Blood is Blood, DNA not Required

19 Mar 2015 2 Comments

by C.O. Bonham in Random Musing, Scientific Musing, Theological Musings Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Sorry for the long wait, but random thoughts come rather sporadically. So to motivate myself I started with a prompt:

 Moses and Aaron did just as the Lord had commanded. He raised his staff in the presence of Pharaoh and his officials and struck the water of the Nile, and all the water was changed into blood. (Exodus 7:20) NIV

I remember as a young Sunday school student listening to the story of the ten plagues and wondering, “When the Nile turned to blood whose DNA did it have?” When I asked this foolish question aloud, I got a foolish answer. “It must have been God’s DNA.”

This answer may have sufficed, save for a funny fact that I learned while reading Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton. I have since confirmed it and now know that human red blood cells have no nucleus. They do not contain DNA. Blood is just blood. It’s the white blood cells and platelets in our blood that allows scientists to collect DNA from a blood sample. This is also why oral swabs are used when a comparison test is preformed. More nuclei to pull DNA from.

It is entirely possible that God turned the Nile river into a river of pure hemoglobin. Thus making it a true river of blood.

But there is the possibility that it wasn’t human blood, it could have been reptile blood or fish blood. There are those who theorize that it wasn’t even blood but rather red algae. To that I say, no. Ancient men might not have had microscopes and computers, but everyone who has ever scraped a knee or bit their tongue knows blood. The smell of the iron, the texture, the color, the way it flows. The thing is all humans have blood. Human blood would have been recognized and understood. They would have known it as human blood. Human blood would have had the most impact for the purpose God intended.

Naturally I can’t expect everyone to be a cellular biologist, but it seems to me that a better understanding of science could go a long way to helping keep the faith strong in this scientific world we live in.

Instead of, “It was God’s DNA.” How about this answer, “It didn’t need to have DNA, because it wasn’t in a body, so there wouldn’t have been any white blood cells for defense or any platelets to induce clotting. So you see it was just red blood cells.” Or the even more simple answer, “Lets look it up,” naturally smart phones were not in production back then but my outdated encyclopedia from that era still has the correct answer.

The point of all this? Well if you were or know of someone who started off strong in the faith and found yourself tempted away by scientific logic, think for a minute. Maybe it wasn’t your faith that was wrong, maybe it’s your science. God is the creator of all. That means he’s the creator of Science too.

The Big Three

09 Nov 2011 2 Comments

by C.O. Bonham in Random Musing, Shakespeare, Star Trek Tags: , , ,

There are three great works that are so deeply ingrained into our popular culture that there isn’t a person on the planet who wouldn’t recognize quotes from one of  The Big Three.

These three opuses will forever be around to shape the human imagination and to inspire future generations.

The three greatest collections of knowledge and inspiration, which are so powerful that each was built on the shoulder of the one before, are:

The Holy Bible — which is the very truth of God. This is the work of works. It has shaped our modern culture into what it is.

The Christian Bible tells us why we are the way we are and what we should yet strive to be.

The Complete Works of Shakespeare — Encompasses of the human spirit. It tells us what we are as the Human race. Shakespeare shows us how we think and how we feel.

Like the Bible, Shakespeare requires Faith. denying that Shakespeare wrote his own plays is like denying that Jesus was the Son of God.  In the same way that no one would die for a madman, would Shakespeare’s friends have bothered spending the money to publish the First Folio if someone else had written the plays?

And the last but definitely not the least is. . .

Star Trek — Take the franchise as a whole or just take the three original seasons of The Original Series, either way it would be hard to deny Star Trek’s influence over our modern way of life. Just flip open your Cell phone and talk, you are holding the communicator from Star Trek.
Star Trek inspires us to look to the future. It encourages progress and it shows us what we can achieve and what the future can become.

Star Trek also embraces the past and reminded the generation of the late 60’s and the early 70’s of the moral lessons that were no longer being taught in their class rooms. Maybe not a lot of people realize it but Star Trek is actually a series of Morality plays that expound Biblical morals and Shakespearian ethics.

Go ahead question me but then sit down and really watch it. Even if the show is lacking in direct quotes you have to admit that the ideas are there.

So there they are the Three most important contributions to modern society. The inspirations for everything  we achieve.

The Record of the past that tells us how we began and why we are here.

The poetry and plays of The Bard that move  us to thought and spark our imaginations.

And the Futuristic morality plays that dare us to move forward without losing sight of the past.

Interesting how the Big Three move through the different mediums from written record to stage plays to television production.

One wonders, Will there be a fourth and what form will it take?

%d bloggers like this: