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Thank you so much for your reply and for your question!

How does DNA "tap" into the force field of life? is a question that came to my mind, but I'm not sure I'm imagining in the right direction. "In him was life, and the life was the light of men..." Any "life" given us is a share in a field of already existing life?

There are two ways to approach your question - science and theology - and since I believe your interest is in the theology, I'll start there.

Scriptures and Jewish tradition speaks of the soul and spirit in four levels as follows:

1. nephesh – the will to live, the animal soul, or the soul of all living things (Genesis 1:20) which by Jewish tradition returns to the “earth” after death. In Romans 8, this is seen as a whole, the creation longing for the children of God to be revealed. This is what we have described here as being field-like, existing in all points of space/time.

2. ruach - the self-will or free will peculiar to man (abstraction, anticipation, intention, etc.) – by Jewish tradition, the pivot wherein a man decides to be Godly minded or earthy minded (also related to Romans 8, choosing)

3. neshama - the breath of God given to Adam (Genesis 2:7) which may also be seen as the “ears to hear” (John 10) - a sense of belonging beyond space/time, a predisposition to seek God and seek answers to the deep questions such as “what is the meaning of life?"

4. ruach Elohim - the Holy Spirit (Genesis 1:2) which indwells Christians (I Cor 2, John 3) – the presently existing in the “beyond” while still in the flesh. (Col 3:3) This is the life in passage you quoted: "In him was life, and the life was the light of men..." (John 1)

I suspect only the first two on the list would be manifest in such a way that science might be able to detect them - the last two are gifts of God. Looking at the first (nephesh) - here is an excerpt from another post:

The “will to live” permeates the entire biosphere and perhaps the entire universe. For that reason, we assert that it is field-like (existing in all points of space/time). It is observed in plants and animals, in creatures which go into dormant phases of their life cycle. It is observed in the simplest of life forms (cell intelligence, amoeba). It is also observed in collectives of organisms which act as if one mind (ants, bees, etc.). The “will to live” also permeates throughout the molecular machinery of higher organisms. For instance, if a part of the heart dies (myocardial infarction) – the molecular machinery will continue to struggle to survive, routing blood flow around the dead tissue. A person can be “brain dead” and yet the rest of the body will struggle to survive and will succeed if a machine (respirator) is used to simulate the cyclic instruction of the brain.

If a universal vacuum field is the host or medium for this "will to live" - then it may be measurable indirectly by its effects on other fields, such as the electromagnetic field in living organisms. Alternatively or additionally, it may be geometrically related to the semiosis (the language, encoding and decoding) in living creatures, the DNA, e.g. post 881 on the Behe thread. Such possibilities are being investigated.

The “self-will” is in the domain of the ongoing inter-disciplinary studies of consciousness and the mind. The monist view would be that consciousness (as well as the soul) are merely an epiphenomenon of the physical brain. Qualia speaks against such a conclusion. Qualia are the properties of sensory experiences which are epistemically unknowable in the absence of direct experience of them and therefore, are also incommunicable. Examples include likes and dislikes, pain and pleasure, love and hate, good and evil.

I would sincerely appreciate both of your undertaking a brief summary (abstract) of this article to insure I'm correctly following it....and then post them, of course.

Hmmm. An abstract. Or “Cliff’s Notes!” Should be doable (just please don’t ask for a specific delivery date just now.)

How does DNA "tap" into the force field of life? is a question that came to my mind, but I'm not sure I'm imagining in the right direction.

I think you’re imagining in the right direction. At least, information theory seems to be going in that direction. As to how DNA “taps” into the putative (organic or biological) vacuum field, I gather the best candidate to effect a “successful communication” in the Shannon sense is photon exchange. One current proposal avers that biological organisms, in self-organizing themselves, form into “collective degrees of freedom” what were formerly the individual degrees of freedom pertaining to their constituent parts. [For an individual atom, a basic constituent part, there are said to be 3 degrees of freedom corresponding to the three spatial dimensions of our 4D block.] Putting it in simple and probably much too general language, this process liberates free electrons, which in turn potentially emit photons. The couplings between such photons and “virtual” photons emitted by the vacuum field constitutes the basis of information transmission in the natural world.

That is a theory subject to test. It firmly resides within the sphere of science to test it.

But the following is another sort of question, xzins:

"In him was life, and the life was the light of men..." Any "life" given us is a share in a field of already existing life?

We here cross over from the “natural sciences” (Naturwissenschaft in the German language — denoting the natural sciences of physics, chemistry, mechanics, etc., side of the so-called “Cartesian split”) into the “humanities” side (the Geisteswissenchaft, or sciences of the “Spirit” — including theology, philosophy, history, music, literature, the arts, etc.).

As you have probably noticed, in our modern age, these two great historical branches of human knowledge are scrupulously separated. Or so it is thought. But the real point is, the great Cartesian divide has always been an “artificial one”; and the proof is, it is the rarest and most scrupulous adherent of the methods of Naturwissenschaft who proves totally immune to the impulses that come from the (putatively now disgraced and forbidden) Geisteswissenschaften side of Wissenschaft — the German word for the unification of the totality of extant human knowledge. (There is no like word in English.)

We point out in the lead essay that, in short, “scientific” materialism is a philosophy. IMHO that statement is completely accurate. So even science “sins” by communing with the “other side of the great epistemic divide,” even if only subconsciously or unconsciously. But I digress from your question.

Which was: “[Is] any ‘life’ given us … a share in a field of already existing life?” The only answer I could give to this question would not be a scientific answer. It wouldn’t be an original answer either. I guess you’d have to qualify it as a theological answer meditated by a humble Christian soul: God is Life. All life is a participation in Him. Now and forever. And the Logos is the Son of God, the Word “who was God and who was with God” in the beginning, and got the world started, and by means of Whom the world is continuously nurtured and redeemed.

Sir Isaac Newton evidently held that the production of all the contents of the Universe living and non-living proceeded from the presence of “the Lord of Life with His creatures.” Newton never included a field in his thinking as far as I know. Even though he did designate the “region” wherein the Lord of Life came into contact with His creatures as the sensorium Dei. Which — I can’t help it!!! — looks like a potential candidate for a “field” to me!

Like I said, this is not a scientific answer for the simple reason that it cannot be validated by means of scientific method (i.e., is not falsifiable, and in any case would probably “predict” nothing even if validated).

But it seems to me that if we humans ever reach the point where this question is widely discounted as risible/irrelevant, we would all be in seriously deep trouble. FWIW.

Thanks so much for writing, xzins.