The Genome Project. So, what is it rather than a law-enforcement tool? That’s about as far as it goes for its sponsors, who routinely let genies out of bottles without taking much note of it. It is an attempt to map a program, the double-helix of the DNA, to map the operating system, the OS of the entire human organism. If it strikes you that even if the hard drive in front of you were to be mapped, the novel you have secreted therein would not be visible, you are correct..This other little problem of when abstraction becomes reality is another question. But let us proceed down this little road for now, shall we?

A program it is, and it determines your hair and your eyes and some manner of clock for puberty, menopause, and the growing of singularly long hairs from the tops of your ears. And of the traits that make us, us? Some deny that this marvelous programming structure has much to do with intelligence, but we don’t know. All the helixes are so near alike, yet the differences are marvelous. But..they determine our drives, lots of them.

And we know for a fact that the polygamous tendencies of men are going to have a place on the map, and sexual orientations, both general and bonding, probably will, and so it goes. And some things long identified as “sin” are going to be found to have a definite spot on the map. Because, most of what’s in that map isn’t even human, but it still operates, oh yes it does! And there, my reader, you there in the cube, you are the explosive charge hidden in this.

If it is in the programming, then it is in the creation. Is God wrong? Do you, presumably of some degree of religious orthodoxy, suddenly posit a “Satan” whom you know to be a fairly recent invention if you’re even moderately literate and religious, of such power as to be a counter-God? A dark power who affects human power equally?

Which would put professing Christians into the position of adhering only to the moral code taught by a Nazarene rabbi who came to be known here as Jesus. How unchristian!