the origin of life

FROM DIATOMS TO LIVING TEMPLES

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Photo credit: kuraev.ru
Photo credit:
kuraev.ru

INTELLIGENT MEN DECIPHERING “INTELLIGENT DESIGNS”:

“For every house is built by someone, but the builder of all things is God.” Hebrews,” 3.

“All of Nature is but a metaphor of the human mind.” Emerson

It is illogical to assume that physical, mental and spiritual designs can be more complex than the artist/creator of the designs.

Living Designs

In the early 17th century, natural “philosophers,” using the light microscope, began to see things that could not be seen with the naked eye. Englishman Robert Hooke observed pockets of air within cork, which he called “cells;” Dutch scientist Anton van Leeuwenhoek saw “wee cavorting beasties” in samples of pond water. I strongly suspect that he also saw images like this array of desmids and diatoms in a drop of pond water.

The origin of words has always fascinated me. In biology, many of the structures are self-explanatory; that is if you know Latin or Greek. The word “ecology” is a good example. The word is derived from the Greek words “oikos”= house and “logos,”= the study of: ergo ecology is the study of “houses.” Whoever coined the word fully comprehended the fact that every living thing lives in a “house” and the study of the interactions of all living “houses” emerged as ecology. John Muir was an “ecologist” before the term was coined.

Spiritual Designs

With annual sales of over 100 million copies, there are estimates that over 5 billion Bibles have been printed. Regarded by many scholars as the “world’s greatest novelist,” Charles Dickens was often at odds with the “formal church” yet he opined:

“The New Testament is the very best book that ever was or ever will be known in the world.”

I suspect that if John Muir were asked, he would have agreed with Dickens. Muir carried a pocket version of the “New Testament and Psalms” with him nearly everywhere he traveled.

Religious arguments are generally a waste of time, however, there can be some areas of agreement. E.g., St. Paul’s contention that every human being is actually a “temple,” is a concept that is not incompatible with many world religions and many people who may not consider themselves as “religious,” but regard themselves as “spiritual beings.”

Understandably, modern scientists, atheists and agnostics are not equipped to deal with a spiritual parallel universe, however, St. Paul’s concept was not only clear to Dickens, it was perfectly clear to John Muir who saw Yosemite Valley as a pure reflection of the temple that he was.

It was fun to see students discover that they were “living, breathing, walking houses;” however, regardless of their religious or nonreligious background, it was thrilling to see some of them begin to regard themselves as “living, breathing, walking temples.”

As a retired, holistic-biology teacher, it is disheartening to see that, in the name of “political correctness,” our public schools and universities are being “spiritually sanitized” and millions of students are tacitly being taught that they are meaningless, soulless, random acts of chance and competition.

I have returned from Yosemite and Grand Canyon with 100s of high school seniors, nearly all of whom saw visions marvels and wonders that they could not describe in words. Regardless of whether they saw themselves as “temples” or not, nearly all of them felt renewed and spiritually invigorated with an enhanced sense of hope, purpose and meaning.

Lowell H. Young
Author: Biodesign Out For A Walk

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Darwin Had Absolutely No Doubt About Theism And The Evolution Of Humans

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ChimpIn his own words, “The Autobiography of Charles Darwin:”

“When thus reflecting [‘on the universe, including man’] I feel compelled to look to a First Cause having an intelligent mind in some degree analogous to that of man’ and I deserve to be called a Theist.”

Shame on Richard Dawkins, and other science atheists who deny, obfuscate, pervert or “cherry pick” Darwin’s words. They have sabotaged Darwin’s message to make it conform their soulless world, and what a cold, heartless world it must be. If one of Dawkins’ minions decides to initiate a nuclear war, he could shrug it of as a “random” result of Darwinian “survival of the fittest.” It is staggering to know that an overwhelming number of high school, college/university biology teachers agree with Dawkins.

Secular scientists are quick to point out that human beings and chimpanzees share 97% of the same DNA. While the fossil evidence suggests that humans and chimps evolved from a common ancestor over 5 million years ago, the obvious fact remains that chimps are chimps and humans evolved into the most extraordinary animals on the planet. Evidently that 3% increase led to the world’s greatest artists, poets, sages, musicians and, ironically, even scientists like Dawkins.

Much of Darwin’s theory can be proven in the laboratory and in the field. For 1000s of years, people have used “selective breeding” and “mass selection” as a means to develop more productive and useful plants and animals. However, this does not mean that his theory is complete and flawless. After a discussion with Alfred Wallace, he acknowledged that he failed to explain human “gifts” such as mathematical, musical and artistic genius. These qualities are almost totally absent in chimpanzees.

All of the genetic changes Darwin observed were minor and only rendered the offspring a small advantage of survival. Loren Eiseley quipped; the human brain grew “like a mushroom in the night.” This has equipped man with an indeterminate period of time of mental growth. There is no known biological cause for the rapid expansion of the two human cerebral hemispheres.

Lamarck’s theory of use and disuse is of no value.

The Leakey family, Louis, Mary and Richard verified the increased cranial capacity of modern man, but they did not demonstrate the compelling factor.

Stephen Jay Gould was a big fan of “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny,” however he failed to show why or how the human embryo (in evolutionary time) suddenly gained the ability to generate a triple-sized brain.

Gould was also a fan of “punctuated equilibrium” which may explain the “fits and spurts of evolution,” but he could not explain the evolution of the human brain.

Pathetically, human geneticist, Richard Dawkins, recently inferred that the human brain evolved out of “nothing.”

The latest wrinkle in the evolution battle is the emerging consideration of “Intelligent Design.” Although the theory suggests that evolution is not a random, chance-born process, it does not describe a “designated designer.” Therefore, “Intelligent Design” does not explain the emergence of the human brain.

The fact of the matter is, by virtue of the laws of chance and probability, the human brain should never have evolved and so it is not surprising that its origin remains a mystery. Considering the universe, with its boggling time/space dimensions, life on Earth is supremely enigmatic. The Earth has been evolving for 4.5 billion years and yielded millions of plant and animal species before man arrived. Darwinian evolution does not need or explain “man.” If all these living forms survived by “instinct,” what need is there for consciousness, values, or free will? If “modern man” evolved 5 million years ago, we have lived on Earth 0.01% of its history and yet arrogant practitioners of Scientism claim that Mystery is irrelevant and that they have all the necessary answers.

Meanwhile, there is a moral and ethical disease that is pandemic in our society and had afflicted scientists as well. It is called “situational ethics” and scientists use it frequently. Lacking any evidence for the origin of the universe, the origin of life, the origin of the first cell or the tripling of the human brain, secular scientists either ignore or obfuscate the issues or make up their own ethics and pander them as truth.

Photo credit: Toscano: Darwin’s Ape. Available Amazon.com

Lowell H. Young
Author: Biodesign Out For A Walk

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Frog Eyes—Human Eyes—Did We Come From Outer Space?

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South American tree frog By Milky Way Scientists Fb
South American tree frog
By Milky Way Scientists Fb

In, The Great Evolution Mystery, Gordon Taylor explains why Darwin’s Theory of evolution does not account for “organs of extreme perfection.” This includes the human eye. Human eyes contain over 100 million cells that all must function in perfect synchrony in order for people to see properly. Although ophthalmologists know much about eyes, it remains a total mystery as to how the light image, focused on the retina, can be converted into biochemical data and transmitted via optic nerves to the brain. How the brain decodes the data and displays it as a visual image is yet another mystery.

Anthropologist Loren Eiseley agrees, however, he expanded the mystery to include the origin of life, which he pointed out Darwin also failed to explain. Eiseley contended that it doesn’t matter what we call the mystery, only that we are aware that it exists. Furthermore, he opined that those who fail to acknowledge “The Mystery” are in danger of ceasing to be fully human.

Albert Einstein agreed, but expressed a more forceful position: “He who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed.”

Contemplating frog eyes, and lacking a time or place for the origin of life on Earth, Eiseley alluded to the possibility that life may have come from somewhere across the “pond of space.”

“Yet whenever I see a frog’s eye low in the water warily ogling the shoreward landscape, I always think inconsequentially of those twiddling mechanical eyes that mankind manipulates nightly from a thousand observatories. Someday, with a telescopic lens an acre in extent, we are going to see something not to our liking, some looming shape outside there across the great pond of space. Whenever I catch a frog’s eye I am aware of this, but I do not find it depressing. I stand quite still and try hard not to move or lift a hand since it would only frighten him. And standing thus it finally comes to me that this is the most enormous extension of vision of which life is capable: the projection of itself into other lives. This is the lonely, magnificent power of humanity. It is far more than any spatial adventure, the supreme epitome of reaching out.”

The fossil record of frogs indicates that they began to evolve from fish about 400 million years ago. However, “modern” frogs emerged about 200 million years ago. Ergo: The eye you are looking at has undergone 0ver 400 million years of evolutionary change.

With a mystery like that, is it not a fool’s errand to bicker over Creation or Evolution?

Like the classic concept of “yin-yang,” both words may reflect a cybernetic mutualism in which one word cannot exist without the other.

This is precisely what Eiseley was suggesting in his classic book, “The Immense Journey.”

If you are feeling a little spiritually deflated, enlarge the frog image and concentrate on it for one full minute and see if you can connect with 400 million years of time and change.

Perhaps it will encourage you to Celebrate the Mystery!

Lowell H. Young
Author: Biodesign Out For A Walk

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Psalm 139: How To Build A Worm or Human Being

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Screen shot 2015-08-03 at 12.01.52 PM“For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.” Psalm 139 13-14

It is a stunning irony that an “uneducated” sheepherder wrote this Psalm circa 3,000 years ago! He may have been closer to the truth of our origin than many modern scientists can imagine. There is no scientific evidence for the origin of the universe. Likewise, there is no evidence for the origin of life. Most high school biology texts correctly state that scientists do not support the theory of “spontaneous generation,”however they proceed to pretend that a random act of spontaneous generation happened once, which led to all life on our planet. The video titled, How to Build a Worm, presents information that questions the logic and intellectual honesty that the origin of life was the result of random chance.

We are amazed when a chess master can anticipate all the possible combinations of pieces, five moves ahead. However, in order for a single, microscopic nematode to develop, the original zygote has to “anticipate,” perhaps billions of “moves” ahead. The egg begins with 100 million base pairs of DNA, however, many succeeding cells will differentiate into cells and tissues that were not present at the moment of fertilization. And they, in turn, may differentiate into other cells or tissues. This means that the adult worm will look nothing like the original zygote.

In discussing the importance of the miracle of “cell differentiation,” I used to tell students that without the mysterious process, they would have been born about the size and shape of a 7-pound volleyball. Charles Darwin discovered some of elementary aspects of evolution, however, cellular/molecular biologists have made a quantum leap in the fledgling science known as “Intelligent Design.” It may be the most important biological discovery in the 21st century.

The results are not unlike what happened when Edwin Hubble discovered “The Big Bang Theory.” Although The Big Bang Theory could not describe the “First Cause,” it did prove that there was a First Cause.

The same can be said for Intelligent Design. The process does not reveal a “Designer,” but indicates that mechanisms of evolution are far more complex than ever imagined and a growing number of respected scientists agree cannot be the result of random activity. Ironically, Darwin himself argued that it was “impossible” to believe that something as complex and wonderful as a human could be the result of “blind chance or necessity.” During a molecular biology lecture at a prestigious University, a student asked the professor what he thought about Darwin’s Theory. The professor chuckled and responded, “There are holes in his theory big enough to drive a Mack Truck through.”

A couple weeks later, the professor received an admonishing letter from the chairman of the biology dept. informing him that Darwin’s Theory was the accepted standard for the biology dept. and any future comments to the contrary should be avoided.

In a bizarre irony, people who support the concept of Intelligent Design are frequently condemned by mainstream biologists in a reverse form of bigotry that the Catholic Church subjected Galileo to.

I am not a church-going, Bible-thumping evangelist. However, having taught high school biology for 37 years, I can tell you that the most difficult current challenges to our teens are stress and the lack of self-esteem. These are silent diseases that drive millions of them into the world of illegal drugs, alcohol abuse and premature, unhealthy sexual relationships. Science has no answers to “The Big Questions” of human existence and all references to spirituality have been removed from our schools, therefore students are left in a vacuum with the impression that they are simply a result of a soulless accident of time. Little wonder they use drugs and alcohol.

It is a tragedy of the greatest magnitude that these precious kids are not walking around each day in a state of awe and wonder, celebrating either the poetic, symbolic or spiritual possibility that they are “Fearfully and Wonderfully made.”

If this were to happen, how many drunk-driving fatalities would be avoided? How many drug rehab centers would be closed? How many kids would avoid Juvie? How many abortions would not be necessary? And how many millions of broken families and relationships would be avoided?

Please watch and share this amazing video and feel free to comment. How to Build a Warm

Lowell H. Young
Author: Biodesign Out For A Walk

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Lightning—Tom Stienstra—The Myth Of The Origin of Life

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LightningTom Stienstra is one of my favorite outdoor journalists. He writes a column for the San Francisco Chronicle covering a wide range of outdoor topics including hiking, hunting, fishing, camping, backpacking, kayaking, canoeing and wilderness adventures. He is a talented writer with a wealth of knowledge about all aspects of the aforementioned subjects. Although he rarely cites John Muir, his personal encounters in, and descriptions of nature put him in the same pantheon of nature lovers as Muir, Eiseley, Thoreau, Agassiz, Humboldt, Audubon and others.Loren Eiseley claimed that all adventures into the wilderness create images and impressions that are always interesting to share and discuss. Tom’s column typically rises to a high level of naturalist writing.

His recent article on the beauties and potential perils of experiencing lightning storms is an excellent sample of his knowledge and skilful writing (Enjoy nature’s light show in a safe, reasoned manner - SFGate). He did not invoke Muir, “Let us make haste to join the storm and see what treasures Nature has in store for us,” but he did a good job of describing the dreadful/exhilarating feeling of being close to a lightning strike. Muir further described a deep love of nature in all of us and suggested that love is energized by all of the various kinds of storms. Although communicating the mysteries and wonders of Nature (spirituality) may be as difficult as capturing lightning in a bottle, those descriptions become the Holy Grail of Nature writers.

When Tom reminded me that lightning bolts typically exceed 50,000 degrees, it reminded me of the masses (and madness) of high school (and university) biology teachers who routinely describe the origin of life as being caused by a lightning bolt. I doubt that there is a scientist on the planet who would foolishly suggest that life is possible on the sun’s surface (10,000 F), however, an overwhelming number of them glibly suggest that life was started by a lightning bolt.

Carl Sagan wrote, “There are more atoms in a DNA molecule than in a typical galaxy.” Hmmm. Is it really possible to conceive that a bolt of lightning could spontaneously organize billions of atoms into the first DNA molecule on the planet? Of course, he did not explain the origin of the original carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and oxygen atoms necessary to create that first DNA molecule. The leap from single DNA molecule to the first prokaryotes is massive and one that scientists have yet to understand or explain.

If biology teachers are truly intellectually honest, they find themselves in a huge ethical and moral dilemma. They obviously can not “scientifically” describe the origin of life as being caused by God (or some form of Supreme Being) and they can not claim that life was caused by “nothing.” Evidently, Thomas Huxley ( and his crones) in their haste to anoint Charles Darwin as the new God of Creation, huddled together and agreed that life must have been caused by a lightning bolt. Many modern scientists continue to perpetuate this myth. There is nothing in science that supports his theory. In fact, what we do know is that living organisms often do not survive a direct lightning strike. While few forms of life can withstand temperatures above 212 degrees F, some rare forms of marine bacteria can withstand 121 degrees C (249.8 degrees F). As amazing as that might be, 249.8 degrees F is a far cry from 50,000 degrees F. To most rational minds, this renders the theory that life was started by a lightning bolt as one of the greatest fool’s errands that modern scientists have blindly claimed to be true.

The only honest description for the origin of life is similar to the origin of the Universe; both remain as events without a known cause, which means that they are unfathomable mysteries. Celebrate the Mystery.

Lowell Harrison Young, Author: Biodesign Out For A Walk

Great Minds Think Alike: Part II

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Charles Darwin

Am I the only one on the planet who has read, The Autobiography of Charles Darwin? The authors of the link: http://www.evolutionnews.org/2014/07/we_hold_some_tr087471.html
obviously must not have or they would have noted that Darwin actually entertained thoughts very similar to those of Isaac Newton and Thomas Jefferson.

“This follows from the extreme difficulty or rather impossibility of conceiving this immense and wonderful universe, including man with his capacity of looking far backwards and far into futurity, as the result of blind chance or necessity. When thus reflecting I feel compelled to look to a First Cause having an intelligent mind in some degree analogous to that of man; and I deserve to be called a Theist.”

The words could hardly be closer to those of Newton and Jefferson, however, very few high school and university biology students will ever be directed to them. So called “progressive” scientists, teachers and professors have hijacked Darwin’s work and created a soulless, Godless “Darwinism” that liberates man from a “higher moral authority.”
Elsewhere, Darwin admitted that his theory does not address the origin of life, the emergence of human beings and the whole realm of human spirituality.

Amazingly, in most US universities, these mysteries have been ignored, lied about, obfuscated or explained by a bolt of lightning.

Lowell Harrison Young, Author: Biodesign Out For A Walk