I still remain fixated, well, fixated for five minutes at a time after which my head aches, with this problem of the very first incident of inanimate matter becoming suffused with life. What's the problem you ask? Well, after the 'Big Bang' it is surely the Singularity of Singularities. Absolutely everything that has ever lived, that lives now and that will live in the future depended utterly on that single little chemical burp which resulted in biology. As Matt Ridley puts it:
The three-letter words of the genetic code are the same in every creature. GCA means an arginine and GCG means an alanine - in bats, in beetles, in bacteria. They even mean the same in the misleadingly named archaebacteria living at boiling temperatures insulphorous springs thousands of feet beneath the surface of the Atlantic ocean or in those microscopic capsules of deviousness called viruses. Wherever you go in the world, whatever animal, plant, bug or blob you look at, if it is alive, it will use the same dictionary and know the same code. All life is one. The generic code, bar a few tiny local aberrations, mostly for unexplained reasons in the ciliate protozoa, is the same in every creature. We all use exactly the same language. This means - and religious people might find this a useful argument - that there was only one creation, one single event when life was born.
Matt Ridley: Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters, 1999, p21.
"One single event"! Can that be right? It seems like it because we all, from people to plants, bacteria to baboons, share the same genetic 'language' and presumably if some other bits of matter had been kick-started in the same environment at that time then there would have been a plethora of different languages - and one shudders to imagine the chaos that would have been created! As it is, the human genome which was thought likely to contain at least 100,000 genes turned out to consist of only 26,000, and that is a mere 5,000 more than - a blind, millimetre-long roundworm! So, one single event, in one single place in certain very specific conditions. What are the chances of that? Of course, the 'Dawkinistas' will propose, on nil evidence so far, that life probably exists on other planets in the cosmos, hence their desperate hopes that signs of life will be found on Mars. There may well be signs there but if and when they are found they need to be treated with great caution and scepticism because, like global warming, inference will become fact overnight!
Anyway, we are left ruminating on the great, nay, humungous, singularity of the start of life on our planet and then we have to consider those absolutely critical, six physical constants which, had any of them varied by a hair's width (or the physics equivalent thereof) then the whole bloody universe would not have been possible. Makes you think, doesn't it? Well, it might make you think - it gives me a headache!
Incidentally, I'm on an away-day tomorrow, back on Wednesday.
My money is on Prof Orr - Nagel merely adds a complication without adding evidence or clarification. I fear Dawkins is right which seems a pity really, it really would be nice if there was a God or some purpose to the universe. But I fear there is neither and unless we discover some deep dark mystery lurking then the universe seems interesting but pointless - a bit depressing really - pass the cocaine.
Posted by: rogerh | Tuesday, 29 January 2013 at 11:56
David, a couple of minor cavils. First, the great life event - that moment when chemistry turned into biology - need not have taken place on this planet, or even in this galaxy. It could have taken place on any planet on any sun and, due to the somewhat violent nature of our universe, spread around the place on any old lumps of rock, then re-evolved here or there or anywhere.
Then, of course, once you have found the answer to the great puzzle of how chemistry turns into biology, you must perforce turn your mind to that other puzzle: How nothing turns into everything.
How no space, no time, no energy, turns in an instant, (a concept that didn't exist an ... er, instant ago), into all the space, all the time and all the energy that ever existed or will exist. (O.K. the space is quite small and the time is quite short but the energy makes up for their lack.)
I'm told the equations all balance nicely, (and I'm sure they do), but it all seems a bit woo-woo to me.
Posted by: Kevin B | Tuesday, 29 January 2013 at 18:59
I know, Gentlemen, I know, it's like a bloody great Rubik cube, another thing I never mastered no matter how long I tried!
Posted by: David Duff | Wednesday, 30 January 2013 at 09:10
"... it really would be nice if there was a God ..."
I used to think that, but I don't now. There are reports coming out of North Korea of cannibilism, and of course endless reports of people being beaten to death because they mispronounced the name Mohammed, or some such thing. In the light of all that, I think it is nicer to think there is no god who looks at this and does nothing.
I admit though that I have a soft spot for Christianity's notion of forgiveness.
Posted by: Dom | Wednesday, 30 January 2013 at 15:52
http://historyofgeology.fieldofscience.com/2010/10/geology-history-in-caricatures.html
Posted by: JK | Thursday, 31 January 2013 at 11:39
"What are the chances of that?"
Philosophically, it doesn't matter what the chances are (and of course they are unimaginable remote), because the only possible observers (us) are by definition at the place and time where it DID happen.
The number of other universes, other galaxies, other worlds, etc, where it did NOT happen, simply don't come into it.
Posted by: Andrew Duffin | Thursday, 31 January 2013 at 12:47
Well, I didn't hear the tree fall
Dinja?
Of course it was a dark and stormy night in Arkansas ...
Yesterday. Er, well 42 hours ago but that's the point in'jit?
http://www.spc.noaa.gov/climo/reports/130129_rpts.html
I'm only coming out from the underground today so I don't know.
Yep David. Thanks - looks to be Coal Tits even tho we've no coal over here.
I'll not be requesting again Corporal Rainmaker!
Posted by: JK | Thursday, 31 January 2013 at 13:43
Well, it's Friday here and, even though I know you people are way behind the times, it really is time you were back on deck.
I think I've missed you!
Posted by: Andra | Thursday, 31 January 2013 at 23:24
Dom, yes, you are right to imply that it is the 'niceness' of Christianity which appeals. I shall have more to say on that when I have finished a book I am reading.
Andrew, a key piece of knowledge that, for the moment, is beyond us, is whether or not life has started anywhere else. If it has, the odds come down and the event on earth is *slightly* less incredible. However, it is amusing to see the strictly rationalist scientists, stuck with trying to explain how our universe came into being given the extremely tight requirements of the six physical constants, have been reduced to inventing multi-verses and having us believe that as ours is but one amongst zillions then it is not too surprising that it exists. Yeeeees, quite!
JK, I am worried about your storm weather - did you save the still?
Andra, my darling, relax, I have returned!
Posted by: David Duff | Friday, 01 February 2013 at 09:23