Hail Mary full of DNA
I saw this Time cover over at Evangelical Catholicism and I thought that the Rosary picture is quite profound even if they didn't mean it that way. A title like God vs. Science is like Reason vs. Logic.
The picture shows a seamless interweaving of life and the Rosary. This picture also reminded me of what John Paul II wrote in Rosarium Virginis Mariae.
Thus the simple prayer of the Rosary marks the rhythm of human life
That just as DNA is fundamental to life, so is prayer. Each strand in DNA is a chain of chemicals called nucleotides. There are only four nucleotides in DNA: adenine (abbreviated A), cytosine (C), guanine (G) and thymine (T) and are used to make up all of the sequences. There are also only four types of prayer (A)doroation (C)ontrition (T)hanksgiving (S)upplication. Every prayer is made up of at least one of these sequences and the perfect prayers like the Our Father are made up of all four.
DNA has been called the chain of life and the Rosary has been prayed in what are called life chains. Fr Groeschel also wrote a wonderful book called The Rosary: Chain of Hope (which includes the Luminous Mysteries) There are DNA ladders and Ladder Rosaries.
I think this picture truly has a lot to meditate on and I think Time has produced a very good icon even if done unintentionally.
Here is a related story.
Vatican, Nov. 06 (CWNews.com) - There is no conflict between Christian faith and scientific truth, Pope Benedict XVI assured participants in this week's plenary session of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences.
In an English-language address to the 80 scientists, gathered in Rome for a discussion on scientific accuracy and the limits of prediction, the Pope conceded that many people see the progress of science as a reason to dismiss faith.
But in fact, the Pope said, scientific inquiry itself is part of God's plan for mankind. And science has its own limits, he added. "Science replace philosophy and revelation by giving an exhaustive answer to man's most radical questions: questions about the meaning of living and dying, about ultimate values, and about the nature of progress itself." Regarding the specific theme of the Pontifical Academy's discussions, the Holy Father said that scientists have a moral obligation to accuracy, and to recognizing their own limitations. In practical terms, he said, "this means avoiding needlessly alarming predictions when these are not supported by sufficient data or exceed science's actual ability to predict. But it also means avoiding the opposite, namely a silence, born of fear, in the face of genuine problems."
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I like your analysis much better than Time's article :o)
and if you modernize the (S)upplication to (G)imme what I need, the four types match up.
But then again ACTG sounds more like the Act-Up crowd rather than biblical like ACTS.
"There is no conflict between Christian faith and scientific truth, Pope Benedict XVI assured participants in this week's plenary session of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences."
So does this mean the Church has finally accepted the overwhelming evidence in favor of evolution? Cool!
(Overwhelming evidence? Like the absence of a fossil record?)
BTW, the receptionist at work gives me her TIMES and Newsweeks when she's done with them. I've never seen such blatant shilling for the Democratic Party in my life--and I've read the Washington Post for years. It's no surprise that this cover story would be issued just before the election.
I seldom read Time or Newsweek, and when I do, I only believe 1/4 of what's in it. :P
"So does this mean the Church has finally accepted the overwhelming evidence in favor of evolution? Cool!"
Well, since evolution has no bearing on theology, the church has stayed silent on it, as always. The church doesn't have a stance on everything, just matters of faith and morals.
Remarkably in what biologists call the nucleotide wild-card alphabet, the letter S (for the word "strong" meaning three hydrogen bonds) "matches" guanine as well as cytosine - suggesting that God's Granting is strongly related to our Contrition? ("How many times must I forgive?")
Incidentally the wild-card alphabet forms a Boolean Algebra of 16 members, which I had to deal with in my dissertation on the use of computing to assist in work on RNA sequence analysis.
Ahem. But more relevant to this topic, I also wrote something about the connection between the Rosary and life last year - here are the links.
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
(back cover)
This reminded me of the Philip K. Dick novel, VALIS, an acronym for VAst Living Intelligence System. Dick was in his gnostic Christian phase, toward the end of his life.
Anyway, there was one part where he made a connection between the double-helix shape and the simple line drawing of a fish, the kind you see as a magnet on the trunks of Christians' cars. In other words, you make the double-helix by connecting a bunch of those "fish" symbols together.
I thought that was an amusing insight, and perhaps very profound.
"So does this mean the Church has finally accepted the overwhelming evidence in favor of evolution? Cool!"
It is interesting how anti-God groups fanatically cling to a lame theory as their "proof" that God does not exist. Any well-intended, learned, scientific questioning of Darwin's theory will buy you a one way ticket to Christianfundamentalistlant in the mind of the Darwin fundamentalists.
I personally don't care much about God's process to make us. However, time is also not on Darwin's side. If you give random evolution the benefit of the doubt (in that 50% of the mutations were positive) there is not enough time in 20 billion years for the necessary sequential changes to make even a simple mammal.
But then, math is not relevant to these Darwinists.
On my blog this Am I posted this cover article as well. My fear is that the atheists will see this cover which will inspire them to create a rosary, where they finger the individual nucleotide bases of the Double helix reciting "adenine, guanine cytosine,"etc all the while meditating on the Mysteries of the Origin of the Universe :)
Jeff,
Fantastic analogy to the Rosary! Thank you. It even adapts well to the Anglican Rosary.
And, Dr, Thursday,
I have printed yours off for use in a class on the Rosary in the near future at our mission. Thanks.
Blogs are so informative where we get lots of information on any topic. Nice job keep it up!!
Blogs are so informative where we get lots of information on any topic. Nice job keep it up!!
Blogs are so informative where we get lots of information on any topic. Nice job keep it up!!
Blogs are so informative where we get lots of information on any topic. Nice job keep it up!!