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"If God was the great magician, why didn't He create the universe
in one day? By breaking the time into six days of creation, the story of Genesis was a reflection of an explanation
of creation that recognized it as a process". I think a most inspiring piece of information as seen here
in "Creation in Genesis: Part I" is that the writers of the Book of Genesis updated a
previous tradition of the Creation. Believing this as true, I feel a kinship as I write a modern philosophy still
in the same spirit as those men in Babylon; and based on Science, as seen here, later, in |
Life is our opportunity.
Our destiny is the fulfillment of our capabilities.
The dedication of oneself to study is essential to a good life.
The men who wrote Genesis were learned men. They had a positive attitude toward
knowledge. At that time Babylon was a world center for the study and advancement of astrology or astronomy (at
that time they were the same). The Biblical story of Creation, was so advanced at that time that it endured for
fourteen hundred years. Genesis was the then current issue of the Scientific Babylonian, 585 BC. One of
the previous issues on the same subject was filed under Psalm 104.
The story of Psalm 104
In each of the three divisions of the Egyptian empire Egypt, Kush, and Syria, he built a temple consecrated to Aten.
He took up residence in a city he had built called Akhetaten, known today as the Tell el-Amarna in the southeastern part
of Egypt. Aten represented a universal power that paralleled the Pharaoh's growing power over the known world. Akenaten
actually paid individuals to proselytize his cult of Aten. However, the faith never became popular.
When Akenaten died, the priests of Egypt returned their society to the old polytheistic religion. The temples of Akenaten
were destroyed. Among the few remains of his cult were hymns found written in the tombs of the proselytes at Amarna. An
Egyptologists then translated them. It is said that it was his secretary who first recognized his translations as
Psalm 104. The significance of this is a mystery, but the progression of both poems is similar. Though the words are
different, there are seven points of similarity. Also, the introduction to the psalm 104 is the only place in the
Scriptures where the Lord is described as the Sun.
It is fairly certain that, even previous to the time of Moses, fleeing slaves in groups of various sizes, had wondered
into the Sinai Peninsula. As the emigrants walked, they sang to keep up their spirits. One of the songs they sang may have
been Akenaten's hymn to the Sun. Oral tradition could have perpetuated the elements of his hymn for 600 years. Another
possibility stems from the evidence of Persian names from Babylonia in residence at Amarna. These were literate people
who transcribed Akenaten's poems. This would have placed the essence of this poem in Babylon, a world center for literature,
well before 600BC when the Jews were in exile, and the early Hebrew bible was assembled.
The Babylonian influence
The purpose of this evaluation of the Creation Story is to hopefully give even the most cynical reader a deeper respect
for the role this story had as the most advanced concept of creation for over 2,000 years. While some people search for
the divine inspiration to this story by comparing it to contemporary science, this author contends that this story was
the best science had to offer at the time it was written. The first thing that gives us insight into this science might
be the following question: If God is the great magician.. why wasn't he seen as creating the universe in one day? The
answer? Because even back then, they knew it was a process. It was a process that had roots in the Cuneiform writings
of the Sumerians of 1500 years previous. At that time, the acts of creation were carried out by more than one god, but
some acts were recorded in similar order. Due to the historical longevity of this interpretation of creation and the
fact that much of it survived concurrently to the Golden Age of Greece (500-300BC) the steps will be analyzed from the
eyes of early humans who found this scenario so logical at the dawn of literacy and history.
The King James version of the Bible will be quoted and with each step a researched correlation with existing Science of
that time will be cited.
One cannot extensively read the old scientific treaties without feeling the difficulty and frustration of getting science
started. One also cannot read the religious treaties of that time without feeling the experience and wisdom that were
behind them. Moses was surely the epitome of an anthropologist at that time in history. One can expect that science can
expand upon religion. This is no contradiction and heresy, but a continuation of the insight of the writers of Genesis.
Surely, if those same men should return today, they would be shocked to find that many modern people still believe in
what they wrote twenty-five hundred years ago.
It is time for religion, science, and philosophy to get together to promote reverence, understanding, and purpose of the
human realm. This is, indeed, the purpose of this book. Although there are theories and guesses, there is not much we can
add about the creation of the universe, though we know more about what is out there. We can add quite a bit about "how"
God created life, however.
Though we do not yet know all the answers, one would want to know as much as there is. This subject
is essential for the understanding of all life of which humanity is a part. Here is presented a concept of biogenesis
based on evidence. One of the basic tenets of Realistic Idealism must be stressed here: "In the past, ostensibly,
facts were few and far between. They were not near enough together to be closely related. To relate them, one had to
bridge long gaps with logic. We now know so much that we can travel great distances in reason without losing touch with
factuality".
The early earth's surface: basalt
Wherever the magma cools rapidly it shrinks markedly and breaks away from adjacent rocks leaving irregular flat surfaces
exposed. This wondrous stone consists mostly of fine grained plagioclase, a granite, with about five percent silica, or
quartz. It also contains a heavy lacing of iron, magnesium, calcium, sodium, potassium, and phosphorous, as well as trace
elements such as sulfur, copper, iodine, manganese, chlorine, zinc, and selenium. These trace elements all occur in
living tissues. The biological elements are generally those of low atomic weight below 79. Iodine with an atomic weight
of 127 is a notable exception.
Profoundly, even mystically, there is actually more resemblance between the cosmic abundance of elements and the abundance
of elements in living matter than there is between that of living matter and the lithosphere (rocks on earth's surface)!
This is somewhat due to their common solubility in water. None-the-less, this seems to firmly unite life to the universe!
All the elements necessary to make living matter are in the basalt. If we had tiny tweezers and the right knowledge,
perhaps we could place the elements where they belonged to create life. We would find, however, that too much unsuitable
material would be in the way.
Water
Under alkaline conditions the iron would react with the available sulfur and drop to the bottom of a river or stream as
fool's gold. The gases dissolved in the water of streams and rivers at that time would not tarnish the tiny fragments of
fool's gold at their brightest. Some of this iron pyrite sand has been encased in quartz and preserved for us to contemplate
over three billions of years later. In an alkaline solution, iron is practically, but not completely, insoluble. In contrast
magnesium is sixty thousand times more soluble and would flow out into the sea.
The insoluble materials such as sand (silica) would separate to the bottom of the river. Chemically inert materials such
as gold, platinum, and silver cannot contribute to life. These too would fall to the bottom, out of the way. Though most
copper would also precipitate, some small traces would remain in solution to flow down to the sea. At a river delta the
river water meets with the sea and pushes it back. In the delta of such rivers as the Amazon, the sea water is pushed back
as much as three hundred miles. In the shallow waters on either side of the delta, the river and sea water finally mix,
and it all comes together with the atmosphere. All the soluble active elements are there without too much else to get in
the way. There are also many factors inherent to such an environment that will help to bring life into existence.
The early earth's atmosphere
E = MC2
Thus the E flows from the center of the Sun to the blood in our arteries and motivates all life. The patterns of life
modify the flow of energy in millions of ways, accounting for all our history. The energy for writing this thought may
have left the Sun day before yesterday.
Carbon-fourteen, our radioactive component
The nature and characteristics of an element is determined by the charge on the nucleus. Thus nitrogen fourteen is changed
to carbon fourteen, a radioactive element that lasts on the average of eight thousand years. That figures out to a
half-life of five thousand seven hundred thirty years. This fact is used as one of the ways of dating more recent organic
materials. In the primordial atmosphere the carbon-14 combined with hydrogen to form a radioactive methane, a part of life
from the very beginning. Such radioactive material may be necessary to life. For every one hundred twenty five pounds
of that biomass, there is another tenth of a milligram of radioactive potassium forty. This works out to half a million
radioactive breakdowns per minute per one hundred twenty five pounds of biomass. Both carbon fourteen and potassium forty
are beta particle emitters. They are relatively destructive ionizing radioactive materials. However, these radioactive
materials may provide an essential energy within life. More likely, a carbon fourteen changing back to nitrogen could
change the chemical composition of an amino acid and make a new chain of DNA quite different from any of the others in
the creature. In a reproductive cell, that would change the instructions of that DNA chain for the maintenance of that
form of life. It should be noted, however, such a mutation normally causes a deadly reaction.
The preferred relationship: auto-assembly
It now appears that lifeless elements have affinities for combinations that make organic compounds inevitable. In a
frictionless environment, such as warm water washing over gentle slopes of clay embankments, combinations of active vital
elements will occur. All the simple organic molecules, possibly with some similarity to nucleic acids, were compounds of
oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, calcium, nitrogen, silicon, magnesium, phosphorus, sulfur, chlorine, sodium, iron, cobalt and
iodine. Here we are leaving out some obvious contaminants. Important elements such as iron, sulfur, iodine, phosphorous,
magnesium, potassium, and calcium were available from the clays. We know that organic slimy materials of that quality are
attracted to the surface of certain metal bearing clays, especially those that contain zinc. Such clays accumulate in
protected tidal swamps, inland water ways and bays. Because of this, organic materials were held together in concentrations
facilitating interaction.
All the clues to the auto-assembly of life are with us today in each of us. Representatives of the various developing
life-forms are still present in the vast array of organisms on the planet. As we grow we ingest lifeless organic material
and convert it into active, living, matter. The mediums, energy sources, and applicable forces for this "miracle" are
still contained in the respective bodies of each species and individual.
Clues of slime-molds today
Evidence of earliest single cells
Rubidium and strontium ratios in the chert, where the fossils were found, suggested an age of over three billion years.
This finding was also somewhat supported by the geological levels of origin. One might, however, question whether the
rubidium and strontium ratios were entirely primary to the fossil containing chert or were secondary to the "mother"
source of the silt in which the fossils were imprinted.
Working with an electron microscope and special cherts, they have found fossils of microscopic life features consisting
of tiny rods and spheres which they interpreted as bacilli. What they may have found were the remains of a plasmodium.
Even the discoverers were suspicious when they found no cilia or flagella. They ascribed the lack to imperfect preservation.
They were able to demonstrate such fine things as double walls surrounding the fossils, but lack of other fine details were
shrugged off. Double walls are a characteristic of most all modern microscopic life.
So what are these guys? We call them Prokaryotes today.. A simple cell wall containing an assortment of organic chemicals.
There is seemingly an infinite variety. They all produce O2; and, in the Precambrian period, began to change the earth's
primoidal reducing atmosphere to the Oxygenated one we have today. However, one can guess about their relationship to
their external environment by considering their peripheral features. Passage of biochemicals through their containing
wall is rigidly controlled by cellular pumps between the double walls. The cellular pumps govern the absorption and
excretion of biological material with respect to the inner contents. One may judge the grade of the external environment
by the anatomical features of the defining wall of the observed creature. If the "cell" is in a serum, gel or plasma, the
double cell wall is sufficient. If the surrounding environment is not so nutritionally rich, cilia, which facilitate
absorption, are usually required. If the supportive environment is limited in extent or richness, flagella, as a rule,
are required to propel the cell around its environment in search of nutrition. One may speculate on the perfection of
preservation, but one must also be prepared to accept the imprints at face value. If there were no cilia or flagella,
the preserved features may be all that is left of a marine slime, gel, or ooze. Even now, there is argument as to whether
slimes are plants or animals. If some of them were thought of as plants, it would be less difficult visualizing their
origin in a non-organic environment where, like modern plants, the organism puts together elemental parts to form living
tissues.
Basic to the study of the physiology of life is the study of how energy is stored, transferred, and transformed within
life. The clay adjacent to earliest life had its own ability to store energy from constant bombardment of natural radiation
and release it as ultraviolet light when wetted. This highlights the probable importance of the Moon with its daily tides.
The tides first bared the clay at the shore for direct solar and cosmic irradiation, then covered it again with water
bearing primeval organic material. The material could then react to the proximately released ultraviolet light. In
addition to this esoteric ultraviolet energy was the proximate infra-red energy stored in the solid material of the shores
by the Sun's radiated heat. Perhaps earliest life thus could have depended on its environment to store and transform
energy. Once one sees these slimes with formed mitochondria and nuclei, one may speculate on more primitive forms,
with molecular ATP and free floating RNA, representing a more delicate and fragile prokaryote condition. The most
primitive form of life one could possibly visualize would possibly be some sort of gel with adenosine triphosphate in
it. One thing we know from a wide ranging study of life is the absolute essential presence of ATP.
The ubiquitous ATP
Oxygen began to saturate the waters and leaked up into the atmosphere over the seas. There it converted the methane and
ammonia to water, carbon-dioxide, and nitrogen with a twenty percent excess of oxygen. In short, the primoidal reducing
atmosphere was converted into the modern oxidizing atmosphere. It changed the atmosphere of the whole planet from methane
to oxygen.
The emergence of effective amounts of oxygen in the air changed the pH (acid content) of many rivers from alkaline to
acid, but not too acid, just enough to make iron soluble in the river water. The bottoms of some streams that had shown
in golden hues then turned brown as the more soluble ferrous oxide (rust) appeared. The streams and rivers then carried
the iron bearing waters down to the sea where it pushed away the magnesium bearing sea water from the mouths of the rivers.
Once in sea water, the iron was thrown down to the sandy bottom where it mixed to make great beds of iron-sand stone, the
source of the brown sandstone fronts in New York City. In the fresh water facing the sea water, iron was face to face
with magnesium.
A third respiratory pigment is formed in a certain few mollusks and crustaceans called hemocyanin. Copper is also known
to participate in some enzyme reactions, but ionic copper is decidedly toxic to most forms of life when it is present in
appreciable quantities. [McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Science and Technology]
Life is easier to understand if it is considered as an experiment. Along the borders of a viable area, life samples
and tests adjacent zones. Life spreads to contiguous tolerable zones: It spreads to areas where it may repeat itself
reliably, and remain consistent with itself. Thus, the Scientific Trinity of repeatability, reliability, and consistency
was the very basis of life from the beginning and can be traced throughout the entire evolution of life in various forms.
Chlorophyll: bearer of magnesium
Hemoglobin: bearer of iron
Movement became characteristic of the hemoglobin bearing life. Some few small species of magnesium bearing creatures
did move too, but they did not have to orient themselves against a current to survive. As a matter of fact, most all
magnesium bearing creatures tended to become sessile and could survive in currents that brought their food to them in
many places in the sea. In essence, magnesium bearing life became plants, with chlorophyll, and iron bearing life became
animals with hemoglobin.
The multi-cellular phase
Life and sex
It may be further noted that equality of each successive individual in such a reproductive chain was the rule. There
were no inequalities. Life was everywhere the same within a species. Positive progressive mutations are very, very rare
and varieties of slime were small. Competition was virtually non-existent by virtue of a paucity of competing varieties.
Successful positive mutation (creating a new form of life) is extremely rare. Negative mutation, on the other hand, played
a very useful part. Negative mutation canceled useless heritable features.
600 Million Years ago: the Pre-Cambrian "explosion"
Now that we have outlined the possible beginnings of life, we ask the question: What does it take to keep it going?
We will also confine our survey to the hemoglobin bearing life: animals. The sustenance of life may be discussed under
a subheading designated as the imperatives of life.
Reaffirmation
It is not the position of this book to resolve the question of G*D the Creator unless that concept conflicts with the
small amount of progress mankind has made in the discovery of Nature. It is in resolving this conflict where this author
hopes to be of assistance. We are describing an evolution of thought from a faith where all is supernatural to a faith
where all is natural. Full understanding is not yet, and may never be, complete. We believe that where the unexplained
and incredible raises questions, the goals of the quest for the frontier of knowledge may be found. Survival, the Good
Life, and G*D.
Chapter 12. Ontogeny.
This story begins in ancient Egypt with Amenhotep IV. (l350-1334BC). He has been identified as uniquely the first
"monotheist" worshipping his god "Aten", the Sun. Aten, similar to the ancient Egyptian god
"Ra", was represented by the "sun-disk", was the creator of all life, and was a god of goodness and
divine benevolence. Amenhotep was so sincere that he changed his name to Akenaten (also spelled Iknaten).
In 589 B.C. Zedekiah, the puppet governor for the Babylonians in Judea, rebelled. Nebuchadnezzar sent armies to Judea
to repress the revolt. In 587 B.C., Jerusalem fell, and after the slaughter and burning which included Solomon's temple,
hundreds of the leaders and skilled workers were exiled off to Babylon in bondage. These, added to previous contingents
of hostages, raised the numbers of exiled Jews there to somewhere between ten and twenty five thousand. Nebuchadnezzar was
an enlightened monarch and permitted his hostages to live, till the land, and build homes in their own designated area
of the city. The young Jews tended to fraternize with the Babylonians, and occasionally marry them. While in Babylon,
the rabbis tried to hold their religion together by writing their oral history on scrolls which later became the definite
form of the present Old Testament. Influenced by Babylonian lore containing the Sumerian concept of Genesis (written 1500
years previously but with many gods performing the process) they updated the concept based on the best thinking of the
time. A good reference for this is History Begins at Sumer, by Noah Kramer.Genesis: Part I
1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
[Envision yourself far out to sea on a clouded, moonless night in a small boat. All would be black under a black sky on
the pitching black surface of the sea.]
2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon
the face of the waters.
3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
4 And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.
5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness Night.
[The surface of the sea and your boat are now illuminated
with a cosmic glow. It is not light as we now understand it, and the sky is still black. The connection between the
"Sun" and "light" was not made until the work of Abuali Alhazen (965-1038 A.D.) who experimentally
revealed the nature of dispersion and refraction of light thus explaining the daylight at dawn and dusk.]
And the evening and the morning were the first day.
[The Jewish day started with the setting of the Sun.]
6 And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.
7 And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the
firmament: and it was so.
[This, in affect, created a capsule of atmosphere deep in the water. This was the state
of the universe as envisioned by Thales (640-546 B. C.). The Earth was a round disk. Within the disk was Sheol,
the realm of the dead. The Firmament was supported by "pillars" in the form of mountains around the edge. The word
firmament was derived from the Hebrew word "ragia" which derives from the verb "raga", meaning to beat out or hammer
out as a silver, copper, and golden bowl. The firmament was believed to have windows or sluices in it for the rain to
pour through when opened by God. Some few suggested lapis lazuli to account for the azure color. The daytime sky was
now a luminous blue, which, without any understanding of dispersion and refraction, did not need the Sun to light it.]
8 And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.
9 And God said , Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear:
and it was so.
10 And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was
good.
11 And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his
kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.
12 And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seeds
was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
13 And the evening and the morning were the third day.
[It is only logical that before the animals were created, they must have a place to roam and grass to browse.
Note, the sun is not yet created.]
14 And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the Heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for
signs, and for seasons and for days and years:
[Hereby He created the stars in their constellations. By these star
groups the farmers read the seasons for plantings. Even the farmers realized that the constellations of the zodiac were
contiguous in a yearly procession across the sky circling over head. Mechanically, this could not be accomplished by a
fixed firmament. This impasse is overcome by visualizing a finite spherical universe with the Earth at its center. This
was envisioned by Pythagoreas about 532 B.C.. Aristotle, though not an astronomer, accepted that the stars were
imbedded in either which was rigid and revolved around the Earth. This was the state of astronomy or astrology as known
by Aristotle. The importance of astrology with respect to the stars increased until the thirteenth century, when men of
learning began to differentiate between the belief in astrology and the scientific facts of astronomy.]
15 And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so.
[There, we finally have the Sun and the Moon at the end of the fourth day of Creation. As has been
indicated, this was perfectly natural under the conditions of their understanding of Science.]
16 And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night; he made the
stars also.
17 And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth.
18 And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good.
19 And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.
20 And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life and fowl that may fly above the
earth in the open firmament of heaven.
21 And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after
their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
[Aristotle believed that all living things could be arranged in a fixed "Ladder of Nature" of ascending worth and
complexity. That is, he felt that the species were firm with no mutations. He started with worms and flies at the bottom
of animal life with man at the top. One thing that impressed him was the similarity of the overlapping pattern of fish
scales and bird feathers. Aristotle classed fish and birds together.]
22 And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the
earth.
23 And the evening and the morning were the fifth day.
24 And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping things, and beast
of the earth after his kind and it was so.
25 And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and everything that creepeth upon
the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea
and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.
27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.
28 And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and
have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the
earth.
[The Hebrew writers were also impressed with similar overlapping scale and feather patterns. They mentioned
fish and fowl together four times in the first chapter of Genesis.]
29 And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every
tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.
30 And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein
there is life, I have given every green herb for meat; and it was so.
31 And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the
sixth day.
[One must believe that even in those days there were contentious groups each doggedly
sticking to their own points of view. As one reads into the second chapter of Genesis, one is struck by the return
to a mythological treatment of God's way. This is understandable. Science at that time was very narrow in its application.
They had already gone about as far as they could go.]The Origin of Life and Mobility: Part II
The earliest surface of the Earth was barren and covered with primitive rocks called basalt (formed after lava or
magma cools). They were, and still are, constantly being renewed from the molten magma which is floating on the heavier
molten nickel-iron core of the Earth. The molten magma is churned to a uniform composition containing all the elements
of the Earth. The magma spews through volcanoes on land and under the ocean waters. We also see geological evidence of
magma flowing up through long crevices forming a shield covering hundreds of thousands of square miles of the earth's
surface as had happened in the North Eastern America. However we shall focus on basalt in the sea since life was in the
sea for billions of years before it appeared on land.
Another important aspect of living matter is the high presence of the water molecule. As the rain erodes these rocks
they gradually turn into a red clay. Compounds wash down to the rivers. In Nature, rain falling on this rock would
dissolve a little, but more importantly it would run off and wash tiny pieces of it into channels of streams and rivers.
The moving waters would smash the pieces together making a fine, wet dust the soluble portions of which would more readily
dissolve in the water. The rolling streams would also combine these ingredients with the methane and ammonia from the
primordial atmosphere. The ammonia made the water alkaline.
When life was just beginning, the atmosphere of the Earth was entirely different. There was virtually no free oxygen.
The atmosphere was nitrogen, methane, hydrogen, and ammonia. Ultra violet, gamma, X-radiation, and electric activity,
such as lightning and static electricity are thought to have provided energy for creating methane in the atmosphere.
It is curious that powerful deadly forces, acting in the right places, caused the combination of enormous quantities
of methane necessary for first life. Some nitrogen, oxygen and hydrogen combined to form ammonia. It was It was demonstrated
in the 1950's by the Stanley Miller and Harold Urey's experiments at the University of Chicago that, when charged
with electrical current (simulating lightning), this combination will produce amino acids, the building blocks of organic
materials.
Energy radiated from the Sun has to do with Einstein's equation: E = MC2. It stands for "The increment of energy resulting
from the conversion of a mass M is equal to the mass M times the square of the velocity of light." By old standards both
energy and mass were indestructible. This formula is a new conversion factor. That is the significance of the river delta.
The energy travels from the central mass of the Sun for ninety three million miles in nine minutes before it strikes the
Earth. There, for the first three billion years, it warmed the shallow waters of the sea and the clay banks of the shore.
Life in the form of slimes and oozes thrived off that warmth.
Methane is already a radioactive organic compound. Among the carbon atoms of each molecule there is one "carbon-fourteen"
out of ten to the twelfth [1+12 zeros] carbon atoms. Carbon fourteen is radioactive. The story of how carbon fourteen came
about is important to understand. The story begins with the stars of which the Sun is one. The thermal energies of these
stellar nuclear energy globes is so hot and violent that it tears the electrons from the nuclei of the elements. Such naked
nuclei, largely hydrogen, because the universe is largely made up of hydrogen, are called plasma. As plasma, the atomic
nuclei are blasted through space at nearly the speed of light. Primary plasma particles from the Sun and stars strike the
Earth's atmosphere at the rate of three per square inch per second. When they hit the nuclei of the atoms in the atmosphere
at such high speeds, they knock out high speed neutrons. When these high speed secondary neutrons strike the nuclei of
nitrogen fourteen, which is over ninety nine percent of the nitrogen in the atmosphere, the neutral neutron displaces a
positive proton from the nucleus. This changes the nuclear charge of the nitrogen by minus one from minus three to minus
four.
Life is a patterned solid geometric relationship between lifeless molecules which are themselves relationships between
lifeless active elements. Such inactive elements as gold, platinum, silver, helium, neon, argon, krypton, xenon, and radon
do not figure in life formations except through contamination. Elements and compounds have preferred relationships in
solids which are called crystals. Each crystal must form under very specific conditions of temperature, pressure, and
concentration. It is now thought that life itself must be a preferred relationship among the vital elements much as it
is with the crystals. Once the Earth cooled to a tolerable state, life appeared so soon as to surprise the Scientists
studying it. There didn't seem to be enough time for an improbable random combination to occur. Life seemed to occur
too soon to be by chance. The elements have preferred affinities for each other that promote patterns. The mineral
world is full of crystals of pure chemicals. Among those preferred affinities between the elements is a preferred
affinity for life that is within the creative power of Nature.
The first life had no membrane, no wall of defense. Life never extended beyond a narrow zone of tolerance. Life
first occurred where the tolerance for life was constantly repeating, steadily reliable, and always consistent. There
was no death.. it was held together as a coating on the surface of the clays. This exists today. First life,
though, maybe a complex crystalline material on the microscopic molecular scale, was grossly slime on the macroscopic
scale. In itself, that life was not cohesive. It was held together as a coating on the surface of the clays. It was
noncellular, fragile, and jelly-like. It probably absorbed liquid, nonparticulate, nutrients from its environment much
as would a plant.
The thoughts that follow are suggested by studies of existing slime molds. In their life-cycles, after fertilization,
the nuclei divide but no cell walls are formed. There follows a multi-nuclear mass of protoplasm called a plasmodium.
This may be a recapitulative phase in their life cycle suggesting primordial evolutionary developments which would hold
this theory of the slime-mold-origin of life together.
The first unmistakable evidence of earliest life is in certain gun flints and cherts that have been analyzed for dating.
There, tightly sealed in most durable quartz, are fragments of life in the form of amino acids and fossils over three
billion years old. The oldest known fossils were found in Australia by Elso S. Barghoorn, and J. William Schopf
from the Department of Biology and Botany at Harvard. There are so few of these that he has named them all. They have
been studied extensively and all the surrounding minerals support the idea of fossilized life. He places the age of the
fossils at 3.5 Billion years. One might think the sample small, but at 2.5 Billion years there are fossils everywhere.
The fact is that due to erosion, there just aren't any rocks over 3.5 Billion years left in existence.
It is more than a probability that one of the earliest combinations that occurred was adenosene triphosphate (ATP). It
has been written that if ever we found life on another planet that the one biochemical that would be found in common
with our own life processes would probably be adenosene triphosphate. This biochemical with its mechanisms to handle
oxygen has existed three and a half billion years operating successfully at low potentials and providing oxygen for
chemical processes within life from the very beginning. All forms of life so far examined contain this biochemical.
It is essential for the production of oxygen in the proper intimacy for biological energy. The ubiquitous adenosine
triphoshate worked inefficiently but surely wherever life was found. It worked wherever the environment was warm enough.
This is not to be confused with photo-synthetic reactivity, such as is found in chlorophyll. By comparison, the oxygen
production of chlorophyll was explosive. The extent of life before chlorophyll was meager. After chlorophyll's evolution,
life exploded into existence like a mushroom cloud.
This respiratory pigment was far more effective than any energy carrying molecule before it. Today it is still the green
photo-sensitive molecule characteristic of plants. Up to that time the driving energy of life had been the radiant heat of
the Sun warming the waters and the clays. Now, with chlorophyll, a wider band of the Sun's spectrum was available for
chemical energy within life. Higher potentials became available. Life forms became much more vigorous. Chlorophyll absorbed
the abundant carbon dioxide and released oxygen in it's process. Such life had the ability to turn the lifeless minerals
of the sea water and atmosphere into living tissues. The carbonic acid in the water was turned into cellulose. This life
had no motive force of its own. It drifted wherever the winds and the currents carried it. We know it today as plankton.
It eventually covered large areas of the sea. Today, under favorable conditions, ten tons of green plankton material will
be produced in an acre of sea each year. We find huge layers of lime and silicates that preserve identifiable skeletons of
these creatures. The White Cliffs of Dover are an example. Wherever we find beds of limestone, we believe it is metamorphosed
deposits: remains of ancient plankton life and corals.
Where the river and sea water mixed, hemoglobin became possible. A hemoglobin bacteria was dependent on the oxygen
producing plankton out at sea. It also had a need that later became a virtue: It had to move. Bacteria that developed to
depend on hemoglobin for their life had to swim effectively against a current to keep from being swept to death in the
magnesium areas away from the iron. In the sea, where chlorophyll first occurred as a greenish-brown pigment, magnesium
occurred in concentrations over sixty thousand times that of iron.
At about 2 Billion years there appeared the Eukaryotes which, although appearing to be single-celled, were combinations
of the more simple prokaryotes. For instance, the chloroplasts in plant cells were at one time a separate Prokaryote. The
O2 burning counterpart is the mitochondria. It was at this time that plants and animals became separate. Eukaryotes are
distinct in that they have a nucleus with DNA, while Prokaryotes do not.
The replication of life was at first without sex. Life probably consisted of fragile chains of amino acids and adenosine
triphosphate floating in a rather thick soup of minerals and nutrients which clung to the clays as a gel at the shores.
Each new segment of life was a clone of its predecessor. The germ plasma was continuous through viable descendants. Then,
as now, a viable mutant was extremely rare. At 1.2 Billion years ago, sex was "invented". Up to that time,
reproduction was dependent on "simple" division. Sexual selection was an additional tool in the adaptability of variations,
but it still took till 600 Million years ago to start the "explosion" of the many types of multicellular
organisms. Plants came on land first, then the animals. This was a most profound happening in Nature. It enabled Nature
to become an experimenter. As Nature was presented with an opportunity for expansion of life into a new territory and/or
survival of life in a local changing environment, it had a chance to choose the combination of two genetic codes presented
in one individual. This individual could pass, or, especially, fail, without destroying the entire species. The important
factor is that it was not just the combination of random genetic codes, but the presentation of codes resulting from long
term success.
life did not evolve much beyond the slime, ooze, and mold of its original condition.
Some sessile plants were attracted to the nutritious minerals that existed under their foot and developed roots to
absorb them. Four hundred million years ago some of those found themselves above low tide levels. A few of them changed
and were able to survive the dry spells between the tides. A further change in their capabilities allowed some of those
to migrate above the high tide level and survive the dry times between rains. Once they sufficiently covered the land,
they produced a fifth of the oxygen in the atmosphere. As a source of food, they also attracted certain mobile creatures
from the rivers and seas. We find fossils of well developed flying insects dated two hundred twenty five million years old.
Insects have hemoglobin within their bodies too, but they are not as completely dependent on it as we are. Since they
circulate air, directly, to all their cells, hemoglobin circulation is not that necessary. All immature insects have
no wings. Many start as grubs and worms only developing wings during the last mature stage. How this ever came about
is a mystery. Herbivore insects first followed the plants from the sea. Also the lung fish finally prevailed over prolonged drying
and scaly herbivores crept over the land from the rivers. Once the land was inhabited by herbivorous insects and animals,
carnivorous insects and animals developed.The Imperatives of Animal Life
1. Move!The hemoglobin bearing creatures had to stay within the iron bearing waters at the mouth of the rivers.
therefore they had to MOVE to keep from being washed out to sea away from the soluble iron. As we peer through a microscope
in search of tiny hemoglobin bearing life, our first probable clue is movement. We must distinguish it from the Brownian
movement which is due to buffeting by heat and vibrations from the environment. The movements of microscopic creature
are more persistent and searching. We have been considering movement of the total creature as it moves around its
environment. Equally significant is the movement within the cell walls. As one observes a single cell, one may see
movements within it. This movement is due to contractile proteins and microtubules. They function to mix the ingredients
for nutritional purposes carrying reactive substances to affector organs, and clearing the end products of metabolism from
the cell. As evolution developed, first cartilagenous, and later bony appendages appeared to control locomotion by acting
as levers and paddles operated by contractile proteins. The rivers, again, divided life, necessitating the stronger bones
with more calcium to withstand the battering by turbulent streams, thus dividing our forbearers: the bony fish, from
the cartilagenous fish of the quieter seas. Land animals in turn evolved from the bony fish of the streams and rivers.
Multicellular Life forms will not persist unless through reproduction. With the exception of the human, once reproductive
capabilities are lost, there are no longer positive factors for evolutionary selection. Among humans, the obligatory social
super-animal, it is often the individuals who are past their "prime" who develop a social ideology that effects
the quality of society for sometimes thousands of generations. Not only are these imperatives characteristics of life,
they are needs as well. Part of the human moral fabric should be woven from them.
2. React! Reaction is a positive reaction to a wholesome environment and a negative reaction to an unwholesome
environment. Through evolution complex sensory organs developed connected to the reactive system by hormones from glands
and nerve endings inside and hormones and chemicals outside.
3. Absorb! Through this function nutritional substances such as oxygen, food, and hormones were taken in from the
environment. In time a digestive tract and organs were developed to assist in this.
4. Excrete! Animals developed orifices and pores through which glands accomplished this function. Metabolic end
products were necessarily excreted.
5. Work! Whatever is necessary for a creature to do to make a living and reproduce is work: sucking, searching,
exploring, foraging, feeding, caring for young, etc.. There is a basic inefficiency to all animal work which cannot be
improved.
6. Play! Exercise beyond work and inefficiency is PLAY, which is number six and is essential to maintain and develop
the contractile protein systems when the animal is not working. Play is usually more vigorous than work. This is to develop
contractile protein which will serve the animal in good stead when it meets an emergency that requires more than normal
strength. Every animal is born with an agenda of play to develop normally. No goal in the future can affect present
evolution, but over the past million years or so, animals developed with more or less basic energy. Those which developed
with more energy tended to survive and propagate. Those inheriting more energy played harder and developed more contractile
protein, and survived easier.
7. Rest! This probably is a characteristic for multicellular animals rather than for those made up of a single cell.
When an animal works and plays all day, metabolic by-products accumulate in the muscles and organs. The clearing of the
end-products cannot be fully accomplished during the waking hours. Rest is especially needed for animals with central
nervous systems where the principal function is to reject and squelch unnecessary reactions to inconsequential stimuli.
It is the nervous system that will put off a natural scratching of an itch if such an immediate motion is negative in
importance in the normal course of life. There is also a permissive phase to any nervous system that allows nervous energy
to flow through to the muscles which causes appropriate reaction to a given situation. All contractile protein must be
exercised or it will atrophy. In any nervous system during a day there must be a large portion of the brain which does
not function. At night, during sleep, the muscle motor receptors are partially paralyzed. During this time the daytime
quiet portion of the brain is exercised. Because of the partial paralysis of the muscles there will be no unnecessary
motion of the sleeping animal to attract nighttime predators.
8. Grow! Each animal is born small and immature. They must enlarge and mature before they reproduce. With higher
animals they must mature psychologically as well as physically. Because of the long neoteny in humans, traditional growth
and development depends on traditional moods. Liberal attitudes ignore this. This has resulted in unexpected developments.
This will be elaborated in the chapter on Natural Tradition.
9. Reproduce! This is an animal imperative. All animals and some humans do not associate the need to copulate with
the ultimate function of reproduction. Animal populations must be refreshed because individuals age and become infertile.
This can be reduced to the reproduction of cells and the continuation of their DNA.
10. Communicate! This is not so obvious an imperative. With bacteria communication is hormonal and genetic. Without
communication a species will disappear. New strains develop in a species when communication is lost between segments through
geographic and environmental changes. Some species do not communicate because of seasonal timing. When humans do not
communicate, they form separate and competing even warring communities. By far and in large communication is by mood.
Each mood is the result of a special hormone and combination of hormones. In a watery environment hormones are secreted
directly into the water for all other animals to sense and react. When life invaded the atmosphere, moods were communicated
by sight, sound, and smells. With humans mood communication is almost in the subconscious, but it is still constant and
vital. Hardly anything is done unless people are in the mood for it.
11. Defend! Each species has its defense strategy: fighting, fleeing, camouflage, climbing, flying, and others.
Some means of defense are bizarre, such as chemical, armor, and sharp quills. These all defend on the macroscopic scale.
Microscopic defense against infection by bacteria and viruses is necessary and elaborate and includes the integument as a
barrier. Repairing faculties are defense against death by injury.
12. Support! Life must have a framework on which to operate. On insects we find exoskeletens of chitin. Humans are e
xamples of creatures having endoskeletens of bone.
13. Die! Among the most primitive forms of animal life there are a few exceptions where there is no death. There
life persists through fission or splitting in two of a mature unicellular creature. There is no special mechanism or
combination of mechanisms for death among such creatures. Among all other creatures, death is inevitably due to failure
of one of the previous twelve imperatives. Death is a disassociation of the life sustaining relationships within the
systems of the body.
Our destiny is the fulfillment of our capabilities.
The dedication of oneself to study is essential to a good life.
One can stand straight and proud in service to society. In applying the true laws of Nature, many of our problems can be
resolved. These forces of creation sometimes work through humanity to create physical and chemical entities that can only
exist with human intervention. If we want to coordinate our efforts with the creative forces of Nature to accomplish our
ideals and goals, we might pause frequently to meditate and clarify our means to attain our ends. In this respect, the
Realistic Idealist determines what we must do to make progress.