Some Thoughts upon the Immortality of Human Science

Upon reading this write up about this remarkable research project that has created tags RNA and DNA within living cells, I was forced to formulate this question to my quondam philosophical adversaries. So, as reductionist materialists, do you still insist that the irrational acausality of purposeless chaotic and universal entropy somehow wound up creating this vast hyperorganization of cellular biology? Really???

Now, I am not in any way an advocate of simplistic biblically inspired creationism. However, I have not ever been able to refute certain classical principles that seek to prove that there exists a universal ordering power or force that is continually transforming the substance of this universe for the better. And that the human intellect is uniquely situated to uncover and indeed further the potential of this very power for the benefit of untold generations of our collective progeny. 

Let me restate this in another way. We as mortal and conscious beings can only know that that consciousness is ever present while we are alive, existing. (And I include our conscious experience of dream states or the periods that we must intuit of provably non conscious lapses in wakefulness.) What we can never know is non existence, in the pessimistic and cowering words of Shakespeare's Hamlet that "undiscovered country, from whose bourn," from which "no traveller returns, puzzles the will, and makes us rather bear those ills we have." 

Putting aside such maudlin reflections, isn't it the case then that we do know that life will go on for humanity in its universal struggle to discover beyond this our "mortal coil?" And thus in potential, if nothing else our very existing consciousness is capable of enhancing that purposive scientific mission inherent in our human existence? And may we not also agree that by necessity this entire process spanning the whole unfolding of human history is in fact good? Or indeed, the Good?

DNA and associated cellular machinery is gathered and organized by certain non-coding RNAs, each region shown in a different colored jellybean-shape in this model. Credit: Inna-Marie Strazhnik

(For educational purpose only.)