“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

As I occasionally do in my notes, I’m anthropomorphosizing “science” by casting a multifaceted discipline in simple human or individual terms. But now it seems that when science claims to understand the workings of a molecule of DNA, for example — the “master molecule” of life, as it’s often called — science then states that it’s stripped away the mystery of DNA and reduced our functions to easily understood mechanistic ones. But Jane and I maintain that grasping the marvelous workings of DNA should instead increase our sense of the wonder and mystery of life. The DNA lies exposed in all of its parts, but the questions about the life within it remain unanswered. Why does science want us to live thinking that we’re creatures programmed only for the survival of our selfish genes? Even the biologists (and other scientists) who insist upon our mechanistic bases do so with feeling!

3. Seth referred to the latest scientific ideas concerning “selfish genes” — a subject Jane and I had been talking about today. (Genes are units found on the chromosomes of the cell nucleus; they carry hereditary characteristics, and consist mainly of protein and DNA, or deoxyribonucleic acid.)

(I’m projecting my own ideas here, but I think that in all of its complexity DNA has motives for its physical existence [as mediated through Seth’s CU’s, or units of consciousness] that considerably enlarge upon its assigned function as the “master molecule” of life as we know it. [...] Once again we have consciousness seeking to know itself in as many ways as possible, while being aware all of the time, in those terms, of the forthcoming “death” of its medium of expression, DNA, and of DNA’s host, or “physical machine.”

[...] He also projects upon cellular components like genes and DNA¹⁴ learned concepts of “protection” and “selfishness”: DNA is said to care only about its own survival and “knowledge,” and not whether its host is man, plant, or animal. [...] I’m only half joking (is there a gene for humor?) when I protest that DNA, for example, doesn’t deserve to be regarded in such a fashion, no matter how much we push it around through recombinant techniques.¹⁵

14. Deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA, is often referred to as the “master molecule,” or the “basic building block” of life. DNA is an essential component of the protoplasmic substance of which genes and chromosomes are formed in the cell nucleus, and governs the heredity of all living things.

[...] This long-sought goal of science involves the very sophisticated recombination of DNA from such different life forms as plants and mammals, say, into new forms not seen on earth before. [...] Although risks may be present in DNA research, such as the unforeseen creation of new diseases, it seems that within strict safeguards recombinant techniques are here to stay.

[...] The gene is primarily made up of protein and a twisted double strand or helix of DNA, or deoxyribonucleic acid. [...]

[...] The genes in each cell have their individual jobs to do in furnishing the quivering templates for the manufacture (via the nucleic acids DNA and messenger RNA) of all of our bodily proteins. [...]

[...] Those men believe in evolution—that once it originated, life, as Charles Darwin proposed, has ever since been growing in complexity and “evolving” through natural selection and random mutations, or DNA copying errors, into the life and beings we see and are today. [...]