Scripture uses that word, “create.” In Scripture “to create” (Hebrew, bara) is something only God can do. “Create” connotes a special activity of bringing creatures into being out of nothing. The verb occurs around fifty times in the Old Testament; all New Testament uses of the Greek idea are founded on the Hebrew. In Hebrew, God is, with but a couple of exceptions, the only subject of the verb, bara. Only God can create; He alone has the wisdom and power to call into being out of nothing whatever it pleases Him to create.

This is a distinction with a difference. Men are doing many remarkable things through the protocols of science and technology, most of which – including the work of Drs. Venter and Smith – hold much promise for improving life on earth. All their work in bringing new creatures into existence, however, is merely a form of making. None of it is, or, in the nature of the case could be, creating.

So let’s don’t go reaching for the pikes and scythes just yet. Rather, let us marvel at the gifts of God, given even to those who do not know Him, so that He might make His glory know through them (Ps. 68:18 LXX).

At the same time, let us caution the members of the scientific community against falling into the hubris of thinking they’ve actually accomplished more than they have.

T. M. Moore is Principal of The Fellowship of Ailbe (www.myparuchia.com) and Dean of the BreakPoint Centurions (colsoncenter.org). Sign up to receive his daily devotionals, Crosfigell, at MyParuchia.com, ViewPoint at colsoncenter.org, and Pastor to Pastor, at worldviewchurch.org.