Inside the Human Genome: A Case for Non-Intelligent Design Book

This book takes a hard look at "intelligent design" from the point of view of the human genome.

As the author documents in great detail, humans are subject to over 500 genetic disorders, and doubtless many more will be identified in the coming years with the explosion of genome sequence data. Cystic fibrosis, a debilitating and often lethal disorder, typically involves one or more mutations (substitutions or deletions) in a handful of nucleotides. Similarly, Huntington's disease, a fatal neurological disorder resulting in uncontrollable body movements and dementia, has been narrowed down to errors at a specific spot on chromosome four. Did God "design" humans with these specific vulnerabilities, or is it our religious duty to seek ways (via the scientific method) to eliminate this type of suffering?

Avise states his conclusion quite forcefully [pg. 158-159:]:

"Evolution by natural causes emancipates religion from the shackles of theodicy. No longer need we agonize about why a Creator God is the world's leading abortionist and mass murderer. No longer need we query a Creator God's motives for debilitating countless innocents with horrific genetic conditions. No longer must we anguish about the interventionist motives of a supreme intelligence that permits gross evil and suffering in the world. No longer need we be tempted to blaspheme an omnipotent Deity by charging Him directly responsible for human frailties and physical shortcomings (including those that we now understand to be commonplace at molecular and biochemical levels). No longer need we blame a Creator God's direct hand for any of these disturbing empirical facts. Instead, we can put the blame squarely on the agency of insentient, natural evolutionary causation."

But lest anyone reads Avise's comments as a blanket dismissal of God or religion, Avise tempers his comments with the following [pg. 161:]:

"The evolutionary-genetic sciences thus can help religion to escape from the profound conundrums of Intelligent Design and thereby return religion to its rightful realm -- not as the secular interpreter of the biological minutiae of our physical existence but rather as a respectable philosophical counselor on grander matters including ethics and morality, the soul, spiritual-ness, sacredness, and other such matters that have always been of ultimate concern to humanity."