A mirror site from the blog of Matt Chait: Beyond Evolution
http://beyondevolutionistheregodafterdawkins.blogspot.com/
http://beyondevolutionistheregodafterdawkins.blogspot.com/
BLOG.RUDYAARONDAVIS.COM
THE SHAPE OF THINGS (CLICK HERE)
Matt Chait - Sunday, April 15, 2007
THE SHAPE OF THINGS
http://beyondevolutionistheregodafterdawkins.blogspot.com/Obviously we inherit more than the contents of our body. Each of us inherits a basic human shape and our own genetically specific shape. It is often easy to observe the combinations of different features that a person inherits from their parents. "Oh, she has her father's eyes, her mother's lips", etc. If DNA codes just for the manufacture of proteins, how do we inherit this specific shape? Without a governing shape, all the exquisitely timed manufacture of enzymes and proteins from trillions of cells will result in a lifeless puddle of matter rather than a human being. Richard Dawkins, the foremost popularizer of evolutionary thinking, offers the following on the subject, "At the end of a virtuoso origami performance; after numerous foldings-in, pushings-out, bulgings and stretchings of layers of cells; after much dynamically orchestrated differential growth of parts of the embryo at the expense of other parts; after differentiation into hundreds of chemically and physically specialized kinds of cells; when the total number of cells has reached into the trillions, the final product is a baby." If this seems to explain anything to make the process of embryonic development more understandable, that illusion vanishes when you remember that, according to Dawkins' own precepts, there is no origamist. These growing cells are, supposedly, doing this incredible origami by themselves.
Dawkins adds, further,"Cells are programmed, by the genes switched on inside them, to behave as if they know where they are in relation to their neighboring cells, which is how they build their tissues up into the shape of ear lobes and heart valves, eye lenses and sphincter muscles." Notice that he says, "to behave as if they know", which means what exactly? Do they know where they are or don't they? No, they don't. They are just programmed by the genes switched on inside of them to behave as if they know. So, then the programmer knows. But wait, the programmer is the cell itself, at least according to this theory. So, then the cell does know where it is in relation to the other cells; or doesn't it?
Let's put aside a discussion of whether or not there is a programmer and see just what kind of a program that would be, if all the shapes and contours of the body were determined by a program within the individual cells. First of all DNA, according to evolutionary biologists, codes for protein and enzyme manufacture alone. No matter what the sequence of manufactures, that would still result in content without shape. If there is a separate code that lets cells know where they are in relation to other cells there is not a word of this 'other' code in the scientific literature. But, if there were such a code, or such a program, it would of course have to be different for every cell. And this shaping would be done from the inside, not the outside. Michelangelo is commonly considered our greatest sculptor. His David, Moses, Jesus and Madonna are all incredibly lifelike. But he was dealing with an image, a plan in his mind that he sculpted from. He chipped away at a block of marble very carefully and lovingly, until what remained conformed to this image in his mind. A human baby is, of course, far more complicated than a sculpture. First of all, there are five trillion separate, moving parts (cells). Second, this sculpture is three dimensional. Not just the surface of the body, but all the internal organs, the villi, the dendrons and neurons, the cappillaries, the digestive organs and the skeleton must be sculpted as well. Is this done within the cell without any outside perception or overarching image of how it should turn out? How is this possible? It's not even that the shape of an individual cell is different. A muscle cell, a blood cell, a nerve cell, have the same shape as others of their kind. If a bone is curved, it is not the individual cells that are curved, they are way too small. It is the boundary where those thousands or millions of cells end and a new type of cell begins that creates the shape. So where is the program for all these boundaries? Could it possibly be within an individual cell? If it were, it would have to be exactly the same program in each of the replacement cells. For instance, if you get a cut, or a bruise, new cells grow to replace the damaged ones and occupy exactly the same space as the previous cells so that the surface of the skin has the identical contour as the original. How do these new cells travelling from other parts of the body wind up with exactly the same 'program' as the cells that they were replacing?And with all of this complexity, of five trillion moving parts that must be organized into shapes, that is only the first part of the problem. Don't forget that the body is constantly changing. The boundaries, both external and internal, are ceaselessly moving during the nine months of gestation, so that a fetus at two months hardly resembles the same fetus four months later. So this supposed program is not only governing the movement of all these cells, but it is adjusting the boundaries of these cells every day as millions of new cells are added on. And, certainly, birth is not the end of this process. A five trillion celled newborn eventually becomes a one hundred trillion celled adult, and at no time are these boundaries, external and internal, every achieving stability. They are always changing. This would have to be some amazingly brilliant programmer. But wait! According to Dawkins, et al. there is no programmer. All of this is being done by the cells themselves!
To discover anything about the shape of a living thing, we have to first admit that we don't really understand it at all. To say that 'it's programmed that way' is really an atheistic way of saying we don't understand a thing about it, but we want to give the impression that we do. A possible way to begin to understand how living things are shaped is through Eastern medicine and the philosophy that underlies it. Western science has had and still has a strange relationship with acupuncture, acupressure, shiatsu massage, and moxabustion. Initially, acupuncture was written off in the West as pure hoakum, and the beneficial results that millions of people attested to in China and Japan were considered a placebo effect, the result of a superstitious belief in it's efficacy. It was then discovered that for many years Asian veterinarians were sedating animals using acupuncture needles before operations. Even the most parochial members of the American Medical Association had a hard time writing off Fido and Mittens as self-deluded zealots. Nowadays, often begrudgingly, acupuncturists are allowed to work along side Western practicioners in the same offices and clinics. Yet, the underlying philosophy, the reason why acupuncture works, has not been deemed worthy of investigation by Western researchers.
As was mentioned in another post, Eastern philosophy comes from the understanding that the subtle creates the gross. Eastern medicine has been more interested in the field of energy that underlies the physical body. This form of life energy, or chi, flows through the body through twelve main pathways, called meridians. Disease and discomfort, from this point of view, is caused by the blocked flow of this energy, and health is restored by achieving a balanced flow through these pathways. Although this energy has not been measured on any equipment, it can be sensed by a trained and sensitive practitioner. All acupuncture practitioners do believe that there could be equipment capable of measuring chi, but that awaits the sufficient interest and will in the research community. The idea is that there are two forces, call them yin and yang, in and yo, or heaven and earth. When these two forces meet, whirlpools of energy are formed, like two opposing current meeting in a river. The body is the fleshed out physicalization of these twelve intersecting meridian spirals. You can see the spirallic formation in the way the embryonic arm folds into a hand, the leg folds into a foot, the spinal column folds into the brain, the digestive system folds into the intestine, and the whole trunk of the fetal body curls, in the womb, into the head. Again, the subtle creates the gross, so this electromagnetic energy pattern is there first, and the cells grow into and flesh out this pattern.
As was mentioned in an earlier post, DNA is God's channel changer. It codes for much more than protein manufacture. This shape, or energy pattern, is attracted by the pattern of genes. Among the billions of genes in human DNA, much of it is considered 'junk DNA' by Western scientists. In other words, they can see no purpose for it. There are long stretches of this 'useless' DNA until one comes to a section that codes for a specific enzyme. I suggest that God, the cosmic mind, or 'nature', if you like, is usually not wasteful. Because you cannot yet see a purpose to it, does not mean that a purpose does not exist. A valuable place to put your intellectual and financial resources, might be in the further study of this 'junk' DNA to see if it has any relationship to the shape of the body and to try and detect energy fields surrounding the developing embryo. Also, I suspect that the precise way in which the billions of genes are folded over and over into the nucleosome has a direct relationship to the eventual shape of the body. These are just conjectures, buy you can have no conjectures or hypothesis if you pretend that the unknown is known and that all the questions are answered.
Welcome
Beyond Evolution; Is There God After Dawkins?
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.
The writings of Richard Dawkins have been toxic to the spiritual beliefs ofmany 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.
ORIGIN OF LIFE (CLICK HERE)
Matt Chait - Thursday, March 20, 2008
ORIGIN OF LIFE
http://beyondevolutionistheregodafterdawkins.blogspot.com/In scientific textbooks under this heading, 'Origin of Life", are found a variety of theories as to how life may have started from the random mixing of chemicals and physical forces. The assumption, according to these theories, is that life originated with a DNA type replicating molecule. This is a huge assumption, however, since no one has managed to get a DNA molecule to replicate outside of a cell, even when the DNA molecule is surrounded in a controlled laboratory setting with all the chemical ingredients that would be available to it within a cell.
But even if you believe that life began with a replicating molecule you still have to explain how a system that metabolizes energy, that manufactures proteins and that genetically replicates can form by the random actions of physical forces and chemicals. And this is a process that took place not in a controlled laboratory but on this planet at least 3.8 billion years ago when the planet was being bombarded by asteroids, spewing volcanoes, with a toxic carbon dioxide rich atmosphere and surface temperatures above the boiling point of water. It is a process that originally was thought to have taken hundreds of millions of years but is now thought, because of new discoveries concerning the age of microbial life and the environmental conditions of early earth, to have taken only tens of millions of years. And it is a process involving delicate organic molecules that in life are protected from the external environment by at least a cell wall and by the cell's own commitment to it's survival. Here we have a scenario in which exposed, unprotected organic molecules are coming together and forming proteins in unbelievably harsh environments and staying in tact for millions of years. Mind you that all the scientists who work on creating these scenarios, including Nobel laureates, cannot create with their highly evolved brains and with the most sophisticated technical apparatus available to them in their laboratories, any system starting from scratch that either replicates, metabolizes or manufactures protein. Yet in this scenario the mystery of these systems, which is still not understood by humans, has somehow been 'discovered' by lifeless molecules.
Even if all of this were possible, which it is not, can we really assume that any assemblage of chemicals will, by itself, lead to the beginning of life? Absolutely not, and that is because replication, protein manufacture and metabolism are biological processes and biological processes are categorically different than purely chemical processes. Let me explain. Biological processes have, of course a chemical and/or an electrical component, but that is hardly the whole story. Writing a novel has a physical component but describing the physical movements of the author's hand as she manipulates her pen across a piece of paper would hardly be a complete or satisfying explanation for the origin or creation of her novel.
Scientists limit themselves to what is seen, but biological processes, like human creative activities, are not completely visible. Intention cannot be seen. Purpose cannot be seen. It can be inferred but not directly observed. All biological processes have intention. All non-biological chemical processes do not have intention. The intention of ALL biological processes is to promote the survival and desires of a living being. Whether it's a single celled organism with thousands of simultaneous processes or a one hundred trillion celled organism like ourselves with quadrillions of simultaneous processes, ALL of these processes are synchronized and coordinated in the service of that being. Again, scientists are limited to the observation of the material world. They cannot see intention; they cannot see purpose; and they cannot see the beings that these processes serve. And above all, they cannot see the Being whose intention it was to create these physical bodies in the first place.
Let's look again at a simple chemical process. If I add heat to liquid water it will boil and turn to a gas. The water molecules do not want to become water vapor and they do not resist becoming water vapor. There is nothing in that molecule that could care one way or the other. The same is true with the expansion of gases or the electro-magnetic joining of atoms to become compounds or the separation of compounds to become atoms. There is no entity within the atom or the molecule that has any interest or investment in combining or separating, in contracting or expanding. There is no "it" there that cares one way or the other. These bits of matter are blindly observing chemical and physical laws. Now biological processes are completely different. Every living being is committed to its own survival. Every living being must perform a series of tasks to insure its survival. For instance, every living being functions best within a certain range of temperatures. When it gets too hot or too cold for this being, a series of processes, chemical, electrical and physical, will kick in to allow this being to either change its internal temperature or move to a warmer or cooler environment. Every living being needs nutrients and every living being has a series of processes to discern those needed nutrients in the external environment, to take them into the internal parts of their bodies and to digest, or chemically alter them so that they can be used as energy and for material for growth. All the processes of the nervous system, the reproductive system, the circulatory system, etc., etc., every one of the quadrillions of electrical and chemical biological processes that are occurring in your body at this very moment as you read these words, every single one, is coordinated and synchronized toward the goal of your survival and the satisfaction of your desires. And this is true for every living being from humans on down to single celled creatures that conduct and synchronize not quadrillions but many thousands of simultaneous biological processes.
Now this will, this desire to survive, although not acknowledged or discussed, is implicit in every writing of evolutionary biologists from Darwin to Dawkins and everyone in between. The unexamined force that drives the whole concept of evolution is the will to survive. Biologists do not discuss this force because they cannot see it. Yet what force can be seen? Physicists cannot see gravity or electromagnetism, but they deduce them from their effects on objects, on matter. No one questions the reality of gravity or electromagnetism, so why question the reality of will, which is as easily deducible from its effect on living bodies as gravity and electromagnetism are deducible from their effect on inanimate objects. No statement, no theory, no conjecture about evolution is possible without the underlying assumption that every living being is "trying" to survive.
Noted biologist Stephen Jay Gould, in an attempt to explain the supposed evolution from a simpler prokaryote type cell to a more complex eukaryote cell, writes "Surely, the mitochondrian that first entered another cell was not thinking about the future benefits of cooperation and integration; it was merely trying to make its own living in a tough Darwinian world." Yes, all considerations are eliminated by these hard nosed scientists except, except, EXCEPT the desire, the commitment, the determination, the will, to survive. Whether or not there ever was a separate being that Gould refers to as a mitochondrian is not the point. The point is that if there was one, the only explanation for its incursion into the interior environment of a larger cell, is its desire to survive. If even a mitochondrian, the precursor not to more advanced species, but to an organelle, a microscopic unit within a larger eukaryote cell, has a will to survive, how can we begin to talk about the origin of life in purely chemical and physical terms, how can we ignore this central question of the origin, not of physical bodies, but the origin of will?
What is the origin of this will to survive? When we say that a human, a chimpanzee, a daffodil, an amoeba, has a desire to survive, what do we mean by that? WHO is it that has this desire? Is it the body that is trying to survive? When the human or the amoeba fails in its survival attempt and dies, what happens? Does the body disappear? Of course not. If you could find enough ice your body and the amoeba's body could survive in tact for centuries. In death the body does survive. It is not the survival of the body that we are trying to achieve. It is the continuation of the spirit within the body that we are striving for. Our physical bodies are made mainly of protein molecules. Protein molecules, just like the water molecules that we discussed above, are inert matter. They do not want anything. They have no goals. Desires and goals originate in beings not matter. Beings want things, bodies do not.
Let's interject a word here about that original survivor, you know the one I mean. The one that emerged, according to modern science, from a fortuitous assemblage of chemicals and started suddenly replicating and staying in tact and managing to assemble all the ingredients it needed to replicate again, and avoid too much heat and too much cold, too low a PH balance and too high a PH balance, avoid too much UV exposure and too little, avoid direct contact with a host of chemicals, including oxygen, that would destroy it. You remember that delicate first organic replicating molecule that would not last five minutes in any environment that we know of, even an environment without predators, if it did not have the protection of a cell. So how did that original survivor, Abby Genesis* I believe the name was, how did Abby learn to survive? I know we all have heard amazing stories of very young children and animals who, by some awful turn of fate, were separated from their parents and from any knowledgeable, caring adult and still managed to survive. We can sort of imagine how they did this. Spurred by intense hunger they managed to find food. Spurred by intense cold they managed to find warmth. Spurred by the threat of physical dangers they managed to find shelter. But that is not the problem for Abby. Abby doesn't have to learn HOW to survive. ABBY has to learn to first WANT to survive. Is Abby a he, she or an it? If Abby is just a molecule we don't even have a name for the part of Abby that would want to survive. We also don't have a name for the part of Abby that would experience hunger, thirst, cold or danger, or that would experience anything that would spur Abby to do anything else. In fact we cannot imagine Abby doing anything, since Abby is a molecule and molecules never have and never will do anything 'by themselves', much less do any of the things above, including replication, which we humans can't begin to do 'by ourselves' four billion years later.
The second half of the twentieth century witnessed an explosion in the power, capacity and sophistication of electronic equipment that is referred to as the 'Silicon Revolution.' The discovery of the great conductive power of silicon to transmit enormous numbers of electronic impulses enabled this revolution to take place. But it was not, of course, the silicon itself, but the brilliant applications of silicon and the brilliant applications of electronic code by electrical engineers and computer scientists that created this revolution. In the same way, the explosion of complex life on this planet can be looked at as a protein revolution. It is the enormous conductive power of proteins for both chemical and electrical reactions that enabled the creation of the amazingly complex life forms that inhabit this planet. But to say that nucleic acids and proteins created life, that some of these acids and proteins 'figured out' how to grow bodies, grow brains, develop consciousness, create energy from carbon dioxide (photosynthesis) or figured out anything; to say that proteins see, or think or have any awareness whatsoever, is ridiculous. Proteins, your body, is nothing more and nothing less than the conductor of your biological processes. And your biological processes are what you, consciousness, and God, or the cosmic consciousness, have created to enable you to participate in the physical universe, to maintain your body so that you can satisfy your desires through your body. To say that nucleic acids and proteins created life, rather than that nucleic acids and proteins are the material used to create life, is like saying that the element silicon, by itself, created the microprocessors and transistors and computer chips that caused the Silicon Revolution.
Has this argument gotten too 'mystical' for you? Are you scoffing at these ideas before you really consider them? To my mind it is the belief in the motive power of acids and proteins that is the really weird idea. It is the notion that a molecule could suddenly start replicating by 'itself' that is truly nutty. In this very moment if you are scoffing at these ideas, please ask yourself this question, "Who is it that is scoffing?" Is it the proteins in your tongue that are uttering those sarcastic words, or the proteins in your brain that are having those skeptical thoughts? Try to put aside for a moment the materialist mind set that we all have been indoctrinated in. How does it strike you? What is your experience? Do you feel like you are proteins that happen to talk and think and desire things? Or is the 'you' that has these thoughts, that has this sarcastic point of view, is that 'you' a thing at all? Are you meat that talks and thinks or are you really a spiritual being, a non-physical being that inhabits a physical body and that has countless electrical and chemical processes that enable you to inhabit this body and continue this existence in the physical universe?
Let's get back to that replicating molecule. Scientists attempts to replicate DNA outside of a cell are as doomed to failure as loved one's attempts to get a corpse to respond to their anguished cries, and for exactly the same reasons. Replication, like digestion, like metabolism, like circulation, like seeing and hearing and tasting and touching, is a biological process in the service of a being. Molecules, even protein molecules, are inert matter. Yes, in a living being protein molecules conduct all kinds of incredibly intricate and precise processes whose goal is your survival, but outside of the nexus of consciousness, will and intelligence of a living being, protein molecules don't do anything and they certainly don't 'want' to do anything. Proteins, just like the rest of the inanimate world, just are. The DNA molecule will not replicate outside of a cell because it doesn't want to. There is no being there that is using the DNA molecule to replicate, and the DNA molecule outside of a cell is a molecule that has no interest in replicating or in anything else.
Now a cell is a different story entirely. A single celled life form is a living being. It does want to survive, and it is committed to it's survival. Also, a cell can live for a short period without it's nucleus. So, just as you could transplant a heart from one being to another, you could, theoretically, take the nucleus (the DNA) from one cell and transplant it to another providing that you could do it quickly enough. But expecting a DNA molecule to replicate by itself would be like expecting a disconnected heart to start pumping or a disembodied brain to start conducting electrical impulses before it was inserted into another body.
Living beings, as opposed to inanimate objects, are not passive. They want their bodies to stay in tact and to survive. As opposed to water molecules that have no interest in whether or not they happen to change into water, ice or vapor form, or whether or not they randomly break down into elements or combine to form larger molecules, living beings are committed to the survival of their physical bodies in their present form. And they need certain things from their environment in order to survive. All living things, then, have a point of view. They are striving to achieve something. They need nutrients. Having enough nutrients is good. Having too little or too much is bad. They need a certain amount of warmth. Having warmth within their optimum range is good, having too much or too little is bad. They may need sunlight, water, minerals, animal proteins, etc. Whatever their needs are, they are operating in an environment in order to meet these needs. They are invested. They need to find or create what enhances their survival, which, from their point of view is good, and avoid or destroy what threatens their survival, which from their point of view is bad. Whether or not they succeed may have a certain randomness to it, but there is nothing random about their lives, their bodies, or the way in which they interact with their environment.
Now to imagine that an "assembled" DNA molecule, by whatever tortured, impossible logic you use to imagine such an assemblage taking place, would suddenly start replicating by 'itself' and not only that, but that the new, replicated molecule would have exactly the same will and determination to replicate as its progenitor, and that it would have the same commitment to survive and to stay in tact until it was able to replicate, and that it would have the same determination to accumulate the materials that it needed for that replication, in other words, that it would suddenly be a living being with consciousness, will and intelligence (and by intelligence I mean, of course, not I.Q., but the ability to read its environment and adjust its behavior to get its survival needs met), is such a myopic conclusion that it could only be arrived at by people who have been so obsessed by their observations of the physical world that they have never stopped to notice that their desires, their emotions, their entire experience, that which they call their lives, has never been observed by anyone but themselves, and that these observations have been made by a self that is at once completely unobservable and the central and most obvious fact of their existence.
Physical bodies are not life. They are the material that life uses. Evolution as is commonly understood and studied is not about the evolution of life, but about the evolution of the equipment that life uses. If the first bodies on this planet were replicating molecules or single cells, if they first appeared in warm tide pools, in thermal vents on the ocean floor, embedded in rocks or in caves; they were not the origin of life. They were a result, not a cause. They were the result of the spiritual being that wanted to create an existence of seemingly separate entities. These molecules, or cells, were not the creators of life, but the first creations of the creator of life. They were instruments that fulfilled the intention of their creator.
Life as we know it, as we experience it and relate to it, is not bodies and biological processes; it is the spirit, the consciousness, will and intelligence that inhabits these bodies and is served by these processes. What do we mourn at a death? The body? The body is still there in the coffin. What do we celebrate at birth? A new body? If that were the case we would be as joyful at the birth of a stillborn baby as a live one.
So, 'The Origin of Life,' as is written in scientific text books, is not about the origin of life at all. It is about the first material, the first pieces of equipment that life, that consciousness, will and intelligence used. Will, consciousness and intelligence preceded physical bodies and biological processes. A discussion about how humans use consciousness, will and intelligence to create the entirety of the 'man-made' world, and something about how God, or the cosmic consciousness may have used Divine will and intelligence to create the natural world, is discussed in other posts.
*abiogenesis....living organisms arising spontaneously from non-living matter.
Any comments? Please let me hear from you.
SELFISH GENES and REPLICATORS (CLICK HERE)
Matt Chait - Wednesday, November 14, 2007
SELFISH GENES & REPLICATORS
http://beyondevolutionistheregodafterdawkins.blogspot.com/"There are people with their eyes open
whose hearts are shut. What do they see? Matter."
Rumi
At the risk of some redundancy with earlier posts, I feel that I have to devote some time to a discussion of Dawkins' first widely popular book, 'The Selfish Gene,' published in 1976. This book, more than any other, has caused deep underlying changes in the way we think about life and deepened the schism between the scientific and spiritual communities. To the torrent of complaints that Dawkins received that his book had caused in his readers severe depression, despair and a kind of spiritual death, Dawkins replied, "If something is true, no amount of wishful thinking will undo it." The purpose of this post is to apply, not wishful thinking, but simple logic, reasoning and common sense to the basic notions of this book, and especially to the theory, or story, of pre-biotic evolution that Dawkins espouses in the chapter of 'The Selfish Gene' called 'The Replicators'.
Pre-biotic evolution purports to explain how things may have evolved prior to the beginning of life. One of the basic tenets (or, as Dawkins' calls them, 'memes') of evolutionary thinking is that things proceed from the simple to the complex. What, then, were the logical steps, from simple to complex, that led to the formation of the first cell and later on to the formation of the bafflingly complex creatures that we see inhabiting the earth today? The impetus for creating this story in the first place, was the discovery, thanks to the invention of progressively more and more powerful microscopes, of greater and greater levels of complexity in the 'simple' cell which, initially, was assumed to be the beginning of the story of evolution. A cell, which grows, genetically replicates, senses its environment, digests, eliminates and moves, could not be explained away by the chance collision of atoms. The scientific community is committed to the basic axiom (another of Dawkins' 'memes') that human intelligence is the only intelligence in the universe, even though, as was discussed in another post, intelligence, human or otherwise, cannot be seen but only inferred. At the same time that we scoff at the idea that life, which is infinitely more complex than any man made creation, was created by an intelligence that transcends our limited human intelligence, we congratulate ourselves for our own brilliance every time we manage to read a map and arrive in one piece at a new destination or remember all the items on our shopping list. To sustain the fantasy of life evolving by 'itself', the story of pre-biotic evolution has been spun out of thin air, and is now accepted as orthodox scientific truth.
The pre-biotic story is laid out in a superficially compelling way in the chapter of 'The Selfish Gene' called 'The Replicators'. This chapter is only eight pages long, but the damage it has caused to the spiritual underpinnings of our thinking cannot be over estimated. The purpose of this post is to repair some of that damage and, to that end, I will analyze each section of this chapter in some detail.
In the first paragraph Dawkins says, "Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection is satisfying because it shows us a way in which simplicity could change into complexity, how unordered atoms could group themselves into ever more complex patterns until they ended up manufacturing people." Yes. It is especially satisfying to people who are married to the notion (the meme) that human intelligence is the ultimate intelligence in the universe, even though the only purpose of that intelligence is to try to figure out how this universe, which has already been created, works. Those people who believe that consciousness and intelligence are not the accidental outgrowths of a blind process of evolution, but are the origin, are the foundation out of which evolution comes, don't see the universe as moving from the simple to the complex, but from the subtle to the gross, from the spiritual to the physical, and then back again.
For Dawkins to talk about Darwin in relation to the grouping of atoms is completely fanciful. Darwin mentions nothing about the grouping of atoms. Darwin also reached no definitive conclusion regarding the origin of life. He wrote of the "Origin of the Species", not the origin of life. He was concerned with the ways in which life forms, from the supposedly 'simple' one celled beings to the complex creatures that we see today, develop different traits, different ways in which they sense and move about in and communicate with their environment. It is terribly important to have a sense of the difference between the essence of life and the variety of forms and traits that life takes ( see the post Life vs. Traits). Darwin's theories of evolution and natural selection go as far back as the cell. To extrapolate back past the cell to an 'evolution' of molecules and then an evolution of 'replicating' molecules is a stretch that Darwin never intended. Whether he would welcome these conjectures or be appalled by them is anyone's guess. My issue with pre-biotic evolution theories is not whether they are congruent with traditional Darwinism, but whether they are congruent with simple logic and reason.
In fact, with our modern understanding of 'simple one celled creatures' it turns out that Darwin was not talking about an evolution from the simple to the complex at all. He was talking about changes from complex to complex. Modern human beings may be more intelligent than our forebears on this planet, but to think that the one hundred trillion celled human is more complex that the ten quadrillion celled brontosaurus, that somehow this involves an evolution from the simple to the complex; when a single eukaryotic cell, which is the building block of all plant and animal life, defies our understanding at every level, this notion, of simple to complex, may have a pleasing, romantic simplicity to those people that cling to the 'simple to complex' meme and to the 'atheistic' meme, but it makes no actual sense.
Then, Dawkins spends two paragraphs talking about how nature, prior to the advent of life, can evolve from atoms into complex molecules. He mentions soap bubbles, salt crystals and diamonds. Fine. All this makes perfect sense in terms of what we know of the structure of atoms. They will bond with other atoms to form molecules with either covalent, ionic, hydrogen, metallic or Van der Waals bonds. All of these have to do with electromagnetism and the attraction and repulsion of ions and protons. But, then he leaves diamonds and salt and spends a long paragraph describing the enormous complexity and precision of the hemoglobin molecule as an example of the natural evolution of atoms from simplicity to complexity prior to the advent of life. But hold on! Hemoglobin is the molecule found in red blood cells. Hemoglobin is produced by living beings. He calls hemoglobin a 'modern' molecule, conveniently leaving out the fact that hemoglobin is a product of life, not part of any causal build up to life.
Having snuck in the structure of hemoglobin molecules, Dawkins now makes it more plausible for the reader to think of a molecule coming together from the natural collisions and combinings of atoms, that is of sufficient complexity in order to replicate. The truth of the matter is that there is no molecule that even remotely approaches the complexity of the DNA molecule found in the world outside of those that are the result of the miraculous processes of genetic replication using material prepared by the miraculous processes of digestion and fueled by the miraculous processes of metabolism within living beings. And this, of course, is the crux of the whole thing. He has to plausibly get to a molecule that replicates by 'itself' (even though molecules don't have selves as was discussed earlier). The point of 'pre-biotic' evolution is that life does not begin with a cell, which is too complex. It begins with a replicating molecule, a 'molecule that makes copies of itself.' The obvious candidate for this replicating molecule would be DNA, since DNA is an integral part of every replication of every cell on this planet. But, much to the chagrin of the 'pre-biotic' evolutionists, DNA had to be rejected as the candidate for the original 'replicator'. Why? Because, first of all, DNA does not replicate, at least not outside of a cell. In fact, DNA replication is always part of a whole cell's replication, and energy is provided by the cell to enable the DNA to perform the processes of replication. Allthough many attempts have been made to remove DNA from a cell and surround it with all the appropriate organic materials (which, aside from a laboratory, would not be found naturally outside of a cell), they never resulted in replication . The second reason for its rejection was that it was just too complex. It was too hard to imagine the DNA molecule, with a genetic code of nucleotides, forming from the random movements of atoms. A simpler molecule had to be conjured up, although no one has any idea what this molecule was made of, they are certain that it was simpler than DNA, because, after all, things always begin with simplicity.
So, what is this replicating molecule? No one knows! Supposedly, superior replicating molecules have evolved and devoured the originals. So no one has seen this replicating molecule, no one has seen any remnants of this molecule, and no one has seen any molecule, DNA or otherwise, that can replicate outside of a cell. All the neo-Darwinists are convinced that this molecule was 'simpler' than DNA, because it is an unquestioned truth in their community that all things begin with simplicity and evolve into complexity. So no one has seen this molecule, no one has seen any molecule that makes copies of itself outside of DNA which always replicates as a part of a whole cell's replication, and no one has any idea what it was made of. Yet, this 'replicator' has become the foundation for the ENTIRE neo-Darwinist theory of the origin of life and evolution.
In the 'Replicators' Dawkins goes on to describe 'the primeval soup'. This is yet another fabrication of the neo-Darwinists, based on conjectures of what the earth may have been like 4 billion years ago. What is postulated is that their were large organic molecules floating around in seas on this planet prior to the advent of life. Dawkins writes , 'Nowadays large organic molecules would not last long enough to be noticed: they would be quickly absorbed and broken down by bacteria or other living creatures. But bacteria and the rest of us are late-comers, and in those days large organic molecules could drift unmolested through the thickening broth." Unmolested? By predators, yes, but, remember, we are talking about organic material that is not protected by the walls of a cell, or by the cell's own commitment to it's survival. We are talking about carbon compounds somehow combining into amino acids, and amino acids combining into proteins, and proteins combining, along with sugars which react strongly with amino acids and affect their synthesis, combining with, modestly, millions of nucleotides, miraculously arranged in perfect sequences, all of which combinations supposedly took many, many millions of years to achieve. Again, I remind you that we are not talking about living things yet. We are talking about a supposed chemical evolution leading up to life. So these organic materials are not beginning a task and leaving their progeny to finish it. There is no progeny. We are talking about exactly the same compounds combining and staying in tact for millions of years. So, yes, there were no predators to molest these molecules, but how about heat above 50 degrees Centigrade or below thirty degrees Centigrade? How about too much acid or base in the pre-biotic solution? Then there are other products of biochemical reactions that would occur and that have occurred under experimental conditions that would be fatal to this process. These include ethanol, isopropyl alcohol, cyanides and carbon monoxide. Also, heavy metal ions are destructive of organic material. Then there is sunlight which contains both wave lengths that are chemical building and wave lengths that are chemical destroying. Amino acids are very delicate and readily breakdown in sunlight. Ultra-violet light also penetrates to several meters of water, destroying and breaking down organic material well below the ocean surface. Even any movement that is agitated will break up polypeptide bonds and denature protein, as anyone who has whipped cream or beaten an egg can attest. And these are just some of the concerns that scientists have begun to have with 'chemical evolution' since the giddy time over fifty years ago when Miller and Urey produced some carbon compounds in a test tube and people thought that the manufacture of a life form under laboratory conditions was just around the corner. On the contrary, now, many scientists have abandoned the primeval soup theory and have looked to other scenarios including: alongside thermal vents on the ocean floor, in shallow tide pools, anaerobically, deep within the crust of the earth, or that extremophile life was transported here from other planets, embedded in meteors.
Although many of these arguments are found in textbooks under the heading 'Origin of Life' they are not really about the origin of life, but about the theoretical build up to the origin. Pre-biotic evolution theories purport to explain no more than how all the materials necessary for life might have gotten assembled. They do not explain life itself. That part, how a non-living molecule becomes alive, is what is of real interest here, and we will spend quite a bit of time on it.
Dawkins says, on p.15, "At some point a particularly remarkable molecule was formed by accident. We will call it the Replicator. It may not necessarily have been the biggest or the most complex molecule around, but it had the extraordinary property of being able to create copies of itself. This may seem a very unlikely sort of accident to happen. So it was. It was exceedingly improbable. In the lifetime of a man, things that are that improbable can be treated for practical purposes as impossible. That is why you will never win a big prize on the football pools. But in our human estimates of what is probable and what is not, we are not used to dealing in hundreds of millions of years. If you filled in pools coupons every week for a hundred million years you would very likely win several jackpots."
Please look carefully at this example. Winning the football pools is highly improbable, but not impossible. No one would call it impossible. Some one buys coupons every week, they may win or not win. It is a question of probabilities. But aren't there some things that are impossible? If I said that in my lifetime I never saw a rock talk or a puddle of water dance a jig, would it be reasonable, then, to say, that if I lived for a hundred million years I would very likely see these things several times? If we had billions of molecules that were trying to replicate for a hundred million years, then maybe one time they would succeed. But are molecules trying to replicate? What are molecules trying to do, anyway? They are trying to do nothing, of course; they are molecules. They are not doing anything and they are not making anything. They are just molecules. Don't confuse molecules prior to life with molecules as they function in a living being. You can take a liver freshly removed from a living human body at which point it is a couple of pounds of meat and an enormous collection of molecules encased in cells, but if you are able to transplant that liver into another human being and it becomes part of the nexus of will, consciousness and intelligence, that is that person's life, then that liver, and the molecules within it, start performing all sorts of difficult and precise functions. But a molecule, prior to life, outside of life, is a molecule, a piece of lifeless matter. It is not purchasing pool coupons and it is not trying to replicate. It is not even an 'it', but more of this later.
Here's the next paragraph, "Actually a molecule that makes copies of itself is not as difficult to imagine as it seems at first, and it only had to arise once. Think of the replicator as a mould or template. Imagine it as a large molecule consisting of a complex chain of various sorts of building block molecules. The small building blocks were abundantly available in the soup surrounding the replicator. Now suppose that each building block has an affinity for its own kind. Then whenever a building block from out in the soup lands up next to a part of the replicator for which it has an affinity, it will tend to stick there. The building blocks that attach themselves in this way will automatically be arranged in a sequence that mimics that of the replicator itself. It is easy then to think of them joining up to form a stable chain just as in the formation of the original replicator. This process could continue as a progressive stacking up, layer upon layer. This is how crystals are formed. On the other hand, the two chains might split apart, in which case we have two replicators, each of which can go on to make further copies."
Yes, if you think of the replicator as a mould or a template, then this all makes sense, but all Dawkins is describing here is the construction of a crystal. He has completely ignored the supposed essential action of this molecule. It is not building up mass like a crystal, it is not just glomming more material onto itself. It is replicating. What does that mean exactly? I am going to focus in on three words of that paragraph. Dawkins is talking about a molecule that 'MAKES COPIES of ITSELF'. Let's look at each of these words separately and what they actually mean in this context.
MAKES. Dawkins is talking about a molecule that is making something. According to Dawkins, et. al's understanding of the world, what else have molecules made up until this point in time? Absolutely nothing. In fact, nothing has made nothing up until that moment. Prior to life, according to Dawkins, there was no will, no intelligence, no imagination, no thought, not even an "it" in terms of anything that would be an agent for 'making' or 'doing' anything. All that there was prior to that moment was passive matter. In other words, things moved, heated up, cooled down, exploded and shrank, but each of those actions was a reaction traceable to some prior action. In a later paragraph of the same chapter Dawkins says, "Should we then call the original replicator molecules 'living'? Who cares?" Well, I do for one. Isn't that the whole point of this story, to explain the beginning of life? If it were a chapter about Arabian race horses or the history of the Balkan Wars, I wouldn't care in the least. But if you start out by telling us that you will now explain how life began, then, whether or not these replicators were living is not only an issue, but it is the issue.
My point is that we have no experience of anything initiating any activity or making anything whatsoever except living beings or machines conceived and constructed by living beings. That is one of the hallmarks of life, that it has the capacity to initiate action. It is even built into our language. You can say a bird makes a nest, a dog makes a hole, but it makes no sense to say that a rock or a puddle of water makes anything. The moment you say a molecule 'makes' that molecule has become something completely different than anything that existed prior to that moment. It has become alive, but how that happened is not addressed. It has been omitted, skipped over. We went from molecules that stick to each other, as in a crystal, to molecules making copies of themselves without ever discussing it, beyond saying that it was very unusual.
COPIES. Making copies seems to be a daunting task, but not unimaginable. After all, we have copying machines that can turn out many, many copies of an original document. Putting aside the fact that copy machines were created by human beings, supposedly the most advanced product of this process of evolution, is replication the same as copying? If there were no copying machine, no equipment whatsoever, and a document were just splitting by itself and forming two documents, each of which, in turn, split to form two more, this would be closer to it, but still not really replication. In another book, Dawkins goes to great length to liken biological replication to digital reproduction. The difference, though, is that while digital reproduction reproduces a signal, biological reproduction reproduces a three dimensional being that grows, replicates, is aware of its environment, etc. So what are we talking about here? If you believe that biological replication began with a replicating molecule (which I don't) or a replicating cell (which I do) what is replication, really?
If replication were only the exact reproduction of a three dimensional DNA molecule, with it's millions and billions of components and it's delicate spiralling structures of enzymes and sugars, that would be a miraculous feat, in and of itself. But replication is not merely the reproduction of matter. The new DNA molecule has the exact desire and will to replicate as the first one does, is exactly as alive and willful as the original. If replication were merely the reproduction of matter, we would be as joyous and celebratory at the birth of a still born baby as a live one. The thing that overwhelms you, when you are having a child, is not just all those perfect toes and fingers and eyes, it is the perfect being that is looking back at you from behind those perfect eyes. Your baby is exactly as alive and willful, as intelligent and conscious, as you are. That is the miracle of replication. That is what gets your heart pounding and your knees knocking. Two have become three. And that is what was left out of the obstetrics manual that you had dutifully studied for the previous nine months. Somehow, at some moment, a new life, a new soul, a new being, was slipped into those proteins that were multiplying inside your wife's belly. That is replication. And that is exactly what is happening in your body a trillion times over as one cell becomes two, each as alive and willful as the first one. Each as transfused with intelligence and purpose as the original. This miracle of replication is what is happening a quadrillion quintillion times at every moment on this teeming planet. Put aside your expertise, your professionalism, your stable definitions of who you are and what the world is. Put aside your 'memes.' Can you hear the roar and whoosh of it? Can you feel the power and majesty of it? Can you sense the awesome intelligence of it? And you, your body and your mind, are an integral part of it. The ecstatic experience of realizing that you are surrounded by and are part of this miraculous creativity at every moment, is the very experience that Dawkins would lull you out of by his smug, ungrateful, tedious talk of digital reproduction and molecules blindly, purposelessly, by random chance, making copies of themselves.
ITSELF. So what is a self? Dawkins contends that the replicator is a molecule that makes copies of itself. This implies the notion of independent action. The molecule is accomplishing this replication, this miracle, by itself. This is a hugely important point, because whether you believe that evolution begins with the replication of a molecule, or the replication of a cell, if you believe that replication is happening by itself, that the molecule or the cell is an independent agent and gets no assistance, then, that is the beginning of the death of gratitude. If the miracle of replication happens by chance, by a freak accidental collision of atoms, which in turn forms a molecule capable, by itself, of the miracle of replication, then Dawkins is right, Jesus, Moses, Buddha, Lao-Tzu, the ancient Egyptians, the Aztecs, Incas and Sufis are wrong, and there is no one or nothing to thank. We are completely independent agents, each cell is a completely independent entity, doing it's myriad functions completely by itself, and we are separate, independent machines whose sole purpose is to try to survive. If Dawkins is wrong and the molecule is not replicating by 'itself' because it has no self, then every mystic down through the ages is right and the first molecule, or cell, is replicated by the consciousness, will and intelligence of the cosmic mind, the cosmic consciousness, God the Father, the Tao, the Divine, or whatever you choose to call it, that was there from the beginning. We, then, rather than being independent entities, are connected with bonds of consciousness and gratitude to the entire universe.
So, again, what is a self? Suppose I build a box, and inside the box I place a thermostat and a tape recorder. I set up this equipment so that when the temperature rises a tape plays that says , "Hot enough, for you?" When the temperature goes down, a different tape plays that says, "Cold enough, for you?" Now when you hear either of those sentences coming out of that box you don't stop for a moment to consider that there is anything in that box that is actually feeling hot or cold, do you? And, certainly, you don't consider that there is anything in that box that is interested in your welfare or that seeks to make dialogue with you, do you? Now, let's get more sophisticated. Suppose I build another box on which I paint or sculpt a very human looking face. Behind the eyes of that face I have a camera hooked up to more equipment that can recognize a variety of things in your appearance and your movement. Now I have fifty different tapes that can say fifty different observational things about you like, "Looks like you could use a cup of coffee,' or "Want to talk about it?" Are we still clear that no matter how much equipment I stuff into that box, and how realistic I make the shape of that box to resemble a human being, that there is nothing in that box that feels, or experiences any mood that I am in, or that actually sees or hears me? Also, that there is nothing in that box that has any concern for me or my welfare? Good. On the other hand, you know that if you have a cat or a dog, even if they can't articulate it, it is clear that they can see you, and that they do respond to things that you do. Your cat or dog can get very excited about the food that you serve them when they are really hungry, while your most sophisticated computer has no excitement, whatsoever, when it gets a tune up, even if that tune up is desperately needed. There is nothing in the computer that experiences a need for anything, that experiences a desire or the fulfillment of that desire. If a computer needs a repair a warning light, or an icon, may flash, but the computer is not concerned about whether or not it gets repaired, or whether it functions at all. Your pets, however, do have a concern about their survival, and getting their needs met. There is an 'it' there. The dog or the cat experiences things and non-living matter does not.
Where in the body of the cat or the dog is that center of experience located? Is it behind the eyes? Although it seems to reside there most of the time, it is not necessarily behind one's eyes. When your eyes are closed, or you are dreaming, or if you lose your sight, you still continue to experience things. The ground of being is still in tact, but the location has changed. Is it in some place in the brain? I hesitate to substitute the word consciousness for the ground of being because scientists like Dawkins will quickly confuse the contents of consciousness with consciousness itself. Elsewhere, Dawkins writes that we developed consciousnes because it was advantageous to our survival to have a picture of ourselves in our minds. This, of course, confuses consciousness with self-consciousness, a mental image of one's self with the actual self that is experiencing the image. Scientists can now track almost every aspect of consciousness, every thing you might be thinking or feeling, to some electrical or chemical pattern in the brain. These patterns are not consciousness, however, but the antecedents of consciousness. You still have to translate these patterns into actual thoughts and feelings, into experience. So consciousness is not those electrical or chemical patterns, and it is not those thoughts, images or feelings, which are contents of consciousness, but not consciousness itself. Consciousness is that which experiences that. Consciousness is the non-physical ground of your experience. It is the empty bowl within which you experience your life. This consciousness, or ground of being, is still there even if a life form does not have a brain, per se. If a being is responsive to its environment in any way, if it can distinguish what is edible from what is harmful, if it moves toward what it desires and avoids or protects itself from what will do it harm, then that being has some form of consciousness. That being is experiencing something. That being has a will and the capacity to initiate action. That being has a self.
In the next paragraph Dawkins says, "Previously it is probable that no particular kind of complex molecule was very abundant in the soup, because each was dependent on building blocks happening to fall by luck into a particular stable configuration. As soon as the replicator was born it must have spread its copies rapidly throughout the seas, until the smaller building block molecules became a scarce resource, and other larger molecules were formed more and more rarely." Why? How does the replicator spread copies if it's not by the chance passage of the proper building blocks in the soup? Can the replicator move? In the previous paragraph Dawkins uses the word 'affinity' twice to describe the attraction that building blocks of the replicator molecule might have for building blocks in the 'soup'. But what is that affinity? Are we talking about something electro-magnetic, one of the normal chemical bonds that we know of? If that were so, the replicator would still be as dependent after replication as it was before replication for the chance passage of appropriate building block materials. Or are we talking about another kind of affinity, which is the affinity that a living being has for something that it needs? If that is the case, then this 'molecule' would have to have some kind of consciousness to discern where in the soup these needed building blocks were located, and it would have to have some kind of locomotion to get to the building block after it was located. So either we have a molecule which has to continue to wait passively (if it took a hundred million years for the first occurrence, then it would take another hundred million for the second), or we have a 'molecule' which is actively searching for building block materials in which case we don't have a molecule at all, but a living being with consciousness, desire and locomotion; and the 'affinity' that Dawkins speaks of is 'will' which is no more a function of the molecule 'itself' than the will that is beating our hearts and growing our cells and energizing the ten quadrillion simultaneous biological processes of our bodies is something that we are doing by ourselves.
Now I want you to look again at the above paragraph. Thirty years after the publication of this book, 'The Selfish Gene,' Dawkins wrote in the preface to the most recent edition that, aside from a small concern that he may now have about the title he will let it all stand as is. Therefore, we can assume that he and his editors considered carefully the following phrase, "As soon as the replicator was BORN...." Of course, how else could you describe the creation of an object that replicates and seeks out material for replication except to say that it was a birth. Astoundingly, on exactly the same page, page sixteen, he describes the virgin birth of Jesus to be the result of a translation error from the Hebrew word for 'young woman' to the Greek word for 'virgin'. The implication being that the only possible explanation for a virgin birth would be a mistake in the translation. Yet, on the very same page he is talking about the birth of a replicator molecule which is missing not one parent, but two. If you cannot explain a birth if there is only one parent, how can you explain a birth when there are no parents? One is considered a silly myth propagated by people with foolish beliefs, and the other, the one that is not just highly improbable, but flat out impossible, is now considered sober, scientific fact!
Dawkins may not be interested in whether or not the replicator is alive, but if he claims that this molecule is making copies of 'itself', by itself, then he is conferring on it selfhood and will. In other words he is not just saying that accidentally a molecule started making copies of itself, he is saying that accidentally a molecule had come to life. Dawkins explanation, then, for the beginning of life is exactly no explanation. All the talk of the evolution of more complex molecules is irrelevant. All the talk of a pre-biotic soups irrelevant. There was a molecule and then there was a living thing called a replicator, with no parents, no build up, nothing. There was no life; there was a freakish accident, and then, poof!, there was. Dawkins explanation of the beginning of life is no explanation at all.
The next two pages of the chapter are a sort of boiler plate list of evolutionary principles which make some kind of sense when you are talking about the replication of living beings. What kind of sense do these principles make when you are talking about the replication of molecules? Dawkins talks about how copying errors create new varieties and how some of these new varieties may have a survival advantage over the originals. So, he is now fantasizing about many varieties of 'replicating' molecules competing for survival. This is remarkable, considering that we cannot even imagine, discover, or genetically alter one molecule that can replicate outside of a cell. The process of replication in Dawkins' description has suddenly become genetic replication. Where did that come from? We were discussing how crystals are formed, when the building block of one molecule bonds with another, and suddenly we are discussing a process of genetic replication. The only explanation for its arrival is that it was an admittedly weird accident.
Then he mentions how molecules with greater longevity would have an advantage over molecules with shorter longevity. Wait! Is he still talking about molecules? What longevity is there in a molecule. If a molecule is not alive, there is no life span, so he would be talking about the sturdiness of a molecule, its ability to stay in tact. But the replicating molecule would have to be made of millions of parts, all in exact arrangements and shapes and all connected by delicate bonds, which is why the DNA in our cells is protected by two membranes, the nuclear membrane and the outer wall of the cell. These delicate peptide and sulfide bonds are vulnerable to temperature changes, exposures to many types of elements, including oxygen and carbon dioxide, heavy metal ions, many other organic compounds, alcohols, and any compound that has the same chemical composition but the wrong physical structure (right handed instead of left handed carbon compounds or left handed instead of right handed sugars). Organic matter is also vulnerable to any strong movement and to ultra-violet light. Now keep in mind, that, according to this theory, all the components of the replicating molecule were not alive until the moment of replication, and, even then, according to the theory, their 'aliveness' was questionable. If they were not alive then there were no ancestors to begin this work of pre-biotic evolution, and no progeny to continue it. That means that the very same carbon compounds that amazingly came together to form amino acids, by themselves, and the amino acids that amazingly came together to form proteins, and the proteins that came together in millions of microscopic parts, in exactly the right shape and formation to form a molecule capable of replication, were precisely the same compounds, acids and proteins that had begun to come together hundreds of millions of years earlier! If we are to believe that all these millions of components had held together through volcanoes, storms, tectonic plate shifts, meteor bombardments, enormous temperature changes, and all of the other vicissitudes of the first hundreds of millions of years of our earth's history, why would there be any issue of longevity? On the other hand, if it is 'alive' then we are talking about life spans, about birth, maturation and death, but what life span could there be if there is no body? Also, the way our replicating molecule, DNA, contorts itself, as part of a whole cells replication, the complex gymnastics it goes through and then returns to its exact original shape, cannot be explained by simple physics and chemistry. This is a function of the will of the cell to survive and maintain its shape, which is not understood at all by modern science. If we do not begin to understand it, how can we pretend to explain how it was created?
Same goes for 'fecundity' which is the next topic on Dawkins' evolutionary checklist. What sense does fecundity make when you are talking about a molecule? If we are discussing cellular replication, yes, the cell, or the organism, cannot replicate again until it has grown and matured. But what maturation process would there be for a molecule that has no body attached to it? If it could replicate, why couldn't it immediately turn around and replicate again? Although Dawkins doesn't want to discuss whether or not the replicator molecule is alive, everything he is theorizing is predicated on these molecules not only being alive, but having mortal bodies, discernment and will. When he is talking about a survival advantage of one molecule over another, what advantage could he be talking about? Would one type of molecule move faster than another type? Then, we are talking about molecules with locomotion. Would one type of molecule survive longer than another type? Then, we are talking about lifespans. Would one type be able to find the materials it needs for replication better than another? Again, we are talking about a living being that can move, and discern what it needs from its surrounding environment.
Now Dawkins makes a point of saying that these molecules, creatures, whatever, do not want to evolve. That nothing really wants to evolve. Well, the replicators may not want to evolve, but they sure as hell want to replicate! In fact, it is the incessant drive and competition to replicate, that is the motor that drives this whole fantasy. How did the whole process of digestion begin? "Some of them (the replicators) may even have 'discovered' how to break up molecules of rival varieties chemically, and to use the building blocks so released for making their own copies," Dawkins writes. Gee, what a neat discovery. Too bad our Nobel Laureate scientists can't come up with anything approaching that. How, pray tell, could a replicator, a microscopic piece of protein, make such a discovery? And how would a molecule execute this discovery once it had discovered it? It would have to manufacture a chemical by a process of digestion and then secrete it at its rival. Where would we find the organs of digestion and secretion in a molecule? It is insulting enough to claim that cells are doing these kinds of things, digestion and secretion, by themselves, but to claim that a molecule is doing it by itself is insulting not just to people of a spiritual persuasion but to anyone who can think.
"Other replicators perhaps discovered how to protect themselves, either chemically, or by building a physical wall of protein around themselves. This may have been how the first living cells appeared." There are myriad reasons why this statement is utterly devoid of meaning or sense, but I will just mention a few. First of all, a single celled organism, as with any living being, behaves as a unit. It is not a DNA molecule with a coat on. It is a unitary being. To say that growing a body is like building a wall, or putting on a protective coat, is an attempt to trivialize and demystify a process that is wondrous, in the same way that calling the replication of a living being, even a cell, a copying process, trivializes that process in a way that gives us the illusion that it is understood when it is not understood in the most fundamental way. Putting on a coat, or building a wall, is something that we can understand, although having a molecule put on a coat or build a wall does take a remarkable stretch of the imagination. Putting on a body, though, is very different than putting on a coat. Our body is the physical extension of ourself. It is an indivisible unit. Our commitment to survival extends to every part of our body. Our digestion feeds every part. When we move, we don't leave parts of ourselves behind. When we grow, we grow as a proportional whole. Every cell in every part of our body works in perfect harmony with every other cell to guarantee our moment to moment survival. But to think of the cell, surrounding the nucleus, as a protective wall, that the will, energy and commitment to survive are all coming from the nucleus and the surrounding cell is merely a buffer, does not compute with anything that we know about the cell, or with our experience of our own bodies.
An entire set of genes is located in the nucleus of every cell. At different times, those same set of genes guide the construction of our fetal body, our infant body, our child body and our adult body. The same set of genes that guides the construction of the caterpillar, guides the construction of the butterfly. Depending on the creature, there are many thousands, or millions or billions of genes. But the selection of which genes are used to manufacture which enzyme at any given moment emanates, at least on the physical plane, not from the nucleus to the outer cell but from the outer cell to the nucleus. If we draw an analogy from the world of computing, the nucleus contains the coding for many, many programs. The rest of the cell decides which program it needs at which moment. The cell is also the equipment that the codes are built to operate in, and the survival of the cell, is the purpose for which the codes exist in the first place. The argument that the genes, or the replicating nucleus, serves the surrounding cell, is just as strong, if not stronger, than the argument that the surrounding cell serves the nucleus. Dawkins may try to separate them (the nucleus and the surrounding cell) in an attempt to conform to his 'simple to complex meme,' but, in truth, they cannot be separated, any more than you can say, regarding any object, that the inside preceded the outside, or the left side preceded the right side.
If we humored Dawkins and tried to imagine how this process of cell building would begin, what would we think? Would the molecule pull something toward it and hold it to itself for protection? We can imagine ourselves doing such a thing, but how would a molecule do it? What part of the molecule would discern what it needs for protection? What part would hold this material to it? And at what point, either in the example of ourselves or the 'replicator' does that material that is clinging to us, or it, miraculously transform from something adjacent but external to ourselves, to something that is an integral, indivisible part of our will and our selves. That is a mystery that neither Dawkins, nor anyone, can begin to explain for any creature much less for a 'replicating molecule.' Again, if you don't understand it, how can you pretend to know how it originated?
Also, the purpose of the genetic code, at least the one purpose that has been detected by Western science to this point, is the manufacture of proteins. These proteins form the physical contents of the bodies surrounding the genes. How these bodies take on a particular shape, how they are filled with intelligence, will and consciousness, and the involvement of the genes in any of this, has not yet been determined. But if the sole determined purpose of the genes is protein manufacture, how can you imagine sets of genes in a 'replicating molecule' miraculously replicating for hundreds of millions of years without ever functioning? In other words, you have this fantastically elaborate equipment to manufacture protein that miraculously replicates for all that time without ever being used. That would be like cook books being printed for millions of years, over and over again, without any kitchens, any stoves or any cooks; with untold numbers of recipes but nothing ever being cooked or eaten; or countless numbers of software programs being replicated with no computers to play them on, no screens to see them on and no people to use or enjoy them. If the sole detectable function of genes is to manufacture proteins to build and maintain bodies, how can you imagine genes being replicated over and over again without ever being used? Yet, here we have Dawkins fantasizing about molecules genetically replicating, by themselves, for hundreds of millions of years and THEN 'discovering' how to build bodies.
Now, to complete his explanation for the origin of life, Dawkins adds two things. One is that there was a competition, initially not for food, but for material to replicate building blocks. And the second, is that in the genetic replicating process, which in all its wondrous complexity just started operating one day on its own, mistakes are occasionally made. Of these rare mistakes, once in a very great while, a mistake is made that enhances the survival prospects of the 'mistake' over its fellow replicators, so that this new replicator soon devours and dominates the others. Keep in mind that there is nothing in this process of 'copying mistakes' that expands the number of genes or the amount of genetic information. It is merely one or several genes swapping for one or several others. The resultant 'mistake' never has more genes, more genetic information, more complexity than the original. This process may explain in a superficial way (superficial because any biological process that is explained purely on the physical plane is incomplete) why we have blue eyes rather than brown, or a flat rather than an aquiline nose, but aside from the swapping of traits, it offers no explanation as to how beings would grow more complex, develop new organs or change their shape in any fundamental way. Yet it is on this fragile, rickety scaffold of replicator molecules, that no one has ever seen or can even imagine, and this system of fortuitous genetic mistakes based on a code that no one ever invented, that Dawkins has the audacity to hang the entire creation of life on this teeming planet. Where did the nervous system come from? The replicators, by chance, discovered how to build a nervous system and those that had a nervous system prevailed over those that didn't. What about the brain? Easy! Another invention, by chance, of the replicators, and those with a brain had an advantage over those that didn't; so, voila! brains. Consciousness? The replicators that discovered, by chance, consciousness, were better able to protect themselves over the replicators that had no consciousness. Eyes, ears, hearts, swimming, flying, thinking, loving, the origin of whatever you can find that's alive on this wondrous planet, can now be reduced to the same stultifyingly mundane, idiotic and meaningless formula. It gave the replicator molecule an advantage.
Even if all of this fantasy were true, you would still have to explain this ceaseless will of the replicators. Why do they keep, endlessly trying to replicate? What is the source of that drive which is completely different than any other force in the universe. First there was electro-magnetism, gravity, the strong force (that binds the nucleus of atoms together) and the weak force (that binds sub-atomic particles). Now, suddenly, there is will, the will to replicate, with discernment and locomotion to serve this will. Where did it come from? Dawkins' explanation: a very weird accident.
The repercussions of creating the fantasy of these replicating molecules as the underpinning of all of life are enormous. What has been imagined are creatures that are alive to this extent: they have no consciousness, no intelligence, no interest at all, except for their single minded and relentless need to replicate. If the cell were postulated as the beginning of evolution then the driving force of evolution could be seen as the expansion of consciousness, since the cell has a responsiveness to its environment, has a ground of being. If it were thought about deeply, even the replicator would have a ground of being, because the replicator would need some form of discernment to locate what materials it needs for replication. If there is discernment and will, then there has to be a ground of being, a non-physical reference point that experiences that will and that discernment. Then, instead of thinking of the process of evolution as the ruthless development of more and more efficient replication machines, we might think of evolution as the development of more and more expansive forms of consciousness.
And finally Dawkins writes, “Human suffering has been caused because too many of us cannot grasp that words are only tools for our use, and that the mere presence in the dictionary of a word like ‘living’ does not mean it necessarily has to refer to something definite in the real world.” And what of the human suffering caused by people that espouse a view that life, consciousness, purpose, will, God and oneness have no reality and that vicious, mindless, relentless replicator molecules that no one has ever seen or can even conceive of in any detail, not only do have reality, but are the basic underlying reality of all of life?
By 'something definite in the real world,' Dawkins means something you can feel, taste, touch and measure. By this standard, everything in life that is truly meaningful has no reality, and that includes love and one’s self. How can we define living , Dawkins wonders? Answer: something is living if it experiences things. And all of experience, including mine, yours and Dawkins’, cannot be felt, tasted, touched, seen or measured by anyone but one’s self. If you tell me you are seeing a gorgeous sunset, I can perhaps do a scan and see an electrical pattern in your brain, but the manner in which that pattern get translated into your actual experience of a sunset, or how Dawkins’ brain patterns get translated into the cynical words that you read in his books, is a mystery that cannot be solved by the scientific method of observation and measurement. And more mysterious than that, is the ground of that experience, which is you. That you, which is not the content, but the context of your entire experience of life, even Dawkins’ experience of life, is not in the physical universe. It is immutable and immeasurable. Is it real? It’s the only reality, ultimately. All the attributes of those ‘definite’ things that Dawkins measures melt away into molecules when we look at them under the microscope. Those solid molecules then melt away into atoms, and those solid atoms melt into sub-atomic particles separated by huge spaces when we look through instruments of higher and higher magnification. What happened to that definite, solid, measurable world? It disappeared. But you, the observer, are still there, just as you always have been and always will be.
Soon after Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister of England in 1979, Steven Rose wrote in New Scientist: "......the switch in scientific fashion, if only from group to kin selection models in evolutionary theory, will come to be seen as part of the tide which has rolled the Thatcherites and their concept of a fixed, 19th century competitive and xenophobic human nature into power." And, this is not just a political tide. It seems that every aspect of life has been infected by a cynicism which mistrusts anything that even hints of idealism or alludes to any motive beyond our most narrowly defined selfishness. Has the 'meme' of the mindless, ruthless, replicators as the sole foundation of our existence infected our entire culture? Now we seem on the brink of catastrophe, as armed camps of religious sectarians face each other down, and huge masses of bewildered atheists sit on the side lines feeling confused by, but still superior to, the passions on either side. While some people worship Allah, some worship Jesus, some worship proteins and some worship replicator molecules, the Nameless One is erupting at every moment in oceans of glorious creativity from within and without. Only when we realize that, will the joy, the passion and the liberation of spiritual life be ours without competition, without rivalry and without war. It's the twenty- first century. We have exploded the forces of the atom and imploded the national boundaries that separated and protected us from each other. It's time that the uniters save us from the dividers; that transcendentalism shows us the way past militant sectarianism and myopic secularism. Peace.
WHAT WE REALLY KNOW (CLICK HERE)
Matt Chait - Monday, April 23, 2007
WHAT WE REALLY KNOW
http://beyondevolutionistheregodafterdawkins.blogspot.com/Richard Dawkins writes in "River Out of Eden," one of several of his polemics on evolution,
"Airplanes built according to scientific principles work. They stay aloft and they get you to a chosen destination....Western science, acting on good evidence that the moon orbits the Earth a quarter of a million miles away, using Western-designed computers and rockets, has succeeded in placing people on its surface. Tribal science, believing that the moon is just above the treetops, will never touch it outside of dreams".
Using this analogy Dawkins equates evolution with the hard science of physics and any disagreement with evolution is equated with tribal superstition. Does the analogy hold? Our understanding of gravity led to the airplane. Our understanding of the expansion of gases led to the combustion engine. Our understanding of electricity led to the light bulb. So, is Dawkins et al., prepared to create a living being? If the principle of life "at it's core" is so well understood by evolutionary biologists, then when can we expect the first manufactured being to arrive? When can we expect the first man-made creation that grows, or that replicates, or that has will, or that is conscious? And please don't confuse genetic engineering with the creation of life. If I understand how my channel changer works I can change the progamming of my television. That doesn't mean that I know anything about how to build a television or that I know how to write, shoot, direct, act or in any way create television shows.
If you cannot see your 'self' or your consciousness or your will or emotions or intelligence, how can you expect to discover the very core of life from physical observation? When Watson and Crick discovered the double helix construction of the DNA molecule, had they discovered "God" as they had initially claimed or had they discovered God's channel changer? In all the subsequent research evolutionary biologists have determined that genes code for the manufacture of enzymes and proteins. But genes code for much more than that. Genes code for shape as well as content. The newly combined genetic code in a fertilized egg attracts to it a particular nexus of consciousness, will, intelligence and information that infuses the physical body and makes possible all it's myriad functions. If the only function of genes were to produce proteins and enzymes, gestation would result in a shapeless puddle of meat rather than a human baby. This is why so much of the code is considered 'junk' DNA, because scientists cannot 'see' a use for it. This is why the particular way all the billions of genes are folded over and over into the nucleosome is not considered a relevant bases for study; because the mystery of the genes is considered solved. If we can get a bacteria to manufacture insulin by genetic engineering, then why look further? All questions are supposedly answered.
The story of evolution is presented as a rational, easily understood account of how life developed from 'simple' single celled organisms into the one hundred trillion celled creatures that we call human beings. Supposedly, from these simple one celled beginnings, after many, many mistakes, we gradually, one step at a time, evolved because our ability to survive improved as we became more perfected and complicated. All of nature's mistakes have disappeared because they were 'devoured' by the more improved survivors that replaced them. Let's look at this argument piece by piece.
First there is the simple beginnings, the cells. Almost four billion years after they arrived on this planet, we are still studying these 'simple' building blocks of life. Before we get into endless, hairsplitting arguments about which genus the digger wasp belongs to or the sexual predilections of the male stickleback, let's look at this 'simple' cell. For all the years of dedicated research and the chest thumping of Watson, Crick, Dawkins and their ilk, there is not one, I repeat, not one, function of that simple cell, which is the very beginning of the story of evolution, that is truly understood by Western science, or that can be produced in a laboratory. We cannot create anything that replicates anything. We cannot create anything that digests anything. We cannot create anything that grows. We cannot create anything that metabolizes. We cannot create anything that is aware of its surroundings. The basic building block of the whole history of evolution, which is supposedly so clear, rational and logical, is an absolute and utter mystery! This story that begins in simplicity, actually begins with transcendent intelligence and unfathomable complexity.
Then, we have the gradual perfection of organs until we come up with the highly perfected organs of a creature such as ourselves. Along the way, according to the story, many genetic 'mistakes' were made, species that could not compete with the genetically superior species that we find today. Does this make any sense, really? When you look at the structure of a microscopic eukaryotic cell, the building block of all complex plant and animal life, you find a nucleus containing millions or billions of enfolded genes, with ribosomes and vesicles and reticulums, with vacuoles and lysosomes and centrioles, with microscopic membranes separating hundreds of chemical reactions all going on simultaneously in perfect synchronicity. When you look at all this dazzling complexity and precision at the very beginning of life, do you really believe that there were vast multitudes of species roaming this earth that were bunking into trees and walking off of cliffs, because they couldn't see well enough; that starved to death because they couldn't digest their food, or that died of fevers or chills because they couldn't regulate their temperatures? The whole thing is absolutely laughable. Beings make perfect adaptations to the particular niche of the environment that they inhabit. When there is a change in the environment, a shift in the weather, in the composition of the atmosphere, the arrival of a new predator or a new competitor, a change in the food source, etc., sometimes the genetic adaptation cannot act quickly enough to adjust to a rapid change. A species that was perfectly adapted to earlier circumstances, suddenly finds itself at a disadvantage. A good example is right now, when our dedicated physicians, researchers and, yes, genetic engineers, are working frantically to stem the tide of cancers, diabetes, heart and kidney conditions in our own species due to the dramatic change in our diet and air quality since the beginning of industrialization. Don't forget that for hundreds of thousands of years we were all organic, locally grown and seasonal eaters. The recent barrage of pesticides, preservatives, growth hormones, fillers and various and sundry chemicals that we are eating in our food, drinking in our water and breathing in our air is too much for our amazing but still limited abilities to adapt. But the idea that dinosaurs were weaker than we are, that pteradactyls were poor flyers, or that this earth was cluttered with evolutionary mistakes that were so completely devoured that nothing is left of them, not even their bones, is beyond absurd.
Underlying this whole theory is the most base, materialistic view of life imaginable. According to this theory, we are here to survive and replicate, plain and simple. Anything that doesn't survive as well as we do, gets devoured and disappears. But why, why do we want to survive? Just to survive? Just to eat so that we can replicate more of our own kind that can eat and replicate more? Yecch! We survive because we want to survive. We survive, that is all of our species, because, when our survival needs are met, when we have enough nourishment, when we are warm enough and cool enough, when our offspring are cared for and we are in the environment that we are so exquisitely adapted to, we love life. We, that is all of us, in the absence of need, feel in harmony, balance and deep connection with our surroundings, and this feeling is intensely peaceful, loving and pleasurable. We have to lose the 'National Geographic' sense of the wild, which focuses on the one minute violent, dramatic struggle for dominance between male Tibetan yaks and ignores the thirty years of peaceful grazing which makes up the rest of their lives. Aside from the bias of Darwinists and most historians, life is not about those occasional, dramatic struggles for survival, but about the much longer, peaceful, harmonious interludes, and the quest for that peace and balance that keeps all of us wanting to survive and replicate.
And finally, does our ability to survive improve as we become more complicated? Absolutely not! The total population of humans is not even a footnote to the population of microbes, plankton, amoebas and bacteria. If the thrust of life were replication, we would have stopped at the beginning. Every drop of ocean water, every square inch of soil on this planet is teeming with microscopic life. We do not live in order to survive. We survive in order to live. Our organs have not improved through evolution, so much as they have adapted to fit our different needs. The sense organs of a cell let it know when a virus is arriving and mobilizes anti-bodies to defend itself against that virus. When we need protection from viruses we turn to the abilities and sensitivities of the cell which far surpasses the abilities and sensitivities of the human organism as a whole in regard to virus protection. Each species gets the genetic equipment it needs to sense and deal with its particular environment. We are oblivious to all the ways a bacteria senses its environment in the same way that a bacteria is oblivious to all the ways in which we sense ours. The evolution of senses, motor skills, digestive organs, etc. has not been so much an improvement, but rather a change to adapt to different environmental demands. If there has been an upward, spirallic evolution of intelligence and consciousness resulting in human beings, it is for very different reasons than simple survival.
In sum, then, what do we really know about the creation of life? Western science has unlocked a part of the code for the manufacture of proteins and enzymes, the physical contents of living things. Who controls that code, who signals which of the three thousand enzymes and one hundred thousand combinations of enzymes will be produced within the one hundred trillion cells of the human body, at every moment of our existence, has not been determined. But the code itself, the arrangement of nucleotides in the DNA molecule, has been discovered, which is hugely important but is still only one small part, and the least subtle, least causal part of the entire picture. On a subtler and more causal level, is the coding for the shapes and energy pathways of living things. Western scientists have only recently begun to explore this area and could get much wisdom and insight from traditional understandings, particularly from the philosophies that underlie acupuncture and aryuvedic medicine. On a still more subtle plane, is the particular will and intelligence that forms an individual being. In our stubborn refusal to acknowledge anything we cannot see, we refuse to recognize the presence of will and intelligence, except, of course, the will and intelligence that we experience ourselves, even though it infuses and permeates every aspect of life and every process and every formation that we see through our microscopes. And finally, on the most subtle, the ultimate causal plane, is consciousness. Not only have Western scientists begun to deny the existence of consciousness (in another post) but they will never discover anything about it if they continue to limit themselves to the methods of physical observation and analysis.
In the homeland of that same tribe that Dawkins referred to as 'believing the moon is just above the treetops,' a television has mysteriously appeared. A tribesman fiddling with the channel changer has discovered that he can get many different, amazing results by pressing these different buttons. Not realizing that these programs are made thousands of miles away and transported invisibly to that little box, people begin to worship it, and worship each of the numbers on that channel changer. The tribesman who figured out how that channel changer works becomes the high priest of this new magic cult. He is celebrated and his little numbers are worshiped as gods. The name of that tribesman leading his people in bowing down to those numbers is Richard Dawkins.
Any thoughts? I sincerely welcome your feedback.
INTELLIGENCE (CLICK HERE)
Matt Chait - Friday, April 20, 2007
INTELLIGENCE
http://beyondevolutionistheregodafterdawkins.blogspot.com/How is it that we, as a society, have become so convinced that the only intelligence in the universe is our human intelligence? Let's look at the animal kingdom. Migratory birds, with their 'bird brains' can effortlessly locate five hundred hidden items of food and construction materials for nests, that they had buried a year earlier. These same migratory birds can recreate a flight pattern of a thousand miles after experiencing it once. We are outwitted by our pet dogs when we play tag with them in our own backyards. These, of course, are examples of 'instinct' rather than intelligence. Instinct means that it is not the animal's own intelligence that is being used, but the intelligence of......what?
As was said earlier, intelligence cannot be observed directly. It can only be surmised based on one's words, behaviors and constructions. The more complex the construction, the more intelligence is assumed in the constructor. When one's words seem insightful, seem true to life, or reveal some aspect of life, the author is applauded for his talent and intelligence. When a painting or a story or a piece of music seems to express something profound or real about life, the author is acclaimed for her insight and brilliance. Although we ascribe intelligence to the degree to which a person's words or artistic achievements reveal some aspect of life, we accord no intelligence to the most complex construction of all, life itself.
Biology is the study of life, at least semantically that's what it means. In reality, biology is the study of organic matter. This matter, at least while it is part of a living being, and not when it is frozen with a fixative on a slide and viewed in a microscope, is engaged in myriad activities. Energy is coursing through this 'matter' and so is intelligence. Biologists are determined to explain everything they observe purely in physical terms. The more minutely they study organic matter, the more amazingly complex and 'intelligent' it gets, but their determination not to see any sign of intelligence is absolutely astounding.
Let's look at the manufacture of enzymes, which takes place millions of times in the one hundred trillion cells of your body every day. Over three billion genes are folded over and over again inside the nucleus of each cell. The nucleus is surrounded by a membrane which protects it from anything harmful that might come floating through the cell's cytoplasm. When a cell needs a certain enzyme produced, another enzyme moves to that exact location in the nuclear membrane that separates the needed piece of genetic code from the cytoplasm and this enzyme opens a hole in the membrane. Then, more enzymes separate the strand of DNA that contains the code from its partnered strand so that the needed code is pressed up against the opening in the membrane. Then another molecule, RNA, attaches to the exposed code and 'copies' it. More enzymes close the hole in the membrane and more enzymes help the DNA strand reattach to it's partner strand. Then the RNA with the copied code travels through the cytoplasm to a ribosome molecule which 'reads' the code and manufactures the needed protein. This process goes on millions of times every day within your body. Oh, yes, and not to worry about mistakes made with all this reading and transcribing. There are other enzymes that 'proofread' and correct mistakes in all these processes. Currently some of these processes are considered 'understood' and some are considered 'not yet understood'. By that is meant that many of the enzymes involved in the process have been identified and named and other enzymes have not yet been identified and named.
Let's suppose that everything were 'completely understood' in those terms. Let's suppose that we could specify every enzyme and every molecule that was used in all of these processes. Would we, then, completely understand how enzymes and proteins were manufactured? How does the cell know what enzyme it needs? I know when I need something to eat. I know when I need some sleep, but I am recognized as a modestly intelligent being. How does the cell know precisely what enzyme it needs out of thousands of possibilities if it has no intelligence? I could probably go to the Library of Congress and find a particular article I needed with the help of a librarian and a computer, because, once again, I am a human being with some intelligence and sophistication. Yet, how does that microscopic droplet of enzyme know exactly where to locate the needed genetic information in the nucleosome, which, by the way, contains more information than the Library of Congress?
One thing I absolutely cannot do, intelligent or not, is replicate anything. If a magician puts a ball under a handkerchief, waves a wand, and then pulls off the handkerchief to reveal two balls, we try to figure out the trick. We look for the place where the second ball was hidden. Was it up his sleeve or inside the lapel of his jacket? If he said, "No, actually the second ball was created from the first ball, it's brand new and identical to the first," would we believe him, or be all the more determined to find out the 'truth' to this deception. Yet this 'magic' act of replication happens trillions of times over in our bodies as DNA 'synthesizes' new DNA and genetic code is 'copied' on to the RNA molecule. In the magic trick, if the magician told us that he was going to reveal the 'truth' of his trick and then described the chemical contents of the first ball and then followed this with the chemical contents of both balls (which I guess would be twice what the first one was) would the magic trick, then, be 'completely understood'? Would he have revealed the 'truth' of the trick, or would he have completely ignored it? So, is this great mystery of DNA replication understood or has it been ignored? Do we understand or do we pretend to understand? And all this is only the least mysterious part of replication, because replication involves the whole cell and not just DNA. The replicated cell is just as willful, just as committed to its survival, just as determined to replicate, just as able to grow and manufacture a variety of enzymes at the precise appropriate moment as the original cell. Will, discernment and intelligence has been replicated along with material. Because we live in a world where these miraculous replications happen countless times at every moment of our existence, does not make them any less miraculous. Let's not delude ourselves into thinking that, because we have identified some of the enzymes and proteins involved in the process, that it is in any way 'understood' or that we have, in any way, removed intelligence from replication.
It's quite amazing really. Scientists call the genes instructions to the cell. If you say, well then who or what is giving these instructions and who or what is receiving these instructions, they will say, no, they aren't really instructions, that's just our way of anthropomorphizing the process so that it can be understood. But what other way could it be understood? What would giving and receiving and executing billions of instructions mean if there weren't some intelligence to give and receive and execute these instructions? When that microscopic drop of enzyme goes directly to the precise piece of code that is needed, how does that droplet know what enzyme is needed and how does it locate that particular piece of code among the billions of pieces of code in the nucleosome? Again, how can you imagine such a thing without intelligence? Does the ribosome read the code from the RNA? We use all these verbs to describe what is going on in a cell that imply intelligence, that make no sense without intelligence, verbs like instructing and reading and transcribing and proofreading, and yet we refuse to see any intelligence in it.
This is what happens when we start our observations on the physical, visible, plane and refuse to make causal inferences to the spiritual, invisible plane. How did Albert Einstein come up with the theory of relativity? He made one vertical line with three horizontal lines attached to it and that gave him the E. Then, he made two horizontal lines, one underneath the other, and that gave him the =. He followed this with two vertical lines attached two two slanted lines which yielded the M, one curved line which gave him the C and, for his coup de grace, he took a curved line and attached a horizontal line to the bottom of it, and he was done; E=MC2. See, now we completely understand the theory of relativity!
Please feel free to comment.
CONSCIOUSNESS (CLICK HERE)
Matt Chait - Thursday, April 12, 2007
CONSCIOUSNESS
http://beyondevolutionistheregodafterdawkins.blogspot.com/Talking about consciousness is difficult and frustrating. It's like one of those visual puzzles. When you first look at it you see an urn. People tell you there are two women's profiles there, but try as you may you can only see the urn. After staring for a while, at some point you suddenly see the two faces and the urn disappears. Afterward, it's hard to get back to seeing the urn when you are perceiving it in the opposite way. Understanding consciousness is something like that. You can't look at it directly, but you can 'get it'. Once you get it so many things in life fall into perfect place, that you will never go back to looking at the world the other way, because that perspective now appears not only nonsensical, but inside out. Also, once you've gotten it, it is frustrating trying to explain it to others. They think you're arrogant or that you have a 'far-out' or 'new-age' philosophy, when you have no philosophy at all. This is just the way that you are experiencing the world, and you know it's right because everything fits. If you talk about it you do so because you are trying to get others to see the light or because you are fed up with the arrogance of some scientific know-it-alls or the stultifying effects of materialism on the society as a whole. Getting it is also not a result of years of education. In fact, if it is Western style, scientific education, all those years of looking at life in a certain way, and perhaps one's professional commitment to that perspective, make it even harder to 'get it.'
Let's first look at the way the Western scientific community is currently approaching the subject of consciousness. When you physically observe the body, using the most modern instruments, and try to discover the very beginning of life, you get as far back as the genes. Genes, as was explained earlier, are not the actual beginning, though. They are the threshold between the invisible world of consciousness, will and intelligence and the physical world of bones, blood, brains and neurons. Will is the desire of consciousness to have and sustain a life in the physical universe. The genetic code is the cosmic mind's or the cosmic conscious', or God's, surpassingly ingenious system of growing a body to be able to participate in this physical universe. One word here about the G word, which is perhaps the most politically incorrect word that one can use in certain company. As Lao-Tzu said, "The name that can be named is not the nameless name". In other words if you call it God, the Cosmic Consciousness, Jesus, Allah or the Great Father, it is not any of those names, and whatever those names conjure up for you, it is not that either. It is not any content. It is not anything you can point to. You are part of it. So in trying to understand or experience the Divine, it is a more fruitful path of discovery to look within at the pointer than to analyze whatever it is that you are pointing at. It is not the sight, but the seer. You are made in the image of God, says the Bible, and this is what that means. It's not that you look like God, it is that your essence, the seer of your sights, the hearer of your sounds, the thinker of your thoughts, the context not the content of your experience, the invisible bowl from which you experience your entire life, is of the same spiritual essence and is an inextricable part of God.
When science observes in the other direction, when they look not at the beginning but at the end of life, in other words at your actual experience, they get as far as the electrical and chemical patterns on the surface of the brain. Just as life force and will is now considered an illusion because it hasn't been detected through scientific instrumentation, and life is now considered to be an act simply of protein manufacture; so consciousness, the very experience of life, is now also considered an illusion, a trick of the brain. It's like describing a house by listing every nail, screw, piece of wood and metal in it. If this house happens to be your home, the problem with this description is that no one built it, no one designed it and no one is living in it!
Steve Pinker writing in Time Magazine says, "Scientists have exorcised the ghost from the machine, not because they are materialistic killjoys, but because they have amassed evidence that every aspect of consciousness can be tied to the brain." Every aspect, that is, except consciousness itself. Imagine that you were looking at a television screen and an army of scientists, with unlimited funding and unlimited time on their hands, had recorded every possible program that you could watch. Not only every program, but every moment of every program was catalogued, so that they, the scientists, knew how to produce every image that appeared on that screen and could tell you when and where it was produced. Knowing all this, would it bring them one iota closer to understanding you, who is not the television screen, but the person watching the television screen?
Let's look at these aspects of consciousness that Pinker writes about. Light waves coming into your eyes are translated into electrical impulses that create patterns on your brain. Sound waves, tastes, touches, all do the same. There are also electrical and chemical patterns created by thoughts and emotions. Now is that the end? Is that how you experience your life? Is that what you see, hear, touch and smell, electrical and chemical patterns on the surface of your brain? If I was looking through an MRI or some other device that could see your brain patterns as you were looking at a sunset, would I be seeing that sunset? If I scanned your brain as you were listening to Beethoven, would I be hearing Beethoven? Don't you see that there is a huge difference between electrical and chemical patterns and what we actually experience? How huge? It's not apples and oranges. It's not even apples and elephants. It's more like apples and nebulae. It's a completely different plane of existence.
Electrical patterns on the brain are the body's outer threshold of the physical universe. Everything that you experience, your perceptions, feelings, thoughts, relationships, dreams and ambitions, lie beyond that. Just like the sense organs, brain and nervous system translate lights, sounds, and touches into electrical patterns; another system translates those patterns into actual experiences. That system cannot be seen. That system is not part of the physical universe. That system is called 'you'. It is also called consciousness. So with living beings, everything begins with the cosmic consciousness and ends with a limited consciousness, which is of exactly the same nature as the cosmic consciousness, but of a much more limited scope, since it is connected to a specific brain, a specific history, and a specific point of view.
The idea that things begin in consciousness and end in consciousness may be easier to grasp when you consider man made things. Look at all the supposed ghosts that have been exorcised from all the machines that Pinker is talking about. Every man made machine begins with consciousness. Some one had an itch, or a twitch, that materialized into a desire, that materialized into an idea or an image, that materialized into a plan, that materialized into the machine itself. And who is the machine for? It's for a conscious being, of course, because only a conscious being can use, enjoy or benefit in any way from a machine. So the machine begins in consciousness and ends in consciousness. Science has not exorcised the ghost from any machine. And with life itself, out of the cosmic consciousness comes the desire or will to experience a life in the physical universe. The end result is a consciousness that is tied to a specific body and a specific point of view.
Consciousness is not one of the evolutionary bells and whistles of the brain. Consciousness is you. It is who you are. Without consciousness there is no you; there is no reason for the brain; there is no life. There is no seeing, no hearing, no thinking, nothing. Scientists may examine the contents of consciousness but not consciousness itself. The brain may resemble a computer, the eye a camera and the ear a recording device. Yet the brain, the eye, the ear, and if you think about it, the computer, the camera and the recording device as well, would have absolutely no use at all without a consciousness to experience their output.
Hindus talk about two birds in a tree. One is very active. She never stops singing, building nests, eating, growing, flying, having children, tending to her children, growing older and dying. The other bird just sits watching. She never moves, she never changes. She just continues to observe everything. The active bird is your self with a small s, your relative self. The still, observing bird is your Self with a capital S. The small s bird is caught up in the constant, ceaseless changes of life. The large S bird, the watcher, is eternal and immutable. Did you ever, a moment after you woke up, have the sudden feeling that you are exactly the same as you were when you were a small child? Then, all the adult thoughts and concerns of the day rush in and the experience is quickly forgotten. Well, that you, that consciousness that exists prior to all the particular thoughts, concerns and desires of the moment, not what you are looking at, but the looker, that's the real you, that is pure consciousness.
Steve Pinker writes, "Consciousness turns out to consist of a maelstrom of events distributed across the brain. These events compete for attention, and as one process out shouts the others, the brain rationalizes the outcome after the fact and concocts the impression that a single self was in charge." Yow! And this statement does not come from some marginal publication. This is from a cover story for Time Magazine. This represents the latest in scientific thinking. So now, along with life and consciousness, modern science declares the self to be illusory as well. I may be mystical but I am also from the Bronx. You can't take away my life, my consciousness and my 'self' and not expect a fight.
Seriously Steve, consciousness is not this maelstrom of events, but 'that which' experiences the maelstrom. Consciousness is not a thing. It is not 'that', but 'that which experiences that'. To experience this 'watcher' without the things being watched, to experience pure consciousness without the maelstrom, this has been the goal of meditators and mystics through the ages. It cannot be studied scientifically because it is not a thing. It is not content, but context. It is the non-physical bowl within which you experience your experience. As opposed to the maelstrom of events, it, the watcher, pure consciousness, is the real you and it is not constantly changing. It is everlasting and immutable. This is knowledge that comes from looking away from the maelstrom, not from analyzing the maelstrom. It is the result of a search, not research.
Now a few things about this 'rationalizer', the brain. The brain is matter. The brain is not a being. In spite of all the conversation you hear about "my brain wants to do this", or "our brains have evolved to do that", the brain does no such things. The brain is not a being. You will never be introduced to or get to meet your brain. Your brain, when it is in your living body, is the passive conductor of electrical impulses and chemical reactions. When it is out of your body it is three pounds of meat. It does not want anything. It does not care about anything. It does not rationalize. It does not do spin doctoring. It does not want to protect you. It does not even know you. It is a piece of meat. It has no will, no intelligence, no desires and no grandiose evolutionary ambitions. You, that is consciousness, has all those things. You also have a brain. This brain has grown in complexity because conscious beings through the ages have wanted to have more and more complex interactions with the physical universe and have developed more and more complex brains to help separate and conduct the energy needed to execute all these interactions.
Then, Pinker asks, "Why does consciousness exist at all"? The main reason he gives is to help the brain with information overload. The implication being, if there were less information we would be better off without that pesky consciousness. What? Hold on! We are consciousness. What 'we' would be better off if there were no consciousness? There would be no 'we'. We are consciousness. We have come from consciousness and we return to consciousness.
Finally, not wanting to be a spiritual killjoy, I do never the less have to say that scientists will never, never, never discover consciousness or 'the Self' through the use of instrumentation or through physical observation. As you read this paragraph there are legions of dedicated scientists making prodigious efforts to understand these problems. In an effort to understand how sights, sounds, smells and touches are translated into our actual experience, they are probing and scanning the brain and finding ever more complex electro-chemical patterns. Again, these patterns, no matter how complex, are still composed of electricity and chemicals. They are of a completely different dimension from what we actually experience. And as you notice different parts of the brain light up with activity when there is thought, or memory or emotion, you will never observe the person who is having these thoughts, memories and emotions. You just see processes, and you never see 'the Self' or consciousness, which is not these processes, but the one which is having these processes. You see processes associated with certain tasks, but you never see the being who has the desires which create the energy for these tasks. You see the brain but you don't see the being whose brain this is, who experiences his life and pursues his goals in the physical world through the intercession of this brain. In spite of your Herculean efforts, you are applying physical techniques to understanding spiritual truths. Until you stop looking through microscopes and scanners and start looking within at the being that is conducting all these searches, you will not make any real headway to understanding the Self, which is the cause of all these ever more complicated results that you study.
Thanks for reading. I welcome your comments.
DESIRES (CLICK HERE)
Matt Chait - Thursday, April 12, 2007
DESIRES
http://beyondevolutionistheregodafterdawkins.blogspot.com/Desires begin in consciousness. I want, you want, he wants, she wants. Beings have desires. Non-beings do not have desires. Proteins and nucleic acids do not have desires. When you say "My brain (three pounds of protein) wants", "my genes (microscopic bits of nucleotides) want", "my neurons want", "my DNA wants....", etc., you are ascribing to a piece of matter a consciousness that it does not have.
Also, principles or concepts do not have desires. If you say 'evolution' wants, or 'nature' wants or 'my reptilean brain' wants, you can mean one of two things. You can mean that the principle 'itself' wants, which doesn't make any sense because a principle is not an 'it' and has no 'self', or you can mean that the being that you refer to as 'nature', 'evolution' or 'mother nature' wants. This makes sense, but then it makes no sense to say that you are an atheist.
Will is the desire of the cosmic consciousness to individuate and participate in the physical universe. All biological processes and the synchronization of all these processes is driven by will. All our desires to satisfy our basic biological needs to survive and procreate come from will and these are the same set of needs and desires that we share with all living beings.
As individuated beings we also have desires that go beyond basic survival needs. These desires can be classified into two groups. The first relate to our individuated existence as a separate being. These include all those desires that we have to individuate or separate ourselves; to stand out, to rise above others or distinguish ourselves in some way. Everything that we do to bring honor, or recognition or wealth or fame to ourselves, to elevate ourselves in any way or to dimish others in any way, would fall into this category. The second group of desires include all those that relate not to our individuated consciousness but to our common origin, our shared cosmic consciousness. These include all desires to make peace and harmony, to share, to achieve social justice, to experience union or oneness with another person or an activity, to bond, to transcend, and all religious activities that give us a greater sense of who we are and a sense of being an integral part of the cosmic consciousness.
There are people who are involved exlusively with the individuated consciousness and experience no connection to the cosmic consciousness. These people believe that nothing exists beyond the satisfaction of their own needs. They live to accumulate as much honor, fame, material goods and/or sensual pleasure as possible. Spiritual life, connections to other people, loyalty to groups of people, commitments to ethics or codes of behavior are all illusory. In the extreme, these people are sociopaths.
There are also people who are involved almost exclusively, once basic survival needs are met, with the cosmic consciousness. For these people, separation, the individuated self, is the illusion. The reality is oneness, the unity of all things. The physical body is a transitory garment that one wears and casts off, and has no real existence beyond one's temporary experience of it. One's own needs are of no consequence. What matters are the needs of life and the planet as a whole. In the extreme, these people are saints.
For the great majority of us, our life is a balancing act between these two opposing yet complimentary forces. And not just within ourselves. We strive to find the right balance between self serving and selflessness, between the cosmic consciousness and the individuated consciousness, between the whole and the individual, in our families, our governments and all our social and economic institutions. The paradoxical nature of these two sets of desires is this: the more we behave from a narrowly selfish perspective, the more our limited sense of self is reinforced and the more isolated and therefore miserable we feel. Witness the anguish of the sociopath. On the other hand, the more altruistically we behave, the more we operate from our larger sense of self, the more connected to the cosmic concsiousness (regardless of your beliefs or the terms you use), the more loved and loving we feel. Witness the ecstasy of the saint. This, in a nutshell, is the essence of all the great spiritual teachings. Selfishness alienates the individual from God; selflessness bonds the individual with God.
God is one, and the experience of God is the experience of oneness, which is the experience of love. This sense of oneness, or love, can be experienced at many different levels. It can be experienced between an individual and an activity, an animal, a plant, a family, a group, a nation, all of humanity or with life itself. What I would like to focus on for a minute is the experience of oneness between two human beings. This can happen at a variety of levels. When you realize that you have experienced similar events in your background as has another individual, or have a similar reaction to an event in present time, this can be very pleasurable. When you realize that you share the same point of view as another individual regardless of differences in background, this is more pleasurable and can be experienced as a powerful bonding. When you realize that you share the same ambition for yourself and for others, the same dream of life, with another person, this is a very powerful experience of bonding and love. When you realize, even for a moment, that you chose this life and that the other person chose their life and that the bonding that you are experiencing is not random but part of a dream that you both had for this life but are only dimly aware of, that is an ecstatic union. When you realize that the being that looks out from behind your eyes and the being that looks out from behind the other person's eyes is the same being, that is a kind of bliss. And when you realize that all individuated beings, including the ones that have passed through this physical plane and the ones that are arriving on this physical plane are all really different aspects of the same One being, well that is as far as you can go while still in this body toward experiencing the bliss of cosmic consciousness.
These two sets of desires, those rooted in the individuated self and those rooted in the cosmic consciousness, blend in endlessly interesting combinations, like the ruthless gangster who is also a very loving family man. No combination is more interesting than in the fundamentalist religious zealot. Understand that we are not talking about mysticism. A mystic is a mystic. There aren't really any Christian mystics, or Buddhist mystics or Moslem mystics or Jewish mystics, and certainly not any militant mystics. Once you get it, you get it. The mystical understanding is exactly the same in all religions. But the fundamentalists are different. They have had some experience of the bonding, the union, the transcendency, the joyousness that one feels when one is lifted beyond one's individual experience and tastes the cosmic consciousness. The trouble with fundamentalists is that their experience has outstripped their understanding. They deify the ladder that they climbed to reach a spiritual height rather than the spirit itself. Each fundamentalist is absolutely convinced, in exactly the same way, and based on exactly the same experiences, that his way is the exclusively right way, that his way is the only way sanctified by God, and that anyone who says differently is to be ignored, diminished or annihilated. This is why religious wars are so passionate. Zealots have had genuinely transcendent experiences. These experiences are associated for them with certain practices, certain prayers, certain buildings, certain groups of people, certain rituals, etc. So each side, using a different name for exactly the same God, with equal passion based on exactly the same fervent experiences, sets out to kill one another.
Thankfully the choice is not just between myopic and joyless atheism or zealous and militant fundamentalism. God is not one or the other. God is not this or that. God is not a story that is true or not. God is not something that took place two thousand years ago, or five thousand years ago. God is not something to squeeze in between biology and psychology on some shelf in your mind. God is at the center of biology, psychology, zoology, anthropology, musicology and cosmetology. God is at the center of all ologies. God is one-ology. God is at every moment, in every space. God is exactly as God has been described through the ages: eternal, omnipotent, and omnipresent. 'Hear, O, Israel, The Lord, our God, the Lord is One." Not one God, one prophet, or one religion as opposed to another; not one temple, one group of people, one species, or one planet as opposed to another. The Lord is beyond opposition. The Lord is One.
Any feedback? I sincerely welcome your comments.
