Beyond Evolution; Is There God After Dawkins?

Note:  When clicking on an article on the right, you MUST click on the small title in the middle a second time to see the entire article.

Please do not give this blog a cursory reading to see if it agrees with what you learned in Sunday school or in biology class. Give yourself enough time to really consider these ideas simply in terms of whether or not they make sense given your own life experience.  Some additional evolution websites are listed below:

http://www.drdino.com/
http://illustramedia.com/
http://creation.com/question-evolution
http://www.facebook.com/creationnews
http://www.answersingenesis.org/


The writings of Richard Dawkins have been toxic to the spiritual beliefs of many people. Hopefully, this blog will be the antidote.

Note:All of the postings are in alphabetical order on the right. Just click on a topic to read it. All of this material comes from the mind of Matt Chait.

2083_-_A_European_Declaration_of_Independence.docx

Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Matt Chait - INTELLIGENT UNIVERSE

The modern view is that the universe, including life, is the product of random, mechanical forces. Most 'religious' people, if they believe in God at all, believe in some kind of force that perhaps initiated the physical universe and initiated life but aside from some rare miraculous interventions, this force is not involved in any way with the moment to moment daily functioning of our existence. Yet the ancient holy books of the Hindus refers to an ocean of divine intelligence in which we are all swimming; and according to the Old Testament, God is omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent. Is the existence of this God, the God that is 'closer than your breath' been made obsolete by the findings of modern science? There is no polite way to bridge the gap between these two views. Either people with this transcendent, mystical view of the universe are completely deluded or people with a mechanistic view are completely obtuse. The purpose of this post is to prove the existence of a transcendent intelligence that functions at every moment of our lives and without which we could not possibly exist.

Before we get any further it is probably a good idea to define intelligence in some way, just so we are in agreement about what it is that I am proving the existence of. To test for animal intelligence, an animal is usually presented with some food or water and some sort of obstacle to obtaining that food or water. Usually, the test animal can see or smell or in some other way sense the presence of this food or water, but cannot actually access it until the obstacle is overcome. The assumption, of course, in these experiments is that the animal wants the food, that it would prefer having the food to not having the food, and is ready to expend some sort of effort to get to it. If the subject animal has already eaten and is indifferent to the food, the experimenter will have to wait until the animal is hungry. If hypothetically the animal were never hungry or thirsty, or had any desires whatsoever, never wanted to lie down, get warmer or colder, or eat or drink, then we would have no way of testing for this animal's intelligence. And this should not be too big a problem for experimenters because all life forms have basic desires, which are an essential part of what it means to be alive as opposed to being an inanimate object.

So intelligence, at least in animals, is connected to desire, and the ability to overcome obstacles to get one's desires met. Let's distinguish intelligence from intellect which may be the sole province of human beings. Intellect is the ability to read and understand environments, either real or imaginary, other than the environment that one is immediately confronted with. Intelligence is the ability to read the environment that one is confronted with now, in present time, in a way that results in behavior that leads to the satisfaction of desires. By the way, for any materialists that are reading this post, if I make a mistake in any way, if I left the cold hard world of 'fact' as you see it, if I am slipping into the realm of 'delusion' please let me know and I will try to correct my errors.

We conceive of things in relation to their opposites. We have a concept of day as opposed to night; of light as opposed to dark; of warlike as opposed to peaceful. What is hard to conceive of is an absolute; something beyond opposition. In an earlier post I gave an example of a fish in water. A fish has no concept of water, because water is the context of every moment of its existence. The fish has never had an experience of 'no water.' But if the fish is lifted out of the water and experiences the absence of it, then when it returns to the water it suddenly understands what 'water' is. So perhaps it is not so much that the materialist, mechanistic group is obtuse, it is perhaps that they are so used to this ocean of intelligence that surrounds and permeates us, and so used to the results of this intelligence that they can no longer see or appreciate it.

This intelligence permeates our existence from within and without. It is 'closer than our breath.' So this entire discussion will focus not on research or on anyone's theory, either biologist, physicist or mystic, but on you; on your actual moment to moment experience. So please compare what I am writing to your experience (not what you once read about your experience, but what you actually experience) and if you discover some errors in this presentation, something that does not jive with your actual experience, not something that does not jive with something you read somewhere, please let me know.

Let's divide the activities of your body/brain for the purpose of this post into two categories: biological processes that are automatic, that are done without your conscious control, and behavior, the things that you consciously do. You consciously do things because you want to do them. Now I don't mean, by that, that you are enthusiastic about everything you do. This has nothing to do with enthusiasm. Much of what you do may be drudgery, but you still want to do that as opposed to facing the consequences of not doing it. This also has nothing to do with the notion of free will, which is a completely different conversation. Some of the things that you want to do you may feel compelled to do from cultural, social or biological forces. Yet you still, in the moment, choose or decide to do that thing as opposed to another. My question is, when you want to do something, and it can be something as simple as getting up to get a glass of water, how do you do it? If you know something about biology, you may tell me that certain neurons fire and these will begin a whole path of firings that will lead to a quite complex combination of muscle contractions and expansions in your hips, legs, feet, arms, hands and eye muscles. Yet the process began, was initiated, by your desire for a glass of water; a desire which may be related to a biological condition, but which is a non-physical experience. Your desire for a glass of water must be translated into the precise pattern of neurons among the one hundred billion neurons in your brain, that will give you the desired result. And it is true, that at every moment of your existence, you are desiring to do things and somehow your brain is firing the exact combinations of thousands and millions of neurons that will make that desired behavior possible. Now please think about this. This is one of those things that is so integral to our existence that we take it for granted; but imagine a piano with one hundred billion keys, one key for each of the neurons in your brain . If each key were a half inch wide, that would be a piano that is about eight million miles long. Now at every moment the precise combination of thousands or millions of these one hundred billion neuron keys must be played in order to allow you to do what ever it is that you want to do. A highly skillled pianist can look at a sheet of music and hit the right keys a small fraction of a second after reading the score; these, in the most complicated music, may be four or five or even six simultaneous keys out of the 88 keys of a piano. But where could we find a pianist that could hit a precise million neuron keys out of a hundred billion, and do that instantaneously at the same time as reading the 'score' of our desires? and do that continuously, at every moment of our existence? Where indeed? We can find such a Transcendent Pianist at the core of every living being on this planet.

One of the reasons this process eludes us is that it does not take place in time. God permeates the universe, but does not take up any space or time. So we are not aware of it and it is instanteneous. I know that for us humans, it takes a while for us to make a calculation. We want to do something and we pause for a moment to decide the best way to go about it. But when we decide to do it, whatever it is, then we instantly begin. I don't mean that when we decide to sell our house or get married or train to be a doctor that it instantly gets done. Huge decisions take many steps. But whatever the plan of action that we decide on, if the thing we want to do requires a plan of action, then whenever we decide to begin that first step, then we begin without hesitation. So when we decide that our first step to getting into medical school is to Google medical schools on the internet to begin to choose where we would like to go, then we boot up the computer and click on 'Google' and type in 'medical schools' without hesitation. Once we decide what it is that we want to do, we just do it. The process that must exist between deciding that we are going to do a thing at this moment and doing it is instantaneous. And yet it must require the selection of all those neurons to be fired among the one hundred billion possibilities. Yet, certainly, the process of selecting the exact right hundreds of thousands of neurons required for you to bring yourself to your computer and boot it up, among the one hundred billion neuron possibilities, only one of which combination will deliver the right result, is infinitely more complicated than the job of selecting the right medical school from a few hundred, all of which would give you at least the basic thing that you are looking for, a medical degree. Yet the internal selection from non-physical desire to firing neurons is instantaneous while the external choice of medical schools may take weeks or months.

Also, you cannot see it, the process, that is. But suppose you could see, not the process, but the results of the process. Suppose there was a highly advanced piece of brain scanning equipment that allowed you to view the entire operative brain of a living human being in such microscopic detail that you could see where individual neurons were firing; you could see where they were lighting up. In this way you would see large groups of neurons firing all over the surface of the brain in perfect, complex patterns. The purpose of all these patterns is two fold. First there are the patterns that provide the electrical stimulation for the biological processes of the body, the physical and chemical processes that are needed to keep a being alive in this body. And second, there are the conscious processes, those that provide the person whose brain that is with the ability to do what it is that he or she consciously wants to do. Viewed in this way, our body/brain is more of an Aladin's lamp than a machine. Aladin's lamp granted its owner three wishes, but your brain and body grant you a life time of wishes; they are the servant at every moment of your non-physical desires; translating them into physical behavior that leads to the satisfaction, and sometimes the frustration, of those desires. But your body/brain allows you, a non-physical being, to be a participant, a player in this game of life in the physical universe; with desires that draw you toward the physical universe and keep you in the game and a body/brain that allows the great majority of those desires to be realized. ( I am not being pollyanna-ish here. If you look at all the things, large and small, that you want to do in the course of a day, there are very few of them that are in any way competitive, where you may not get what you want because someone else is not cooperative, or will out compete you. I am talking about all those little things that are not little at all, but seem little because we do them all the time and take them for granted. In other words, when we want to look at something, we get to look at it. When we want to stand up, we stand up. When we want to walk we walk. When we want to touch something we touch it, etc.)

From this perspective, the usual processes that we associate with life: the processes of digestion, elimination, metabolism, reproduction, growth, and the genetic processes of translation and transcription,(in other words all the unconscious biological processes that I referred to above) are not there in and of themselves, just to continue and reproduce because they happen, by chance, to continue and reproduce. They are support mechanisms. They are there to provide the equipment that allows you to have a body and a brain so that you can participate in this physical universe;so that you can have desires and be able to translate those desires into behavior that gives you or others pleasure and satisfaction.

If you are getting the impression that this is part of some kind of hedonistic philosophy, that is not accurate. For the purpose of this conversation I am not distinguishing between one desire and another. There are desires whose fulfillment brings one happiness and well-being and desires that bring others happiness and well-being. There are also desires that bring one and bring others suffering. Are these desires morally equivalent? Absolutely not. But I am not making a moral argument now. For the purposes of this post I am talking about all desires without distinction.

Getting back to intelligence: remember that we can never observe intelligence directly. Intelligence is always deduced from behavior. We know Einstein was intelligent not because we could peer into his skull, but because of the things he said and wrote. And the same thing, of course, is true of Galileo, Shakespeare, Marie Curie and the guinea pig that manages to find a way through the lab maze so that she can enjoy her dinner. Evidence of intelligence is not made by direct observation but by the observation of behavior, of the results of intelligence. And if you could observe the firing neurons of the brain and the complexity and speed with which they respond to your desires, what better proof could there be of transcendental intelligence? Just as our intelligence allows us to manipulate our environment to get our desires met; divine intelligence fires up the exact parts of our brain and musculature that we need so that we can behave in the way that we have chosen to behave.

So I just want to be clear on what it is that I am talking about. I am not talking about everything that happens from the time that the neurons fire through muscular contractions and expansions, glandular secretions, and all the chemical and electrical changes in the body that are engendered by that particular pattern of firing neurons. That amazingly complex pattern of reactions is the realm of science, of biology, of neurology, of brain science, of endocrinology; of all the research that has been going on and that now continues in the life sciences. I am not talking about that. I am talking about the movement from desire to the initiating pattern of firing neurons. This is not something that you already know about. You know nothing about it and neither do I. I am only pointing out that this process, which does not take place in time or space, and requires transcendent and omnipresent intelligence, must be occurring at every moment of our existence. You say, how can you imagine such an omnipresent and overarching intelligence? I say, yes, you cannot imagine it. That is precisely what ALL the ancient holy books say: that God is beyond our imagining.

Part of our inability to fathom such an intelligence is that we associate intelligence with bodies, specifically human bodies, and human brains. But from this perspective, our human intelligence is minuscule. Our intelligence is limited and bound by time and space; whereas the universe's intelligence is not. Perhaps you have another, more 'rational' explanation for how we manage at every moment to do the things that we 'want' to do. If so, please let me know how else you can move from non-physical desire to the awesome precision of selecting exactly the right neurons to get our desires met, and doing that at every moment.

DESIRES

Now I would like to talk about the desires themselves. I will be confining this discussion to biological desires. Are there other kinds of desires? Of course there are. The character of a person is most clearly defined by their desires; not their stated desires but their real ones; toward what pursuits did a person really put their time and energy in the course of their existence here. But there are certainly biological desires. With lower life forms there is probably a biological bases to most if not all of their desires. But what I want to distinguish between are desires, even biologically based desires, from needs. A need is something that can be discovered by a biologist or a nutritionist. Based on biological observations and measurements of your body, scientists can deduce that you need such and such nutrition and so much water, that you may have too little or too much of a whole range of chemicals; that you need a certain amount of sleep, and that you function best within a certain range of temperatures. The things that a doctor or 'specialist' would prescribe are things that you need, or things that they think you need or things that, in the case of unscrupulous doctors and specialists, that they would like to convince you that you need even though they realize that you don't actually need them. And it is important to note that the body, by itself, needs nothing. A body has no needs. You have a need for the body to be maintained in a certain way. But the body, as a body, could care less. The body has no interests; has no concern as to whether it is a fully functioning body or a rotting corpse. The same is true with your car. When you say "My car needs gas," you really mean that you need to have more gas in your car so that it can continue to help you get where you want to go. Your actual car, just like your actual body, has no interest in whether you get there or not; whether it continues to serve your needs or is abandoned in a junk yard.

Desires, as opposed to needs, are what you want to do. Sometimes it's confusing because in a natural state what a being wants to do is precisely what will best satisfy that being's biological needs and the result will be physical and mental health. In our present condition we are being advertised at much of our waking day. The purpose of these advertisements is to create desires in us (to make us 'want') things, the great majority of which do not enhance our body's health or our well being, but merely enhance the financial health and well being of the advertiser. In fact, often these desires that we 'ingest' through advertising are for products that run counter to our needs and are detrimental to our health and well being. Even our education and much of scientific writing is, perhaps unwittingly, an advertisement or a re-inforcement of a materialist view of the universe and of ourselves that is detrimental to our mental health and destabilizes and diminishes our sense of self.

I used to think that we ate and drank and rested and sought shelter from extreme cold and extreme heat and had sex because we wanted to survive and we wanted to create progeny so that our race or our particular gene pool could survive. I received this kind of thinking not from my actual experience, but from certain books and teachers that I had been exposed to. By actually thinking about my experience I realized that this is entirely false. We do not eat because our body needs food. We eat because we are hungry, and when we are hungry we desire food. We do not drink water because our body needs water. We drink water because we are thirsty and when we are thirsty we desire water. We do not sleep because our body needs time to undergo restorative processes. We sleep because we are tired and when we are tired we desire sleep. We do not seek warmth or coolness because our body needs to operate within a certain range of temperatures. We seek warmth because we experience being cold and when we experience being cold we desire warmth; and we seek coolness because we experience being hot and when we experience being hot we desire coolness. And we do not have sex to propagate the species. We have sex because we are horny, and when we are horny we desire sex.

This is not just hair splitting. Although each of these experiences is RELATED to a biological condition, the experiences of hunger, thirst, tiredness, being hot, being cold and being horny are not IDENTICAL with these biological conditions. This crucial separation between a certain chemical/electrical condition and a non-physical experience is at the very essence of what it means to be alive. Let me explain it another way. Living beings are beings committed to or attached to a physical body. The physical bodies of living beings are metabolic systems. Metabolic systems are systems which, much like a man made machine, gather energy in some way and then focus that energy to overcome (not violate, but overcome) the forces of nature in order to accomplish a goal. In living beings there are both biological activity and behavior. The goal of biological activity is the survival of the physical body in a way that continues to support the existence of that being. The goal of behavior is to satisfy the desires of that being.

If there is no being within the body, then there is no life; in other words the body is no longer the ground through which the being's world is experienced and the medium through which the being's desires are satisfied and/or expressed. As I said above, in a natural state a being's desires are aligned with the body's needs; so that as the being continues to do what the being wants to do, she naturally, through this process, guarantees the maximum health and survival of her system. Yet there are cases, especially where humans have tampered with the environment in some ways, that plants and animals desires are no longer aligned with their needs; or the environment has changed so that what living beings most want from their environment is no longer available. Also, humans, as opposed to other living beings, are advertised at. The purpose of this advertising is to create desires; desires that may not best support the health and well-being of the recipient of these messages, and in many if not most cases, diminishes the health and well-being of the recipient. Let me give you some extreme cases to highlight the difference between desires and needs:

Methamphetamine addicts desire continuous activity when their body desperately needs rest.

Anorexics do not desire food when their body desperately needs food.

Hypothermia sufferers do not seek warmth when their body desperately needs warmth.

Obese fast food junkies continue to desire high fat, overly salted, over chemicalized food when their bodies need less food, and food with much less fat, much less salt, much less sugar with few are no added chemicals to artificially enhance the flavor and extend the shelf life.

My point here is not to draw a distinction between good and bad desires, but to distinguish between desires, which are experienced but not physical or directly measurable, and needs, which are biological, physical and measurable.

Again, desires and needs are both so close to us that they have been conflated in our minds, so that we think desires are needs and needs are desires. Living beings are drawn to the food they need. How is this done? What is the force that allows a living being to overcome natural forces (usually gravity and inertia) to move toward whatever nutrition their body needs? According to physicists there are only four forces: gravity, electro-magnetism, the strong force and the weak force. So, is it gravity that moves living beings to their food? Obviously not. We do not fall into a plate of food and we do not go hungry if our food happens to be uphill from us rather than downhill. In fact, in our quest for food we most always have to use metabolized energy to overcome gravity. Is it electro-magnetism? Are we attracted to food in the same way that iron filings are attracted to a magnet? Again, obviously not. We have sensory systems that allow us to detect the presence of food so that we can begin to overcome inertia and gravity to metabolize energy to move toward the food we have detected. If it were electro-magnetic energy, we would just be passively pulled toward our food and would need no metabolized energy to get there. The strong force and the weak force are the enormous forces that bind the nucleus of the atom together. These gigantic, and mercifully bound, forces are not in any way involved with our eating activities which insure our survival in the same way that any direct involvement with the altering of an atomic nucleus and the unleashing of either of these forces would insure our death. No. The force that moves living beings toward the nutrients they need is none of the four enumerated by physicists. It is a fifth force and that force is desire. And just as gravity, electro-magnetism, the strong force and the weak force cannot be observed directly, but can only be deduced by their effects on matter; desire can only be deduced by its effects on the behavior of living beings. The difference betweeen desire and the other four is that desire is experienced and does not exist outside the experience of a living being. So whenever you see a living being summon metabolized energy to overcome gravity and inertia and the laws of diffusion and whatever other natural forces they need to overcome to arrive at a morsel of food, the force that summoned and directed that energy is desire. What else could it be?

If all desires are experienced and all living organisms have desires, then, am I saying that all living beings are conscious? Yes, that is exactly what I am saying. But please don't confuse consciousness with any intellectual ideas of having a 'sense of oneself' or having the ability to think or use symbolic language, or the ability to fantasize or dream. None of that. All I am saying is that if an organism metabolizes energy to overcome natural forces to get to its food; the force that is motivating and focussing that energy is desire and that desire is experienced. Desire does not require thought. In fact, thinking often dulls the impact of desire. Desire does not require symbolism. It does not require the ability to fantasize or dream. With most living beings desire is a force that drives them toward an object that is right there in their present environment. They don't have to fantasize, strategize, make plans or dream about it. They just have to move toward it; and they move toward it because they 'want' to move toward it.

If a living being metabolizes energy to move toward food, then that living being is hungry and that hunger is experienced. Does that mean that it is experienced in the same way that humans experience hunger? I have no idea. Certainly the objects of hunger are very different depending on what being is experiencing hunger. When an anteater gets hungry it craves ants; koalas crave eucalyptus leaves, pandas crave bamboo and dung beetles crave dung. Each of these foods happens also to be the best possible food to biologically support these organisms, but, of course, these animals do not know that. Just as we did not know that breast milk was the best food for us when we were infants. We just got hungry and when we got hungry we craved breast milk.

So there is this amazing system whereby living beings, including humans, do not 'know' what they need, but living beings desire things and the things they desire, in a state that has been untampered with by human industrialization or human advertising, just happen to be the things that they need. Please understand that I am not talking about the biological pre-condition of desire. I know that biologists can pinpoint the chemical conditions of certain cells that will send an electronic signal to the brain that will result in hunger. My question is why does that particular signal result in the experience of hunger and the experience of hunger for the foods that are most needed? When one wonders about the origin of any biological system, the typical modern answer is that it 'evolved' that way. This is taken to mean that by the accidental mutation of genes, those that were better able to survive outlasted those that weren't. In this way, gradually, a biological system improves. But how does that make any sense in this instance? First of all we are talking about a system whereby an organisms basic needs are met. How could any organism, no matter how 'simple,' survive if it didn't have a method of getting its needs met? Could we imagine generations of any organism that had no way of getting the food or water or warmth or method of reproduction it needed? An entire system would have to be in place from the very inception of life. And we are not just talking about a biological system. We are talking about an experiential system of desires in perfect coordination with a biological system of needs. If the only way that an organism has to overcome the forces of nature in order to get its needs met is through desire and desire for the specific things that it needs in order to insure its survival, then this system with all its biological and spiritual complexity has to be as old as life itself.

So not just the system whereby, when we desire something the exact set of neurons fires to enable us to satisfy that desire; but the actual desires themselves, the system whereby what we desire is perfectly aligned with what we biologically need, are both equally and unfathomably brilliant; not gradually evolving to become something that we now consider brilliant, but, of necessity, transcendentally brilliant from the very beginning.

We live our lives trying to fulfill our desires. Many of these desires may be selfish or altruistic, visionary or petty. But among them and central to all the rest are biological desires: those desires whose fulfillment guarantees our basic biological survival. Certainly we expend effort and ingenuity toward the realization of these desires. But the fact that we are driven toward the fulfillment of this particular set of desires whose fulfillment insures our health and survival, and the fact that we are able just by choosing to do so, to mobilize those exact parts of our brains and bodies that we need in this pursuit, are wonderous things that ordinarily escape our notice, simply because these wonders are an inherent part of the mechanics of every life form that surrounds us. Yet when we do notice we have to conclude that both the system that makes each life form desirous of the objects that its organism needs for its survival, and the system that allows it to mobilize its organism in the exact right way the moment it decides to do something, are clear evidence of the omnipresence and enormity of universal intelligence.

Your comments are always welcome. Thanks.

Sunday, April 4, 2010

A DEBATE

I received the following blog comment recently:

Hi Matt,

I hope you are doing well. I always check for new posts from you every week or so and I noticed you have not posted in a few months so I hope you and your family are doing well.

Below are some youtube videos that you might find interesting.

ABC Nightline Debate Commentary - Does God Have a Future?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-8-Yxdphsg

ABC Nightline Debate Commentary - Does God Have a Future?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0X2aobTnw8


Is there anyone still out there? I took a hiatus from blog writing. There were many other things going on in my life that made it hard to concentrate on this material. Way back in college a friend wrote a two line poem that I will always remember,"How can I dwell on absolutes in a house full of relatives." Well, without going into gorey details, it was something like that. Another reason that I stopped for a while is very much in evidence in this debate that Rudy was kind enough to send to me.(Go to youtube and search for: Does God Have a Future). This debate shows what a seeming impasse we are at between materialists and people that have spiritual insight. I have a lot to say about this debate and I will try to say it in a reasonable way; but first let me get something off my chest. Two of the panelists on the debate, Michael Schirmer and Sam Harriss, are obviously very bright, very eloquent and very knowledgeable of history and science as well as both being spiritual nincompoops. Everything they say about God and religion is infantile and moronic as are the peanut gallery audience responses of Cal Tech scholars always ready with a good yuck at such pearls of wisdom as "That's woo-woo!," or "what have you been smoking?," or, "if God created the universe, why do my feet hurt?" Although they may have lofty IQ's and impressive vocabularies, the conduct of the audience was so idiotic that I was expecting them to say to the interviewer at the end of the debate something like, "I ain't had so much fun since Granny caught her finger in the meat chopper!" But, alas, those same people that were so dramatically and moronically rambunctious sitting in the anonymity of the audience, donned their scientific aura of 'objectivity' and reserve when being singled out by the camera after the debate.

Materialists often say things like, 'that's woo-woo,' or 'that's too far out for me.' The truth is that with real spirituality, it is not too far out, it is too far in. What is the proscription, the orthodox fundamentalist taboo among materialists against introspection, against looking within? I am not talking about looking within in the modern, Western sense, of looking at your deepest feelings, your most cherished memories or your underlying beliefs. Of course there is nothing wrong with introspection in this sense, but I am talking about something else. I am talking about going one step closer, one step deeper; not looking at your feelings, but at the feeler, not the memories, but the rememberer, not the sights but the seer, in other words experiencing yourself without any of the things that the self is habitually and continually involved in; not what you happen to be conscious of at any given moment, but consciousness itself. It can be done; you can experience yourself; you can dwell within yourself, but you cannot conceptualize it. Why? Because the moment you start to conceptualize, the moment you start to describe, you are pushing 'it' away from you so you can look at it. But 'it' is not an 'it', and your attempts to make 'it' an 'it' are doomed to failure. You are not a concept, but the conceiver. You cannot look at it outside yourself, because 'it' is the very self that you are trying to look outside of. And all of this, of course, sounds like woo-woo to the racing, competitive, analytical Western mind. You will never experience your 'self' until you train your mind to slow down and 'shut-up,' but it is a lot harder to do that than to dismiss the whole thing as 'woo-woo' and get ready for the next debate by overloading yourself with a whole new boat load of information and concepts.

We think we can figure out consciousness; if not now, perhaps in a few more years when we have done a little more research, have a little more information. We can figure out most things, but we can't figure this out. If we were just a little smarter, just read a few more books, just were a little faster and a little more accurate in our calculations, just had a bit more data, then everything would fall into place. We would find another law, like the law of gravity, or the laws of electromagnetism or the laws of chemical diffusion, that we could wrap our conceptual minds around and that would explain our consciousness and how we experience things. But there are no such laws because consciousness is not a physical thing. You can experience it, you can 'get' it, but you cannot understand it, or create a satisfactory concept for it. Whatever the concept you come up with, it is not the concept, but you, the conceiver of the concept. It eludes you not because it is too far out, but because it is too far in. That is why, while scientists/materialists are crammed full to bursting with data and lists of all sorts of things, like elements and atomic numbers and the names of enzymes and proteins and genetic sequences, and while we spiritualists may seem somewhat deluded and simple to them, they seem somewhat shallow to us. Are we not sober enough or are they not deep enough?

NOTHING LEFT FOR GOD TO DO

In the debate Schirmer gets the whole thing rolling by saying something to the effect that, "science is discovering so much about the way things work that soon there will be nothing left for God to do." This is one of those thoughtless statements that echoes through modern society making absolutely no sense but gaining seeming validity through mindless repetition. Science studies the material world and how it works. It studies how matter and energy react and from observing these reactions it teases out certain consistencies, or 'laws' that, once understood, can make these reactions, at least in a controlled setting, predictable. Science does not study actions, it studies reactions. In other words, in does not and cannot observe how anything 'initiates' action. And that is because things do not initiate actions. Beings (like you and me and, dare I use the G-word?, God) initiate actions. Also, science does not and cannot observe how things experience things and that is precisely because things cannot experience things. Beings (you, me and God) experience things. Let's put God aside for a moment and talk about you and me type beings. We initiate things, we do things, because we want to have a certain kind of experience for ourselves or for other beings. I am not talking necessarily about huge things like writing the Magna Carta or building the Taj Mahal. I am also talking about little things, like rolling over or blowing our noses. We roll over to have the experience of being more comfortable than we were before we rolled over. We blow our noses to end the unpleasant experience of pressure in our nasal passages. But the desire to blow our noses like the desire to build the Taj Mahal is not measurable, or part of the physical universe. And the experience of the relief of having blown our noses or the pride that one feels at having constructed such a gorgeous monument to the memory of one's young wife as the Taj Mahal, are also not measurable or part of the physical universe. Our noses are measurable; the stuff that comes out of our noses is measurable, and the Taj Mahal is measurable. But our desire to do or build these things and what we experience having done them and built them is not measurable. Desires that initiate physical change or creativity and experiences that are the result of this physical change and creativity, do not exist in time and space and are not measurable. And neither is intelligence. Let me go into more detail.

A simple act like rolling over entails an enormously complex series of electrical and chemical biological responses that result in a complex sequence of muscular contractions that produce the desired movement. According to Western science that movement begins with the firing of a whole series of neurons in our brains and ends with a whole series of muscular contractions and expansions. But what really initiates the movement is not the firing of neurons by themselves, but our desire to roll over which results in the firing of these neurons. Conscious behavior begins with our desire and then the particular and very specific and very complicated set of neurons fire which will deliver the desired result. But the desire is not in the physical universe. It can be experienced. In fact it is what we experience. We experience the desire to roll over, but we do not experience the firing of neurons that makes that movement possible. And while the desire is much more vivid for us than the firing of neurons which we can only accept intellectually, the firing of neurons can be observed and measured while our desires cannot be observed or measured. Only the brain activity which is the result of these desires can be observed. In the same way, the activity does not 'end' with muscular contractions and expansions. It ends with our experience of increased comfort at having achieved the desired position. Neither the desire nor the experience can be observed. Brain activity and muscular activity, electrical and chemical changes can be observed, but these are the intermediaries between desire and experience.

Again, a being does not exist in the physical universe. We have a body/brain that exists in the physical universe, that has a size and shape and weight, that changes over time, that develops and ages. But we, which is not our body/brain, but that which desires and experiences the fulfillment or the frustration of those desires through the agency of our body/brain; we do not exist in the physical universe. That means that we do not occupy any space or time. Biologists and neurologists cannot find us, no matter how sophisticated their instrumentation. And we take no time. That means, and this is truly miraculous, that when we desire something the extemely complex pattern of neurons that will deliver our desire will fire at the exact same moment that we desire it. It is not sequential in time. In the same way, when we, for instance, want to remember something, the neurons that, when fired, will deliver that memory, will fire at the exact same moment that we remember it. It may take us some time to 'remember' which means time to locate the right neurons. But when those neurons fire is the exact moment that we remember. It is not sequential. We do not desire something and then the neurons fire; and it is not that other neurons fire and then we experience something. It is instantaneous.

Let me explain it another way. It is often said that the brain is a computer. But it is not any computer; it is YOUR computer. It is a computer that you use. You are not the computer. You are that which uses the computer. There is a lot of research now taking place on brain-mapping, in other words, mapping those areas of the brain, those neurons, where various activities take place. Let's imagine that science had reached a point where they could locate so specifically various neurons, that they could, by giving a certain longitude and latitude and depth of the brain, locate those specific neurons that, when stimulated, would provoke in you the memory of your mother. Then they could use the same brain address, the same latitude, longitude and depth, on me and that would provoke in me a memory of my mother. My point, though, is that in you that would provoke the memory of your mother, not my mother. And in me it would provoke the memory of my mother, not yours. In other words, we, you and me, imbue our own brains with our own particular memories. In each case, it is the same set of neurons, whose biological structures are almost identical, with the same location within the brain and the same electrical firing whose voltage is identical, and the same chemical deposits connected with these firings; and yet our two memories are very diffent: your memory of your mother in a particular context that you experienced, and my memory of my mother in a particular context that I experienced. In the same way when you get a computer you fill your computer with the data that you want to fill it with, and I fill my computer with the data that I want to fill it with. The computer does not fill itself. A computer has no desire to seek out information. It stores information that it's owner wants to store and it expresses information that its owner wants to express. But you are not your computer. You are the owner; you are the one who uses your computer to help you fulfill various desires and experience various experiences. The computer does not, by itself, read or send e-mails. It does not follow or write any blogs and it does not, by itself, record or watch any videos. And that is simply because the computer has no self and neither desires nor experiences anything. But in our materialist age, since we cannot observe desires or experience and we cannot observe ourselves; our computer, the brain, has become synonymous with the self, and the firing of neurons is considered the beginning and the end of experience when obviously it is not.

Something else that is not in the physical universe, that cannot be measured or observed is intelligence. I am not talking about intellect, about your ability to solve hypothetical problems or do well on a Stanford-Binet test. Intelligence is not about hypothetical problem solving, it is about solving problems in the physical world that confront you in the moment. When you desire something (like the desire to roll over), how do you accomplish that? How do you actually accomplish anything that you want to accomplish? The very next thing that you want to do, right now, how do you do that? Tell me! You studied biology. You have advanced scientific degrees from prestigious institutions. You read all the books about the death of God. So tell me: when you want to get up and get a glass of water, how are you planning to do that? Again, I am not asking you to accept anything far out, or woo-woo. I am just asking you to take one step closer to yourself; to look closer. And to give up the idea that science has already discovered everything about you. Science hasn't even detected your existence!

As I mentioned above the process of translating desire into behavior is initiated on the physical plane by the firing of a very specific and very complex pattern of neurons among the hundreds of billions of neurons in your brain. The ability to locate the exact neurons that are required to fulfill your desire is intelligence, and it does not take place in time or space. It is instantaneous. When you throw a bread crumb in the air and a seagull adjusts his velocity and direction in mid flight and catches that crumb, that is intelligence. Intelligence is not the exclusive province of human beings, but is something that is enjoyed by every being that experiences a desire and that has to make an adjustment to its organism in order to satisfy that desire; which is ALL beings. In that instantaneous gap between desire and the firing of neurons is intelligence; and it is an intelligence that you use, but does not belong to you, or that you are even, necessarily, aware of. But the intelligence required to translate your non-physical desires into the precise set of firing neurons, is not only awesomely complicated and transcendentally brilliant, but this enormous intelligence could not possibly ever have evolved. The satisfaction of basic biological desires cannot be learned. A living being must already be able to satisfy these basic desires or, obviously and simply, that being would not be able to survive; and that goes for microbes on up. Imagine any living creature who did not know how to feed itself and had no parents to teach it; who, even more basically than that, did not know what to eat, or how to eat it; what to do when it got tired or hungry or thirsty; or even had not 'evolved' to have an experience of tiredness, hunger or thirst. This creature would perish within moments. That means from the very inception of life, the experience of hunger, thirst and tiredness, and the translation of those experiences into desires for specific foods, liquids and activities (evading, attacking, sleeping, eating) and the enormous intelligence to translate these biological conditions into experienced desires and the enormous intelligence to translate these desires into specific neural reactions that would deliver the behavior and adjustments to satisfy those desires, had to have been there from the very beginning. Intelligence did not evolve from living beings. Living beings evolved from intelligence.

Equally awesome is the ability to translate a pattern of electrons and chemicals into an experience. Now if you say that the pattern of electrons and chemicals is the same, is identical, with experience, then you have been so brainwashed by materialism that you may be a hopeless case. Is an apple the same as the experience of eating an apple? Of course not. An apple is related to the experience of eating an apple. An apple is a necessary prerequisite to the experience of eating an apple, but an apple is not identical with the experience of eating an apple. An apple is a physical, measurable object and the eating of an apple is a non-physical, nonmeasurable experience, which requires an eater, not just a digestive system and taste buds, but a being, you, that experiences that experience. A CD, which is a plastic physical object, is not the same as listening to a CD. Listening to a CD is an experience that requires a listener; once again, you. In exactly the same way, a pattern of electrons and chemical deposits in your brain is not identical with the memory of your mother. That particular pattern may be related to the memory of your mother; it may be a necessary prerequisite to the memory of your mother; but it is not identical with the memory of your mother. One is a physcial phenomenon consisting of a flow of electrons and chemicals and one is the non-physical experience of remembering your mother. If there is any chance of saving you from this robotic 'miniscule' understanding of yourself, please consider the fact that while every neuron in the brain is almost biologically identical, your experiences could not be more varied. There are colors and sounds and feelings and shapes and textures and smells and each of us in our biologically, almost identical brains, stores an amazingly varied collection of thoughts, memories, attitudes and values. Even within your own life time, with the firing of your very same brain, you have experienced a completely different world of experience. You once had gigantic parents that could lift you to enormous heights in the air. You once were fascinated by the sound of rattles and your ability to shmear food on your bib. Now you tower over your elderly parents and are concerned about their welfare. You see, the same brain,the same neurons, same axons, even the same genes, but you are now using all this equipment for very different purposes and you have imbued the billions of neurons in your brain with very different information.

Our brain assists us in defining the environment we are currently in by automatically firing neurons that are connected to experiences and objects similar to those that we are currently experiencing. Through our brain's activity, our world becomes familiar and defined. It becomes comfortable and gives us and the people around us a defined role to play within this defined world. But it is always we, ourselves, that is using the organization of the brain, by translating these patterns of electrons and chemicals into the specific world that we actually experience. This translation, this movement from electrical and chemical patterns to actual experience, does not take place in time and space; it is not accomplished by a yet to be discovered organ of the body. It is done by God or by the Universal Intelligence, if you prefer, and it is part of the miraculous equipment that we all, as living beings, have been given.

So going back to Schirmer's original question, "what will be left for God to do?", what is left and will be left is the initiation of any activity whatsoever, including anything that is the result of will, imagination, desire or purpose; and the experiencing of anything whatsoever including all feelings, emotions, thoughts and perceptions and the feeler, emoter, thinker and perceiver of all of these; which is the very moment to moment stuff (or non-stuff) of which our lives are composed.

DIFFERENT WAYS OF DESCRIBING GOD

Schirmer's second point is that since different societies at different times have had different ways of describing God, that this, therefore, is PROOF that God does not exist, and is purely the creation of the people that are describing Him/Her. Well, that is an interesting piece of scientific logic. But guess what? God is not a concept. That is why there are descriptions of God but there are also meanings that are subtler than physical descriptions. That is why Moslems never make an image of God, because that would be physicalizing (as in 'cheapening') what is beyond their ability to conceive. That is why the name of God in the Old Testament is intentionally unpronouncable. And that is why the Tao Te Ching begins with these words: 'The name that can be named is not the nameless name."

Let's talk about a creature that we do know exists, YOU. When you were born your mother described you as a little bundle of joy and a gift from God. When you were in that boring French class in high school, your teacher described you as the inattentive brat in the third row. When you dated your first girlfriend she described you as hot. When you got your first job your boss thought of you as possibly helpful to him. Now that you have your own business, your employees describe you as intimidating. Muslim fundamentalists describe you as an infidel. Members of your same church describe you as a brother. The Census Bureau describes you as a statistic. An African villager describes you as a material prince, while members of the Trump family describe you as a material pauper. But these are relatively small differences. A blood protozoan racing through your circulatory system thinks of you as a roaring river. One of the many billions of parasites in your intestines thinks of you as home. That louse in your hair thinks of you as both a very dense forest and a restaurant. Shall I go on? Every living being that you have any contact or association with has a different perspective of you and would describe you very differently than any other living being. All of which goes to prove, according to Schirmer, that you obviously do not exist and that you are a figment of the imagination of all the countless beings that have been forming these very different impressions of you. All of these impressions, by the way, are accurate from the perspective of the being that is describing you. That is truly their perspective. But is there not, then, anything else? Are you merely the figment of everybody else's imagination? Nothing but the sum total of all the myriad impressions that you have cast and continue to cast on other living beings?

Of course not. You exist. If you didn't, who is it that is reading this post? Although you are in possession of an almost endlessly complex body and endlessly complex brain, you are a unitary consciousness, that desires things and experiences things as a unit. Everything you do, you do with your body and your brain and the activities of these make impressions in the world, and these impressions vary completely and entirely depending on which beings are on the receiving end of these impressions (our two biggest American national heroes are Abraham Lincoln and George Washington. Lincoln, while he was being sainted in the North, was the most reviled man in the South in the 1860's; and Washington, our almost unanimously revered first President, was not winning any popularity contests in England in the 1770's). But you are something that is beyond the impressions that your body and your utterances and your constructions and your creations and your writings make. You are you: a self, a unitary consciousness, the context of your desires and your experiences.

Now in our materialst age we are taught to trust in the reality of solid, concrete, measurable things, and not in the reality of non-physical things, like love, desire, feelings, consciousness and the self. Yet, how can we trust, given what we now know scientifically, in the solidity, the concreteness of the physical world? What used to be considered an unbroken solid mass was discovered to be really a network of tiny pieces called atoms connected by a network of mysterious forces. The imperviousness of these forces is what gave us the illusion of solidity. It was later discovered that these tiny solid pieces, or atoms, were not solid pieces at all. That they, in their turn, were really groups of much tinier subatomic particles called protons and neutrons and electrons that were also, in their turn, connected by mysterious impervious forces. The imperviousness of these forces within the atom was what had lead us to the false conclusion that that atom was a solid speck of matter. And now, lo and behold, as we examine the neutron and the proton and even the minuscule electron, we find a previously undiscovered world of even much more miniscule particles: hadrons, leptons, bosons, fermions, mesons, baryons, quarks and anti-quarks, up and down quarks, top and bottom quarks, charm quarks, strange quarks, virtual quarks, valence quarks, gluons and sea quarks. And all of these unimaginably tiny pieces of matter are all somehow bound together by an impervious force field within these sub-atomic particles. And it is the imperviousness of this unimaginably minuscule force field that "really" creates the illusion of solidity. But again, is this bewildering array of unimaginably minuscule subatomic particles the 'real' reality, the real solidity of matter, or, ultimately, is there any matter at all? Will quarks and bosons and mesons also prove, with even more advanced optical technology, to be, themselves, force fields of a dimension way more minuscule than we have thus far unfolded? And what are these force fields made of? What is electro-magnetism, gravity, the strong force, the weak force anyway? Not how they effect matter, but what are they themselves without the matter they are effecting? They are laws and have no more actual physical reality, no more solidity, than any man made law. They are ideas, agreements, about how to organize the physical world. Laws are only made real because they are enforced. Natural laws are inviolable simply because whoever or whatever is enforcing them, never stops enforcing them. But the law itself, has no physical reality what so ever. At this moment scientists are involved in an enormously expensive search for an as yet to be seen particle that will confer 'mass' to atoms, because with everything we have uncovered so far we cannot detect any mass in the physical universe, what so ever. And yet it is in this same physical universe, whose mass and solidity continue to elude us, that we have put all our faith, and we have relegated the universe of love, conciousness, self, desire, feelings, insight, will and intelligence, in other words: everything that we cannot observe and measure but everything that we do actually experience, into the dust bin of foolishness, of 'woo-woo.'

Beyond relative descriptions that change according to who is doing the describing, there are two kinds of descriptions that are different, in that they are not dependent on any particular impression that you are casting off at any particular moment to any particular being. The first are scientific descriptions. These would consist of various measurements and lists of different aspects of your body: your weight, height, age, blood pressure, chemical make up of your blood, and even much more detailed descriptions like the length and weight and shape of all your different bones and muscles, long lists of your enzymes and proteins involved in the construction of various parts of your body; the kind and amount and location of your various electrolytes and fats and the shapes of all your organs, internal and external and even the organelles, within your trillions of cells, and, now, of course,the order of the three billion nucleotide pairings that make up your genome and are found in each one of your one hundred trillion cells. These measurements, while similarly trained people can agree on them precisely if they are making these measurements at the exact same moment, are constantly changing (the only exception being the genome, which although it is not, in itself, noticeably changing, the actual number of copies and the patterns of which genes are being expressed, is ceaselessly changing). In fact if all these measurements were done it would be not only exhaustive but lengthy, and the information gathered when the measuring began , would no longer be accurate when the measuring was finished. All of these measurements change (some more than others) when you grow, engage in activity, eat, excrete and sleep. And, actually, they change anyway from the myriad biological activities that are taking place in your body even when you are doing nothing at all. In fact everything that you are measuring scientifically has either a much shorter life than you, yourself, and is replaced by new material that looks like its replacement but is not in fact the same; or exists for as long as you do, but undergoes radical change in size, shape and composition during that life time.

Consider your face, that most familiar part of your body staring back at you in the mirror. The face is so familiar, in fact, that, in the West, it is often confused with the self, which is not the face but often expresses itself through the face. The actual cells that make up the bones and skin of your face have been replaced several times since you were born, and the material for your current facial cells was sitting, not too long ago, on a plate in front of you in the form of meatballs, fish sticks and scrambled eggs. (By the way, how this food is broken down and reconfigured into the material that makes up your face, is known, in part by science, but how this material takes the SHAPE of your face, which is really what you recognize in the mirror, is not known at all. All that is known regarding shape is that it is related to certain genes which is exactly as much information as you have when you know that pressing #7 on your channel changer will produce 'Jeopardy', 'Wheel of Fortune' and 'The Oprah Winfrey Show').

Although these scientific descriptions are more objective than the others, in that we can agree at the precise moment on the results of these measurements regardless of our particular relationship with what is being measured (in this case, you), my question is this: Are these scientific descriptions really describing you, at all, or are they describing all the fantastic equipment that you use? Which brings us to another description which is higher than all these others including the scientific descriptions; that is a description of what you are beyond the sum total of all the impressions that you leave with your body and your behavior or that can be measured by studying your body and behavior; a description that does not change regardless of your age, size or activity at any given moment: and that is a description of you from the perspective of you, yourself. You are a being that experiences the world through the agency of your body/brain and which is the milieu of your desires which you attempt to fulfill through your body/brain. You are the non-physical ground of experience and desire which expresses itself through your brain/body, but which is not your brain body nor any of the impressions you cast off to a multitude of different creatures as you make your way through your life's journey. (The only people that get real intimations of who you really are, are the people that love you). You are a unified consciousness that experiences the world through your body, but as one thing, and experiences it one moment at a time. You also desire things as a unit, and responds to these desires as a unit. In other words if you want to eat that apple there; it's not that the front half of you wants to and the back half of you doesn't. You, as a unit, want to, and you, as a unit, mobilize energy and move your entire body with all it's trillions of separate parts and chemicals and quadrillions of separate simultaneous biological processes, not leaving any part of it behind, to get yourself over to that apple, where it is eaten and digested for the benefit of your entire body, and where it satisfies the hunger of your entire self. Not different parts of your body, but your 'self', that unitary consciousness that experiences all your experience, and out of which comes all your desires, that non-physical context that is not your face, but that animates your face, that is not your brain, but that uses your brain to help you record and define your experience, and that is not your body, although you use your body to fulfill your desires; that non-physical context is the REAL you no matter what impressions your body or your behavior or your utterances or your constructions and creations happen to make with all the other creatures of the world that you happen to come into contact with, and no matter what conclusions scientists draw as they make physical measurements of your equipment. It is the exact same self that sees your sights and hears your sounds and thinks your thoughts. Although the activities that the self engages in is constantly changing, the self that is engaging in these activities does not.

What Schirmer doesn't realize in his comparative studies of religion is that God is not a concept. God is a being, in fact God includes all beings, and God, from our perspective is an experience, and when you have had that experience (which Deepok Chowprah has obviously had and Michael Schirmer and Sam Harriss have obviously not), then all your previous concepts and descriptions of God are transcended. They are no longer relevant. People in every society, as Schirmer has noted, have attempted to describe God. And they have written these descriptions down. But those descriptions are not how anyone experiences God. In every great religion there are people who experience God. That is what makes great religions great, that they work as a ladder, an avenue, for getting to an experience of the Divine. But the Divine is never what they thought they would experience before they experienced it. This is what Buddha meant when he wrote, "...a reasonable man will realize that the raft has been very useful to him in crossing the river and arriving on the other shore, but that once he has arrived, it is proper to leave the raft behind and walk on without it. This is using the raft appropriately." And that is, in fact, what all great religions are: rafts, for getting you across the river of material delusion. The rafts may be shaped differently and made from different material, but the reason they have survived over the millenia is that they continue to succeed in bringing people to the other side; to the exact same side regardless of the shape or appearance of the raft.

It's not that you get the description of God right. Every description is right from the perspective of that particular describer. There is nothing that is not God. It's that a description of God is very different than an experience of God. When you experience God you transcend your previous description. It's that you experience one-ness with the creator, which is a melting of your ego, a destruction, even momentarily, of the miniscule peephole through which you look out at the world.

Now, are there fundamentalists in every religion that think that their religion and their descriptions are right and that everyone else's descriptions are wrong? Yes, of course there are. Just like there are people that think their skin color is right and their culture is right and their etiquette is right, and their history is right, and everyone else's skin color and culture and history and rules of etiquette are wrong, etc. The problem with these people is not that they are spiritual; it is that they are not spiritual enough. They are spiritual materialists. They have had some experience of God, some intimations of God in the closeness, the bondedness that they feel with their fellow worshipers and the comfort and reverence they feel for their particular church or mosque or temple; but they have confused the trappings of God with the real article which is not physical, which permeates space and time, but is not really in space and time, and cannot, therefore, be described accurately to minds that are limited to space and time descriptions.

So, again, the you that is real, that is realer than all the descriptions of all the various creatures that have encountered you, and is real because it never changes regardless of where you are or what you are doing, how old you are or who you are encountering, is that you are context not content. You are the non-physical context of all your desires and all your experiences and you, in this life time, are attached to a body/brain so that when you experience this world through your body/brain it helps create for you a limited, defined, comfortable and dramatic world which includes victories and defeats, the satisfaction of desires and dreams and the frustration of desires and dreams, unions and separations, births and deaths. But all of that, all of it, is not you, but the contents of your consciousness. You remain the seer and the listener, the wonderer and the mourner and the celebrator of that. Scientists, with their exploration of the material world, of things and how they work, and with their magnificent technological instruments, have completely missed YOU, your endless depth, your endless dimension, and your ultimate lack of separation from the rest of the living universe.

You do not come face to face with the Divine. When you encounter the Divine you are not in your body and certainly not in your face. At that moment you have no face and neither does God. To have a face is to have a front, and to have a front is to have a back, all qualities of objects which God and you are not. You don't meet God; you expand, or melt into God. You, if even for a moment, lose all sense of your separate self, and experience yourself as an inseparable part of the consciousnes, love intelligence and will that underlies, transcends and holds the entire universe together. Again, you can consider this definition as being very far out, but it is also very far in. This is the you at the center of you. This is the self that is seeing your sights, thinking your thoughts, hearing your sounds; always, at every moment, and this is the same self which you can train, (through the avenue of any or all of the great religions) to look away from the body/brain and encounter, even in a brief and limited way, your real home, your infinite and eternal home: infinite consciousness, God consciousness, the entire universe from the perspective of the universal consciousness.

Back to Schirmer's point: the fact that different people of different ages and societies have described God differently proves only that God is, like all of us, a being, and as a being casts off different impressions at every moment. The variety of these impressions prove rather than disprove God's existence.

DEEPOK CHOPRAH

Let me first say that I agree completely with Deepak Choprah in every detail, every jot and tittle, of his understanding. This is NOT because we studied with the same teacher or read the same books or have the same belief system. I have never met Deepak Choprah or Ramakrishna or the poet Rumi or Martin Buber or Tiellhard de Chardin. Yet my understanding of the relationship of the spiritual to the material world, of the spirit to the body and the individual consciousness to the collective consciousness, is IDENTICAL with all of the above. Again, this is not because we share the same belief system. If someone is engaged in a genuine spiritual practice, they take on that practice initially because they believe in it. They have faith that it will produce a desired result. And, of course, we do that all the time in our normal everyday lives. We go to a movie because we believe that it might deliver good entertainment value. We train ourselves in a profession because we believe that that training will hopefully result in work that is lucrative and enjoyable. We make a financial investment in the belief that it will produce a good return. Then we have an experience. Either our belief resulted in the end which we desired, or it didn't. In either case, we no longer have a belief; we have an experience. It makes no sense to say, after you have seen a movie, that you hope the movie will be good. You've seen it. You now know that it is a good movie, or it isn't.

To believe and to hope are interesting verbs. When used in the present tense they still imply a future event or future realization. From a religious/materialist perspective, some people have beliefs or hopes, and these beliefs or hopes will be realized or not realized after they die. A true spiritual path is not dependent on anything that does or does not happen after you die. The goal is a realization which occurs in this life. As I said, if there is any belief, it is to practice something with a certain diligence, regularity and commitment in the hopes that it will deliver,in this life time, an experience or an insight that will reward that dilligence and commitment. The real issue in the debate is that Deepok Choprah claims that he has had and continues to have such an experience and Sam Harris and Michael Schirmer are calling him a liar.

HOW CAN WE KNOW GOD

This may sound 'Clintonesque' but when Sam Harris keeps insisting that we stop pretending to know that which we cannot possibly know (although maybe we can in a few more hundred years of research), he is talking about a different meaning of the word 'know.' He is also talking about a different understanding, a materialist understanding, of the self and God as opposed to a spiritual understanding. The way we 'know' a being and the way we 'know' a thing is very different. And God is a being not a thing. I knew my mother. If Sam Hariss wants to argue with me about that, then bring it on. I didn't know her blood type, her genome, her metabolism rate, her cholestorol level, but I knew her. Again Hariss is confusing one's material equipment with one's self. By his account, a lab technician looking at a battery of my mother's tests, who never actually met my mother, would know her far better than I would. This is the sort of idiotic conclusion that our materialist thinking is leading us to. I knew her not because I memorized and can babble back a thousand biological facts about her. I knew her because I experienced her; not her body, or her equipment, but her, her self, her soul, her non-material essence; the way that she expressed herself through her body. When we say that we know God, or we know that we are an aspect of the Divine, it is not because we measured it or physically observed it or saw the results of God's lab tests. It is not because we can describe or give a chemical analysis of God. It is because we have had a certain non-physical, non-measurable, non-observable experience which led us to a certain non-physical, non-measurable, non-observable insight. This insight, as with any insight, cannot be observed directly by others, but we can try and explain it. That is what everything that Deepok Choprah's writings and what this entire blog is about. In short, the reason all those people mentioned above and Choprah and myself are in perfect agreement is because we GET IT and Sam Harriss and Michael Schirmer, in spite of all their academic training and erudition, their expansive vocabulary and quick-wittedness, do not.

SIDE NOTE

I have to mention that I just saw a short video of someone being interviewed by Richard Dawkins, an interview that he conducted with all the openness, the curiosity and the listening skills of a medieval inquisitor. The thing that amazes me when ever I see or listen to Dawkins is how differently people react to the same stimulus. Several years ago I started studying yoga and it was the gateway for me for a whole new world of spiritual understanding. Richard Dawkins, on the other hand, has been practicing yoga for years with no discernible spiritual effect.

Oh, how do I know that Dawkins practices yoga? It's obvious. Anyone with the spinal flexibility to be able to go through their entire adult life with their head so deeply embedded up their buttocks, had to have practiced yoga diligently for many years. And it is from this inky black chamber where Dawkins spends all his waking moments that he daily proclaims to all who will hear him, that there is no light in the world.

IN THE BEGINNING

There was quite a bit of discussion in the debate about the first millisecond preceding The Big Bang. Deepak Choprah said whatever happenned prior to that first millisecond of time (considered to have been 10 to the minus fourty-third second, I believe) is considered to be, by at least some scientists, not known or knowable. After that millisecond, when all the laws of physics and chemistry and all the constants of mathematics were in tact, then the scenario is explainable by a continual series of reactions that operate according to these precise laws. Yet how did all these precise laws, without which there would be no material universe, come into being? In discussing this first millisecond, Deepak Choprah makes what I think is a big mistake by introducing statements by Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking that indicate that they both, at least at the time that they made those statements, seemed to have believed in God. And, of course, Schirmer and Harris, right on cue, come back with statements of Einstein and Hawking indicating that at other moments in time, they were both atheists. But who cares what they believed? This is not about belief. As Deepak said, "Belief is a cover-up for insecurity." Harriss talked about the audacity of Choprah discussing theoretical physics when he is not a theoretical physicist. But the whole point is that this is not about physicss; what happenned after that millisecond is the beginning of physics; prior to that it is not physics; it is an entirely different field of study. The truth is that Einstein and Hawking have no more idea about the existence of God and no more clarity about it than the corner butcher. Their field is physics. God is not physical. Physicists, just like biologists, search for physical causes, but there is no physical cause to physics itself. You cannot look to matter and energy for the origin of matter and energy. Their research has brought them to the very beginning of the physical universe, but how do you go back that one further step?

The same kind of bewilderment happens when you materially try to recreate the beginning of life (really the beginning of life forms). James Watson, the biologist who, along with Frances Crick, discovered the double helix formation of the DNA molecule, said some words to the effect that the beginning of life was 'a miracle.' Now, does Watson believe in God? Again, it doesn't really matter. His expertise is in the field of organic matter, not the life which uses organic matter. With just the tools of observation and physical and chemical calculations he is just as baffled as anybody else.

CONSCIOUSNESS IS NON-LOCAL

When Deepok Choprah makes the statement that 'consciousness is non-local,' Schirmer, Hariss and somebody from the audience who works with Stephen Hawking attacked him for using the word 'non-local' in a way that quantum physicists and Hawking in particular did not intend. Again, so what? Choprah is talking about consciousness, not sub-atomic particles. His statement should be viewed in and of itself. Choprah comes from an ancient tradition of people that have studied consciousness. What understanding, experience or even interest does Hawking have in any of that? If you understand the statement, and Schirmer, Hariss and Hawking's assistant obviously do not, it is brilliant. The truth of it is astonishing to anyone who can really hear it, but you have to hear it in and of itself and not in relation to anything that anyone else might have said or not said.

Look, I have nothing against physicists or biologists. Physicists are uncovering the ways that the physical world works. By studying phenomenon they tease out the laws, or the consistencies in the workings of inanimate matter. The efforts of theoretical physicsts open the doors for new ways in which we can manipulate and enjoy this physical universe. I give them great respect for that. Yet, I do not consider them to be in any way experts on God, life, consciousness or creation. Einstein and Hawking look for physical answers to physical questions, but when you come to the very edge of the physical universe (not just the edge in time, but the edge in space and the edge in size, the unimaginably tiny particles, and the huge objects moving at unfathomable speeds) then the physical laws that we have gotten used to give way. They either curve and bend back on themselves or disappear altogether. We are approaching the edge of space-time and if we peer past the edge with merely the tools and equations we use for understanding the physical universe, these tools will fail us. What's past the world of space-time is God or universal consciousness. The way to discover that is by an internal process, since we are each a part of that unbounded consciousness. That internal process and the insights that it yields are what every mystic, every transcendentalist of every major religion have gone through in one form or another. The opinion of anyone who has not undergone such a process and who has no interest in undergoing such a process, regardless of how knowledgeable they are about anything else, has no bearing on the validity of the process or its results.

Without pretending to understand that first fraction of a millisecond, I do want to say two things about it. First, it seems arbitrary to assign any length of time to that moment. If time measures the rate that things change, how can there be any time at all before there are things. That is not to say that that moment is less long or more long than scientists say it is. It is just to say that it (the formation of the laws of physics and chemistry and mathematical consistencies) did not take place in time. Time only begins once all that is in place. And second, I think it is very similar to what we were discussing earlier on a biological level: that when we experience a desire for something (which is not physical) that results instantaneously in physical neurons firing that will deliver that desire. The neurons firing are the instantaneous result of our intentions, just as, I think, all the laws of physics, chemistry and mathematics were the instantaneous result of God's intention to create a physical universe.


GOD AND VIOLENCE

The other atheist on the panel, Sam Harriss, talks at length about the history of violence and cruelty that he claims is CAUSED by religion. What? He is supposed to be a scientist. Don't scientists insist that you need a control before you can make an assertion? Where is the non-religious society that he has studied to compare the amount of violence and cruelty when religion disappears? Of course, there were few, if any, non-religious societies prior to one hundred and fifty years ago. That is when a few of us got the brilliant idea that humans with our pea brains and our sixy watt intellects, were the ONLY intelligence in the universe and this in spite of the fact that what we call intelligence is our ability to understand to any degree life and the world around us which supposedly was not created by intelligence. But what we can do, by way of comparison, is look to the twentieth century and immediately three monsters, three giants of cruelty and violence, leap up at us: Adolph Hitler, Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong, each of which was personally responsible for the deaths of millions of people and the torture of many, many more. Is this the nirvanah that Hariss promises us the moment we are able to eradicate religion?

Throughout history people lusting for wealth and power have used the name of religion and the name of God to forward their aims. In the same way and for the same selfish aims they have invoked and perverted the idea of nationalism, race, gender, language, freedom, patriotism and anything else that they think will inspire armies of people to fight for what, in reality, serves their selfish interests. But what does that have to do with God? That is the lust for wealth and power, not the lust for God.

Nowadays it has become fashionable to insult and make dumb jokes about traditional religion. At this debate Deepak Choprah and Jean Houston (the two people on the spiritual side) were strangely silent at these attacks. They were saying basically, "oh yes, but that is the old religion; we are talking about the new religion." Hariss, Schirmer, Bill Mahr, and a whole host of talking head atheists crack smarmy jokes about religion and get off on their superiority to those silly fools with their beliefs in old wives' tales. What is always overlooked in these smears is that although many people of traditional religions were not as open-minded regarding the beliefs of people of other cultures, or, in fact, about anything regarding people of other cultures (people, religious or not, lived to a much greater degree in cultural isolation and were often fearful of anything that was different), but within their own communities, their religion provided a depth and fervency, a passion for life, a stable family structure, a richness of art and literature and music that modern day shallow atheists cannot even approach. Real humor and insight has been replaced by glib sarcasm; real depth and wisdom has been replaced by endless lists of memorized trivia; a gratitude and wonder for life and the universe is replaced by a callow sense of superiority at how 'modern' and 'progressive' we have become, and a sense of one's own spiritual self worth has been replaced by an inner emptiness and desperate ambition.

DYNAMICS

I should say something about the dynamics of the debate. Ross and Schirmer started out, I thought, in a very cocky way. They were going to make short work of these spiritual fools, pretending to be scientists. As the debate continued I did think that, especially Schirmer, was at least considering some of what Deepok Choprah was saying. Then Harriss got side tracked by Deepok's 'arrogance.' And I can understand how he felt that way. When discussing matters of the spirit, of God and creation, the conventional conversation is couched in a tentive, questioning stage with a lot of maybe's, perhaps' and possiblies. Choprah talks like a man who knows, with the confidence of a man who knows. He does not pretend to know all the details of the workings of the physical world or even as much detail as some of the research scientists in that auditorium. What he has is a difference in perspective, in context. To understand what Choprah knows requires not the addition of a few more facts, but an axis shift, a sea change in the way one holds all of this materialist information. What he is sure of is the basic way things are layed out: that matter comes out of spirit; that the universe and life forms are intentional; that we are unlimited spiritual beings committed for this life time to a particular body, brain and perspective that defines and dramatizes our point of view. So what is perceived as arrogance is really sureness about topics of which very few of us are sure, because very few of us have had that spiritual insight, and very few of us have undergone a disciplined system of spiritual training to lead to such an insight. And in this world, Deepok Choprah has a certain style, as all of us have a certain style. His style is not mine. He probably fared much better in this debate than I would because of his style. But the topics of this debate are way too important to be side tracked by stylistic issues. And I have hardly mentioned Jean Houston, and this is because I am not sure what to make of her. Some of what she says seems very piercing and truthful, and yet there is a muddledness. I don't know if it is due to her age, or the extent to which she seems taken by the exoticness of her own life and the interesting people that she has met. Sometimes she seems interested in impressing us with the breadth of her knowledge and her wide circle of prominent acquaintances, and this does muddle her message. God is within all of us, it is not the exclusive property of gurus and famous spiritual authors. A person of true spiritual insight should be talking directly to the self, the soul, in each of us, each of the people she is addressing at the moment, and not be diverted by trying to impress us with all the wonderful, famous people she has met, and all the interesting things that she has read and memorized.


IN SUM

God does not have a future, nor a past. God is present. God does not improve. God does not benefit from technology. And GOD IS NOT A THING. Science is the study of things and how they work. But neither God nor our selves are things. We are not measurable or observable. Yes, we have bodies and brains which are things; but they are things that we have, not things that we are. We are that which uses our bodies and brains. We experience the world through our body/brain and we fulfill our desires through our body/brain; but we are not our body/brain. We are part of God, we are aspects of God and as such, we are beyond time and space, we are boundless. Now that can be experienced but not observed. The way to experience our true nature, which is non-physical, spiritual and boundless, is not by putting together clever words, by winning debates or by researching physics, biology, psychology or even researching religion. Spiritual insight is the result of search not research. Deepak Chowpra understands the whole thing, but he is playing somewhat of a charade. He knows very well that you cannot get to God merely through science. You can get to wonder; you can get to intellectual bafflement; but you cannot get to spiritual clarity without having a spiritual experience and this is achieved through prayer, meditation, or a whole variety of spiritual practices whose forms vary but whose goals are IDENTICAL with each other, whether they were invented last week or in the last millenium, and whether they were invented in Bombay, Belarus or the Bronx.

There is much more that I could write about this debate, but I haven't published anything in quite a while, so I think I'll stop here.

Thanks for reading. Your comments are always welcome

posted by Matt Chait at 7:04 PM | 0 Comments

Tuesday, September 29, 2009

WONDER

Please consider this description of a living cell by Australian micro-biologist Michael Denton:

" Viewed down a light microscope at a magnification of some several hundred times, such as would have been possible in Darwin's time, a living cell is a relatively disappointing spectacle appearing only as an ever-changing and apparently disordered pattern of blobs and particles which, under the influence of unseen turbulent forces are continually tossed haphazardly in all directions. To grasp the reality of life as it has been revealed by molecular biology, we must magnify a cell a thousand million times until it is twenty kilometres in diameter and resembles a giant airship large enough to cover a great city like London or New York. What we would then see would be an object of unparalleled complexity and adaptive design. On the surface of the cell we would see millions of openings, like the port holes of a vast space ship, opening and closing to allow a continual stream of materials to flow in and out. If we were to enter one of these openings we would find ourselves in a world of supreme technology and bewildering complexity. We would see endless highly organized corridors and conduits branching in every direction away from the perimeter of the cell, some leading to the central memory bank in the nucleus and others to assembly plants and processing units. The nucleus itself would be a vast spherical chamber more than a kilometre in diameter, resembling a geodesic dome inside of which we would see, all neatly stacked together in ordered arrays, the miles of coiled chains of the DNA molecules. A huge range of products and raw materials would shuttle along all the manifold conduits in a highly ordered fashion to and from all the various assembly plants in the outer regions of the cell.

We would wonder at the level of control implicit in the movement of so many objects down so many seemingly endless conduits, all in perfect unison. We would see all around us, in every direction we looked, all sorts of robot-like machines. We would notice that the simplest of the functional components of the cell, the protein molecules, were astonishingly, complex pieces of molecular machinery, each one consisting of about three thousand atoms arranged in highly organized 3-D spatial conformation. We would wonder even more as we watched the strangely purposeful activities of these weird molecular machines, particularly when we realized that, despite all our accumulated knowledge of physics and chemistry, the task of designing one such molecular machine - that is one single functional protein molecule - would be completely beyond our capacity at present and will probably not be achieved until at least the beginning of the next century. Yet the life of the cell depends on the integrated activities of thousands, certainly tens, and probably hundreds of thousands of different protein molecules.

We would see that nearly every feature of our own advanced machines had its analogue in the cell: artificial languages and their decoding systems, memory banks for information storage and retrieval, elegant control systems regulating the automated assembly of parts and components, error fail-safe and proof-reading devices utilized for quality control, assembly processes involving the principle of prefabrication and modular construction. In fact, so deep would be the feeling of deja-vu, so persuasive the analogy, that much of the terminology we would use to describe this fascinating molecular reality would be borrowed from the world of late twentieth-century technology.

What we would be witnessing would be an object resembling an immense automated factory, a factory larger than a city and carrying out almost as many unique functions as all the manufacturing activities of man on earth. However, it would be a factory which would have one capacity not equalled in any of our own most advanced machines, for it would be capable of replicating its entire structure within a matter of a few hours. To witness such an act at a magnification of one thousand million times would be an awe-inspiring spectacle.

To gain a more objective grasp of the level of complexity the cell represents, consider the problem of constructing an atomic model. Altogether a typical cell contains about ten million million atoms. Suppose we choose to build an exact replica to a scale one thousand million times that of the cell so that each atom of the model would be the size of a tennis ball. Constructing such a model at the rate of one atom per minute, it would take fifty million years to finish, and the object we would end up with would be the giant factory, described above, some twenty kilometres in diameter, with a volume thousands of times that of the Great Pyramid.

Copying nature, we could speed up the construction of the model by using small molecules such as amino acids and nucleotides rather than individual atoms. Since individual amino acids and nucleotides are made up of between ten and twenty atoms each, this would enable us to finish the project in less than five million years. We could also speed up the project by mass producing those components in the cell which are present in many copies. Perhaps three-quarters of the cell's mass can be accounted for by such components. But even if we could produce these very quickly we would still be faced with manufacturing a quarter of the cell's mass which consists largely of components which only occur once or twice and which would have to be constructed, therefore, on an individual basis. The complexity of the cell, like that of any complex machine, cannot be reduced to any sort of simple pattern, nor can its manufacture be reduced to a simple set of algorithms or programmes. Working continually day and night it would still be difficult to finish the model in the space of one million years."

And let me add my two cents to this astounding picture. The model that you would complete a million years later would be just that, a lifeless static model. For the cell to do its work this entire twenty kilometer structure and each of its trillions of components must be charged in specific ways, and at the level of the protein molecule, it must have an entire series of positive and negative charges and hydrophobic and hydrophilic parts all precisely shaped (at a level of precision far, far beyond our highest technical abilities) and charged in a whole series of ways: charged in a way to find other molecular components and combine with them; charged in a way to fold into a shape and maintain that most important shape, and charged in a way to be guided by other systems of charges to the precise spot in the cell where that particle must go. The pattern of charges and the movement of energy through the cell is easily as complex as the pattern of the physical particles themselves.

Also, Denton, in his discussion, uses a tennis ball to stand in for an atom. But an atom is not a ball. It is not even a 'tiny solar system' of neutrons, protons and electrons' as we once thought. Rather, it has now been revealed to be an enormously complex lattice of forces connected by a bewildering array of utterly miniscule subatomic particles including hadrons, leptons, bosons, fermions, mesons, baryons, quarks and anti-quarks, up and down quarks, top and bottom quarks, charm quarks, strange quarks, virtual quarks, valence quarks, gluons and sea quarks." Are these particles, found in every one of the ten trillion atoms in every one of the one hundred trillion cells that make up our bodies, the 'ultimate' particles? Or will even more advanced optical and chemical technology reveal these sub-atomic particles to be also, in and of themselves, vast force fields or lattices connected by whole series' of even more unfathomably minute particles?

And let me remind you again, that what we are talking about, a living cell, is a microscopic dot and thousands of these entire factories including all the complexity that we discussed above could fit on the head of a pin. Or, going another way, let's add to this model of twenty square kilometers of breath taking complexity another one hundred trillion equally complex factories all working in perfect synchronous coordination with each other; which would be a model of the one hundred trillion celled human body, your body, that thing that we lug around every day and complain about; that would, at this magnification, blanket the entire surface of the earth four thousand times over, every part of which would contain pumps and coils and conduits and memory banks and processing centers; all working in perfect harmony with each other, all engineered to an unimaginable level of precision and all there to deliver to us our ability to be conscious, to see, to hear, to smell, to taste, and to experience the world as we are so used to experience it that we have taken it and the fantastic mechanisms that make it possible for granted.

My question is, "Why don't we know this?" What Michael Denton has written and I have added to is a perfectly accurate, easily intelligible, non-hyperbolic view of the cell. Why is this not taught in every introductory biology class in our schools? Why doesn't every member of our society know this information? If archaeologists found under the surface of our planet the remnants of any man made technology that even faintly resembled our biological technology, that approached the complexity and sophistication of a life form in even the feeblest way; why that would be the greatest discovery in the history or archeology. If aliens arrived here from elsewhere in the universe possessing technology that had a small fraction of the ability of the human body to replicate and to deliver consciousness and sensory awareness, thinking and memory, to the level that we enjoy it; that would again be a discovery that would have rewarded all the radio astronomers and UFO watchers, who have been waiting for such discoveries for decades, beyond their wildest dreams. Where are the poets who, inspired by this unfathomable technical magnificence, would write volumes in joyous praise to this gift of life?

To get some sense of the sophisticated mechanical nature of cellular activity at the molecular level, consider these words, by biochemist Michael Behe, describing the workings of two protein molecules, myoglobin and hemoglobin, as they operate in our human bodies. (The non-italicized comments in parenthesis are mine.)

Myoglobin binds oxygen and stores it in muscles; it's especially abundant in the muscles of diving animals such as whales that have to endure long times between breaths. The protein chain of human myoglobin has 153 amino acids, 22 of which are positively charged, 22 negatively charged, 32 water-loving, and 57 waterfearing (oily). In eight segments of the protein chain, the amino acids are arranged so that roughly several oily ones are followed by a few water-loving ones, which are followed by several more oily ones, and so on. This arrangement allows the segment to wrap into a spiral in which one side of the helix has mostly oily amino acids and the other side mostly water-loving ones. The helical segments are stiff but the portions of the chain between the helical segments are rather flexible, allowing the helical segments to fold toward each other. Happily, separate segments can now interact and press their oily sides against each other in the interior of the now compactly folded protein, shielding them from water. (Amazingly, during the folding process 'chaperone' molecules arrive to protect the oily segments from the watery cytoplasm until the myoglobin is folded. This system of chaperone molecules protecting amino acids during the protein folding process happens not just with myoglobin but with many other proteins.) Their water-loving hydrophilic sides face outward to contact water. When all is said and done, the myoglobin chain has folded itself into the exquisitely precise form shown in Figure A.I.






FIGURE A.l



A drawing of myoglobin by the late scientific illustrator Irving Geis. The numbered balls (encased in gray shading) connected by rods are the amino acid postions of the protein. (For clarity, details of the structure of the amino acids are not shown.) The flat structure in the middle is the heme. The sphere in the center of the heme is an iron atom. The letters mark different helices and turns in the protein. The folded shape of the protein is required for it to work.

The shape of the folded myoglobin allows it to bind tightly to a small, rather flat molecule with a hole in its center. The molecule is called "heme" ...... The heme itself is rather oily and fits into an oily pocket formed by the folded myoglobin, like a hand fits into a glove. Now, the heme is also the right size, and has the right chemical groups, to tightly bind one iron atom in its central hole. When the heme fits into the myoglobin pocket, a particular amino acid (the histidine at the eighty-seventh position in the protein chain; histidine is abbreviated as "H") from the myoglobin is precisely positioned to hook onto the iron and keep the heme in place. The iron in heme can bind......to six atoms. Four of those atoms are provided by the heme itself, and one is from the myoglobin's "H". That leaves one position of the iron open to bind another atom. The open position can tightly bind oxygen when it's available. All those features combine to allow myoglobin to fulfill its assumed role as an oxygen-storage protein in muscle tissue.

Again, don't worry about remembering those technical details.....the most important point for us to notice here is that myoglobin does its job entirely through mechanistic forces-through positive charges attracting negative ones, by a pocket in the protein being exactly the right size for the heme to bind, by positioning groups such as "H" in the very place they are needed to do their jobs. Proteins such as myoglobin don't work through mysterious or novel forces, as they once were thought to do. They work through well-understood ones, like the forces by which machines in our everyday world work.........

Believe it or not, myoglobin is one of the smallest, simplest proteins of the nanobot. What's more, myoglobin works alone, which is unusual among proteins. Most proteins work in teams where each protein fits together with others in a sort of super Rubik's cube, and each has its own role to play in the team's task, much as a particular wire or gear might have its own role to play in, say, a time-keeping mechanism in a robot. To give a taste of such teamwork.... I'll briefly discuss the workings of a protein system that is related to, but somewhat more complicated than, myoglobin.

Myoglobin stores oxygen in muscle, but a different protein, called hemoglobin, transports oxygen in red blood cells from the lungs to the peripheral tissues of the body. Although in many ways it is similar to myoglobin, hemoglobin is more complex and sophistiicated. Hemoglobin is a composite of four separate protein chains, each one of which is approximately the same size and shape as myoglobin, each one of which has a heme group that can bind an oxygen molecule as myoglobin does. So hemoglobin is about four times larger than myoglobin. The four chains of hemoglobin consist of two pairs of identical chains: two "alpha" chains and two "beta" chains......The sequence of amino acids in both the alpha and beta subunits is similar to, but not identical with, the sequence of amino acids in myoglobin. When correctly folded, the four subunits of hemoglobin stick together to form a shape like a pyramid. The subunits all have regions that allow them to adhere to each other strongly and precisely, in just the right orientation so that the right amino acids are in the right positions to do the right jobs.

The task hemoglobin has to do is trickier than myoglobin's. Myoglobin simply stores oxygen in muscles, but hemoglobin transports it from one place to another. To transport oxygen, hemoglobin not only has to bind the gas in the lungs where it is plentiful, it also has to release it to the peripheral tissues where it is needed. So it won't do for hemoglobin just to bind the oxygen tightly, since it then wouldn't be able to easily let it go where it was needed. And it won't do just to bind it loosely, because then it wouldn't efficiently pick up oxygen in the lungs. Like a Frisbee-playing dog that catches, brings back, and drops the saucer at your feet, hemoglobin has to both bind and release. Hemoglobin can bind oxygen tightly in your lungs and dump it off efficiently in your fingers and toes because of a Rube-Goldberg-like arrangement of the parts of the hemoglobin subunits...... When no oxygen is bound to hemoglobin, the iron atom of each subunit is a little too fat to fit completely comfortably into the hole in the middle of the heme where it resides. However, when an oxygen molecule comes along and binds to it, for chemical reasons the iron shrinks slightly. The modest slimming allows the iron to sink perfectly into the middle of the heme. Remember that "H" that was attached to the iron in myoglobin? (I knew you would!) Well, there also is an "H" attached in hemoglobin. As the iron sinks, it physically pulls along the attached "H." The "H" itself is part of one of the helical segments of the subunit, so when the "H" moves, it pulls the whole helix along with it. Now, at the interface of the subunits of hemoglobin, where alpha and beta chains contact each other, there are several positively charged amino acids across from negatively charged ones; of course they attract each other. But when the helix is pulled away by the "H" that's attached to the sinking iron, the oppositely charged groups are pulled away from each other..... What's more, the shape of the subunits is such that when one moves, they all have to move together. So hemoglobin changes shape into a somewhat distorted pyramid when oxygen binds, and electrostatic interactions between all of the subunits of hemoglobin are broken.

That takes energy. The energy to break all those electrical attractions comes from the avid binding of the oxygen to the iron. But here's the catch. Just as only one quarter dropped into the slot of a soda machine can't release the can, the binding of just one oxygen doesn't provide enough energy to break all those interactions. Instead, several subunits must each bind oxygen almost simultaneeously to provide enough power. That only happens efficiently in a high-oxygen environment like the lungs. Conversely, when a hemooglobin that has four oxygen molecules attached to it is transported by the circulating blood from your lungs to the low-oxygen enviironment of, say, your big toe, when one of the oxygens falls off, the others aren't strong enough to keep the hemoglobin from snapping back. The electrostatic attractions between subunits reform, which yanks back the helix, which tugs up the "H," which pushes off the oxygens. As a result, the remaining several oxygens are unceremoniously dumped off, exactly where they are needed.

My point in discussing the intricacies of the relatively simple molecular machine that is hemoglobin is not to tax the reader with details. Rather, the point is to drive home the fact that the machinery of the nanobot works by intricate physical mechanisms. Robots in our everyday, large-scale world (such as, say, robots in automobile factories that help assemble cars) function only if very many exactly shaped and precisely positioned parts-nuts, bolts, levers, wires, screws-are all in place and working. If they are ever built, artificial nanobots will also have to work by excruciatingly detailed physical mechanisms. Biological nanobots must do the same. There is no respite from mechanical complexity except in idle dreams or Just- So stories.

Many molecular machines in the cell are much more complex than hemoglobin, but all work in the same mechanistic way. There are proteins that act as automatic gatekeepers, regulating the flow of small molecules or ions into and out of the cell. There are proteins that act as timing devices; others that are molecular trucks to ferry supplies to different parts of the cell; still others that act as cables and winches, pulling on cellular parts that need to be together: One of my favorites is a protein called gyrase, which can literally tie DNA into knots. In terms of our big, everyday world; gyrase is somewhat like a machine that could tie shoelaces. In developing an intuition for how such molecular machines act, a good start is to ask yourself how a shoelace-tying machine might work in our big world, or how a clock might work, or a delivery system, or a reguulated gate. As you might suspect, they all would work by mechanical principles, and none of them would be simple.

And just to add one side note, before we move off the topic of hemoglobin: Your body manufactures hemoglobin molecules to the exact specifications detailed by Behe, without one amino acid out of place or one alteration of shape, at the rate of four hundred trillion times every second!

My question again is: why isn't biology taught in this fashion, as an understanding of organic mechanics as much as an understanding of organic chemistry? Before students have any grasp of what is going on in a cell, they are required to memorize long and tedious lists of foreign sounding amino acids and nucleotides and organelles. They may learn 'where' different things take place (transcription takes place in the nucleus, translation takes place at the ribosome, etc.) but no details of 'what' actually takes place. This knowledge is more the geography of the cell rather than the working of the cell. Look again at the descriptions of the function of the myoglobin and the hemoglobin molecules by Michael Behe. It is fairly detailed (of course it could be much more detailed), but is it hard to follow? Not at all. Looking past foreign sounding words like 'heme' and 'histidine' the actual mechanics are quite simple. Each particle is either positive or negative, either water loving or water fearing, and is brittle or supple. With this highly precise but basically simple knowledge a whole new understanding and appreciation of the complexity and working of a protein molecule, which is one of the billions of tiny machines hard at work within each of your one hundred trillion cells, is easily come by. So, once again, why is this knowledge being kept under wraps? Why the big secret?

The first reason is historic. Before we had any really grasp of the mechanical nature of protein molecules and how they are energized and combined to do the cell's work, we had some understanding of what was going on in the cell chemically. With our vision limited by the magnification of the light microscope and unable to see the actual workings of the cell, we were still able to detect, chemically, what was going into a cell and what was coming out. Further, within each organelle, within the nucleus, the ribosomes, the mitochondria, etc., we could detect, again, without actually seeing them, the results of the chemical processes within them. Although the knowledge of much of these workings is now known in the rarified evirons of microbiology graduate departments, the general public still thinks of cellular activity as primarily chemical and not mechanical. Given the current state of molecular biological knowledge one would think that university departments of 'organic mechanics' should rival or surpass in their enrollments departments of organic chemistry; but they do not even exist. Ostensibly the study of organic chemistry will lead to superior treatments and medicines for a wide variety of human ailments. Shouldn't we suppose, equally, that the study of organic engineering would lead to enormous advances in our human technology that would have a wide range of benefits in every field of scientific exploration?

The other reasons for this obfuscation are, I think, more insidious. Science is taught, at least at the introductory levels, in terms of what is known. Our current technology allows us to see far more than we understand. With the processes of transcription and translation, with the processes of protein folding and combining, with the manner in which these proteins move to the exact spot where they are needed and the precise timing of their manufacture and delivery, we know 'what' is going on, but we don't know, precisely, 'how' it is done. Are scientists, particularly evolutionary biologists, afraid to reveal how much is unknown? Are they concerned that our gaps in understanding of cell mechanics will be filled in by people of a spiritual persuasion who will ascribe 'supernatural' causes for these gaps? Perhaps. In my own view, I am sure that the entire workings of the cell are both guided and also mechanical. Whoever and whatever operates in the physical world has to operate within the inviolable laws of physics and chemistry. If I intend to climb a mountain I can't just wish myself to the top. I have to mechanically burn the energy and use the muscles to overcome gravity. If I want to get into my house I can't just dream myself through the door. I have to mechanically open it. Intelligence is not just dreaming. It's figuring out ways, mechanical ways, of using energy to harness natural forces to realize those dreams. The transcendent, supernatural intelligence of the cell is evident not because physical laws are avoided, but because energy is used (metabolism) in absolutely astonishing,brilliant mechanical ways to bring about replication, growth, digestion, elimination, and responsiveness to light, sound, taste and touch.

Also, the one hundred trillion cells that make up our bodies are all factories. Within each of these factories are many millions of protein molecules which are the mechanical apparatus, the machines, of these factories. How do you describe a machine? The same way, basically, that Michael Behe described the workings of the myoglobin and hemoglobin 'machines' in the above insertion. You explain how it is 'designed;' how energy moves through the various parts and how 'the shape' of each part, whether that shape be cylinders, or pistons or pumps or wheels or levers, as it is charged with energy, interacts with the 'shapes' of the other parts enabling the work of the machine to get done. Yet the common understanding of a cell is not as a high tech factory crammed with amazingly sophisticated and precisely shaped equipment, but as a fairly undefined, amorphous space, a kind of biological beaker or test tube in which chemical reactions take place.

My contention is that the amazing details and specificity of this molecular equipment flies in the face of neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory which contends that all this, almost endless, complexity and synchronicity, was arrived at by a random process of very rare genetic replication accidents. Also, from the Darwinian perspective, life was supposed to have evolved from simple beginnings. Yet we see breathtaking complexity within the cell, at the very beginning of life. And whatever knowledge we have now of the functioning of genes is about how genes specify different amino acids which combine into proteins. This is information about how genes determine the building materials, the chemical contents, of bodies. We know nothing, or, perhaps, next to nothing, about how genes determine the shapes that these proteins will take or how these proteins or combinations of proteins form themselves into the fantastically precise shapes and contours of ducts and membranes and tubes and processing centers and cilia and flagella; which shapes are essential to the entire mechanical functioning of the body. (Please note that I am not challenging the fact that genes specify proteins and these then form into specific shapes; but simply that we do not know how it is done.)

Now much of my blog does argue for the impossibility of genetic mutation and natural selection being able to produce anything resembling the complexity and coherence of even a 'simple' cell, never mind the one hundred trillion coordinated and synchronous cells of the human body. But what my opinion is is beside the point at this juncture. And Darwinian assumptions about the simplicity of cells, ideas that were popular one hundred and fifty years ago, are also beside the point. The point is: there is this fabulous design. However you think it got here, intelligently or randomly, the fact is: it actually is here. So let's not pretend it isn't.

We are all searching for common ground. We are all searching, in this increasingly crowded and inter-connected world, for a way of living in harmony and cooperation with each other. This cannot happen, I think, if there is no sense of mutual respect, and, to my mind, it is impossible to have respect for everyone if we don't have respect for ourselves. Again, however you think this fabulous equipment, that allows you to think and see and hear and respond and develop relationships and do what it is that you feel like doing; however you think it got here is beside the point. The point is that it did get here. It is here. You have it. I have it. Every person on this planet has it; and it is, regardless of who you are, or how the surface of your body is commonly regarded as to cultural standards of beauty, or how much health you enjoy or illness you suffer from; a technically awe-inspiring masterpiece.

Also we may have spiritual differences. I am absolutely clear that all this equipment, as fabulous as it is, is not me. I am that which uses this equipment and experiences life through the perspective of this equipment. I am not these amino acids and nucleotides and neurons and hemoglobin molecules that I study. I am that which uses those amino acids and nucleotides and neurons and hemoglobin molecules to experience my life. This equipment is not me; this equipment is here for me! I am grateful for this equipment. I am the recipient of this equipment. Again, you may think differently. You may think that you and the biological equipment that you are studying are one and the same thing. That you are this equipment; that you are trillions upon trillions of nucleotides and protein molecules that just happen to talk and think and see and hear. Okay, fine. That makes absolutely no sense to me, but, again, you are entitled to your opinion. But whatever your opinion is, that does not diminish one iota the breathtaking complexity and brilliance and beauty of this body/brain, whether you actually consider it to be you or to be your equipment, or whether you consider the creation of it to be intentional or some amazing accident.

Whatever the reason for the obfuscation, isn't it time to shine some light on what have been clearly the most amazing discoveries of this century and the second half of the last one? I think when everyone begins to understand at some level the magnificence that lies under our skin, then that may be the beginning of a growing self-respect and respect for others; a softening of the hierarchical nature of many of the institutions of our society and a diminishment of cruelty, injustice and abuse.

What do you think? Let me hear from you.

MattChait - Friday, June 20, 2008

EVOLUTION

http://beyondevolutionistheregodafterdawkins.blogspot.com/

If you are bewildered by "evolution" and can't quite grasp how our once lifeless planet is now teeming with conscious, intelligent, living beings, and you share that bewilderment with an evolutionist, they will often say that you just don't have an appreciation for the amount of time involved. "How much time?" you may ask. "Millions of years," they reply. When you still look skeptical they will say, "Hundreds of millions, even billions of years." And if you still seem unconvinced they will say, "Endless time," thereby throwing you a concept that you cannot possibly imagine or appreciate and ending the conversation.

Yet, is it possible to accept without question the 'fossil record', including the basic accuracy of all the calculations regarding time, and still be completely skeptical of evolution, at least the way it is currently viewed by modern science? Absolutely! In this post I will show you how an examination of the fossil record as it is currently understood, can lead one to a completely different conclusion then the one commonly accepted by Darwinists and neo-Darwinists. And by evolution I mean the supposed explanation for how one species changes into another, how we evolve in complexity from 'simple' one celled creatures to human beings. I am not taking issue with the obvious adaptive variations of traits that happen within a species. I am not taking issue with the genetic mingling that happens with sexual reproduction and how the resulting varieties of genes within a species allows that species to withstand threats that may be fatal to some, but not all, of its members. And I am not taking issue with the obvious fact that we are all trying to survive and that in order to survive we must make constant adaptations to our environment. These things obviously happen. What I am taking issue with is the idea that life began as merely an evolution of chemicals and the idea, which has never been observed, that random, accidental mutations can lead, and have led, and are the only path to lead, from one species to another, from one phyla to another and even from one kingdom to another.

Let's look at the 'time- line.' Your understanding of the 'time-line' may depend on how long ago you studied evolution in school. When I studied it the impression we had was that very slowly, inexorably, over many, many millions of years, in primeval tide pools, organic matter would float unmolested by predators and with the help of energy provided by fortuitous lightning strikes (many thousands of them and each lasting one week or longer) this organic matter would naturally congeal and combine until, by an incredible piece of luck, it managed to coalesce into a replicating molecule with a genetic code. Then, after many, many more millions of years, this replicating molecule would 'learn' to grow a body, to digest and eliminate food, to discern what it needed from what was harmful in its surroundings, to metabolize energy, to grow, to be born and to die, in other words, it would learn to become a cell. And the way that this was done and continued to be done as the cell changed into more advanced forms of life, was by the random and very, very occasional process of mutation, or an accident in the reproductive copying of the genes, that would produce a creature better able to survive than it's predecessors. This genetically 'improved' creature would then flourish until another fortuitous accident would happen, which could be many millions of years later, creating a newer and even more adaptable and sophisticated creature which would lead the evolutionary way until the next fortuitous accident. And this would continue, mutation to mutation, as we moved slowly from single-celled creatures, to more complex microscopic creatures, to molds, to worms, to fish, to reptiles, to mammals and finally to humans.

The current understanding, however, does not give any support to the notion of an endless time line punctuated at regular intervals by these mutational advances. In addition to becoming more sophisticated in their calculations of the age of fossils, scientists have learned much more about the geological and astronomical formation and history of the earth. Most of the information that I will be using in this post comes from a book, "Rare Earth," written by a geologist, Peter D. Ward, and an astronomer, Donald Brownlee, both of the University of Washington. I will not be discussing their main hypothesis, that many, many geological and astronomical events conspired to make advanced life on this planet possible, and therefore advanced life on other planets is probably extremely rare since so many unique events including our distance from the sun, the radio-active core of the earth, plate tectonics, the shape of our orbit around the sun, the sun's distance from the center of the Milky Way Galaxy, long periods of intense glacial cold, etc., etc.; all these conditions were absolutely necessary for the development of complex and advanced life. In making their argument they have put together a wonderful compendium of the latest thinking concerning the history of the development of life and the latest evolutionary theories and conjectures. It is this compendium that I will be borrowing from. Anything in quotation marks from here on out will be from their book, "Rare Earth" unless otherwise noted.

How Old Is Life?

"The Earth formed about 4.5 billion years ago from the accretion of variously sized 'planetesimals,' or small bodies of rock and frozen gases. For the first several hundred million years of its existence, a heavy bombardment of meteors pelted the planet with lashing violence. Both the lava-like temperatures of Earth's forming surface and the energy released by the barrage of the incoming meteors during this heavy bombardment phase would surely have created conditions inhospitable to life....Clearly, there would have been no chance for life to form or survive on the planet's surface. It was hell on Earth."

"Most scientists are confident that life had already arisen 3.8 to 3.9 billion years ago, at about the time when the heavy bombardment was coming to an end....As soon as the rain of asteroids ceased and surface temperatures on Earth permanently fell below the boiling point of water, life seems to have appeared."

Wow! Now that's a very different idea than what we learned in school, isn't it? What happened to those organic molecules brewing in a primeval soup for hundreds of millions of years? And those were hundreds of millions of years to assemble a 'replicating molecule'. This 'replicator' still had to 'learn' how to build a body, how to grow, how to be born, how to keep its shape together, how to accumulate materials for future replications, how to digest, how to eliminate, and how to be able to discern what is harmful from what is beneficial in its environment. Oh, yes, and the evidence indicates that these first creatures were photosynthetic. So they needed time to discover how to metabolize energy from carbon dioxide, as well. These are all 'discoveries,' by the way, that almost four billion years later, none of our most brilliant researchers have been able to discover for themselves. Not one of them can produce anything from scratch that either metabolizes, grows, replicates, digests, or any of it. The reason that has been given as to why lifeless molecules can accomplish what our most brilliant human minds cannot has always been 'endless time'. Yet, what has been discovered and now commonly accepted among scientists is that as soon as environmental conditions were established that made life possible, life was there. The time excuse no longer holds. So how did it happen?


I should also mention that there is very strong evidence that there was life deep below the surface of the earth that even predates these ancient photosynthesizers. Chemoautotrophic life that metabolized energy not from the sun but from chemical reactions, and specifically from the mixing of highly reduced fluids from volcanic activity spewing up through hydrothermal vents in the ocean floor reacting with cooler and less reduced ocean water. Today there are vast colonies of these extremophilic (heat loving) and chemoautotrophic microbes that live adjacent to hydrothermal vents whose genetic make-up, if current ways of estimating these things are accurate, make them the most ancient of all bacteria. So it seems that even when the surface of the earth was still way too toxic and violent for any life to survive and especially for the fragile formation of life from organic material, there was life with a completely different metabolism and a whole different tolerance for heat, thriving way below the surface in the relatively stable (as compared with the surface at that time) environment of hydrothermal vents.

Both of these discoveries, of photosynthetic life on the surface of the earth and chemoautotrophic life at the thermal vents, completely puts the kibosh on any nonsense about a primeval soup of organic molecules floating 'unmolested' (Dawkins, 'The Selfish Gene') in Edenic tide pools on this earth for hundreds of millions of years prior to the arrival, thanks to thousands of week long, perfectly timed lightning strikes, of an assembled molecule that just started replicating by itself. Any bonding of organic material would not stay in tact for five minutes in the roiling, boiling atmosphere of earth before 3.8 billion years.

So, how to explain this sudden appearance of life below the surface, as soon as the environment was in any way habitable, and on the surface as soon as that environment was even marginally habitable. The response in the scientific community has been to drastically shrink the estimated time for both pre-biotic evolution (the creation and assemblage of organic materials leading up to a replicating molecule) and for the evolution from replicating molecules to bacteria, from several hundreds of millions of years to perhaps ten million, a time that, given the limits of our abilities to date things that ancient with any precision, could be within the margin of error of phenomena that we would call 'simultaneous'. Let's look at this assumption in the light of what is known of extremophiles, and, in particular, of hypothermophiles, bacteria that thrive at temperatures at and above the boiling point of water.

Hypothermophiles

Biochemist Mike Adams of the University of Georgia writes, "It now seems clear that conventional life forms didn't give rise to these hypothermophilic bacteria; rather all conventional life forms evolved from high temperature organisms. In other words, you and I are adaptations to much colder (below boiling point) environments."

Adams writes further, "....enzymes produced by conventional organisms, and the protein material that comprises them, are very sensitive to high temperatures. Consider how an egg white--almost pure protein--instantly turns solid when dropped into boiling water. The high temperature destroys the protein structure, and when the proteins fall apart and precipitate out, they no longer function."

So how are hypothermophiles able to exist and function, even thrive, in such deadly temperatures? Adams writes, "Studies, including chemical analyses, Nuclear Magnetic Resonance spectroscopy and crystallography, have revealed that hyperthermophilic enzymes and proteins are made with the same building blocks as conventional proteins and enzymes. The hyperthermophilic proteins simply have more chemical bonds inside of them. The result is a "super glue" that maintains the structure of protein even at high temperatures."

Please understand clearly the full implications of these discoveries. Hyperthermophilic microbes thrive in an environment where none of their individual organic chemical components could exist even for a minute. They exist because of the multiple bonds that hold them together. Any scenario of organic building blocks gradually coming together over any period of time at all, is flat out impossible in this environment, or in any environment that existed on this planet prior to 3.8billion years ago. So whether they arrived here from other planets embedded in asteroids or directly from the mind of God, hypothermophilic bacteria arrived here ready made, complete, as whole functioning organisms. There was no such thing, at least on this planet, as pre-biotic evolution.

Basic Survival: Indivisible and Unlearnable

Now this idea of a life form arriving here whole, without any build up from simple to complex, may be hard to accept by people who have been indoctrinated in the idea that all things begin with simplicity and become more and more complex over time as more things are learned. Yet there are some things that, if you really think about it, are impossible to imagine 'learning'. First of all, if we went, as evolutionist Richard Dawkins would have it, directly from a lifeless molecule to a replicating living molecule, how did that molecule 'learn' to replicate? If there is any learning at all, there must be a learner. In the case of the molecule, who is it that is doing this learning? Also, how does a molecule, or a cell for that matter, learn to survive? How long could it survive before it learned how to survive? How much time would it have to learn how to metabolize? How much time would it have to learn to respirate? To learn synthesis and regulation and reproduction? What about growing? How long would it take that most simple creature, whatever it was, to learn how to grow? Come to think of it, how do we grow anyway? Has any creature, including ourselves, ever really learned such a thing?

Those are just some of the amazing biological processes that all creatures need for their survival. What of the non-physical processes that are equally necessary but never discussed or even acknowledged? For instance, what about the amazing way that we want and desire exactly what we need? If we need water, then we become thirsty for water. The more we need water, the more delicious water seems. The more we need nutrition, the more we desire the food that will bring us this nutrition. When we need sleep, we crave it, and the more exhausted we are the more appealing a good night's sleep becomes. Now did we learn this? Did we pass through millions of years wanting things other than what would deliver our survival? When that first microbe's body first needed water, did that microbe have to learn what water is? where to find it? how to drink it? How long would that microbe survive if it had to learn how to satisfy its thirst. Come to think of it, how long would that microbe survive if it had to learn 'thirst'. If this is a truly random universe, were there countless generations of microbes or even simpler creatures that tried to eat sand when they needed water, that got more active when they needed sleep, that sought out poisons instead of nutritious food? How many generations did it take to discern what was nutritious from what was poisonous? How many generations did it take to learn to want the very things they needed? How many generations did it take to learn to want anything?

Of course, all of this is absolutely impossible. No species, no matter how 'simple', could last until the next generation if it did not arrive on this planet already knowing how to metabolize energy, how to digest, how to eliminate, how to discern what it needed in the environment from what is harmful, how to grow, how to break down the materials it took in to a form that it could use for energy and new growth, how to replicate, and, of course it already had to want to survive, and want the food, water, and whatever else was necessary from its environment that it needed for its survival. It could learn HOW to get better at finding what it needed, but it could never survive for more than a moment if it had to first learn WHAT it needed and if it even had to learn to WANT what it needed. The exquisitely balanced system whereby a living creature wants exactly what it needs, and in satisfying those desires insures its survival, is a system that is so basic to our understanding of life that we never even question it and we are never even aware of its existence. But if we postulate a completely lifeless, purposeless universe, how in the world did life begin without this exquisite alignment between wants and needs already in place? And how could we imagine such a subtle, perfect system, which we have not even begun to understand, forming accidentally by the fortuitous collision of atoms and molecules? And who is this 'it' who's desires allow these survival processes to function? Who is this 'it' who wants to breathe, who wants to eat, who wants to drink and rest? So not only did there have to be a complete survival kit from the very beginning, but there also had to be an 'it' that was using this survival kit, that was committed to it's own survival and whose desires were in perfect alignment with its biological needs. Only when you can tell me where this 'it' came from and how this exquisite system was formed, can you convince me that you are really talking about the origin of life.

And this is true whether we are talking about this planet or any planet. There is no partial survival. There is no gradual survival. You will survive until you are able to replicate or you wont. All the mechanisms of this survival, and the complexity of these mechanisms in even the 'simplest' life forms, far surpasses anything else in the inanimate universe; and these mechanisms must already be complete and perfectly coordinated from the very beginning, and they must be driven by a being that wants to survive, that wants to somehow extract from its environment the things that it needs to survive, or it and all the mechanisms that support it, will fail. It is as simple as that.

Simple To Complex

Another scientific justification for this shockingly early appearance of life has been to explain that life at first must have been very 'simple'. It then becomes more understandable that it would appear in almost 'no time' geologically, like ten million years, ( but not understandable in actual 'no time', as I mentioned above, which would be less time than it would take to boil an egg!) and that the really complex creatures, like ourselves, would take another four billion years of evolution. Brownlee and Ward write,"The gulf between the complexity of a bacterium and the complexity of even the simplest multicellular animal.......is immense. The number of genes in a bacterium can be measured in the thousands, whereas the genes in a large animal number in the millions."

Is that really a gulf? When you think about it, the basic structure, not in terms of skeletons, organs or shapes, but the basic structure in terms of functions was already in place. Bacteria grew, were born, died, replicated, had a form of metabolism, used the energy from that metabolism to digest food, to replicate, to produce needed enzymes, and to grow. Bacteria were and are also able to discern what they need from their environment and have a way of taking these materials into the interior of their bodies, breaking them down and digesting them in a way that they can be used for new building materials and energy; and they have a way of discerning what is potentially harmful to them in their environment and avoiding or destroying or protecting themselves from this threat. When you think of what our basic human survival functions are now, exactly the same in their essence as the bacteria, then this development does not seem like a gulf at all. It seems like a big change in complexity and form but not in basic function.



The real gulf, the gulf that dwarfs any separation between one life form and another, is the gulf between non-living molecules and a living being, even if that living being happens to be microscopic. I am astounded that whole cadres of otherwise highly intelligent research scientists don't see this. Are you so inculcated in the materialist notions of our society that you cannot see a difference between a living body and a lifeless collection of molecules? Scientists argue that it is actually very hard to 'see' a difference. Of course it's very hard to see it, because you are looking for it through a microscope. LIFE IS INVISIBLE! Is that shocking? Well, get used to it, because it is not only true, but it is painfully obvious, once you get it. Of course you can see how a living being enlivens the body that it occupies. You can see how that body is filled with consciousness, will and intelligence, but you cannot see consciousness, will and intelligence directly. You can measure all the biological processes that serve that being, but once that living being leaves that body, the body returns to being just a collection of molecules, mainly protein, and all the quadrillions of electrical and chemical processes that those proteins conducted disappear too, because the being that those processes served and whose needs and desires initiated those processes, is gone. Yet every visible part of that body remains.


When biochemists base origin of life theories on the assumption that once, by chance, all the chemicals of a replicating molecule were assembled, it would just start replicating, they are coming from the point of view that they have been indoctrinated in for years, that life is merely chemicals. Life is not merely chemicals. And it is not merely electrons. Life is how we EXPERIENCE those chemicals and electrons. A chemist friend of mine once told me that he understood sex. "Great" I replied, anxious to finally get some clarity about a topic that had completely bewildered me since puberty, decades earlier. "So, what's the answer?" "Testosterone" he replied. Wow! So does he think that if I put a pot of testosterone on a barstool next to a pot of estrogen, that the pot of testosterone will start buying the pot of estrogen drinks? Folks, it's not the chemicals. It's how we experience the chemicals. We are the non-visible, non-physical ground of our experience. Whatever you point to, we are not that. We are that which experiences that. We are not chemicals. We are that which experiences chemicals.


To fully appreciate the enormity of this gulf between the non-living and the living world, let's look at it from the perspective of modern science (not mine). Supposedly in this world prior to that first replicating molecule there was no life, no consciousness, no awareness, no ambition, no plan, not even anything that had an ambition, a plan or a desire for anything. There was nothing that wanted to survive, only atoms and molecules colliding at random, passively being pushed and pulled by gravity, electro-magnetism and the other forces of physics. And there was no such thing as a machine, since a machine is something that gathers energy and uses it for a purpose; but there was no purpose, just atoms joining with other atoms and separating, colliding, amassing, exploding, expanding and contracting with perfect randomness. That's it!


Now comes 'simple' life. And this is life that supposedly, from Dawkins' and modern biologists perspective, began with a molecule. This would be, again according to modern science, not only the first molecule to ever do anything in the history of the world in terms of a self initiated action (to quote Dawkins, "a molecule that makes copies of itself") but it is the first time anything, molecule or otherwise, had initiated anything in the entire universe. The first time that a molecule didn't just passively react to outside forces, but actually did something. And what does it do? It replicates! Now I have two children. And these children, by the way, arrived here, according to the script, after four billion years of fortuitous mutations and accumulated knowledge and complexity. They are supposed to be, even mine, the pinnacle of evolution. And I know, because I saw them, some of the very first self initiated activities that they did upon their arrival here on this planet. One of them discovered to his great delight, that he could press down on his food and splatter it over our dining room table. My daughter discovered that she could hit a low hanging mobile and cause it, also to her great delight, to swing back at her. Here we have, not a human being, but a lifeless molecule doing as the first initiated activity in the history of the universe not squishing food, not playing peekaboo or patty cake, but replicating itself; the most intricate, confounding, baffling process in all of biology.

And please don't believe any nonsense you hear about replication now being 'understood'. If it is understood so well, then why don't those people that understand it, do it? Start from scratch, from carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, sulfur and phosphorous, and build something that replicates. The same holds true with all the other functions of this 'simple' bacterial life. If it's so simple and understandable then build something, starting from scratch, that grows, that digests, that senses its environment, that metabolizes, that eliminates, etc. Scientists think they understand these processes because they understand the chemicals involved. What is not understood is that a life form, and by that I mean life that takes a physical form, is an expression of intention, and intentions divine or human cannot be seen. An assembled DNA molecule does not replicate because there is nothing in it that wants to replicate. If DNA from one cell is transplanted into the nucleus of another cell, then it might replicate because a cell is a living being that wants to replicate. But the chances of a DNA molecule replicating when it is separated from a cell, even when it is surrounded by all the chemical materials it would need for replication, are no greater than the chances of a corpse making itself breakfast.

Life did not begin when a collection of chemicals suddenly sprouted an intention (to survive and replicate). It began when intention or purpose formed a living body that could survive in the environment as it existed on this planet in that first moment four billion years ago. There are no biological processes in organic material assembled in a laboratory, because there is no self, no being there whose needs and desires are served by these processes. Organic material, even the most complex protein molecules, have no interest in anything by themselves. They have no selves. Biological processes happen because a being wants or needs them to happen.

Let's get back to the time line.

The Next Two Billion Years


Two billion years is an enormous amount of time. We are talking about fully half the time from the first appearance of life to the present day. So what did the inexorable march of evolution accomplish during those two billion years? Absolutely nothing! Nothing, that is in terms of how we conventionally think of evolution accomplishing things, as one life form gradually, mutation by mutation, changing into another and more complex life form. None of this happened. We began four billion years ago with microbes and we ended two billion years later with microbes. In the show business community ,when people are casting projects, and they look at an actor or director's resume in which there is a five or ten year gap between one show or one film and another, they often use the phrase, "That's a long time between drinks." What it means is that if you really call yourself an actor or a director, how can you explain these five or ten years of no professional activity? If you really had a career, wouldn't we see evidence on your resume of shows that you had directed or played in every year? Now I know that evolutionary processes are supposed to move slowly, but two billion years seems an awfully long time for there to be no movement from one species to the next, from one grade of organization to the next, from one phyla, or basic body type to the next. It does seem, no matter how you look at it, especially for a thing that is supposed to be marching rhythmically and inexorably, like an awfully long time between drinks!

Now during these two billion years, within this gigantic community of microbes, there were adaptations, amazing adaptations, but no changes in basic shape or complexity. It seemed that whatever environmental challenges were faced by these creatures, they were always able to respond with a new enzyme, an antibody, or a new way to organize themselves to counter the effects of this new threat and render it harmless. Here is a list of some of the bacteria that made huge adjustments to very difficult, to otherwise deadly, circumstances:

Acidophiles: Organisms with an optimum pH level at or below pH3.
Alkaphiles: Organisms with an optimum pH level of 9 or above.
Endoliths: Organisms that thrive in microscopic spaces within rocks.
Halophiles: Organisms requiring at least 2M of salt for growth.
Hyperthermophiles: Organisms that thrive at temperatures between 89-121degrees Centigrade.
Hypoliths: Organisms that live inside rocks in cold deserts.
Lithoautotrophs: Organisms whose sole source of carbon is carbon dioxide and who derive energy from chemical, inorganic, reactions.
Metalotolerants: Organisms that thrive in high levels of otherwise toxic amounts of dissolved heavy metals including copper, cadmium, arsenic and zinc.
Oligotrophs: Organisms capable of growth in nutritionally limited environments.
Osmophiles: Organisms capable of growth in environments with a high sugar concentration.
Piezophiles: Organisms that live optimally at very high hydrostatic pressure, in deep terrestrial subsurfaces and in ocean trenches.
Polyextremophiles: Organisms that thrive under more than one of these categories.
Psychrophiles/Cryophiles: Organisms that thrive at 15degrees C or lower, including in permafrost, polar ice, and in or under alpine snowpacks.
Radioresistant: Organisms resistant to high levels of ionizing radiation, including extreme amounts of ultra-violet radiation and nuclear radiation.
Xerophiles: Organisms that grow in extremely dry conditions, like the soil microbes of the Atacama Desert, where the average rainfall is 1mm per year and where, recently, there was no rainfall for 400 years.

No matter what extremities bacteria were exposed to, they invariable managed to come up with a way of not only dealing with those extremities, but a way of thriving within the very conditions that originally threatened them. Now in all these cases we can try to apply the old Darwinian bromides of the accidental mutation that happened very, very rarely, and that resulted in an improvement in adaptability and that ultimately would result in an adaptation that would be able to handle whatever the environmental exigency was. When you think of the rarity of these mutational 'mistakes' and, if things are truly random, the incalculable number of 'mistakes' that would have to occur before there was any 'mistake' that would give an organism any advantage whatsoever (have you, in your life time or in your study of human history, heard of any mutation among humans that became anything other than a horrifying disadvantage to the mutant? Do you know of any X-Men, like in the movies, whose mutations give them extraordinary powers and who have become the rage, in that everyone of the opposite sex wants to immediately mate with them and have their own mutational offspring, and in this way the mutants become the dominant population?) and of those advantages, the almost endless number of possible advantages before there was an advantage that would actually deal with the specific threat that was at hand; how does it happen that in all of the above cases, bacteria managed to find a genetic solution to these deadly problems instead of being wiped out by them? How have bacteria managed to occupy the hottest, coldest, driest, most alkaline, most acidic and most pressured nooks and crannies of this planet, and to not only survive, but to flourish there? And this was not accomplished in 'endless' time. In the case of hypothermophilic bacteria, it was accomplished in no time at all. And if we postulate that each of these other evolutionary processes started with 'normal' bacteria, composed of 'normal' organic material, how much time would they actually have under the pressure of these deadly threats to evolve anything? Was there really that much 'endless time' or were these relatively sudden responses to urgent situations? Also, why does the perfect remedy for each threatening situation occur in the exact location where that specific remedy is needed. If things were truly random, wouldn't we find genes to neutralize the effects of high acidity in normal pH environments, and genetic adaptations to extreme cold in warmer climates? Even if these gene sequences were never used, why wouldn't they appear in the genomes of bacteria from other environments. Surely there is something more at work here than just occasional random replication errors.

Writing in Science Magazine, Portugese biologists Lidia Perfeito and Isabel Gordo report that beneficial mutation rates in Escherichia coli bacteria, not when they are measured in a stable environment as they usually are, but when they are measured adapting to a new environment, are A THOUSAND times higher than one would have predicted by random replication accidents. And these are beneficial mutations. Of all the possible accidents that could happen in gene replication, how many of those possibilities would be beneficial, if these accidents were truly random. Here we have a thousand times the rate of any mutations, and the mutations are beneficial. Whole colonies of bacteria are undergoing the same mutations that are moving them to an adaptive balance with their new surroundings. Not deleterious mutations caused by radiation, but beneficial mutations that deliver the precise survival advantages they need in their new environment. These are not, then, mutations at all, in the sense that we usually think of mutations; as deleterious accidents. These are not accidents. What else could it be but a purposeful attempt to restore needed balances to lives and to the environment by altering, with transcendent specificity and intelligence, the genetic sequences to deliver survival in a harsh new environment? And this is precisely how bacteria have managed to adapt to every extreme environment on this planet.

Gene Swapping

Before we leave this two billion year period, we need to say something about 'gene swapping'. Scientists first suspected that there was such a thing as gene swapping, a lateral transfer of genes from one bacteria to another, even from different species of microorganisms to others, because they were astounded at the great similarity of the genetic composition of microscopic creatures across the entire spectrum. Also, in modern times, when one strain of bacteria develops a resistance to a certain drug, say a certain antibiotic, then that resistance often spreads quickly beyond that particular strain of bacteria, and suddenly whole communities of microorganisms are sharing the same resistance to the same antibiotic.

Scientific investigation has revealed many types of gene swapping. Here are descriptions of two of the most common types from an article by geneticist Robert Miller in the Scientific American,

"(in certain types of bacteria) ....conjugation begins when a donor bacterium attaches an appendage called a pilus to a recipient bacterium that displays a receptor for the pilus; then the pilus retracts, drawing together the donor and the recipient. Generally, many donors extend pili at about the same time, and several donor cells can converge on a recipient at once. Consequently, extension of pili causes bacterial cells to aggregate into clusters. After aggregation occurs, bridges, or pores, form between donor and recipient cells, and plasmids (a part of a bacteria that often carries genes that enhance the chances of survival in hostile circumstances) pass through the bridges from the donors to the recipients."

"(Conjugation in other types of bacteria)....does not involve pili. In advance of conjugation a would-be recipient of new genes secretes substances that prompt potential donors to produce proteins, often called clumping factors, able to bring bacterial cells together. When the cells associate, they form the pores needed for DNA transfer."

Do you see what is going on here? An organism, a 'simple' microorganism, faced with a challenge to it's existence, senses that a neighboring microorganism has genetic material that would enable it to survive this threat. It seeks out that organism and either displays a receptor for a pilus which the donor organism then grows, or secretes substances that will stimulate the donor to produce clumping materials, each process resulting in the two organisms coming together and forming connecting pores, through which flows the very genetic material that will save the donee's life.

Do you grasp the breathtaking beauty and complexity of this process? When does modern science say that altruism evolved? When does modern science say that intelligence evolved? Here we have processes dating back to the first billion years of our existence which are clear examples of sharing in the most fundamental and profound way and a mechanism that requires an awareness on someone's part(if not the bacteria themselves, then on who's awareness does this entire process depend?) that requires an understanding of precisely what is needed genetically in one bacteria, and precisely what needs to be offered in the other and the most transcendentally specific and precise mechanisms to deliver this transfer. As I have said in earlier posts, if intelligence is not the ability to read one's environment and make adaptations to it that allow one's survival needs and desires to be met, then what else could it possibly be? And what reading of an environment could possibly be more intelligent than the ability to recognize what is missing genetically in one body, to discern where it could be found in a neighboring body and, then, to initiate and execute a process that delivers that amazing transfer?

By contrast let's talk for a minute about the discovery of the polio vaccine in the mid-twentieth century in our society. Two scientists were then lauded for a discovery that ended a scourge that attacked thousands of young children in our country and even our president. What did Jonas Salk and Carl Sabin do actually? They both found a way of 'tricking' our body cells into thinking that they were under attack by the polio virus, so that our body cells would start to manufacture the anti-body in sufficient quantities that could destroy the polio virus before it had a chance to get a foothold within our cells. Salk did it with dead viruses and Sabin did it with live but disabled viruses. Now these achievements did end this epidemic and these two men should be justly recognized and honored. But keep in mind, the real genius of the polio vaccine lies within the cell which understands exactly what is needed and exactly how to manufacture this needed antidote. Salk and Sabin both found ways to stimulate the genius defenses of the cell without actually putting the body at risk.

If you don't think that it is the genius of the cell or the genius of the bacteria, to manufacture the exact enzyme it needs to adapt or protect itself at any given moment, then whose genius is it? But please explain to me how Salk and Sabin are geniuses and the cell, which actually produced the antibody, or the force behind the cell that produced the antibody, is not a genius. Please explain to me how such a process could 'evolve' randomly without any intelligence.

In this supposedly 'random' world of evolution, one could not imagine a more purposeful, more specific, more nonrandom activity than gene swapping. If we now recognize this observable truth; if we now know the cell, or a force and intelligence governing the cell, knows precisely what it needs genetically in order to survive, and knows precisely where to get it; then, why can't we also assume that that same force and intelligence knows how to create that genetic combination that would deliver the protection, or the adaptation, in the first place. In other words, we now say that completely randomly a prokaryotic cell just happened to have the exact genetic sequence that would protect it from whatever environmental exigency happened to crop up, but then, completely nonrandomly, through gene swapping, that genetic information is spread laterally through an entire community or species of prokaryotes. If we recognize the specificity and nonrandomness of gene swapping, why can't we also accept that the same force and intelligence that could recognize and spread this sequence, could create the sequence in the first place. God, the Universe, the cosmic consciousness, whatever you choose to call it, shepherding and rescuing a species when it is threatened with annihilation, by altering genes to provide the anti-body or adaptation that would allow it to withstand extreme temperatures, excess alkalinity, excess acidity, extreme atmospheric pressure; doesn't that make so much more sense than saying that all these different defenses and complex adaptations were created randomly by a whole serious of amazingly fortuitous accidental replication errors, only matched in its weirdness and uncanniness by the almost endless series of fortuitous and accidental molecular bondings that supposedly created the first 'replicating molecule?'

In the process of gene swapping we have 'simple' bacteria going so far beyond what modern researchers can do in their laboratories that the only proper response is awe. These bacteria recognize precisely their own genetic deficiency, and are able to locate bacteria that have, genetically, exactly what they need. The donor bacteria knows exactly what, genetically, to donate, and all of this is accomplished with no harm done to the donor or the donee and in this fashion entire communities of microbes are saved from disaster.

Rather than using the discovery of this technique of gene swapping as proof of the awesome intelligence of life right from the very beginning of evolution, it has been used as a reason to eliminate intelligence as a factor in evolution. What would scientists expect to see through their microscopes to prove that intelligence was at work? A microbe with a furrowed brow and tousled hair? A bespectacled bacteria scratching its beard? You cannot see intelligence directly. You can only see the results of intelligence as it manifests on the physical plane. You look at the most transcendently brilliant processes imaginable and then say that there is no intelligence involved based on the fact that you 'saw' those processes. If you saw Einstein writing for the first time E=MC2 on a piece of paper, would you then deduce that there was no intelligence involved because you saw the whole thing and you can explain it in terms of the movement of his hand and wrist muscles across a sheet of paper? Astounding!

Prokaryotes To Eukaryotes

The 'evolution' of life up to this point can be summed up as follows: the arrival of chemoautotrophic life at deep sea thermal vents 3.8 to 4 billion years ago; the arrival of photosynthetic bacteria at surface levels 3.8 to 3.5 billion years ago, and within these two basic structures of cells, the many variations and adaptations that we have mentioned above. The next major structural innovation was the eukaryotic cell which may have arrived over 2.5 billion years ago but did not begin to flourish until 2 billion years ago. The major differences between eukaryotic cells and the earlier prokaryotic cells as Ward and Brownlee write are as follows:

"1. In eukaryotes, DNA is contained within a membrane-bounded organelle, the nucleus.
2. Eukaryotes have other enclosed bodies within the cell-the organelles such as mitochondria (which produce energy) and chloroplasts (tiny inclusions that allow photosynthesis).
3. Eukaryotes can perform sexual reproduction.
4. Eukaryotes have flexible cell walls that enable them to engulf other cells through a process known as phagocytosis.
5. Eukaryotes have an internal scaffolding system composed of tiny protein threads that allow them to control the location of their internal organelles.
6. Eukaryotic cells are nearly always much larger than prokaryotes; they usually have cell volumes at least 10,000 times greater than the average prokaryotic cell.
7. Eukaryotes have much more DNA than prokaryotes--usually 1000 times as much. The DNA in the eukaryotic cell is stored in strands, or chromosomes, and is usually present in multiple copies."

So did the eukaryote cell 'evolve' from the prokaryote cell? Although there are no remnants of any cells that were half way points or stepping stones from one to the other, just as there are no cells that are half way between photosynthetic and oxygen metabolizers, evolutionists believe that eukaryotes came from prokaryotes mainly because of the similarity of their genetic code. Why are such structurally different creatures so similar genetically? The conclusion among evolutionists has been that they must have evolved from a common ancestor. But could this conclusion come not from objective observation but from the materialist biases of these observers? What other similarities do all creatures have on this planet, besides the obvious ones of coexisting on the same planet, with the same basic atmosphere, the same play of gravitational forces, the same amounts of radiation, and the same relationship to the rest of the galaxy and the cosmos? If you don't look at structure, but look at function, then you see that all, and I include plants, animals, bacteria, archaea, molds, the entire panoply of life on this planet, in terms of our basic survival functions, are IDENTICAL! All creatures are born, die and replicate. All creatures must find nutrients. All creatures must metabolize energy. All creatures must be able to discern what is needed from what is harmful in the environment. All creatures must have a way of breaking down those needed ingredients into what they can use for growth and energy and must have a way of eliminating what they don't need. And all creatures must have a way of protecting themselves from what is harmful. Looking past the amazing variety of sizes and shapes, life has an equally amazing unanimity of purpose and function. With this in mind, is it really so surprising that we are more alike than different genetically?

But scientists have labored for years to construct a plausible scenario to explain how, without any intelligence or design, without any planning or purpose, a eukaryotic cell could develop by chance from a prokaryotic cell. Before I explain why these theories make no sense at all, I should mention that although evolutionists say they are theorizing about a random world, a world that was constructed with no purpose at all, but simply by fortuitous accidents, this is by no means the case. Life, as conceived by evolutionists, is purposeful, is imbued at every moment with purpose. The purpose at every juncture, every moment of evolution, is survival. Neither natural selection nor survival of the fittest make any sense unless each organism, and in this case, each prokaryotic bacteria, is trying to survive. How we went from inanimate matter with no interest or caring for survival, and no entity within any atom or molecule that had the capacity to care about it's survival, to this countless armada of microscopic beings each relentlessly intent on its own survival, is never explained. But it is important to note that the difference between evolutionists and people of a spiritual persuasion, is not that evolutionists see nothing beyond the material world, and spiritual people do. It's that the sole purpose of life, as seen by evolutionists, is a selfish struggle for survival within each organism, and spiritual people see a different and higher purpose. The one group thinks of the development of life as purely the development of matter and ignores the whole issue of purpose and why things are trying to survive even though their theory depends on it. The other group is at least as concerned about the purpose of life and its origins as it is about the material equipment of life.

Any evolution from prokaryote to eukaryote would involve not merely the acquisition of the ability to manufacture new enzymes, but it would involve a complete transformation of the structures and organization of the cell. Because biological processes are so integrated and synchronized with each other, any change in structure, for it to be successful and produce any advantage, would have to happen in very small increments over many generations. The organism needs time to adapt to the new adaptation. If a gene is altered, will it be expressed at the same time and in the same sequence as the former gene? We can see or sense the sequences of firing, but the enormously complex pattern of firings, how or where these decisions are made are not observable and are not transferred through the genes (from the same genome we get many different firing patterns at different times and in different cells; think caterpillars and butterflies; or muscle cells and nerve cells). But if the genes are altered or the firing patterns are altered, or both, then the way in which this organism behaves and relates to its environment is also altered, including what it feeds on and where it feeds, how it relates to the species that gave birth to it and how it relates to the species that it is becoming. All of this needs to be adjusted gradually or this genetic 'accident' will fail. If we are still using the neo-Darwinian framework of the rare, but fortuitous mutation, we are talking about hundreds or thousands of sequential mutations in the same organism or descendants of the same organism. How would that work?

Let's take the supposed transition from photosynthesis to oxygen metabolism. An organism metabolizes oxygen or carbon dioxide. It doesn't metabolize both or some combination of the two. That means that for thousands upon thousands of generations, the particular strain of bacteria that was in the process of moving from photosynthetic to oxygen metabolism, was carrying partially constructed equipment for oxygen metabolism that wasn't yet being used. And it was awaiting, although, of course, it did not know it was awaiting, that exact mutation which would be the next step in all the thousands upon thousands of steps that it would take to complete this conversion. How long would that take? Keep in mind that this is supposedly a completely random world. So this cell is not only awaiting a mutation, which in itself is very rare. It is awaiting a fortuitous mutation, which is extraordinarily rare. But it is not awaiting a fortuitous mutation that would help its locomotion, or it's digestion, or it's growth or replication. It is awaiting a fortuitous mutation that would help its metabolism. And it is not awaiting a fortuitous mutation that would help it's photosynthetic metabolism, it is awaiting a fortuitous mutation that would help its yet to be completed oxygen metabolism. And this is not any prokaryote that is awaiting this mutation. This is the one prokaryote that has already been the recipient of a whole series of mutations that got it to this point. And given the precision of the equipment that is already in place, and how each part of such a delicate construction builds on the next, it must be awaiting the precise mutation that will deliver the precise next step in this sequence. The probability of this entire series of mutations happening to the same organism randomly is so vanishingly small that it is virtually impossible. And this is a process that is not taking place in 'endless time,' it is taking place in the urgent context of an atmosphere that is filling with oxygen which is poisonous to this prokaryotic microbe unless it simultaneously develops, through a parallel series of fortuitous mutations, an entire system for dealing with oxidation. Good luck!

Also, it is an essential tenet of Darwinian evolution that more efficient creatures will survive over less efficient ones. Keep in mind that the cell does not know, and no one supposedly knows, that it is evolving into an oxygen metabolizer. So all this time, all these successive generations of prokaryotes are replicating this partially built oxygen metabolizing equipment in various stages of construction, lugging it around, using energy to build and maintain it, but never using it. This would have to make this particular strain of prokaryotes much less efficient than their microbial brethren who are using every part of their cell body to promote their survival. Doesn't this contradict another tenet of Darwinism, that whole species or strains of organisms would disappear fairly quickly if they are much less efficient than their competitors? And then, thousands, millions of generations later, when the oxygen metabolizing equipment is complete, and the photosynthetic equipment is still functional (the prokaryote would have to be metabolizing at every moment, wouldn't it?) when we had an organism with two complete parallel metabolic systems, if you can imagine such a creature; then who throws the switch? Who says, "Okay, now it's time to completely change your system of metabolizing; GO!"

Let's look at the possibility of a sequence of advantageous mutations from a mathematical perspective. Scientists use a figure of one in ten million as the chance of a truly random mutation occurring. It should be kept in mind that this is the figure for any mutation, which are almost always harmful or, at best, neutral, and not for the much, much more rare advantageous mutation. Biologist Gary Parker writes,

"Fortunately, mutations are very rare. They occur on an average of perhaps once in every ten million duplications of a DNA molecule....... That's fairly rare. On the other hand, it's not that rare. Our bodies contain nearly 100 trillion cells....So the odds are quite good that we have a couple of cells with a mutated form of almost any gene. A test tube can hold millions of bacteria, so, again, the odds are quite good that there will be mutant forms among them.

The mathematical problem for evolution comes when you want a series of related mutations. The odds of getting two mutations that are related to one another is the product of the separate probabilities: one to the seventh times one to the seventh, or one to the fourteenth. That's a one followed by fourteen zeroes, a hundred trillion! Any two mutations might produce no more than a fly with a wavy edge on a bent wing. That's a long way from producing a truly new structure, and certainly a long way from changing a fly into some new kind of organism. You need more mutations for that. So, what are the odds of getting three mutations in a row? That's one in a billion trillion, ten to the twenty-first. Suddenly, the ocean isn't big enough to hold enough bacteria to make it likely for you to find a bacterium with three simultaneous or sequential related mutations.

What about trying for four related mutations? One in ten to the twenty-eighth. Suddenly, the earth isn't big enough to hold enough organisms to make that very likely. And we're talking about only four mutations........Four mutations don't even make a start toward any real evolution. But already at this point some evolutionists have given up the classic idea of evolution, because it just plainly doesn't work."

The most commonly accepted theory for the evolution of prokaryote to eukaryote cells comes from evolutionary biologist Lynn Margulis. She contends that organelles, the separate structures within a eukaryotic cell, like the mitochondria, which are involved with energy formation and transformation, plastids, the sites of chlorophyll, and flagella, used for locomotion, were all originally separate smaller prokaryotes, that had been ingested by a larger prokaryotic cell; a cell which had previously, using the fortuitous mutation scenario described above, evolved into a much larger cell with a double cell wall capable of engulfing smaller bacteria, and evolved the organization of its genetic material into chromosomes encased in a nucleus (all of which would take thousands of sequential mutations). Then these smaller prokaryotes, after having been ingested by the larger prokaryote and somehow surviving its processes of digestion, entered into a symbiotic relationship with the larger cell. Over a very long period of time (a billion years, perhaps?) these separate smaller cells all became parts of the one larger cell. How these invaders managed to get themselves replicated into all the successive generations of the larger cell during all the centuries while this process was going on, is never mentioned. But if we begin with a number of separate biological entities (one host and a few invaders) we are then talking about three or four simultaneous and synchronized processes of evolution, of fortuitous mutations, as the invaders gradually take over functions for the host and eventually become one with the host. But for the great part of this process each entity has their own system and rhythm of replication. Why would the replicated host wind up with any symbiants in its system, at all, much less the exact symbiants in the exact same stage of evolution as the last generation? But the real magic happens when these separate cells become parts of one larger entity. What entity? Biologists give no credence to the idea of an overarching entity to begin with. Biologists do not consider a living being to be anything more than the sum of its biological processes. As you read these words you have, in your body, more bacteria living in a symbiotic relationship with you than you have cells in your own body, and you have one hundred trillion of those. Yet these symbiants are not part of you. They have their own commitment to their own survival. They live, die and replicate independently from you.

Now suppose I decided that this symbiotic system was not efficient enough. Sometimes we have enough bacteria in our bodies, and sometimes we have too much, or too little or the wrong kind, depending on our diet and our activity level and metabolic rate. Wouldn't it be a good idea, I think, to have the human body be born with these bacteria permanently attached to the wall of the intestine and be replicated along with our human replication. Then, each bacterium would, instead of serving our survival needs as an indirect result of serving its own survival needs, would serve our human survival needs directly. In fact this bacterium would no longer be an 'it'. There would be only one 'it', which would be me. All those other 'its' would be subsumed by my overarching 'it'. Good idea? Okay, then how would I do such a thing? How would Lynn Margulis do such a thing? How can biologists talk about many entities becoming one entity when they never acknowledge any entity in the first place?

The only way that I can imagine describing a biological entity is that all the processes within that entity serve the survival needs of that entity. But the focal point of those processes, which is the self, although it is obviously there, cannot be observed, so it has no acknowledged existence for biologists. Lynn Margulis' theory is based on the transformation of a number of entities, each with their separate survival interests, their separate focal points of organization, merging into one entity with one survival interest. How else could you explain it? It's a kind of replication in reverse. In replication one becomes two, or in sexual replication two becomes three. In Margulis' theory three or four (separate smaller prokaryotes) become one. Now I am not arguing about whether or not this happened. I am simply wondering how it happened. If we are supposed to relate to this theory with the respect we reserve for hard science and not with the skepticism that we have for magic tricks, then you have to go beyond saying THAT this happened and give us some sort of an explanation about exactly HOW this happened. If walking on water or parting a sea is something to scoff at, how does two, or several, beings transforming into one being become something to respectfully consider? If this is the central event of your theory then, at least, give us some idea of how this could possibly happen. Tell us where the focal point of each prokaryote's organization is, and give us some idea of what it is. If we don't know or even acknowledge that a focal point of all those survival processes exists, if we can not tell what it is or where it is, how can we have a serious theory about 'them', whatever they are, combining? If this is science and not magic, give us some explanation as to how such a thing, as separate beings combining to make one being, could possibly happen.


Genetic Information

How does a life form, in this case a prokaryotic bacteria, 'evolve' into a structurally much more complex form? As I said before, functionally, they are basically the same and equally mysterious, but in terms of level of organization, of form and complexity, the eukaryote is far more complicated than the prokaryote. So how is it done? Natural selection can cull and favor certain traits over others, but it does not 'add' to those traits; and it does not add to the amount of genetic information in an organism. Although mutations are constantly referred to as the path of evolution, mutations, in fact, do not add to the amount of genetic information either. Mutations can alter or rearrange genes, but they do not add genes. Gene swapping, as was mentioned earlier, can add genetic code for the manufacture of a certain enzyme, but we know of no gene swapping that results in a change in structure, shape, or a new organ or a higher level of organization. In all cases of natural gene swapping that have actually been studied, the received genes stay in plasmids separate from the chromosome of the receiving cell. This means that they do not become part of the heritable traits of the cell. The receiving cell is able to produce a new enzyme, but the new genetic material in no way effects the shape or traits or organization of the receiving cell. In fact, if we are talking about the evolution of a new life form, then gene swapping is irrelevant. Gene swapping presupposes that the donor already has what ever is needed in the donee. Gene swapping, if it has anything to do with traits and not just with enzyme manufacture, would be about sharing existing traits, not creating new traits.

Even if there were a known process for adding new genetic information, which there is not, what information are we talking about? The only genetic information known to research scientists is the information, or recipes, for making enzymes. Genes, as far as we know, are not building bodies or traits, and are not giving instructions about how to build bodies or traits. All genes are doing, as far as we have detected, is passively (at the behest of certain enzymes) allowing themselves to be copied, and the information that is copied is simply recipes for making enzymes. The actual enzyme manufacture is done elsewhere in the cell, and these are only the raw materials, the basic ingredients of living bodies. What about the information as to how to shape and mold these enzymes and to imbue them with function and coordinate and synchronize those functions with every other function in an organism? Where is that information? Is that actually genetic information? It is somehow related to the genes, but where is it? And who understands and executes that information, wherever it is? And please don't believe any 'information theory' nonsense about the power of information by itself. Information is only useful when it is understood and acted upon by a conscious being. The way Richard Dawkins talks, it seems like you could just leave written copies of genomes or computer code books laying about and they would automatically sprout, by themselves, into living beings, computers and software! If we don't even know where any of the constructing or synchronizing information is, or who is shaping or executing it, if all we know is a few rudiments about how the raw materials (enzymes) are made, then how do we have the audacity to pretend to know how one life form, whose existence is completely mysterious, can 'evolve' into another life form, whose existence is equally mysterious?

Also, keep this in mind: From the identical set of genes, depending on which parts are being expressed, comes both the caterpillar and the butterfly. From our own identical sets of genes, comes our fetal body, our infant body, our child body and our adult body. From the identical set of genes comes muscle cells, brain cells, skin cells and stomach cells. All of these variations depend on which precise gene sequences are being expressed, or copied, and the execution of unfathomably complex combinations of sequences and timings of sequences. Genes are like the keys of a piano. Adding genetic information, as far as we know, only increases the number of keys of that piano. In moving from single celled creatures to humans, we have moved from one fifty thousand keyed piano to one hundred trillion pianos each with three billion keys. Yet we still have no idea who is playing these pianos, who is conducting this one hundred trillion member orchestra and who is composing this breathtaking symphony, which in the case of humans consists of ten quadrillion notes (biological processes) resounding in perfect harmony at every moment of our existence.

Look again at this amazing discrepancy between what has been actually observed or detected regarding genes and what supernatural powers and intelligence have been attributed to them. All genes actually do, that can be observed, is allow themselves to be copied; and this is done not at their own initiative, but at the behest of enzymes to which they passively respond. That's it! And yet the genes are now considered to be, by modern biologists, the source of creativity that engendered all of life! According to Dawkins, et al., genes 'discovered' how to build bodies, how to digest food, and how to manufacture antibodies to protect themselves; they 'discovered' photosynthesis, oxygen metabolism, intra-cellular communication, and locomotion; and, ultimately, they 'discovered' love, consciousness, the human heart, the human eye and the human brain. For submicroscopic pieces of nucleic acid, of matter, that sit passively in the nucleus of a cell until they occasionally, and only in automatic response to an enzyme, allow themselves to be copied, that is a whole lot of attribution, isn't it?

Codes

Now it is undeniable that genes are coded for traits. Twins with identical genomes look almost exactly alike. They also often share a whole host of personality traits and desires. Long separated identical twins often marvel at the similar paths that both their lives had taken. The important distinction to make here is that genes are CODED for traits, they do not CREATE traits.

What is a code? Let's look at some codes that we already know. Our English language is a code of twenty-six letters. Our mathematics is based on a code of ten numerals. Our computers run by a code of high frequency pulses (1) and low frequency pulses (0). Genetic code is based on four nucleotides (sub-microscopic pieces of nucleic acid) adenine (A), cytosine (C), thymine (T) and guanine (G). Now the first three codes were clearly created by intelligent beings, yes? Letters didn't invent letters, did they? Numbers didn't invent numbers and the high and low frequencies didn't get together and decide to organize themselves into computer code either. Letters don't write novels by themselves, numbers don't form equations by themselves and the high and low frequencies of computer code don't sit around and make software, do they? Also, novels, once written, are not read by the letters in the novel, equations are not applied by the numbers of the equations and computer software is not used and enjoyed by high and low electric frequencies. In all these cases, obviously, intelligent beings invented these codes to communicate information and ideas to be used and enjoyed by other intelligent beings. So why in the world would we think that adenine, cytosine, thymine and guanine formed themselves into codes by themselves, and used those codes to build bodies by themselves, to satisfy the survival desires of adenine, cytosine, thymine and guanine? This is insane!

Genetic code was not formed by four submicroscopic dots of nucleic acid. It was formed by God or, if you prefer, the cosmic consciousness, as a way of creating sentience, consciousness, in a physical form. Life did not begin with simplicity. If it did, why do the functions of single celled creatures still completely baffle us four billion years later? Yes, we have evolved. Body plans have gotten larger and more complex, although the basic structure, the basic system of metabolism, digestion, responsiveness to the environment, birth, growth, adaptation and replication are all brilliant beyond our comprehension, and were just as brilliant from the very beginning of creation. If we have evolved, it is in terms of the richness of experience that our bodies and their amazing sensory equipment allow us to have. Yes, levels of organization between cells to form tissues, between tissues to form organs, between organs to form systems and between systems to deliver the moment to moment survival of the entire organism, have gotten more complex, but who is controlling and coordinating this organization? If this organization was learned, then who learned it? And how was this learning passed from generation to generation? Certainly it was not the genes themselves that learned all this. You cannot seriously consider submicroscopic pieces of acid to be capable of learning, organizing or controlling anything.

How then do we square the fact that genes, although we only observe them providing the recipes for enzyme manufacture, are coded for so much more, including physical traits, shapes, whole body types and temperament? Each cell contains over three billion pairs of nucleotides and among all these there are a little over twenty thousand sequences that code for the basic ingredients, or enzymes, of our bodies. Although there are some one hundred thousand different substances that are found in humans, they are all made from combinations of these twenty thousand basic sequences. Now twenty thousand sequences, even if they are somewhat lengthy, are still a very small portion of over three billion nucleotide pairs. The great majority of these, called base pairs, in a human cell are considered 'junk' DNA. By that is meant that biologists can find no observable use for them. Also, these three billion base pairs are folded over and over within the nucleus of each cell. My contention is that the entire genome, including all three billion nucleotides and the particular shape in which they are enfolded within the nucleus, is a receiver, a kind of cosmic channel changer. When I turn my TV channel changer to number #4 and get NBC, it is not the little numeral on that button, or the plastic that the button is made out of, or the wire that is underneath that button, that is creating the Tonight Show. The Tonight Show is created by the mysterious and unobservable talents of Jay Leno, his writers, his musicians, his guests, and the equally mysterious and unobservable talents of his staff and the NBC administrators. My little button merely allows, at my initiative and not the button's, that particular creation to be transmitted to my television. Our genome is the amazingly complex but still passive receiver for the particular mysterious and unobservable part of the cosmic consciousness or God whose will and intelligence form and maintain at each moment this miraculous equipment that we call our bodies. In an earlier post I said that Watson and Crick, when they discovered the double helix structure of the DNA molecule, thought they had found God. What they really found was God's channel changer.

I have mentioned above and spent a fair amount of time in other posts explaining how life is invisible. Not the equipment that life uses (our bodies), not the biological processes that serve our life, but life itself, our selves, our consciousness, will and intelligence, are invisible. We can see the results of them. It is pretty obvious to everyone who is not looking through a microscope that there is a big difference between a living body and a corpse, between a still born baby and a healthy baby. It's easy to see consciousness, will and intelligence enlivening a body. It's just that we cannot see consciousness, will and intelligence directly. We judge ourselves as more or less intelligent depending on how much of life we understand. In truth, we still understand only a minuscule part of it. But life itself is the source of intelligence. Life is created by unlimited intelligence, by cosmic intelligence, or God. Genetic code was not formed by four submicroscopic dots of nucleic acid. It was formed by cosmic consciousness, by God, as a way of bringing consciousness, sentience, into a physical form. The genetic code, and by that I mean all of it, not just the sequences for enzyme manufacture, but all of the code, all of the spacing and the entire way that the whole genome is folded within the nucleus, all of it, is a receiver for a particular shape, a particular intelligence, a particular will that constructs a particular kind of body and a particular kind of brain. And this will and intelligence will never be detected by biologists because it is not part of the physical, observable, measurable universe.

Now you can have a knee jerk reaction to the idea of invisible forces, will and intelligence, but why don't you stop for a moment and ask yourself what force is visible? Certainly not gravity or electro-magnetism. Certainly not any force that you exert (I am not talking about the force of your arm as it hits a wall. I am talking about the desire that causes you to move your arm to hit the wall). When biologists study the brain they study the neural excitation and chemical releases in different areas, but what is causing these excitations in the brain? One excitation is there because you want to look at something; another because you want to listen to something; another because you want to think about something; and another because you are trying to remember something. So neither you nor your desire is ever detected, only the results of your desires. And exactly the same thing is true when we study genetic activity and cellular processes. All the activity we see is the result of God's or the Universe's or the cosmic conscious' (the name is not important) desire for you to survive and grow and replicate. As I've said numerous times before in this blog, you, your will, your intelligence, your focus and your desires are not visible. They are the foundation of your experience, but neither you, nor anyone else can see them directly. And unbounded (not tied to a particular brain or body) consciousness, will and intelligence, or God, is no more and no less invisible than you are. Now you may scoff at this, but what you have done is to pretend that the 'code,' those submicroscopic pieces of nucleic acid that are merely recipes for enzymes, are doing the entire job of creating and maintaining and organizing your existence, without explaining how or where or why they are doing this. This is actually more absurd than claiming that letters form themselves into novels, that numbers form themselves into equations and that the high and low frequencies of computer code form themselves into software.

Environmental Factors

If brilliance and intelligence were there from the beginning, if genes don't 'learn' or 'discover' anything, if they are merely passive receivers, and God or the cosmic consciousness is doing it all, then why did it take so long? Why, for instance, getting back to the prokaryotes and eukaryotes, did it take two billion years for the eukaryotes to arrive? And why did it take another billion and a half years for complex, multi-cellular life to get here? The answer is very simple. The physical universe was created following a set of very precise and inviolable laws. Life forms must operate within these laws. At the beginning of the post we talked about life forming below the surface of the earth in thermal vents on the ocean floor, when the surface of the earth was way too turbulent to support any life. Then, when things stabilized and the surface of the planet cooled down below the boiling point of water, photosynthetic microbial life appeared. In other words, as soon as the physical conditions allowed for it, these life forms were here. It was another two billion years before eukaryotes began to flourish here. What happened during those two billion years? Were genes 'learning' how to form organelles, how to engulf foreign objects, how to organize themselves into chromosomes, how to metabolize oxygen? No, of course not. How can a submicroscopic piece of acid learn anything? One of the things that was actually happening was that oxygen was slowly making its way into the atmosphere of this planet.

Oxygen is a by product of photosynthesis. At first these ancient prokaryote photosynthesizers were releasing their oxygen into the oceans where they combined with free iron to form iron oxides. Ward and Brownlee write, "Today there still exist at least 600 trillion tons of such iron oxides deposited before 2.5 billion years ago in these banded iron formation." Around that time, 2.5 billion years ago, the supply of free iron in the oceans began to run out. Instead of oxygen combining with iron in the oceans, it began to emerge into our atmosphere. There are no banded iron formations formed after 1.8 billion years ago. Also at roughly the same time, 2.5 billion years ago, the amount of heat coming from radioactive elements in the earth was diminishing and the surface of the planet was cooling. Large continents were forming which created more shallow water habitats for these microbial prokaryotes. As they flourished, the amount of oxygen they were producing also increased; and the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was decreasing as it was being used up by these ever multiplying photosynthesizers and the amount of oxygen they were releasing into the atmosphere was increasing, both of which diminished the greenhouse (heat trapping) effect of the earlier atmosphere and the planet continued to cool.

So now we have two major elements, oxygen and temperature. Prior to the appearance of eukaryotes there was not enough oxygen on this planet to support any life form that was based on oxygen metabolism. When there was enough oxygen to support oxygen metabolizing microorganisms, then oxygen metabolizing microorganisms appeared. When the temperature of the surface of the earth cooled to 70-73 degrees Centigrade or 158-163 degrees Fahrenheit, which is the upper tolerable limit for photosynthetic bacteria, then photosynthetic bacteria appeared. When the surface of the earth had cooled to 60 degrees Centigrade or 140 degrees Fahrenheit, which is the upper tolerable limit for eukaryotic microorganisms, then eukaryotic microorganisms appeared. In each case the arrival of a life form was dependent on the planet reaching a point in terms of heat and atmosphere that was tolerable for the survival of that life form. It didn't take two billion years for prokaryotic bacteria to 'figure out' how to become 'eukaryotes'. It took two billion years for the earth to become cool enough and oxygenated enough for eukaryotes to survive. Oxygen metabolizing eukaryotes, just like photosynthesizing prokaryotes and just like chemoautotrophic extremophiles arrived here whole, formed, as complete systems. And they arrived here as soon as environmental conditions on this planet could support them.

Contrary to neo-Darwinian theory which states that the thrust of evolution is survival; the more advanced and complex life becomes, the more fragile it becomes and the more demanding it is on the environment that it finds itself in. Complex, multi-cellular, macroscopic eukaryans must operate within a much narrower range of temperature and need a much more oxygenated atmosphere than microorganisms. But the amount of oxygen in the atmosphere and the surface temperature are not the only environmental factors that influenced the arrival of more advanced life. Inorganic nutrients including iron, nitrate and phosphorous, are necessary to advanced life. Phosphorous, in particular, is necessary for the development of skeletons and for maintaining complex organs in a stable physical relationship to one another. Increased tectonic activity starting about one billion years ago, caused the upheaval of phosphorite rocks. This spur in the amount of phosphorous in the oceans was necessary for the growth of skeletons which, in turn, is necessary to the structure and support of larger animals. Once again we can wonder why it took a billion years for multi-cellular life to arrive after the appearance of the first single celled eukaryans. Did it take all that time for the genes of single celled organisms to 'learn' to relate to each other, or was multi-cellularity and larger organisms impossible without skeletons and skeletons were impossible without phosphorous, and phosphorous was not available until increased tectonic activity brought phosphorous to the surface of the ocean waters? At the same time that the amount of phosphorous was spiking in the oceans, the planet was continuing to cool and the atmosphere was becoming more oxygenated. The upper temperature limit for animals is 50 degrees Centigrade, or 122 degrees Farenheit. Multi-cellular but still microscopic eukaryotic organisms began to appear about one billion years ago, right at the time that there was enough oxygen, enough phosphorous and a consistent surface temperature of 50 degrees Centigrade or less.

I should mention here the current neo-Darwinian conjectures regarding the evolution of multi-cellularity. Ward and Brownlee write,

"The first step, they (biologists John Gerhart and Marc Kirschner) argue, seems almost paradoxical: It was not some new structure gained that allowed this transition, but an important structure lost. Long ago in our planet's past, some organism of the eukaryotic lineage made a brave (or lucky) morphological change-it shed its external cell wall. Why this occurred is still unclear, but the net effect was far-reaching. A tough outer coating protects most unicellular creatures from their surrounding environment. At the same time, however, it isolates these cells from other members of their own kind. By divesting themselves of this outer wall, individual cells could begin exchanging living material-and information-with one another. The naked cells could adhere to each other, crawl over each other, and communicate. These were the first steps in the formation of a tissue, which is an aggregation of cells united for mutual benefit."

Keep in mind that this is the current, best explanation for the evolutionary development of multi-cellular organisms and inter-cellular communication. To paraphrase, individual one celled beings took off their outer coats, rolled around and became one being. I have heard of orgies where the individual participants report experiences of deep bonding, but I never heard of an orgy where the participants emerge as one being! This is more magic of the Lynn Margulis variety, except this time, instead of the individual beings submerging their focus and organization to a larger being and retaining their basic structure, the individual cells become what? A kind of tissue? But who does this tissue belong to? The first cell, the second, or some new combination of both of them? Does this really make sense? Individual cells shedding their outer cell wall would put them in extreme jeopardy. How long could they survive in this unprotected state until this mystic merger took place?

Current evolutionary theory to my mind is centered around a process that can't possibly work: the process of genetic mutations, which works fine with simple, within species, adaptations, but makes no sense regarding evolutionary changes in structure and complexity from one species, one genera, one family or one phyla, to the next; and three, what I call POOF! experiences. The first, and biggest poof experience, of course, was when a randomly accumulated organic molecule suddenly started replicating, using a genetic code, with a relentless commitment to its own integrity, shape and survival, and with the ability to transmit that commitment to its progeny for ever more. Inanimate matter to living molecule.....POOF! Then we have Lynn Margulis' invading symbiants becoming one being with their host cell..... POOF! And, finally, we have Gerhart and Kirshner's moment when individual organisms, stripped of their outer cell wall, roll all over each other and become one multi-cellular being...... POOF!

The Cambrian Explosion

The final event in evolutionary history that I would like to mention is referred to as the Cambrian Explosion. All the organisms I have mentioned thus far have been either microscopic or barely visible. In fact all of the evidence for their existence comes not from fossilized skeletons, but from the fossilized traces, the trackways and feeding patterns, of these ancient organisms, and their effects on their environment (like the oxidation of minerals and the ratio of carbon isotopes). The first actual fossilized skeletons visible to the naked eye did not appear until 540 million years ago, over three billion years from the first arrival of life. So for two billion years we had prokaryotes and for over a billion more they were joined by microscopic eukaryotes. The reason the Cambrian period is referred to as an explosion is that very suddenly, about 540 million years ago, not only did fossils and macroscopic life appear, but in a relatively short period of time ALL the basic body plans, or phyla, of animal life appeared. And since the end of the Cambrian period, about 490 million years ago, there have been no new phyla. All of the animals on the planet today are variations of forty or less body plans, all of which made their appearance in that brief interlude, 540 to 490 million years ago.

So why did all these body plans arise from microscopic organisms in such a relatively brief period? For one thing, oxygen reached a critical threshold. A huge upwelling of mineral nutrients from volcanic emissions, from intense plate tectonic activity which tore apart huge land masses and redirected oceanic flows, and quite possibly from a shift in the magnetic axis of the earth; all of these contributed to the appearance on the ocean's surface of a rich supply of minerals which spiked the growth of photosynthetic prokaryotes, which in turn spiked the amount of oxygen in the atmosphere. There was now both a sufficient amount of oxygen for the larger and more efficient oxygen metabolizers and a sufficient amount of phosphorous to support their skeletal structures. And there were many other environmental factors as well. The amount of radiation coming from the earth's core had stabilized. There was a balancing system in place between photosynthesizers and oxygen metabolizers. The first increasing the oxygen supply and decreasing carbon dioxide, the second increasing carbon dioxide and decreasing oxygen, and in that balance, creating a long term stability in the amount of green house gases, and, therefore, a long term moderation in planetary temperature. There was a strong and consistent magnetic field which may be necessary for the internal structure of complex animals and plants. And there was a shifting land mass which effected the distribution of waters and the isolation of bodies of water from each other and the chemical content of these waters, which provided a wide variety of environmental conditions or habitats which would encourage (or command) a wide variety of evolutionary responses.

But for whatever reasons, the Cambrian explosion did happen and it did happen when scientists said it happened. Also, it is undeniable that the building block of all these macroscopic creatures that came out of the Cambrian explosion was the eukaryotic cell. The most debated question of the Cambrian is: were all the creatures that suddenly emerged in the Cambrian, with such diverse body plans, were they separate creations as the intelligent designers would have it; or did they all evolve from one microscopic eukaryan ancestor, as the evolutionists would have it?
That question is, I think, unanswerable; but a more relevant question is this: if all these phyla did descend from one ancestor, how was this accomplished? If the theory of random advantageous mutations does not fit mathematically or logically, in explaining such total transformations in organization, size and complexity, then how was this 'evolution' possible?

Advantageous vs. Evolutionary Change

First, let me pose a question: what is an advantageous mutation? At the level of bacteria, that is a pretty easily answered question. An advantageous mutation would be one that alters the production of an enzyme in such a way that it affords more protection, or facilitates digestion, metabolism or some other biological function. But that is an adaptive not an evolutionary change. An organism, which is producing a whole suite of enzymes, now produces one slightly different enzyme. There is no change in structure, form or complexity that such a mutation engenders. Microbes, bacteria, in spite of the almost endless chemical adaptations they have undergone in terms of the enzymes, and antibodies that they have been able to produce at different times and in reaction to an almost endless variety of environmental threats, have not really changed in terms of complexity or structure since they first arrived here four billion years ago. They have not evolved. They have adapted.

It is among the eukaryans that the real evolution, the increase in size and shape and organization and complexity has taken place. These changes, though, are not adaptive, in that they do not increase the survival capabilities of an organism. In fact they diminish them. Any increase in complexity of organization or shape, at least in the short term, would be nonadaptive. As I said earlier, you cannot imagine any complete rearrangement of a major biological system without many, many genetic changes. If each of these changes really happens randomly by an extraordinarily rare mutation (not just a copying error, but the one and only precise copying error that would further the development of this one particular system to the next precise step in its construction) and since all systems in an organism must be in balance and synchronized with each other then, there would have to be parallel series' of extraordinarily rare mutations in all the other biological systems of an organism so that balance and inter system communication could be maintained during this lengthy, millions of years perhaps, transition. In all these cases we are talking about transitions from one celled creatures to creatures of billions and trillions of cells, all relating and synchronous, all supporting the survival needs of this new entity, all organized into systems to deliver the separate biological needs of this organism. So during this extraordinarily lengthy process, when all these biological systems are in transition, this organism is putting itself at a severe disadvantage to its brethren organisms; organisms which are not undergoing these transitions and are using all of their biological systems to promote their own survival and are in balance with their environment and within themselves. The only reason any lengthy transitions of this nature were possible was that, at that time, there seems to have been little or no predation. These creatures could develop in this weakened state without fear of attack from competitors. If there were competitors, then this long process of evolution could not happen because the organisms undergoing this process would not be able to compete successfully with the organisms who weren't. There are other reasons why there has been no evolution over the last many, many thousands of years, but even if evolution were attempted now, the environmental niches of our planet are too competitive to allow any organism to survive the weakened state that they would have to undergo for many, many generations before any evolutionary change could be accomplished. And even when all of these astounding changes had been achieved, the resulting organism would be LESS hearty, LESS flexible, LESS capable of protecting itself from a wide range of temperatures and environmental threats, in other words LESS of a survivor than its forebear, the one celled microorganism. The thrust of evolution is clearly not survival, and organisms, rather than securing their survival, put themselves in jeopardy when they undertake it.

Now, again, do not get confused between adaptive change and evolutionary change. Evolutionary change is not adaptive change. All the changes that we are aware of in modern times are adaptive changes. Within a certain phyla, a certain body type, within a working, balanced, functioning and responsive organization of biological processes, when the evolutionary work has been completed, or at every stage, or plateau of evolutionary development, an organism adapts to constantly changing environments. This is what we (all living things) do our whole lives. This is what intelligence is. We try to read or judge our environment, to the extent that our biological equipment allows us to make such readings and judgments, and we (all living things) make adjustments, or adaptations, to this environment in order to get our survival needs, or our species' survival needs, or our family's survival needs, or our planet's survival needs met. That is intelligence. When Darwinists say that in evolution adaptation has replaced intelligence, I have two problems with such a statement. The first is that evolution is not adaptive at all, as I have been trying to explain. The second is that adaptation is not a replacement for intelligence. Adaptation IS intelligence. Really, what else could it be? Intelligence, or adaptation, on an intellectual level, we call science; intelligence, or adaptation, on a behavioral level, we call instinct; intelligence, or adaptation, on a level of living bodies we call biology, and intelligence, or adaptation, on a cellular level, we call genetics. But all of these are adaptations not evolution. We are adapting not changing. In the modern world, humans are still humans, apes are still apes, and armadillos are still armadillos.

So what would be an advantageous adaptation that promotes the evolution of structure and complexity? NO ONE KNOWS! And that is because no one has ever seen one. But one thing we can say for sure: it would most assuredly not be caused by a random mutation. As we said earlier, the math simply doesn't work. But also, genes are only a part of the story. I remind you that genes are simply the recipes for the basic ingredients of living bodies. And I also remind you that from the identical set of genes comes the caterpillar and the butterfly. This enormous change is not a genetic change. It is a change in how and when these genetic sequences are expressed and how and when the resultant enzymes and proteins are shaped and imbued with purpose. All of this we know NOTHING about. But evolutionary change clearly involves change at this level of forming and shaping and creating and imbuing as much as it does on the genetic level of changing the amount and quality of the basic ingredients that are being used by all this creativity. So evolution, in addition to requiring the addition of genetic sequences (which is not accomplished by mutation, which is the altering not the accumulation of genes), also requires, and more importantly, more causally, requires the organizing of genetic information, the readjustment of timing sequences and the reshaping of enzymes and proteins.

Whatever this process was, which is completely unknown to us, one thing we can say for sure: it happened over a very long period of time (although not nearly so long as Darwin had predicted) and it happened in very small increments. All this is supposing that there was an evolution. It is entirely possible that every different phyla that we have discovered in Cambrian fossils was a separate creation. But, if they were not separate creations, if they did evolve from one single celled eukaryan ancestor, then the process of that evolution had to happen very gradually. Why? Well, let's look at what happens when we try to change something in life. Let's say, a building.

If we are not tearing down a building and erecting a completely new one, but if we are renovating an existing building, we have to proceed with caution. If we want to put on a second floor, we have to first re-enforce the basement. Now many of us have endured major renovations in our homes. Sometimes it gets intolerable and we have to move out for a week or two until the job is completed. But in evolution, God or the cosmic consciousness does not have that luxury. We can't ask the being living inside that ancient body to move into a primordial hotel for a million years until we have finished evolving its body. No! During all these major renovations, as the entire structure of the organism is being redone, the organism is still living within its body. If the organism moves out (we call that death) then the whole project fails and we have to start all over. As I said earlier, the process of evolution puts the organism in a compromised state, and in a very competitive environment, like what exists today, this process would be impossible. But even then, the organism had to continue to survive at every moment of the process, had to still have a functional system of metabolism, of digestion, of procuring nutrition, etc. And this is not just adding a new wing to a house. This is transforming a one room cabin into a multi-billion room luxury complex, and during the entire time of the renovation, this home remains occupied.

Also, we know that the more complicated the structure, the more difficult it is to change, the more things have to be considered. For instance, in this house, at all times, there is wiring (the nervous system), and the electricity is ON. We cannot shut down the main breaker, add a new circuit, and then turn the juice back on. The juice has to always be on, even though we are going from one simple circuit to billions and trillions of connecting circuits. And, needless to say, the same holds true for the plumbing. No shut downs allowed. The occupant can't leave the house to borrow the neighbor's facilities. The plumbing has to work constantly, through all the changes.

One more thing. We know from our own human lives, that whenever there is an important change, we need a period of adjustment, a time to regain the balance of our lives. Biologically this is certainly true. All infants have some experience of colic and spitting up at first as they adjust to the change from pre-digested intravenous food, to food that they have to digest themselves. Adolescents, that experience a rapid spurt of growth, go through a period of awkwardness and 'growing pains' until they adjust to their new height. People who suffer the loss of a limb or some other incapacitation, must take some time to adjust and find balance within the framework of their new limitations. So the same must be true for evolution. Any change must be small enough, and incremental enough, so that the organism is capable of adjusting and making balance with it. And not just the organism itself, because any change in this organism will have an effect on its behavior and therefore on its fellow creatures and its environment. Only when a balance, an adjustment to the last incremental evolutionary change has been achieved within and without this organism, which may take many generations, is it ready, and is the whole system ready, to withstand yet another evolutionary adjustment.

My point is, that even when we act with a purpose, with a design, if we are trying to build on existing structures, and improve rather than destroy, we must move slowly and incrementally. And I am not talking just about structures within an organism, but the entire environment that that organism finds itself in. So, for instance, it is silly to talk about the evolution of oxygen metabolizers apart from an environment with a sufficient amount of oxygen. Oxygen metabolizers had to follow long after prokaryotic photosynthesizers, because, for one thing, they created, and still create, the oxygen that we oxygen breathers need. But we are dependent on the microbial world in a host of other ways to, just as we are dependent on the world of plants, just as we are dependent on the increasing levels of organization that we have inherited from generations and generation of other animals in our evolutionary ascent.

You may wonder why God took four billion years to evolve humans, if humans are, indeed, the purpose of evolution. But God does not operate in time, and if you understand your true spiritual nature, neither do you. God is not a guy who's been tapping His foot and looking at His watch for four billion years. And evolution is not the story of life. Evolution is the story of the equipment that life uses. It is the story of life as it manifests on the physical plane. Life in unmanifest form, as unlimited consciousness, love and intelligence, as oneness, has been here forever.

The question of why evolution began and why, in terms of new body types, and in terms of any species beyond humans, it seems to have ended, I will try to tackle in another post. For now, let me leave you with this: Life begins in consciousness and ends in consciousness. When biologists limit themselves to the actual observations that they make, there is no problem. But when biologists begin to conjecture about origin and purpose, that's when things get goofy, because biologists never begin at the beginning and they never end at the end. In looking at biological processes, biologists may locate an enzyme that initiates a process. They may even be able to detect the electrical charge that stimulates the manufacture of that enzyme. But what they will never observe is the desire that creates the polarity that creates the electrical charge that stimulates that enzyme. And they will never observe the self, that is the source of that desire. Likewise, brain researchers will locate excitation in the optical center of the brain, or the aural center, or the olfactory center, or the center for memory. But they will never see you, whose desire to look at something, to hear, smell or remember something, is what caused that excitation in the first place. And certainly, they will never see your experience, the sunset you were looking at, the concert you were listening to, the flower you were smelling or the episode you were remembering. So the desires that begin these processes and the experiences that these processes result in are not included or even acknowledged. Biology, which is supposedly the study of life, is really the study of the intermediate physical processes of life that lie between desire and experience.

To conclude that God, the cosmic consciousness, has not only engendered life, but has evolved life and is maintaining life at every moment may seem a strange point of view in the present day. But it is a point of view that includes all the latest scientific findings and aligns itself perfectly with the eternal, omnipresent God, the God that is closer than your breath, of the Old Testament, with the Divine Ocean of the Vedas and the Upanishads, the unlimited consciousness of the teachings of Buddha, and the transcendence of the Tao. I thank God for evolving this body that allows me to learn, to experience the world and to contemplate the world beyond. I thank God for breathing me, for growing me, for circulating my blood, for giving me the equipment that enables me to understand as much of the world as I can, and for allowing me to write this blog. And I thank you for listening.


I sincerely welcome your comments.


posted by Matt Chait

Matt Chait - Monday, July 27, 2009

MORE SANDY

http://beyondevolutionistheregodafterdawkins.blogspot.com/

This post is a continuation of a correspondence I have been having with Sandy McKean. It should be read after reading the previous post, 'Sandy and Me.' Thanks.

Sandy McKean said...
I appreciate Matt re-organizing our conversation into a true blog post. Clearly, he is a diligent and committed fellow. OTOH, I can't say I am particularly happy with his characterization of me as:

"He is a materialist evolutionist and especially demeaning and sarcastic toward anyone who disagrees with the strict neo-Darwinist party line....."

Frankly, I'm at a loss to figure out how he came to this characterization of me from what I have said here -- especially when he himself has thrown quite a few insults my way comparing me to Joe MacCarthy, a member of the Inquisition, and generally using pejorative terms toward me (as indeed he does in the quote directly above). Oh, and I will confirm that I am male  . OK, now back to the discussion.....

Matt you say:

"Yes, there is an energy in biology that has not yet been discovered; at least not by evolutionary biologists......that extra energy is desire."

You say here that you (and others presumably) have discovered a form of energy that is apparently not accepted by the scientific establishment. I have a question for you: do you have an independent and objective way of measuring this energy? For example, we can use a thermometer to measure heat energy, and do experiments with heat sources while watch the thermometer go up and down measuring that heat energy just as we might predict. Or we can put a amp meter into an electric circuit and watch the needle move as we claim that electric energy flows unseen around that circuit. Or we can bring what might otherwise be an ordinary rock near a Geiger counter and listen as the clicks register energy coming from radioactive energy; or like Madame Curie we can put that same rock on a unexposed photographic plate and find the next day that something in the rock exposed the emulsion in the photographic plate. Matt, do you have same sort of experiment or device such as these 4 examples where you can MEASURE this undiscovered "energy in biology" in an objective way that is totally independent of human intervention or interpretation (such as a needle moving, or mercury in a thermometer rising, or a photographic plate being exposed without any human involment other than setting a rock on it)?

Further, I'm confused by this statement:

"Replication requires the use of extra energy, of borrowed energy, to overcome the laws of physics and chemistry."

Which specific laws of physics and chemistry have to be violated or overcome? Maybe you didn't mean to say this; maybe what you are actually trying to say is that this "extra energy" is required to overcome what you consider to be a statistical improbability.....but that is not what you said. You said that some laws of physics and chemistry have to be overcome; laws I presume such as F=MA, or the inverse square law of gravity or the electromagnetic force, or the law of chemical valance where atoms lower their energy state by having a certain number of electrons in their outer shells (such as oxygen having only 6 electrons in its outer shell when it is energetically advantageous to have 8, so it naturally combines with 2 hydrogen atoms to form water since each hydrogen has 1 more electron than is energetically advantageous). I know of nowhere in the sphere of life where a law of physics and chemistry is broken or needs to be broken (a broken law would be something like a water molecule spontaneously breaking down into separate oxygen and hydrogen atoms sicne that is energetically disadvantageous according the laws of physics and chemistry (to use my example above). Do you have specific examples of the laws of physics and chemistry being overcome? Can you tell me exactly which laws are being broken? Or are you, as I suspect, simply referring to your personal observation that it is statistically improbable that the living world you see around you could have evolved given only the laws of physics and chemistry?



Sandy,

"Frankly, I'm at a loss to figure out how he came to this characterization of me from what I have said here"

As I told you earlier I recognized your name and your style and your sarcasm from comments that you had written on other posts. Also, your first comment on my blog was a huge ‘Gotcha!’ moment based on the one fact that, not me, but one of the commenters on my blog signed off with the unforgivable words, ‘God Bless you.’ I wonder if on occasion even you let those awful words slip out; say, when someone sneezes in your presence? And when you do say ‘God Bless you,’ when someone sneezes, do you feel ashamed of yourself afterwards? Well, for what it’s worth, I forgive you.

"I have a question for you: do you have an independent and objective way of measuring this energy?"

I do, but before I answer that question, I have one for you. Do you have an independent and objective way of measuring yourself? Where is Sandy? I know you have a name and an address; I know you have a social security number and a telephone number; I know you can give me a list of your accomplishments, your relatives, your attitudes, your scores on various tests; but all of these are measures not of you, but of your possessions, abilities and relationships. What about you? Where and how do I measure you? I can look at x-rays, cat scans, and colonoscopy pictures, and with the help of these I can see your bones, muscle mass, blood vessels and the inside of your intestines; but through all of these Sandy is nowhere to be found. Well, you may say, I may not be my body, but I am my brain. So I’ll do MRI’s and other scans of your brain and what will I see? I’ll see one hundred billion neurons each with a thousand or more axons connecting to the other neurons and to your musculature. I know this because these are pretty much exactly the same kinds of neurons and same kinds of axons that are found in my brain. When your neurons fire, a stream of electrons will flow through these firing neurons leaving a series of chemical deposits. I know this because these are pretty much exactly the same electrons flowing at the same voltage and leaving pretty much exactly the same chemical deposits as they do in my brain. So far, looking at your brain and my brain and any other human brain we can detect no noticeable difference. So, once again, where is Sandy? And as we look at your brain scans we notice that certain areas light up at different times; sometimes the hearing center fires; sometimes the visual center fires; sometimes the memory center fires. The question is why do these different areas light up at different times? And the answer is because YOU WANT to listen to something; YOU WANT to hear something; and YOU WANT to remember something. Whenever you want to do something, whenever you focus on something, a different area of your brain will fire. But the YOU that is focusing, and the FOCUS and the WANTING is not seen by any scan, and cannot be measured by any equipment. And what about your experience; which is the result of all this neural and sometimes muscular activity? Where is that?


Can you show me your experience directly? Can you measure it? Your experience is the actual moment to moment content of your life; but where is it? I know you can write a book about it; you can even write a blog comment about it. But can you measure it directly? Can you tell me how big it is or how much it weighs? You cannot. The only instrument that YOU and your DESIRES and your EXPERIENCE effects are your own neurons. But that is enough. Your neurons, like the ignition switch of your car, are enough to initiate all the processes that allow you to get your desires met and your neurons in conjunction with your sense organs are enough to allow you to experience the world in the way that you want to experience it.

Now, hold on, you say. Anything that is in the physical, material world can be measured. If something exists in space and time then there must be some sort of device that can detect its presence. But this harks back precisely, Sandy, to the experience that you once had. You, the real you, the seer of your sights, the thinker of your thoughts, the experiencer of your experience, is exactly what you thought it was in that one moment when you realized that you were beyond space and time, that you were one with everything; that separation was the illusion and Oneness was the reality. We are here in space/time, we are playing in space/time, but we are not of space/time. You may not appreciate the source, but this is my understanding of what it means in the Bible when it says that ‘we are made in the image of God.” We are part of God, we are an inextricable part of the spiritual underpinning of the universe; but we have chosen to live this life of a separate existence, of duality; of me and you; of up and down, of past and future.

“where you can MEASURE this undiscovered "energy in biology" in an objective way that is totally independent of human intervention or interpretation (such as a needle moving, or mercury in a thermometer rising, or a photographic plate being exposed without any human involment”


Do you think there is no human involvement in the measurement of heat? We can measure expansion and contraction, but aside from that, what is heat? Is there any such thing as hot or cold without a human’s or a living being’s experience of it? Heat is the experience that a being has when it is in an environment where it is becoming too expansive for that being to survive. Cold is the experience that a being has when it is in an environment where it is becoming too contractive for that being to survive. On the surface of the sun, atoms and molecules and subatomic particles may be moving at enormous speeds but they are not looking for an air conditioned movie. At absolute zero molecules may be hardly moving at all but they are not dreaming about hot soup and fire places. Rather than being independent of human involvement, any measurement or even discussion of heat or cold, or what we call temperature, has absolutely no existence apart from the ‘experience’ of living beings. And the same must be said for colors, sounds, smells, soft and hard, permeable and impermeable. What are they apart from our, or other living beings experience of them? Take away the experience and what you are left with, from a space perspective, is just expansion and contraction; and from a time perspective is just frequency and speed. Yet even space and time have no reality apart from the way in which living beings organize their experience.

Your question was about desire and will, and how I could objectively measure them in the same way that one could measure the other forces of gravity, electro-magnetism, the weak force and the strong force. But how do you observe these other forces directly? How can you measure them except by the effect they have on matter. We know how gravity effects matter, but what is it actually? Has anyone seen gravity by itself? And the same is true for the other forces. We can only measure them by the effect they have. That’s how we know they are there. In truth the law of gravity and the laws of electromagnetism have no direct observable reality. They are laws. These universal laws, just like our man-made laws, derive their power from agreement. What is the force that emanates from red lights that has the power to stop traffic? It is simply the force of agreement. We, as a society, decided to organize our traffic that way and we as a society agree to obey these laws that we have set up. They are a result of our intention to have a safe and functional society and, specifically, a safe and functional traffic system.

Let me go back to what I said earlier, that we are made in the image of God; so that, by studying ourselves and how we operate, we can get a glimpse into how God operates. We can ask of any of our fellow human beings, regarding their accomplishments, “How did you do this?” And, they can answer with a detailed list of specific chains of events that resulted in them becoming a doctor, or building a monument, or writing a novel. But this whole chain of events began, the entire thing was first engendered, when that person first said to themselves, “I am going to be a doctor” or “I am going to write a novel.” This intention was the catalyst that energized the whole series of events that resulted in the achievement of their goal. The inviolable, precise and consistent physical laws of the universe are also a result of intention, God’s or the Universe’s intention, to create a world of matter and energy and ultimately a world that could support life forms, which is a way of having separate experiences. Another way of saying that would be, “God said let there be a physical universe, and there was a physical universe.”

So, if you agree that gravity and electro-magnetism cannot be measured directly, but only by their effects on matter, I can now return to the original question. How do I measure desire? I measure it by its effects on living bodies. Remember, I spoke of two kinds of desire. There is human desire and God’s or the Universe’s desire that we call will.

A normal person has a certain level of desire. A depressed person has a lower level of desire. A severely depressed person has a lower level of desire than that. A catatonic person, that has to be force fed and propped up to stay erect, has a lower level still. A body without will is a corpse. A good instrument to measure these differences would be your eyes.

“Which specific laws of physics and chemistry have to be violated or overcome?”


I don’t think I ever used the word violated. Isn’t the purpose of any machine to gather and focus energy to overcome physical laws? My car serves my intention of getting places. It does so by using energy to overcome friction and inertia. In terms of my own biological machine, my desire to climb a mountain creates the energy to overcome gravity. In the same way my body uses energy to overcome gravity to get blood circulating to my head; and on the molecular level I have vast numbers of pumps in every cell that move molecules into solutions with enough energy to overcome the laws of diffusion. Any metabolic system uses energy to accomplish what would not happen without this extra energy. Again, the difference between the force of will in a living body and the absence of will in a living body, is the difference between a living body and a corpse. A corpse is a body behaving as matter; that is, being a completely passive object reacting to whatever physical forces happen to be acting on it or not acting on it. A living body is a body imbued with the intention to survive which energizes a multitude of biological processes to achieve that survival. And the being that occupies a living body uses it to fulfill his or her desires.