DNA Is Not a Blueprint, So "All Bets Are Off" About Body Origins and Mind Origins

Ever since the discovery of DNA and the genetic code in the middle of the twentieth century, many scientists have been making an untrue claim about DNA: the claim that DNA is some kind of blueprint or program or recipe for making a human body. 

There are various ways in which this false idea is stated, all equally false:

• Many described DNA or the genome as a blueprint for an organism.
• Many said DNA or the genome is a recipe for making an organism.
• Many said DNA or the genome is a program for building an organism, making an analogy to a computer program.
• Many claimed that DNA or genomes specify the anatomy of an organism. 
• Many claimed that genotypes (the DNA in organisms) specify phenotypes (the observable characteristics of an organism).
• Many claimed that genotypes (the DNA in organisms) "map"  phenotypes (the observable characteristics of an organism) or "map to" phenotypes.
• Many claimed that DNA contains "all the instructions needed to make an organism."
• Many claimed that there is a "genetic architecture" for an organism's body or some fraction of that body. 
• Using a little equation,  many claimed that a "genotype plus the environment equals the phenotype," a formulation as false  as the preceding statements, since we know of nothing in the environment that would cause phenotypes to arise from genotypes that do not specify such phenotypes. 

Some of these claims are documented in Table 1 of the paper here, where some authors count (in only June and July of the year 2000, in a single newspaper) 10 claims that DNA is a draft or script, 6 that it is a software program, 8 that it is a blueprint, 6 that it is a cook book (a recipe), and 12 that is a map. The same table shows similar claims being made abundantly in the leading scientific journal Nature; and Table 2 and Table 3 of the same paper shows similar claims being made abundantly in 2001 and 2003 in both the newspaper and Nature. 

There was never any justification for making any such claims. The only coding system that has ever been discovered in DNA is a system allowing only low-level chemical information to be specified.  That coding system is known as the genetic code, and it is merely a system whereby certain combinations of nucleotide base pairs in DNA stand for amino acids.  So a section of DNA can specify the amino acids that make up a protein molecule. But no one has ever discovered any coding system by which DNA could specify anything larger than a protein molecule. 

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. The facts indicate that DNA is not anything close to a complete specification of an organism, but that DNA is instead something much simpler, mainly just a kind of database (or a collection of ingredient lists) used in making particular parts of an organism.

To get an idea of the true nature of DNA, it is a good idea to adopt a conceptual model of DNA. In science, a model is a somewhat simplified representation that helps us understand a more complicated reality. A classic example of a model is the Bohr model of the atom, in which the nucleus of an atom is compared to the sun, and the electrons in an atom are compared to planets that revolve around the sun. The atom is actually more complicated than such a situation (given the weirdness of quantum mechanics), but the Bohr model is still useful to help us get a basic grasp of what an atom is like. The Bohr model is essentially accurate, because just as the great majority of a solar system's mass exists at its center in the sun, the great majority of an atom's mass exists at its center in the atomic nucleus.

Now, what model can we use to grasp the basic nature of DNA? A good model to use is what we may call the chain-of-colored-beads model. Let us imagine a long chain of colored beads, in which there are about twenty possible bead colors, and each bead stands for a particular type of chemical called an amino acid. That is exactly how DNA works. We can imagine that one of these colors means kind of “Start.” The amino acids are the constituents of proteins. So after one of these “Start” beads appears in the chain, there is then a sequence of colored beads, with each color representing one of the twenty amino acids. Altogether the long “chain of beads” that is DNA specifies the ingredients of thousands of different proteins.

A particular snippet or section of DNA will correspond to a chain of amino acids that is the starting point of a protein. The visual below illustrates this schematically.

Now, once we have adopted this useful “chain of colored beads” model to help us understand the nature of DNA, we can understand the limitations of DNA. What type of information can be specified with such a “chain of colored beads”? Only simple linear information, what is called one-dimensional information. As two scientists state, "Genes are merely a means of specifying polypeptides," the one-dimensional chains like those depicted above. 

An example of one-dimensional information is a telephone number, a social security number, or a stock ticker tape. Such information can always be presented with a single line or row, although some types of one-dimensional information might require a long line or row. A more complicated type of information is what is called two-dimensional information. Such information requires both rows and columns. An example of two-dimensional information is the information in a calendar or a spreadsheet.

Another more complicated type of information is called three-dimensional information. Three-dimensional information specifies something that can only be described using the dimensions of length, width, and depth. An example is the information specifying the three-dimensional structure of a car.

Now, what type of information would be required to specify the physical layout of a three-dimensional body such as the human body? To specify such a thing, you would need three-dimensional information, information involving length, width and depth. But there is no way that such three-dimensional information could exist in DNA, which has merely one-dimensional information.

In fact, it seems that in order to make a complete biological specification of an organism, you would need not just three-dimensional information, but four-dimensional information. Time is often regarded as the fourth dimension. We can describe four-dimensional information as information that involves not merely aspects of length, width, and depth, but also an aspect of time.

Why would you need four-dimensional information to specify an organism such as a human? For one thing, it is not true that humans just pop into existence as adults. Instead, there is a long series of transitions between the earliest state of a newly fertilized egg, and that of a full-grown human. A full human specification would have to specify each of these states. So the specification would need to use the fourth dimension of time to specify this temporal progression in human forms.

Another reason why a full human specification would need to be four-dimensional is that human beings are not static objects, but intensely dynamic objects. Think of all the dynamic activity occurring every day in your body. Blood and electricity is flowing about, proteins are being synthesized according to specific time tables, cells are being born and dying according to other time tables, and so forth. A single snapshot of the state of a human body is not at all sufficient to capture this dynamic activity. You would need to have a specification that is four-dimensional. Similarly, if someone from some small island in the Pacific had no idea of what a city was, you would never specify what a city was by just showing some maps. You would need to somehow specify the motion occurring in the city: the subways moving, the cars moving, the people moving, the water flowing through pipes, and so forth.

But DNA can only specify one-dimensional information. So it is very absurd to maintain that a biological specification of humans is in the one-dimensional information of DNA.

The table below lists on the left various types of information that would be needed to have a full biological specification of an organism, and on the right whether or not such information can be specified in DNA.

Type of information	Can it be specified in DNA?
Linear amino acid sequence of a protein molecule	Yes
Three-dimensional shape of a protein molecule	No
Exact location where a protein is located in body	No
Layout of a cell organelle	No
Layout of a cell	No
Layout of a tissue type	No
Layout of an organ	No
Layout of an organ system	No
Layout of a full body plan	No
Structure progression from simplest tiniest form to fully grown form	No
Dynamic behavior inside an organism during a particular month or year	No

Some would disagree about the answer I have given in the third row, and claim that the three-dimensional shape of a protein molecule is purely a consequence of its sequence of amino acids. If this were true, scientists would have long ago solved the protein folding problem, and would be able to predict the three-dimensional shapes of proteins from their one-dimensional sequence of amino acids. But after decades of trying to do this, the protein-folding problem is still unsolved, and (as discussed here) scientists still cannot accurately predict the 3D shapes of large proteins from their amino acid sequences.

The fact that DNA can only store one-dimensional information is a decisive reason for rejecting all claims that DNA even half-specifies the human organism. There are two other reasons for rejecting such claims. The first is that no one has found any information in DNA corresponding to human body plan information. The human genome has been thoroughly studied through massive projects such as the Human Genome Project and the ENCODE project. No one has found any gene information specifying a human body plan, a structural plan for a cell, a structural plan for an organ, or a structural plan for an organ system.

The second reason is equally enormous. It is simply that there exists nothing in the human body that could interpret a specification of human biology, if such a thing existed in DNA. Consider computer code. Such code can only work because there is an enormously sophisticated piece of software called an interpreter or compiler that is smart enough to read such complex instructions. If it were to happen that DNA stored instructions for making a human, contrary to the evidence, we would only explain human development if we imagined that somewhere in our biology was some enormously sophisticated machinery or functionality capable of reading such highly complex instructions and executing them. But no such functionality has ever been discovered.

Is it accurate to say that DNA is a recipe for building a body? No it is not. A recipe includes an ingredient list, and a set of instructions explaining how to make a particular meal or dish using those ingredients. DNA has lots of ingredient lists specifying the ingredients of proteins. But nowhere does DNA specify a series of instructions for assembling a cell, an organ, an organ system, or a full body. Protein molecules have three-dimensional shapes that they assume for unknown reasons. Such shapes are not specified in DNA.

MINIATURE LANGUAGES
NAME	LIST OF WORDS IN LANGUAGE	WHAT CAN BE SPECIFIED BY LANGUAGE	WHAT CANNOT BE SPECIFIED BY LANGUAGE
Sandwich Language	Bread, Turkey, Ham, Cheese, Lettuce, Tomato, Onion, Bacon	Various types of sandwiches	Anything that is not a sandwich
Exercise Language	Jump, Crouch, Stretch, Punch, Lift, Bend, Squat, Spin	Various types of exercises	Anything that is not an exercise
DNA Language	Alanine, Asparagine, Aspartic acid, Arginine, Cysteine, Glutamine, Glycine, Glutamic acid, Histidine, Isoleucine, Lysine,Leucine, Phenylalanine, Methionine, Serine, Proline, Tryptophan,Threonine, Tyrosine, Valine	Polypeptide sequences – a linear one-dimensional  sequence of amino acids	Anything that is not a polypeptide sequence, including the 3D shape of a protein, the shape of any body part, the structure  of any organism, or a behavior or instinct.

So where is it that biological shapes and structures come from? This is a gigantic unknown, which stands as a dramatic contradiction of all attempts to explain biology in mechanistic or materialistic terms. We do not know where the 3D shapes of protein molecules come from. We do not know where the shapes of cells come from. We do not know where the structure of tissues comes from. We do not know where the shapes of organs come from. We do not know where the shapes of organ systems come from. We do not know where the overall body plan of an organism comes from. We therefore have a strong reason to suspect that such things are mysterious inputs from some unfathomable reality outside of an organism.

Since the lie that DNA is a blueprint or program or recipe for building bodies has so often been told, I will need to cite again a list I have compiled of distinguished scientists and other PhD's or MD's who have told us such an idea is untrue. Below is the list:

• On page 26 of the recent book The Developing Genome, Professor David S. Moore states, "The common belief that there are things inside of us that constitute a set of instructions for building bodies and minds -- things that are analogous to 'blueprints' or 'recipes' -- is undoubtedly false."
• Biologist Rupert Sheldrake says this "DNA only codes for the materials from which the body is constructed: the enzymes, the structural proteins, and so forth," and "There is no evidence that it also codes for the plan, the form, the morphology of the body."
• Describing conclusions of biologist Brian Goodwin, the New York Times says, "While genes may help produce the proteins that make the skeleton or the glue, they do not determine the shape and form of an embryo or an organism." 
• Professor Massimo Pigliucci (mainstream author of numerous scientific papers on evolution) has stated  that "old-fashioned metaphors like genetic blueprint and genetic programme are not only woefully inadequate but positively misleading."
• Neuroscientist Romain Brette states, "The genome does not encode much except for amino acids."
• In a 2016 scientific paper, three scientists state the following: "It is now clear that the genome does not directly program the organism; the computer program metaphor has misled us...The genome does not function as a master plan or computer program for controlling the organism; the genome is the organism's servant, not its master.
• In the book Mind in Life by Evan Thompson (published by the Belknap Press of Harvard University Press) we read the following on page 180: "The plain truth is that DNA is not a program for building organisms, as several authors have shown in detail (Keller 2000, Lewontin 1993, Moss 2003)."
• Developmental biologist C/H. Waddington stated, "The DNA is not a program or sequentially accessed control over the behavior of the cell."
•  Scientists Walker and Davies state this in a scientific paper: "DNA is not a blueprint for an organism; no information is actively processed by DNA alone...DNA is a passive repository for transcription of stored data into RNA, some (but by no means all) of which goes on to be translated into proteins."
• Geneticist Adam Rutherford states that "DNA is not a blueprint," a statement also made by biochemistry professor Keith Fox. 
• "The genome is not a blueprint," says Kevin Mitchell, a geneticist and neuroscientist at Trinity College Dublin, noting "it doesn't encode some specific outcome."
• "DNA cannot be seen as the 'blueprint' for life," says Antony Jose, associate professor of cell biology and molecular genetics at the University of Maryland, who says, "It is at best an overlapping and potentially scrambled list of ingredients that is used differently by different cells at different times."  
• Sergio Pistoi (a science writer with a PhD in molecular biology) tells us, "DNA is not a blueprint," and tells us, "We do not inherit specific instructions on how to build a cell or an organ." 
• Michael Levin (director of a large biology research lab) states that "genomes are not a blueprint for anatomy," and after referring to a "deep puzzle" of how biological forms arise, he gives this example: "Scientists really don’t know what determines the intricate shape and structure of the flatworm’s head."
• Ian Stevenson M.D. stated "Genes alone - which provide instructions for the production of amino acids and proteins -- cannot explain how the proteins produced by their instructions come to have the shape they develop and, ultimately, determine the form of the organisms where they are," and noted that "biologists who have drawn attention to this important gap in our knowledge of form have not been a grouping of mediocrities (Denton, 1986; Goldschmidt, 1952; B. C. Goodwin, 1985, 1988, 1989, 1994; Gottlieb, 1992; Grasse, 1973; E. S. Russell...Sheldrake, 1981; Tauber and Sarkar, 1992; Thompson, 1917/1942)."
• Biologist B.C. Goodwin stated this in 1989: "Since genes make molecules, genetics...does not tell us how the molecules are organized into the dynamic, organized process that is the living organism."
• An article in the journal Nature states this: "The manner in which bodies and tissues take form remains 'one of the most important, and still poorly understood, questions of our time', says developmental biologist Amy Shyer, who studies morphogenesis at the Rockefeller University in New York City."
• Timothy Saunders, a developmental biologist at the National University of Singapore says, "Fundamentally, we have a poor understanding of how any internal organ forms.”
• On the web site of the well-known biologist Denis Noble, we read that "the whole idea that genes contain the recipe or the program of life is absurd, according to Noble," and that we should understand DNA "not so much as a recipe or a program, but rather as a database that is used by the tissues and organs in order to make the proteins which they need."
• A paper by Stuart A. Newman (a professor of cell biology and anatomy) discussing at length the work of scientists trying to evoke "self-organization" as an explanation for morphogenesis states that "public lectures by principals of the field contain confidently asserted, but similarly oversimplified or misleading treatments," and says that "these analogies...give the false impression that there has been more progress in understanding embryonic development than there truly has been." Referring to scientists moving from one bunk explanation of morphogenesis to another bunk explanation, the paper concludes by stating, "It would be unfortunate if we find ourselves having emerged from a period of misconceived genetic program metaphors only to land in a brave new world captivated by equally misguided ones about self-organization."
• Referring to claims there is a program for building organisms in DNA, biochemist F. M. Harold stated "reflection on the findings with morphologically aberrant mutants suggests that the metaphor of a genetic program is misleading." Referring to  self-organization (a vague phrase sometimes used to try to explain morphogenesis), he says, "self-organization remains nearly as mysterious as it was a century ago, a subject in search of a paradigm." 
• Writing in the leading journal Cell, biologists  Marc Kirschner, John Gerhart and Tim Mitchison stated, "The genotype, however deeply we analyze it, cannot be predictive of the actual phenotype, but can only provide knowledge of the universe of possible phenotypes." That's equivalent to saying that DNA does not specify visible biological structures, but merely limits what structures an organism can have (just as a building parts list merely limits what structures can be made from the set of parts). 
• At the Stack Exchange expert answers site, someone posted a question asking which parts of a genome specify how to make a cell (he wanted to write a program that would sketch out a cell based on DNA inputs).  An unidentified expert stated that it is "not correct" that DNA is a blueprint that describes an organism, and that "DNA is not a blueprint because DNA does not have instructions for how to build a cell." No one contradicted this expert's claim, even though the site allows any of its experts to reply. 
• A paper co-authored by a chemistry professor (Jesper Hoffmeyer) tells us this: "Ontogenetic 'information,' whether about the structure of the organism or about its behavior, does not exist as such in the genes or in the environment, but is constructed in a given developmental context, as critically emphasized, for example, by Lewotin (1982) and Oyama (1985)."
• Biologist Steven Rose has stated, "DNA is not a blueprint, and the four dimensions of life (three of space, one of time) cannot be read off from its one-dimensional strand."
• Jonathan Latham has a master's degree in Crop Genetics and a PhD in virology. In his essay “Genetics Is Giving Way to a New Science of Life,” a long essay well worth a read, Latham exposes many of the myths about DNA. Referring to "the mythologizing of DNA," he says that "DNA is not a master controller," and asks, "How is it that, if organisms are the principal objects of biological study, and the standard explanation of their origin and operation is so scientifically weak that it has to award DNA imaginary superpowers of 'expression'” and 'control' to paper over the cracks, have scientists nevertheless clung to it?"
• An interesting 2006 paper by six medical authorities and scientists tells us that "biochemistry cannot provide the spatial information needed to explain morphogenesis," that "supracellular morphogenesis is mysterious," and that "nobody seems to understand the origin of biological and cellular order," contrary to claims that such order arises from a reading of a specification in DNA. 
• Keith Baverstock (with a PhD in chemical kinetics) has stated "genes are like the merchants that provide the necessary materials to build a house: they are neither the architect, nor the builder but, without them, the house cannot be built," and that "genes are neither the formal cause (the blueprint), nor the efficient cause (the builder) of the cell, nor of the organism."
• Evolutionary biologist Richard Lewontin stated, "DNA is not self-reproducing; second, it makes nothing; and third, organisms are not determined by it." Noting that "the more accurate description of the role of DNA is that it bears information that is read by the cell machinery," Lewontin lamented the "evangelical enthusiasm" of those who "fetishized DNA" and misspoke so that "DNA as information bearer is transmogrified into DNA as blueprint, as plan, as master plan, as master molecule." In another work he stated "the information in DNA sequences is insufficient to specify even a folded protein, not to speak of an entire organism." This was correct: DNA does not even specify the 3D shapes of proteins, but merely their sequence of amino acids. 
• In 2022 developmental biologist Claudio D. Stern first noted,  "All cells in an organism have the same genetic information yet they generate often huge complexity as they diversify in the appropriate locations at the correct time and generate form and pattern as well as an array of identities, dynamic behaviours and functions." In his next sentence he stated, "The key quest is to find the 'computer program' that contains the instructions to build an organism, and the mechanisms responsible for its evolution over longer periods." Since this was written long after the Human Genome Project had been completed, he thereby suggested that no such instruction program had yet been discovered in the genome (DNA). 

The visual below illustrates the ridiculous situation in today's biology. Shown are search results I got on the first page of results, after asking Google "is DNA a blueprint for making a human body?" Half of the results are false, and half of the results are true. 

Last week we had the latest confession by a scientist that DNA is not a blueprint. It occurred in a very influential place: on the pages of the leading scientific journal Nature. Entitled "It’s time to admit that genes are not the blueprint for life,"  the article was by biologist Denis Noble.

Not wishing to shock his scientist readers too much, Noble kind of pulls his punch, and tells a bland story that kind of has a sound of "things are more complicated than we thought."  But the true story is something far more shocking.  The real story is this:

1. As soon as DNA and the genetic code were discovered, around the middle of the twentieth century very many scientists started to tell a wholly unjustified lie that DNA was a blueprint or recipe or program for making the human body. Nothing had been discovered that justified any such claim. The code used by DNA (the genetic code) is something capable of expressing only low-level chemical information, not any high-level structural information. 
2. The lie that DNA is a body blueprint continued to be told by many scientists throughout the rest of the 20th century. During the last decade of that century, the Human Genome Project was busy making a complete list of all the genes in DNA. 
3. When the Human Genome Project completed in 2001, very many scientists continued to make the false claim that DNA is a blueprint for making a human, even though no evidence supporting such a claim had been found by this gigantic effort analyzing the contents of DNA. 
4. Despite all these claims, by now many scientists have confessed that neither DNA (the genome) nor its genes are any such thing as a blueprint or recipe or program for making a human body, and in February 2024 the leading science journal Nature had an article entitled "It's time to admit that genes are not the blueprint of life," contrary to its numerous previous claims that genes are such a blueprint. 

How can you describe what it should be like for the person who studies the facts and realizes that neither DNA nor its genes are any specification, blueprint, recipe or program for building the human body or any of its organs or any of its cells, contrary to the claims so often made? There is a good English expression that describes the situation. The expression is: "all bets are off." "All bets are off" is an English expression that describes a state of loss of confidence that follows a revelation that undermines your confidence about some situation.   Some examples of using the expression are below:

• "I was all ready to marry Willy because I thought he was someone who would be devoted to me for the rest of my life. But I just learned he's been having a sex affair with his co-worker, so all bets are off."
• "I was going to invest many thousands in New Shiny Tech, Inc. But I just learned that their profit and loss statement is bogus, so now all bets are off."
• "I was set to buy that house on Maple Street, but the inspection report shows the foundation is all rotting, and that the pipes are all leaking inside the walls. So now all bets are off."

The same expression should be used by anyone who learns of how scientists have been gigantically misleading us for so many years about how our bodies arise. Such a person should be saying: "all bets are off" about the origin of human bodies, human gene pools and human minds. What this means is that the key causal claims of biologists regarding the origin of human bodies and human minds should be distrusted, particularly whenever such causal claims seem to have an ideological motivation.  Whenever a biologist makes some kind of claim that seems to be part of justifying his worldview, we should be extremely suspicious. 

The person starting to think he should be saying "all bets are off" about his origin (based on all the long years of scientists lying about DNA) will have ample further justification for such a thought when he considers the question of how human minds arise.  There are many similarities here:

(1) Just as scientists told us in a matter-of-fact manner for many decades that DNA is a blueprint for the human body (a claim without any observational foundation), scientists have told us for more than a century that the brain is the cause of the human mind and the storage place of human memories (a claim without any robust observational foundation). 

(2) The claim that DNA is a blueprint for the human body was an ideologically motivated claim, told to try to help prop up boasts that human origins are understood, and to help banish ideas that the arising of an adult body requires some superhuman causal reality. Similarly, the claims that the brain is the source of the mind and the storage place of memories are ideologically motivated claims, told to help prop up claims that humans have no soul, and claims the arising of human minds can be naturally explained without requiring some causal reality higher than human beings. 

(3) Those  claiming that DNA is a blueprint for the human body kept chanting year after year "the microscopes will find it some day," even long after the most powerful microscopes that should have found any DNA body blueprint failed year after year to find any such blueprint for building bodies or cells.  Similarly those  claiming that brains store human memories kept chanting year after year "the microscopes will find it some day," even long after the most powerful microscopes that should have found any memories stored in the brain failed year after year to find any human learned knowledge stored in brain tissue.