Jun 23 2009

The Next Great Awakening, Part 7: Whither the primordial soup? I thought soup required a chef.

Category: science,theologyharmonicminer @ 9:17 am

The previous post in this series is here.

Long odds on space viruses seeding life

LIFE on Earth is unlikely to have come from space, says a new study on viruses. If life is ever found on another planet, however, the findings could help us judge whether it arrived from space or not.

What’s funny here is that scientists have come so close to giving up on the “spontaneous origin of life on Earth” theory that anyone who challenges the notion of “panspermia” is actually seen as being adventurous and contrary to an emerging scientific orthodoxy.

meta-message: Scientists have no fuzzy clue where life came from, or WHEN life came from… except that it appears on earth in a geologic eye-blink after the “late heavy bombardment”, and there was no era of “billions and billions of years” in the primordial soup — which never existed, anyway — for some lucky amino acids to form a little DNA, or RNA, or protein, or much of anything except simple acids and bases.

What we know is that life on Earth appeared at least 3.8 billion years ago, maybe 3.9 or even sooner…. and the Earth had barely cooled enough not to kill anything that was alive.

“Aunt Matilda, I think you accidentally dropped some living proto-cells on Earth on that last fly-by. Do you want to go back and get them? Or just leave them there?  Won’t they rot?”

And atheists accuse theists of “god of the gaps” theories. As if “somehow life began, somewhere, somewhen” and “someday we’ll figure it out” is anything other than a “science-of-the-gaps” explanation, what Karl Popper called “promissory materialism.”

Personally, I think life was seeded on Earth, and maybe only on Earth, by an extra-dimensional, super-intelligent being, one not bound by local laws of time and space, one who knew just what amino acids to jiggle and juggle just so, for the purpose of spending 3.8 billion years creating a biosphere and resources for some relatively weak, big-brained primates.   I think this creative super-intelligent being continued to “stir the pot” now and then, and every now and then invented a new recipe just for the joy of it.   Why would this super-being do such a thing?   Maybe for the same reason the amino acids were made in the first place, as well as the conditions in which they stayed amino acids, instead of breaking down to simpler things.   Time doesn’t seem to mean much to this being, who was perfectly fine with waiting around for 9 billion years or so after starting the whole thing off, until it was time to start cooking up some life in the first place.   A brand new kitchen (solar powered) was designed for this particular production.

Does it make sense that after starting a recipe like this, the creative super-being would stop watching the pot and walk away and just let it happen?   Seems more likely to me that this is one of those recipes where ingredients have to be added at just the right times, temperature adjusted, some of the ingredients moved from the broiler, to the oven, to the stove top, and back, maybe even refrigerated over night and then mixed with something else and baked again…  sort of like twice-baked potatoes, if you’ve tried those.   Instead of running down to the corner supermarket, this particular super-intelligent being just creates what’s necessary, either out of stuff that was already there which had already been made, or completely out of “whole cloth,” or out of nothing…. as necessary.  We’re talking cooking from scratch.

It would have been possible, I suppose, to just open a can, or pull something out of the freezer and nuke it, but the joy of cooking is very, very old.   And for those of you who like simple answers, it might be wise not to insult the chef by comparing the outcome to fast food, after all this loving care was taken in preparation.

The piece de resistance seems to be….  us.

Perhaps some clues have been left here and there, clues which only people who look in the right way will see.

You can ask, if you ever meet (not that hard to do, surprisingly).  I have heard that this particular extra-dimensional, hyper-intelligent, hyper-powerful being is interested in being known, once visited here on an extended missions trip, still hangs out here a lot, and likes to talk, if you’re interested in listening.

That’s my experience, for what it’s worth.

The next post in this series is here.