One of the complaints often leveled at science by religious clerics is that embracing science tends to lead one away from accepting a religious faith. I'm sure that that is true in many cases, but I contend science attracts more people toward religion than it does the reverse. A well-known example of this is Francis Collins, the current Director of the National Institute of Health and former head of Project Genome, the identification of all human genes housed in DNA. Dr. Collins has several times let it be known in press interviews that he is a devout Evangelical Christian, and that his work with DNA was instrumental in bringing him to that faith.
Like Francis Collins, my inspiration toward a deeper religious faith has to do with DNA. But not so much as what it does, but rather how it does it. To begin with, DNA (deoxyribose nucleic acid) is a sequence (i.e., a polymer) of what are called nucleotides, with each nucleotide in the chain being attached to a molecule of the sugar deoxyribose, which is ribose missing one molecule of oxygen. As it exists in the cells of our body, two such long strands of DNA are wound together with these double strands comprising each of the 46 chromosomes packed into the nucleus of every cell in our body. A gene is a section of DNA on a chromosome that codes for the manufacture of a specific protein of which we have a multitude. It is proteins that carry out the lion's share of physical and chemical properties of all living cells, and in doing so they tend to wear out and must be replaced.
When a protein needs to be made, the gene section of DNA that codes for the manufacture of that protein receives a signal which activates the gene. The first step following activation is that the two strands of DNA separate at the site of the gene exposing the sequence of nucleotides that will code for the protein to be assembled. At this point I'm going to skip a multitude of steps (I heard that 'yea') and cut to the chase by describing what it is about DNA coding for the manufacture of proteins that enhanced my religious faith.
The nucleotides within DNA consists of four different molecules of nucleic acids: Adenine, Guanine, Cytosine and Thymine (A, G, C and T). Each chromosome strand contains several million nucleotides strung out in linear fashion in what appears on first glance to be a random order. But each chromosome strand of DNA is divided into several gene segments, with each gene coding for a different protein.
The way that the nucleotides in a gene code for the manufacture of a protein is that specific combinations of three of the four nucleotides, called "codons", determine the order in which amino acids line up in what will become the primary structure of the protein. In this manner the sequence of nucleotides within a gene is in essence the written instructions for the assembly of a protein. By this analogy, each codon (three of the four nucleotides) acts as a letter in a word with several words making a sentence and sentences onto paragraphs and so on. With this in mind, the entire human genome of some 25,000 genes is like a library of instruction manuals for the creation of an individual person.
Considering that the number of combinations of four items taken three at a time is four cubed (4X4X4 = 64), and that we only have 20 amino acids, there are more than three times as many codons than there are amino acids. It turns out that some amino acids are directed by more than one codon, and some codons serve as punctuation marks, capital letters and so on.
The bottom line here is that the genome of an organism is in essence a written language. If that is so, then who wrote it? My thought on this, is that it was written by a Deity. Who or what that Deity might be is one of the questions that I've been wrestling with and has drawn me more into the Christian faith to find answers. That's my brief take on how science has impacted my faith in a positive manner.