Hardware/software or the Image of God?

In the the past months we have heard a great deal about the human genome project in which the code of the human DNA has been unravelled. The code is hundreds of millions of `letters' long. By itself it can do nothing. It needs to be connected by another code (RNA) to a chemical factory (cytoplasm) for making proteins. The non religious multiple prize winning scientist Edward Wilson tells us that cells of life (even simpler than the human cell) "use very modern technology involving digital logic, analogue-digital conversion and signal integration". He also tells us that this complexity exceeds that of super-computers and space vehicles. (How anyone can believe that this all happened by accident - even given millions of years of the survival of the fittest - I will never know.)

However there are people who think that the human being is nothing more than complex computation - a subtle interconnection of software and hardware.

What does the Bible say?

Gen 1:2627
26 Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground."
27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.

In my office where I am typing this there are three things that have some kind of ability to store and analyse information. All three of us can learn new skills. 
First there is the computer itself. It can do amazing calculations, sort out huge lists of names and addresses into every conceivable order, communicate with other computers on the other side of the world, play chess much better than I can, and accomplish a host of other useful and not so useful tasks. 
Second there is our cat, who although she is no practical use at all, has an amazing ability to run and jump and keep her balance way above the abilities of a human athlete. 
Third there is me - in some ways of slower brain than the computer and slower legs than the cat.

What is the difference between the three of us?

Although the computer is much the quickest of us all at sorting out information and doing calculations it cannot feel happy or unhappy. When it wins at chess it does not rejoice and when it is beaten it certainly does not feel disappointed. It is not conscious at all, and I don't believe we will be able ever to make computers that will actually be happy, sad, depressed or elated - no matter how complex and amazing our technology. Even if we could make them so that they could imitate emotions they would not be really experiencing emotion. Some think that, one day, computers will have that ability. I disagree. (There is some discussion of this matter in my article on Edward Wilson's book: Consilience.)

The cat however does have emotions. Purring is a genuine sign of pleasure and an enlarged tail is a sign of real fear. (Animals may even have powers of sense beyond human knowledge.) She does like human company. She wants to be played with, to be spoken to, and to be stroked, but she also wants to demonstrate her independence of  the human race. Someone once said: `Never patronize a cat!'

Then there are humans like us. We can be happy and unhappy. But more than that we can think about our happiness. We can think about our senses. We can wonder why we are happy or wonder why we depressed. I do not believe animals do that. Not only are we conscious, we are aware of ourselves and able to think about our conscious experiences and ponder in our hearts who and what we are.

In short, a computer cannot be happy or melancholy, a cat can be happy or melancholy, and we humans can think about our emotions and therefore be happy that we are happy or depressed that we are depressed. 

Recent experiments claim to show that animals do not recognize themselves in mirrors. I am not so sure. I have reason to believe that our cat does recognize herself but shows no interest in her reflection. (If she thought her reflection was another cat she would certainly show interest!) 

Human self awareness is a sign that we are higher than the animals but it also has its potential dark side. For example when we are in pain, reflecting and thinking about our suffering, makes it worse. Pondering the future can make us afraid. The New Testament talks about some people who "through the fear of death live in life time bondage".

But the most dangerous thing for our humanity is that we turn to worship ourselves. C.S. Lewis describes this as the weak point in creation. God, in giving us self-awareness and freedom, knew that we might use that freedom to turn in on ourselves. But it was a necessary weakness if God were to create beings in His image who really could enter freely into a relationship with Him. 

The real nature of human sin as described in the Bible is that we have turned from God to self worship. We become so full of ourselves that in the end we destroy the humanity God has given us.

I heard a Russian Christian say that the cross of Jesus means that God loves us more than He loves himself! Certainly it is at the cross that we find salvation from self worship and all the horrors that it brings to our lives.