What I call the Great DNA Myth is a false teaching that continues to be spread by innumerable people in the world of biology, even though there are very many other authorities in that same world who are telling us the teaching is false. The Great DNA Myth is the myth that inside DNA is some blueprint or recipe that specifies how to make a human body.
There are various ways in which this false idea is stated, all equally false:
- Someone may describe DNA or the genome as a blueprint for an organism.
- Someone may describe DNA or the genome as a recipe for making an organism.
- Someone may describe DNA or the genome as a program for building an organism.
- Someone may claim that DNA or genomes specify the anatomy of an organism.
- Someone may claim that genotypes (the DNA in organisms) specify phenotypes (the observable characteristics of an organism).
- Someone may claim that phenotypes (the observable characteristics of an organism) are "expressions" of genotypes (the DNA in organisms).
- Someone may claim that genotypes (the DNA in organisms) "map" phenotypes (the observable characteristics of an organism) or "map to" phenotypes.
- Someone may claim that DNA contains "all the instructions needed to make an organism."
- Someone may claim that there is a "genetic architecture" for an organism's body or some fraction of that body.
- Using a little equation, someone may claim that a "genotype plus the environment equals the phenotype," a formulation as false as the preceding statements, since we know of nothing in the environment that would cause phenotypes to arise from genotypes that do not specify such phenotypes.
Weaker formulations of this false idea include claims that DNA is "life's instruction book" or "the key to life" or "the book of life" or "the secret of life." While such rather vague assertions are not as explicitly false as the statements in the bullet list above, such formulations are equally misleading, as they insinuate the false claims in such a bullet list.
There is no truth to the claim that DNA is a specification for anatomy. DNA merely specifies low-level chemical information such as which sequences of amino acids make up polypeptide chains that are the starting points of protein molecules.
There are various ways to demonstrate the untruthfulness of claims that DNA is a blueprint for making human bodies or human minds. One way is to quote scientists who deny such a claim. I have a long list of quotes from biologists and chemists and doctors who deny that DNA is any such thing as a blueprint or recipe or program for making humans. You can read that list at the end of the post here.
Another way to debunk the claim that DNA is a blueprint for making a human body is to point out the simple fact that blueprints don't build things. Buildings get built when agents intelligent enough to read and understand blueprints act by reading blueprints and then start using them as guides for how to construct something. So the idea that a human body arises from a one-cell zygote because of the reading of a blueprint is nonsensical. Even if such a blueprint existed in DNA, it would not cause the construction of a human body. If such a blueprint existed, it would be a fantastically complex set of constructions, given the enormous complexity and hierarchical organization of the human body. There would be nothing inside the womb of a mother capable of reading and understanding a body blueprint if it existed inside DNA.
Another way to debunk the claim that DNA is a blueprint for making a human body is to simply describe what we know about the coding system in DNA, and mention how such a coding system is an extremely simple system that is purely concerned with low-level chemicals, and has no handling at all of high-level anatomy. The only coding system discovered in DNA is what is called the genetic code. That is a coding system so simple it can be depicted in a simple diagram. Below is a diagram depicting the genetic code:
The letters such as A, C, T and G are the four types of nucleotides that can exist in DNA. Different triplets of these nucleotides stand for different amino acids such as lysine and leucine. Under such a coding system, the only thing that can be represented in DNA is low level chemical information such as which amino acids make up a protein. No one has ever discovered any high-level coding system in DNA under which parts of DNA can stand for things more complicated than lowly amino acids.
It is impossible to even represent in DNA one of the lowly organelles that are the building blocks of cells. It is also impossible to represent in DNA a cell or an organ or a bone or a body structure. The very low-level coding system used by DNA is utterly incapable of such representations. Similarly, under a primitive coding system such as "thumbs up means I like it" and "thumbs down means I don't like it," you can indicate your approval or disapproval of things. But so primitive a coding system is utterly incapable of transmitting complex construction information such as how to build a house.
The diagram below shows the hierarchical organization of the human body, and which parts of it are not specified by DNA.
There is an additional way to show how groundless are claims that DNA is a blueprint or recipe or program for making human bodies or minds. We can search the scholarly literature for papers using the phrase "genetic architecture" or "DNA architecture." Such a search will show that no robust evidence has ever been reported of any such thing as a genetic architecture for a body or a genetic architecture for an organ or a genetic architecture for a mind or even a genetic architecture of a cell.
Before discussing the results of such searches, I can discuss a type of study called a Genome-Wide Association Study or GWAS. In this study no attempt will be made to describe how genes could be the cause of some trait or structure. What will merely go on is that some statistical analysis will be made from some database of genomes and physical or mental characteristics. The results reported in such studies are typically small effects that you would expect to get by chance, even if DNA and genes entirely fail to specify body structure and minds.
Attempt #1: Searching for Papers Using the Phrase "Genetic Architecture"
First, I went to the Google Scholar page and used a search phrase of only "genetic architecture." Using this phrase and looking at the first 100 search results, I found no papers claiming a genetic architecture of the human structure or any organ or cell in the human body. The results were mainly papers claiming a genetic architecture of low-level things. Some of the papers are listed below:
- The genetic architecture of Type 2 diabetes
- The genetic architecture of Parkinson's disease
- The genetic architecture of multiple myeloma
- The genetic architecture of COVID-19
- The genetic architecture of colorectal cancer
There was a paper with the nonsensical title "The genetic architecture of economic and political preferences." The paper title is nonsensical because of the utter impossibility of expressing such preferences in DNA or the genes that are part of DNA. The paper did not produce findings justifying its title. To the contrary, the paper states this:
"Our analysis of individual SNPs does not reveal any associations that are significant at the conventional threshold of genome-wide significance required in genetic association studies. This is unsurprising in light of the accumulating evidence that the effects of common variants on complex outcomes are small (47), especially in the context of social science traits."
A 2013 paper discusses the lack of evidence for any genetic basis for social traits:
"Despite the extraordinary promise of extending genetic research to behavioral traits, results of studies that have searched for genetic variants associated with these traits have so far been disappointing: No strong, replicable associations have been discovered. Most of the claims of genetic associations with such traits have turned out to be false positives, or at best vast overestimates of true effect sizes. Chabris et al. (11) found that across 3 independent samples, only 1 of 12 published associations of particular genes with general intelligence replicated, and this association replicated in only 1 of the samples. Worse, the new samples were considerably larger than the originals, which suggests that all of these reports were probably false positives. Similarly, Benjamin et al. (4) found a SNP associated with educational attainment and cognitive function but could not replicate it in 3 independent samples. Benjamin et al. (12a) likewise found no significant associations with any member of a set of traits involving economic and political behavior. Finally, Beauchamp et al. (12b) conducted a GWAS of educational attainment (i.e., years of education completed) and found no hits that met conventional genome-wide significance levels; those that approached significance did not replicate in a second sample."
There was a paper with the misleading title "Insights into the genetic architecture of the human face." See the post here for a lengthy discussion of why this paper failed to show any such thing as a genetic architecture of the human face.
There is a paper with the title "Uncovering the Genetic Architecture of Major Depression." The title is misleading, because the paper does not describe any such genetic architecture. For example, we read this in the paper:
"But, what of candidate genes for MD [major depression]? Recently, Border et al. (2019) evaluated 18 major depressive disorder candidate genes (e.g., SLC6A5, BDNF, COMT, and HTR2A). In an extensive set of analyses of empirical data, they did not find much support for any candidate gene. We refer the reader to this paper for full details, but these authors concluded: 'The study results do not support previous depression candidate gene findings, in which large genetic effects are frequently reported in samples orders of magnitude smaller than those examined here. Instead, the results suggest that early hypotheses about depression candidate genes were incorrect and that the large number of associations reported in the depression candidate gene literature are likely to be false positives. ' ”
Any attempt to show a genetic cause of depression by showing that genomes may make a person more prone to depression will fail to show a direct genetic cause of mental attitudes. What happens is that people with various types of physical ailments or birth defects are more likely to be depressed, because of their physical shortcomings or afflictions. So you can't identify any gene directly causing depression (as opposed to a gene causing some physical problem that may contribute to depression).
Another paper produced by the search is a 2006 paper entitled "The molecular genetic architecture of human personality: beyond self-report questionnaires." The paper claims this: "Several new paradigms especially functional neuroimaging or ‘imaging genomics’ have strengthened the connection between 5-HTTLPR and anxiety-related personality traits." But the association is not valid. Here is a quote by an expert I quoted in a post I wrote in 2019:
"Using data from large groups of volunteers -- between 62,000 and 443,000 people -- the scientific study attempted to find whether there was any evidence that any of the genes (such as SLC6A4 and 5-HTTLPR) linked to depression were more common in people who had depression. 'We didn't find a smidge of evidence,' says Matthew Keller, the scientist who led the study. 'How on Earth could we have spent 20 years and hundreds of millions of dollars studying pure noise?' asks Keller, suggesting that hundreds of millions of dollars had been spent trying to show a genetic correlation (between genes such as SLC6A4 and depression) that didn't actually exist. "
The search also reveals a paper entitled "The Genetic Architecture of the Human Cerebral Cortex." The paper fails to discuss any specification of the structure of the human cerebral cortex in genes, and fails to discuss any way in which DNA or genes could specify any of the neuron cells that make up the cortex. What we have is simply another GWAS study attempting to statistically associate variations in DNA with tiny differences in brains. As it failed to show any actual specification of brain structure by genes or DNA, the paper should have been entitled something like "DNA Differences Can Affect Brain Structure."
Going through the first 100 papers that appear after a search on Google Scholar using only the term "genetic architecture," I found nothing to support claims that DNA is a blueprint or recipe or program for making a human body or making a human mind. Almost all of the papers were those claiming a genetic architecture of diseases. The few papers that referred to a genetic architecture of some large structure (such as eyes or the cerebral cortex) were simply mistitled papers. For example, the paper with a title referring to a "genetic architecture of the human face" should have been titled something "Genomic effects on face appearance." And the paper entitled "The Genetic Architecture of the Human Cerebral Cortex" should have been titled "Gene effects on brain structure."
Attempt #2: Searching for Papers Using the Phrase "DNA Architecture of"
Looking through 100 science papers that show up after doing a Google Scholar search using the phrase "DNA architecture of," I found not a single one with a title that claims to have found any such thing as a DNA architecture of the human body or the human mind or any organ in the human body or any cell in the human body.
Attempt #3: Searching for Papers Using the Phrase "Genetic Architecture of Eyes"
Looking through 100 science papers that show up after doing a Google Scholar search using the phrase "genetic architecture of eyes," I found not a single one that claims to have found any such thing as a genetic architecture of eyes. All that I find are a few claiming a genetic architecture of eye color.
Attempt #4: Searching for Papers Using the Phrase "DNA Architecture of Eyes"
Looking through 100 science papers that show up after doing a Google Scholar search using the phrase "DNA architecture of eyes," I found not a single one that claims to have found any such thing as a DNA architecture of eyes
Attempt #5: Searching for Papers Using the Phrase "Genetic Architecture of Hearts"
Looking through 100 science papers that show up after doing a Google Scholar search using the phrase "genetic architecture of hearts," I found not a single one that claims to have found any such thing as a genetic architecture of hearts. All that I find are a few claiming a genetic effect on some types of heart disease.
Attempt #6: Searching for Papers Using the Phrase "DNA Architecture of Hearts"
Looking through 100 science papers that show up after doing a Google Scholar search using the phrase "DNA architecture of hearts," I found not a single one that claims to have found any such thing as a DNA architecture of hearts.
Attempt #7: Searching for Papers Using the Phrase "Genetic Architecture of Human Body"
Looking through 100 science papers that show up after doing a Google Scholar search using the phrase "genetic architecture of human body," I found not a single one that claims to have found any such thing as a genetic architecture of the human body.
Attempt #8: Searching for Papers Using the Phrase "DNA Architecture of Human Body"
Looking through 100 science papers that show up after doing a Google Scholar search using the phrase "DNA architecture of human body," I found not a single one that claims to have found any such thing as a DNA architecture of the human body.
Attempt #9: Searching for Papers Using the Phrase "Genetic Architecture of Human Structure"
Looking through 100 science papers that show up after doing a Google Scholar search using the phrase "genetic architecture of human structure," I found not a single one that claims to have found any such thing as a genetic architecture of the human structure.
Attempt #10: Searching for Papers Using the Phrase "Genetic Architecture of Human Skeleton"
Looking through 100 science papers that show up after doing a Google Scholar search using the phrase "genetic architecture of human skeleton," I found only a single one that refers to a genetic architecture of the human skeleton. One paper has the title "The Genetic Architecture of the Human Skeletal Form." The paper attempts to find associations between genes and things such as height and skeletal defects. No claim is made of genes that actually specify the human skeleton or any bone in the human skeleton. The human body has 206 bones. The paper makes no claim that any gene specifies the structure of any one of these bones. The title "The Genetic Architecture of the Human Skeletal Form" does not match any claims made in the paper.
Attempt #11: Searching for Papers Using the Phrase "Genetic Architecture of Cells"
Looking through 100 science papers that show up after doing a Google Scholar search using the phrase "genetic architecture of cells," I found not a single one that claims to have found any such thing as a genetic architecture of cells.
Attempt #12: Searching for Papers Using the Phrase "DNA Architecture of Cells"
Looking through 100 science papers that show up after doing a Google Scholar search using the phrase "DNA architecture of cells," I found not a single one that claims to have found any such thing as a DNA architecture of human cells. I did find a paper entitled "DNA Replication and Genomic Architecture of Very Large Bacteria." The paper gives us a good example of an inappropriate use of the phrase "genetic architecture." The paper does nothing to show there is a genetic architecture for bacteria, showing no such thing as a DNA plan for making a bacteria. It merely claims that very large bacteria have larger DNA. Neither DNA nor its genes contain any specification of how to make a bacteria, or even any of the organelles that make up such a bacteria.
Conclusion
The searches above help show that claims that DNA is a blueprint, recipe or program for making human bodies are groundless. If such claims were true, then doing the searches above would reveal a great abundance of substantive papers that showed something like a genetic architecture of the human body or the genetic architecture of cells or the genetic architecture of the human skeleton or the genetic architecture of human structure or the genetic architecture of eyes or the genetic architecture of the heart. The searches above produce no such thing. The closest matches found are simply papers that establish how genes influence things such as the structure of cells or the structure of eyes or the structure of the skeleton or the structure of the heart or the overall human structure. None of the papers establish that genes or DNA specify any such thing as a specification of the structure of cells or the structure of eyes or the structure of the skeleton or the structure of the heart or the overall human structure.
A great technique to help show that baloney is baloney and that bunk is bunk and that lies are lies is to dismantle a big lie by asking smaller related questions. Here is an example of using such a technique, in which John debunks a false boast made about someone living in a grand home like a mansion.
John: So where do you live?
Bill: I live in such a magnificent house! I think of it as my mansion. I'm living like a king.
John: So how many bedrooms are there?
Bill: Uh, just one.
John: And how many bathrooms do you have?
Bill: Uh, just one.
John: So you must have a big living room, right?
Bill: Well, it fits me and my wife in it.
John: How big is the back yard and front yard?
Bill: Well, we don't actually have a back yard. But we have a little front yard. It's big enough to fit 2 plastic patio chairs.
John: Do you have one of those big kitchens?
Bill: Well, it's more like a kitchenette with a hot plate and a mini-fridge, on the left side of our little living room.
John: It sounds like you're actually living in a mobile home, right?
Bill: But I'm very proud of it. It's one of the best in our trailer park.
I have used a similar technique in this post. To help dismantle the claim that DNA is a specification for making human bodies, I have asked smaller questions such as:
- Is there someone showing DNA specifies how to make a cell?
- Is there someone showing DNA specifies how to make a skeleton?
- Is there someone showing DNA specifies how to make an eye?
- Is there someone showing DNA specifies how to make a heart?
- Is there someone showing DNA specifies how to make a brain?
The answers to all these questions are: no, there isn't. The "no" answers to such questions help show how bogus and phony are claims that DNA is a specification for making a human body. For insight on why we were told for so long the lie that DNA is a specification for making a body, read my post here.
Below is a diagram of Darwinist theory that I took from page 69 of the source here, and annotated in red. The diagram shows how an appeal to luck is at the core of Darwinism. At the top of the diagram we have an appeal to "fortuitous mutations," "fortuitous" being a word meaning "lucky." Since the so-called "natural selection" of Darwinism is not actually selection (as it involves no actual choice), a better description of Darwinism is "Darwin's theory of insanely lucky luck." With the annotations in red, the diagram explains why Darwinism fails as a theory trying to explain very complex anatomy innovations and very complex cell innovations. Because DNA does not specify the structure of cells and does not specify anatomy, there are no possible lucky mutations in DNA that can explain how we got the enormously complex biology innovations that we see in the natural world.
The walls of a house can be built with about 10,000 bricks. An adult human requires about 37 trillion cells of about 200 types, most of which must be placed in the right places in the body. Most of these cells are gigantically more organized than a brick wall, with the average cell requiring a special arrangement of about 100 trillion atoms. Given such a reality, the progression from a speck-sized zygote to the full organization of the human body is not like a pile of bricks progressing to become a house, but something more like a million piles of bricks, wires, doors, glass panes, pipes, floor boards and electrical wires gradually progressing to become a city as organized as New York City, without any visible builders being around. How there can occur such a marvel of organization is a mystery a thousand miles over the heads of today's biologists.
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