Are we just DNA?

Question

If one starts from the premis of evolution - and I know there are lots of creationists out there - one questions the purpose of life.
If all there is is the survival of the fittest - in other words, those with the best 'fit' for survival - this is transmitted through DNA to the next generation, and so on.
But all this has achieved is to enable the easier transmission of a genetic success through generations.
So, are we just a vessel for our DNA? Is life really as empty as that?
This perspective tends to make me belive that life is just a method of preserving DNA

Answer 1

Once you realize that there are *many* "points of view", then this issue is less troubling.

- From the point of view of a cold virus, a human being is just a vessel for making more virus, and then spreading them.

- From the point of view of a domestic chicken, a human being (the farmer) is just a vessel for making more chickens.

- From the point of view of an oxygen (O2) molecule, a human being is just a vessel for finding a carbon atom to turn it into a CO2 molecule.

- From the point of view of a strawberry, a human being (that eats and poops) is just a way of distributing seeds.

- From the point of view of a sperm cell, a baby boy is just a vessel for (someday) making more sperm cells.

- So yes, from the point of view of DNA, a human being is just a vessel for replicating that DNA. (And not just in the mundane reproduction point of view, but that a human being is the culmination of better and better 'designs' for DNA propagation.)

But that does not diminish the idea that we are *intelligent* and therefore can look at things from *our* point of view. So from our point of view, DNA is just a human's way of making more humans.

But more importantly, we have hopes and desires and joys and tragedies, and we think amazing thoughts, and we learn how to be moral and good to each other and to other organisms, etc. etc. The fact that all these thoughts and abilities may just be side-effects of DNA's everlasting efforts to replicate itself, does not diminish those thought and abilities one bit. How we look from the point of view of other life forms, or to DNA itself, is irrelevant. What we are to ourselves is *everything*. In other words, we are lucky enough to be aware that we *have* a point of view.

Another *really* key thing ... we have something that transcends DNA. We have LANGUAGE. This means that we can acquire thoughts and abilities in our lifetime, and pass things on to offspring (anybody's offspring, not just our own) in ways that are *much* faster than DNA can do. It is language that gives us cultures, and civilization, and technology, and art, and the ability to be horrible and wonderful to each other. Language (IMO) may have way more far-reaching effects on the universe than DNA will.

And that last sentence is why what we do is very, very important.

- P.S. Just don't think that this means that, to a thought in the brain, a human being is just a way of transporting that thought to other brains. :-)

Answer 2

Such would seem to be the conclusion of The Selfish Gene by Dr. Dawkins and this has has a lot of credibility. DNA covers all organisms not just us right down to virus level. A virus certainly has no other purpose than to replicate and can be seen as the most selfish expresion of DNA involving the destruction of host cells in pursuit of replication.
Looking back at ourselves what is the driving force for a lot of humans - sex, which of course is the transmission of DNA. If you wanted to look at it religously it boils down to one sentence;
"Go forth and multiply".

Answer 3

From one single fertilised egg (cell), the 23 pairs of chromosomes with DNA have the "intelligence" to create and duplicate into a complex organism with 100 trillion cells, each with replicas of the originally merged DNA strands. The natural variations determine how we will age, skin colour, baldness etc

Each strand of DNA is about 0.000000001mm in diameter and about 1000mm long if it was uncoiled, with a sequence of about 3billion codes from the basic A-T-G-C code.

Are we just DNA? Even this is an increadible marvel.

Answer 4

I have heard this argument before, and yes, it's seems that ironically, DNA does not exist to perpetuate us, we exist to perpetuate it. Life is, scientifically, matter attempting to be in an ordered state. Why? Who knows. You could answer with religious answers or that life is simply a bi-product of chemical reactions. Why do salt crystals arrange in such a symmetric combination? It's chemical.

Answer 5

Believe what you want to believe. Being a vessel for DNA might sound pointless but maybe it's true.

Answer 6

Salvador Dali once said "Eroticism is the cybernetic principle inherent in the DNA molecule". I think there is more to life than that!

Answer 7

Not the way that I would've put it myself, but basically yes. We seem to exist for no other reason than to reproduce so that our genetics get carried on.

Answer 8

course not! BUT by the sounds of things U R JUST DNA

Answer 9

and water

Answer 10

yeah sure, and we came from monkeys, bullshit
i ain't no damn dirty ape