A Soul Might Explain Instincts, but DNA and Brains Cannot

The discovery of DNA was one of the great triumphs of science. But ever since this discovery there has been a strange trend which we may call “DNA inflation,” “DNA exaggeration,” or even “DNA apotheosis.” The trend has been to carelessly describe DNA in ever more grandiose terms, regardless of the actual facts. One of the central myths about DNA is the idea is that it is some kind of blueprint for an organism. Another common claim is that DNA is a recipe (or a library of recipes) for making an organism. It is also sometimes claimed that DNA is like a computer program for generating our bodies.

But such statements are not warranted by the facts. Judging from the facts, we must conclude that while DNA uses a code of symbolic representations (the genetic code), DNA is not a blueprint for making a human, is not a recipe for making a human, and is not a program or algorithm for making a human.

There are several facts that dictate this conclusion:

1. DNA does not store information in some general purpose language in which complex body plans might be stated. DNA stores information using a minimal, stripped-down “amino acid” language capable of listing only the chemical ingredients (amino acids) that make up a protein. Other than the word “stop,” the only “words” that you can state in DNA are words such as tryosine, valine, proline, lysine and serine, words that specify amino acids. Given such a limitation, no one can explain how DNA could possibly contain a three-dimensional blueprint for a body or a list of instructions for constructing an organism.
2. If it were true that DNA had instructions for making the three-dimensional form of a body, we know of nothing below the neck of a female that would be capable of interpreting and understanding such instructions. Using 200 types of cells, each so complex and dynamic they have been compared to factories, the human body is a marvel of multi-level hierarchical organization, and is more physically complex than anything humans have ever constructed. Any instructions for making a human would be fantastically complex. Extremely complex instructions require something smart enough to interpret them, and just as there is nothing in a cell capable of interpreting something written in English, there is nothing in a womb that could be capable of understanding and executing three-dimensional assembly instructions if they were written in DNA. The idea that organisms arise because of a DNA blueprint is therefore a childish notion, like the notion that you could ride a balloon to the moon. 
3. Despite cataloging the entire human genome, and exhaustively analyzing it, scientists have not discovered any part of DNA where a blueprint of the human body or a recipe for making humans is stored. For example, we have found no part in DNA where it specifies that humans should have two arms, two legs, ten fingers, ten toes and one neck; and we have found no part in DNA where it is specifies that heads and eyes should be rather round, or where it specifies the shape of the heart or the ear.
4. If body plans were stored in DNA, we would expect a human to have vastly more genes than much simpler organisms. But the opposite is often true; for example, humans have fewer than 25,000 genes, but the rice plant has between 32,000 and 50,000 genes.
5. The human genome is not big enough to store the body plan of a human, something that would require many more bytes than the mere 700 megabytes in human DNA.

So it is not true that a human baby develops from a fertilized egg because some instructions for making human are read from DNA. So how is it that morphogenesis occurs? How is it that a fertilized egg is able to progress to become a newborn baby? This is a great mystery of nature we do not at all understand. Such a mystery is an embarrassment to many types of thinkers, who want to think that biological life is something that has been pretty much figured out by scientists. Such thinkers will try to hide the fact that there is a gigantic secret of life we are quite ignorant about, and they will promote the incorrect idea that DNA is “the secret of life,” as if there were no gigantic secrets of biological life we don't understand.

There are actually six gigantic mysteries of life we do not understand:

1. The mystery of morphogenesis, of how a fertilized ovum manages to progress to become a newborn baby. The mystery is unsolved because DNA does not specify how to build a human being or any of its 200 types of cells.
2. The mystery of protein folding, the mystery of why newly formed linear sequences of amino acids (called polypeptide chains) form very rapidly into complex three-dimensional shapes needed for them to be functional.
3. The mystery of the origin of life.
4. The mystery of the origin of species and complex macroscopic biological functionality, which is not at all explained by the vacuous idea of random mutations and so-called "natural selection" (which is a misleading term because "selection" is a word referring to choice by an agent, and those who appeal to "natural selection" are referring to something that does not involve such choice).
5. The mystery of the origin of consciousness and higher mental functions.
6. The mystery of what causes organisms to have instincts.

Let us look at the question of instincts. Ever-prone to depict themselves as understanding things they do not understand, our scientists sometime suggest that we understand what causes instincts. They may suggest that instincts come from an animal's DNA. The idea is every bit as untenable as the idea that DNA contains instructions on how to build an organism.

Let us consider some examples of instinct. When a baby is born, it has an immediate urge to suck on its mother's breast. This is an instinct. But how could such a tendency ever be represented in DNA, which can only state groups of amino acids? There is no way in which DNA can express the shape of a breast or nipple, nor could it express any idea such as “move your mouth to this shape when you see it.”

Another instinct is the maternal instinct. Most mammals will have an instinct to protect their young. But how could such an instinct be expressed in DNA? Can we imagine, for example, that the DNA of a bear contains some little image of a bear cub, along with some type of message saying to protect this type of animal? Not at all, given the severe expressive limitations of DNA, something that is basically capable of listing only the chemical ingredients of proteins. A message such as “protect them” is utterly incapable of being expressed by the primitive “chemicals only” bare-bones language used by DNA.

In the animal world, we see many incredibly complex instincts. For example, spiders have instincts to build spider webs, bees have instincts to make complex hives, and some birds have incredibly complex instincts. According to one site, “The monarch butterfly makes a multigenerational 4000 mile annual trip in which descendants of the third or fourth generation know exactly where the first generation started.” Wikipedia.org tells us this:

"The monarchs begin their southern migration from September to October. Eastern and northeastern populations, up to 500,000 monarch butterflies, migrate at this time. Originating in southern Canada and the United States, they travel to overwintering sites in central Mexico. The butterflies arrive at their roosting sites in November. They remain in their roosts during the winter months and then begin their northern migration in March. No individual butterfly completes the entire round trip. Female monarchs lay eggs for a subsequent generation during the northward migration.  Four generations are involved in the annual cycle."

There is no plausible scenario by which such complex instincts could be represented in DNA.  Nor can we explain such instincts by anything in a brain. Sometimes people appeal to "hardwiring" in a brain. No one has ever discovered any effect by which particular types of wiring in the brain can explain complex behavior. "You're hard-wired to do this" is usually just fantasy talk.  The analogy of "hard-wiring" was stolen from the behavior of early electrical equipment.  A particular arrangement of wires in early telephone switchboards might create one particular communication effect that would not occur under a different arrangement. There is no evidence that particular arrangements of wire-like axons in the brain explain particular behaviors. 

Consider the case of sex and a human male. A typical young human male will have a very strong instinct to have sex with a human female. But about five percent of the human male population will have no such instinct. Instead, this five percent will have a strong desire to have sex with the male of the species. How can we explain this by imagining that the male instinct for sexual intercourse with females comes from DNA? We would have to imagine that some “do this” instructional information in 95% of males was not present in 5 % of the males. There is no genetic evidence that this is the case. Nor is there any evidence that the brains of homosexuals are wired differently than the brains of heterosexuals. 

In humans the ability of an infant to quickly pick up the language of its parents may be considered an instinct. Linguist Noam Chomsky has stated the “poverty of stimulus” argument, that the exposure to language that an infant gets is very inadequate to explain how quickly the infant picks up language. Linguist and psychologist Steven Pinker wrote a book called The Language Instinct, but he presented little or no evidence that DNA can explain language acquisition. On this topic professor of linguistics Vyvyan Evans stated this:

"For a Universal Grammar to be hard-wired into the micro-circuitry of the human brain, it would need to be passed on via the genes. But recent research in neurobiology suggests that human DNA just doesn’t have anything like the coding power needed to do this. Our genome has a highly restricted information capacity. A significant amount of our genetic code is taken up with building a nervous system, even before it gets started on anything else. To write something as detailed and specific as knowledge of a putative Universal Grammar inside a human infant’s brain would use up huge informational resources – resources that our DNA just can’t spare. So the basic premise of the language instinct – that such a thing could be transmitted genetically – seems doubtful."

Humans have innate language abilities that are very much like an instinct, but neither DNA nor brains explain this.

It is sometimes suggested that epigenetics might help explain instincts. Epigenetics is basically methyl molecules that attach to the outside of certain base pairs in DNA. But such molecules have all the same expressive limitations of DNA itself. There is no way in which behavior patterns can be expressed in either a genome or an epigenome.

The existence of instincts seems to be evidence for souls, not just in humans but in all animals that display instincts. If we imagine that an animal has a soul, we need not imagine that such a thing is some kind of blank slate. It may be that when particular types of souls start out in an organism, they have particular types of inclinations. Such soul characteristics may be the root cause of instincts.

DNA cannot explain instincts, and since current ideas of so-called natural selection depend on the idea of a change in genomes, natural selection also fails to explain instincts. As Gustave Geley stated in his very erudite book From the Unconscious to the Conscious, “Now the origin of instincts is no more explicable by natural selection or by the influence of the environment than the formation of species.”

If The Brain Had a Memory Storage Code, We Would Have Found It Long Ago

One of the dogmas of modern biologists is that memories are stored in the brain. No one has ever produced any direct evidence establishing this claim, and there are many strong reasons for disbelieving it. One of these reasons is the lack of any plausible theory that explains how humans are able to instantly remember specific pieces of information when given some prompt such as the photo of someone's face or that person's name. Another reason is that there is no plausible theory that explains how humans could remember things for 50 years, such as humans can. The most popular theory of memory storage is that memories are stored in synapses, but we know that the proteins in synapses have short lifetimes, and they last for less than a month. No one has given a credible explanation of how memories could be stored for 50 years in synapses if there is such high protein turnover in synapses.

But despite these very grave difficulties, our neuroscientists keep telling us that our memories are stored in the brain. Neuroscientists do not claim that this alleged act of memory storage is some simple flow like the flow that occurs when you pour milk from your milk carton into your cereal bowl. Instead, neuroscientists claim that something called “encoding” occurs. We are told that the things we learn or experience are somehow translated into neural states, perhaps by some process that involves chemicals, electricity, or microscopic changes in the brain. But no neuroscientist has ever given anything resembling an exact description of how this encoding could occur.

The wikipedia.org article on “Encoding, memory” tells us that “The process of encoding is not yet well understood, however key advances have shed light on the nature of these mechanisms.” But no such advances have actually occurred. The article then mentions “the modification of neural synapses, modification of proteins, creation of new synapses, activation of gene expression and new protein synthesis.” But none of these things shed any light on how human experiences or learned concepts could ever be encoded as neural states, chemical states or electrical states. The wikipedia article in question gives us only bluffing and digressions, without doing anything to convince us that scientists have any understanding of how memories could be encoded as neural changes, chemical changes or electrical changes.

One reason for doubting that memories are encoded in brains is that such a thing would require for there to exist (still undiscovered) a set of encoding protocols so complex that they would be a miracle of design if they existed. Encoding always requires some set of translation rules. For example, human DNA uses a set of translation rules called the genetic code to encode information; American writers use the encoding protocols of the English language and the alphabet to encode information stored on paper; and computers use the encoding protocol known as the ASCII code to encode information stored in a computer. As argued here, it would seem that a brain could only store memories if it used a whole series of encoding protocols far more complex than the ASCII code or the genetic code; and the origin of so many sophisticated protocols would be impossible to naturally explain.

Consider only a few of the types of things that can be stored in a human memory:

• Memories of daily experiences, such as what you were doing on some day
• Facts you learned in school, such as the fact that Lincoln was shot at Ford's Theater
• Sequences of numbers such as your social security number
• Sequences of words, such as the dialog an actor has to recite in a play
• Sequences of musical notes, such as the notes an opera singer has to sing
• Abstract concepts that you have learned
• Memories of particular non-visual sensations such as sounds, food tastes, smells, pain, and physical pleasure
• Memories of how to do physical things, such as how to ride a bicycle
• Memories of how you felt at emotional moments of your life
• Rules and principles, such as “look both ways before crossing the street”
• Memories of visual information, such as what a particular person's face looks like

How could all of these very different types of information ever be translated into neural states or synapse states so that a brain could store them? If such encoding were to occur, it would be a miracle of complex design.  Very oddly, the same people who tell us (without any sound basis) that such an encoding occurs are the same people denying design in biological organisms. 

There is another very strong reason for doubting that memories are encoded in the brain: if the brain used a system of memory encoding, we would have already discovered direct evidence of such a code; but we have not discovered any such thing. Specifically:

1. If brains actually stored encoded information, we would see regularities and repetitions that would be signs of encoded information, such as we see in the nucleotide base pairs of DNA, where encoded information is stored; but we see no signs of any such repetitions or regularities that might be the hallmarks of encoded stored memories in the brain.
2. If brains actually stored encoded information, there would have to be many genes that support such encoding, such as the hundreds of genes that support the transfer RNA molecules needed to carry out the protein encoding used by DNA and the genetic code; but we see no signs of any such memory-encoding genes in the human genome.

Let me explain the first of these points. Encoded information has regularities and repetitions that allow someone to tell that it is encoded information. For example, before Europeans were able to read hieroglyphics, they were sure that it was some type of encoded information, because of the large amount of repetition of symbols. When scientists first started to unravel DNA, they quickly figured out it was some type of encoded information, because there was a very high amount of symbol repetition. If we were to get radio signals from intelligent extraterrestrials, it might be years before we would be able to decipher such signals. But soon after we received signals, we would at least be able to tell that they were from intelligent beings and the signals contained encoded information, because of the great number of regularities and repetitions we would see in the signals.

It therefore stands to reason that if some part of the brain (other than DNA) contained encoded information, we would be able to see physical evidence of such an encoding. When scanning neurons and synapses with our electron microscopes, we would see regularities and repetitions that would be the sign of encoded information. But we see no such thing. If you look here, you can see electron microscope photographs of tiny synapses smaller than a neuron. You will see no sign of anything that looks like encoded information. Advanced chemical analysis also have shown no signs of anything that had the regularities and repetitions that are the hallmarks of encoded information.

Some may claim that the brain has encoded memory information, but that it's just too tiny for us to see. Such a claim has little credibility. Scientists were able to discover the microscopic encoded information in DNA in the 1950's. Can we believe that 65 years later science and medical technology is not advanced enough to discover encoded memory information in the brain?

We know exactly what is in synapses, because we can view them with very high-resolution electron microscopes. Below we see a 2013 close-up electron microscope photograph of a synapse head, from the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (link).  At the bottom we see a unit that has a length of 100 nanometers (billionths of a meter). 

There is no sign of any encoded information in such synapses.  We see none of the symbol repetition or token repetition that is a sign of encoded information. The little round things are balls of chemicals called vesicles.  The vesicles are almost all the same size and shape.  The vesicles are not stable, and travel across the dark line shown in the center of the photo (which is called a synaptic gap), as a nerve impulse travels.  No one has credibly proposed any method by which such vesicles could represent stable encoded information.  If we were to look at the same synapse head the next day, the arrangement of vesicles would be much different. Synapses bear no resemblance to any system for storing permanent learned information or long-term memories lasting for years.  Synapses no more resemble a system for storing encoded information than do the snow drifts outside of a house in Alaska. 

There is another place that we would expect to see a large sign of a neural code for memories if it existed. If such a thing existed, we would expect that there would be genes supporting such a facility. But no such genes have been found.

Let's consider a comparatively simple case of encoded information stored in the body, the case of the encoded information in DNA. DNA mainly consists of nucleotide base pairs, and particular combinations of such pairs represent particular amino acids. This very simple type of use of encoded information requires hundreds of genes, what are called tRNA genes. 

If human brains were to actually be translating thoughts and sensory experiences so that they can be stored as memory traces in the brain, such a gigantic job would require a huge number of genes – probably many times more than the 500 or so "tRNA" genes that are used for the very simple encoding job of translating DNA nucleotide base pairs into amino acids.  But we see no sign of any such memory encoding genes in the human genome.

There is a study that claims to have found possible evidence of memory encoding genes, but its methodology is ridiculous, and involved the absurd procedure of looking for weak correlations between a set of data extracted from one group of people and another set of data retrieved from an entirely different group of people. See the end of this post for reasons we can't take the study as good evidence of anything. There is not one single gene that a scientist can point to and say, “I am sure this gene is involved in memory encoding, and I can explain exactly how it works to help translate human knowledge or experience into engrams or memory traces.” But if human memories were actually stored in brains, there would have to be many hundreds or thousands of such genes.

The pie chart below shows human proteins by function:

This is a Wikipedia Commons file, and the page for the file gives the following table with the data used for the chart:

Function	Number of genes	Percent of genome
extracellular matrix protein	72	0.40%
protease	476	2.80%
cytoskeletal protein	441	2.60%
transporter	1098	6.40%
transmembrane receptor regulatory/adaptor protein	84	0.50%
transferase	1512	8.80%
oxidoreductase	550	3.20%
lyase	104	0.60%
cell adhesion molecule	93	0.50%
ligase	260	1.50%
nucleic acid binding	1466	8.50%
signaling molecule	961	5.60%
enzyme modulator	857	5.00%
viral protein	7	0.00%
calcium-binding protein	63	0.40%
defense/immunity protein	107	0.60%
hydrolase	454	2.60%
transfer/carrier protein	248	1.40%
membrane traffic protein	321	1.90%
phosphatase	230	1.30%
transcription factor	2067	12.00%
chaperone	130	0.80%
cell junction protein	67	0.40%
surfactant	15	0.10%
structural protein	280	1.60%
storage protein	15	0.10%
receptor	1076	6.30%
isomerase	94	0.50%
unclassified	4061	23.60%
Total	17209	100.00%

Notice that there is no mention at all of any such category as "memory encoding proteins," nor any mention of "memory storage proteins" nor any mention of "memory retrieval proteins."  The 15 proteins listed as "storage proteins" have nothing to do with memory storage. The wikipedia.org article on storage proteins describes them merely as "biological reserves of metal ions and amino acids." 

If human episodic memories and human learned knowledge were to be translated into brain states, such a marvel of translation would require a massive number of proteins dedicated to such a task. But no such proteins have been discovered or identified. 

Let's imagine a woman named Joan who is dating a man named Jack. Jack claims that he's one of the nation's most successful corn farmers.  But one day Joan notices something very suspicious. At Jack's home there are no signs of any of the things that Jack would need to have to be a successful corn farmer. Joan notices that Jack's home merely has a modest back yard, and does not have any large field for growing corn. Joan notices that Jack does not own a tractor for planting corn or any other piece of farming equipment,  and that in Jack's garage there are no signs of anything like food storage bins or seed sacks.  Joan should suspect that Jack is not telling the truth when he claims to be one of the nation's most successful corn farmer.  

Jack is similar to neuroscientists, and Jack's home and land is similar to the human brain.  The human brain does not have the things it would need to have if the neural memory storage claims made by neuroscientists are correct.  If it were true that the human brain stored memories, the human brain would need to have all of the following things:

• Some specialized physical biology in the brain capable of writing memories.
• Some specialized physical biology in the brain capable of reading memories.
• Some specialized physical biology in the brain capable of reliably storing memories for decades.
• Some specialized physical biology in the brain capable of retrieving memories instantly based on the most fragmentary hints.
• A huge number of proteins in the human body dedicated to accomplishing the incredibly difficult task of translating human episodic memories and human learned information into neural states or synapse states.

None of these things exist in the human brain. So the claims of today's neuroscientists are very much like the claims of Jack, claims that are contrary to the physical facts. Just as Jack's home bears no resemblance to a very successful corn farm, the human brain bears no resemblance to a device for permanently storing and instantly retrieving learned information. 

Postscript: Below are some quotes:

• "There is no such thing as encoding a perception...There is no such thing as a neural code...Nothing that one might find in the brain could possibly be a representation of the fact that one was told that Hastings was fought in 1066." -- M. R.  Bennett, Professor of Physiology at the University of Sydney (link).
• "No sense has been given to the idea of encoding or representing factual information in the neurons and synapses of the brain." -- M. R. Bennett, Professor of Physiology at the University of Sydney (link).

The Promissory Notes of Materialist Professors Are Long Past Due

"The elite struggling to maintain its power is embodied now in our educational institutions - our universities, in particular. The academic bureaucrats are the greatest beneficiaries of the mechanistic myth, as this myth affords them a privileged position in society regardless of whether their activities are useful or not. So it is not surprising to see them defend the mechanistic ideology as fiercely as the church was defending earlier the religious one. ...Today, mechanism is important, so we continue to trust and respect the academic bureaucrats even as the mechanistic theories are failing. As we will see in the following chapters, it is quite easy to prove that these theories are fraudulent; and yet we treat their defenders as scientists, not as charlatans. As part of its power, the academic elite controls education. And it has used this monopolistic position to turn the process of education into a process of indoctrination: all we are taught is what can be explained mechanistically. Thus, while promoting knowledge, intelligence, and creativity, the academic elite has redefined these qualities to mean, not the utmost that human minds can attain, but merely the skills needed to follow the mechanistic ideology: knowledge of the latest mechanistic theories, the intelligence to appreciate the mechanistic principles, and the creativity to accomplish a task with mechanistic methods alone. Mechanism is not just practised - it is enforced."

Andrei Sorin, Sofware and Mind, page 16

Let us imagine a young man named Rick who decides late in his seventeenth year to declare independence from his parents.  That's an age when many a young man often becomes convinced that he is a genius, and that his parents are pretty much idiots. Suppose that at this time Rick declares that he no longer needs his parents for anything, and he can take care of things just fine by himself. 

We can imagine that Rick might have to borrow lots of money to get through college, particularly if he wasn't quite the genius he imagined himself to be, and didn't get much of a scholarship.  We can also imagine Rick continuing to borrow lots of money after leaving college.  Looking forward a few years after his graduation, we can imagine Rick in a state of very serious debt.  He has a big car loan to pay off, and very high amounts of money he has due on his credit cards. There are also his big college loans which he is having difficulty paying off. 

Finding himself rather floundering with all of these debts outstanding, we can imagine Rick starting to tell some lies.  To borrow more money to pay off his overdue debts, he might fill out new loan applications, and be untruthful in his statements on such loans. He might brag to his parents about his fancy car, telling them he's doing great, and failing to tell them about how he is long  overdue on his debts.  Rick might also resort to telling implausible tales to soothe those worried about his debts, such as saying, "My financial woes will be fixed once I sell that screenplay I'm writing, which I'll be able to sell for $500,000."

Rick might also engage in a kind of evidence avoidance, in which he avoids looking at things that might tell him that his plan to become all independently successful has not worked out.  For example, he might avoid checking his credit rating on one of those online sites that tell you your current credit rating.  And getting many bills from his creditors, Rick might stick them in his desk drawer unopened, to avoid being reminded of how things have not worked out as he hoped.  

Eventually Rick might enter a kind of state we might "virtual bankruptcy."  We may define this as a state in which you have no reasonable chance of paying off your debts, but you haven't yet officially declared bankruptcy.  Virtual bankruptcy is often characterized by a kind of charade in which someone pretends to be doing very well financially, even though the actual situation is so bleak that a nasty "day of reckoning" is inevitable. 

We may compare the path of materialist scientists to the path of Rick. Late in the nineteenth century, the community of academic scientists pretty much declared their independence from religion and philosophy.  Religion was largely the parent of academic science, because so many of the universities had started out as religious institutions or institutions created for the purpose of promulgating religion. But around 1880 our professors started saying, "We don't need religion; we can do it all ourselves," rather like Rick declaring at 17 that he no longer needed any help from his parents. 

Just as Rick piled up so many promissory notes, our materialist scientists piled up many promissory notes. These included the following:

• They had no understanding of how a brain could generate thought or understanding, but they promised that this would soon be revealed once the brain was more carefully studied.  In 2005 one scientist stated, "I believe (I know—but can't prove!) that scientists will soon understand the physiological basis of the 'cognitive spectrum,' from the bright violet of tightly-focused analytic thought all the way down to the long, slow red of low-focus sleep thought—also known as 'dreaming.' "  
• They had no understanding of how a brain could store memories, but they promised that such a mechanism would be found, and that memories would be found in brains like letters printed on the pages of a book. 
• Being convinced that minds can be understood by material principles, they predicted with great confidence that intelligent computers would be invented by late in the twentieth century. For example, the most famous AI expert of his time (Marvin Minsky) said this in a 1967 book: "Within a generation, I am convinced, few compartments of intellect will be outside  the machine's realm  -- the problem of creating 'artificial intelligence' will be substantially solved." Similarly, a Herbert A. Simon predicted in 1965 that "machines will be capable, within twenty years, of doing any work a man can do." 
• They had no understanding of how life could have naturally originated, but they promised this would be revealed once they learned more about chemistry. In 2006 a chemistry professor predicted, "We shall understand the origin of life within the next five years."
• They had a theory of natural biological origins that was radically lacking in the intermediate transitional fossils needed for it to be well-confirmed, but they promised that such fossils would be found. 
• They had no understanding of how a tiny speck-sized human egg cell is able to progress to become a full-sized human being, but they promised that this would be revealed before long, after more progress was made in biology. 
• They had no understanding of the universe's beginning, but they promised that some natural theory of the universe's past would appear, probably some theory of a universe that had existed forever. 
• They predicted that all the neuroscience research would allow us to increase human intelligence and improve human memory. For example, in 2007 one neuroscientist said, "I am optimistic that human intelligence can be increased, and can be increased dramatically in the near future." 
• They predicted many times starting about 1960 that on the grounds that the origin of life was easy or inevitable, and that Darwinian evolution was inexorable once life began, it followed that searches for radio signals from extraterrestrial civilizations would soon be successful.  

It is now very long after such promises were made. But none of these promises has come true.  Specifically:

• Despite well over a century of neuroscience study with increasingly powerful scientific instruments, we still have no idea of how a brain could generate thought or understanding.
• Despite well over a century of neuroscience study with increasingly powerful scientific instruments, there is still no understanding of how memories could be stored in brains, nor any physical evidence that they are stored in brains.  
• Despite 70 years of origin-of-life experiments, scientists have made no real progress in understanding how life could naturally originate.
• The great wealth of intermediate transitional fossils promised has not been found, and there is still no understanding of how there could have occurred events such as the Cambrian Explosion, when almost all of the animal phyla appeared in a relatively short time.  
• There is still no understanding of how a tiny speck-sized human egg cell is able to progress to become a full-sized human being, and the failure to find any sign of anatomy-building instructions in DNA has made this mystery all the more puzzling. 
• Scientists have not established any theory of an eternal universe, and the theory they have of the universe's origin (the Big Bang theory, a theory of a sudden beginning to everything 13 billion years ago) offers no explanation for how such a beginning occurred.
• Despite lavish funding for very many years, all attempts to detect radio signals from extraterrestrial civilizations have failed. 
• Despite all the billions spent on neuroscience research, no one has been able to produce any device or medical technique for increasing human intelligence or expanding human memory.  

Just as Rick's promissory notes became long overdue, the promissory notes of our materialist scientists are long overdue. And just as Rick began to lie to try to smooth over the crisis caused by his overdue debts, materialist scientists long ago started to lie to smooth over the crisis caused by the failure of their promises to materialize. 

Such lies come in many forms:

• Having failed to find any blueprint for anatomy in human cells, or anything like a program or recipe for constructing a human body, many scientists told the big lie that the DNA molecule was such a thing (DNA actually contains only very low-level chemical information such as which amino acids make up a protein). 
• Having failed to produce life through any artificial method, and having failed to even produce any of the building blocks of life (protein molecules) or even any of the building blocks of the building blocks of life (amino acids) through any experiment realistically simulating the early Earth, scientists repeatedly bragged about experiments merely producing the building blocks of the building blocks of life in experiments that did not realistically simulate the early Earth, trying to portray such defective experiments as some progress on origin-of-life research. 
• Having failed to actually produce any such thing as artificial intelligence, the shortfall has been covered up by pitchmen  simply using all over the place the words "artificial intelligence" or the equivalent acronym AI for what is merely computer programming that does not involve any such thing as understanding inside a computer. 
• Groundless speculations about the origin of the universe were passed off as some progress in explaining how such a thing could have occurred. 
• Poorly replicated and extremely dubious mouse experiments done with all kinds of procedural defects were passed off as progress in understanding a neural basis for memory. 
• A never-plausible Darwinian theory of biological origins that was unproven was passed off as a great scientific success (despite its utter failure to credibly explain things Darwin knew nothing about such as a multitude of different types of fine-tuned protein molecules and the magnificent organization and purposeful-seeming biochemistry of cells), based on shoddy  grounds such as the number of scientists who supposedly accept it or the academia speech custom of claiming that the theory was a triumph.

Just as Rick might have resorted to implausible tales to soothe those worried about his debts, our professors have resorted to ever-more-implausible tales to help soothe those worried about their explanatory failures.  Such tales include a whole bunch of wild stories such as tall tales about monkeys rafting across the Atlantic Ocean millions of years ago (designed to help explain  fossils found in embarrassing locations), the tale that there is some infinity of other universes (lamely designed to try to help explain away evidence that our universe is fine-tuned for life), and the tale that thousands of different types of protein molecules each accidentally appeared by chance  (each such event being as unlikely as a typing monkey producing a small working computer program).   

Faced with mounting signs that things have not worked out as he hoped, Rick engaged in evidence avoidance such as failing to check his credit score, and sticking creditor bills in his desk drawer, unopened.  Faced with mounting signs that reality does not work as they thought, materialist scientists often engage in similar evidence avoidance. They fail to seriously study the evidence for paranormal phenomena, evidence that shows their assumptions about reality are not correct.  They also fail to study case histories and neuroscience findings that defy their assumptions about how reality works, such as cases of people who thought and remembered well after half of their brain was removed, and findings showing brains are too slow, noisy and unstable to account for human mental phenomena. 

So where does scientific academia now find itself? We may call its current state a state of virtual bankruptcy.  Just as a person in virtual bankruptcy has no hope of being able to fulfill his financial promises, and needs to undergo a drastic reordering of his affairs,  scientific academia has no realistic hopes of fulfilling its promises, and needs to undergo a drastic reordering of its affairs.  If Rick were to move from virtual bankruptcy to actual bankruptcy, he would need to do the equivalent of humbly saying something like, "I screwed up really bad, and now I need to make great changes to set my affairs in order." If the swollen heads in scientific academia were to do something equivalent, they would say, "We science professors screwed up really bad, and need to do a drastic reordering of our affairs and our publicly stated positions, to restore public confidence in our statements."