New Hypothesis Says Life Began Before The Earth

Old Atlas, Young Atlas feel alright ...

Many have asked "What Is Pseudo Science?"

It has been said that: “The application of Scientific Method is universal. … there is nothing too lowly, repulsive, obscure, contentious, or deceptive to come within its scope. Neither is there anything too ‘sacred,’ which generally means a fear that the things so denominated cannot bear investigation.” — F. C. S. Schiller, Logic for Use (1930)

It has also been said that subjecting “religion,” like any other subject, to Scientific Method quickly reveals its fundamentally ludicrous supposition: namely, that the world works not according to discoverable laws working everywhere the same but through the whim of obscure, fickle personalities whose “powerful” appetites and prejudices one can assuage or conciliate through stereotypical ritual practices such that the world will work otherwise than predictably, and to one’s own personal advantage.

Oh, if only reality was that simple!

A scientist many have heard of once said "make things as simple as possible, but no simpler than that." Another champion with many trophies, and currently a world renowned scientist, said:

Quantum mechanics is an incredible theory that explains all sorts of things that couldn’t be explained before, starting with the stability of atoms. But when you accept the weirdness of quantum mechanics [in the macro world], you have to give up the idea of space-time as we know it from Einstein. The greatest weirdness here is that it [quantum mechanics] doesn’t make sense. If you follow the rules, you come up with something that just isn’t right.

(The Memes of Penrose, quoting Dr. Sir Roger Penrose, emphasis added). What ... the venerable Penrose dissing the venerable Einstein (inspiring many orthodox scientists and their laity, wielding pitchforks, to advance upon the labs and classrooms of Penrose for talking out of school like that)?

A very recent paper (March 2013) has indicated that biological life is older than previously hypothesized:

An extrapolation of the genetic complexity of organisms to earlier times suggests that life began before the Earth was formed. Life may have started from systems with single heritable elements that are functionally equivalent to a nucleotide. The genetic complexity, roughly measured by the number of non-redundant functional nucleotides, is expected to have grown exponentially due to several positive feedback factors: gene cooperation, duplication of genes with their subsequent specialization, and emergence of novel functional niches associated with existing genes. Linear regression of genetic complexity on a log scale extrapolated back to just one base pair suggests the time of the origin of life 9.7 billion years ago. This cosmic time scale for the evolution of life has important consequences: life took ca. 5 billion years to reach the complexity of bacteria; the environments in which life originated and evolved to the prokaryote stage may have been quite different from those envisaged on Earth; there was no intelligent life in our universe prior to the origin of Earth, thus Earth could not have been deliberately seeded with life by intelligent aliens; Earth was seeded by panspermia; experimental replication of the origin of life from scratch may have to emulate many cumulative rare events; and the Drake equation for guesstimating the number of civilizations in the universe is likely wrong, as intelligent life has just begun appearing in our universe. Evolution of advanced organisms has accelerated via development of additional information-processing systems: epigenetic memory, primitive mind, multicellular brain, language, books, computers, and Internet. As a result the doubling time of complexity has reached ca. 20 years. Finally, we discuss the issue of the predicted technological singularity and give a biosemiotics perspective on the increase of complexity.

(Cornell Archives, emphasis added). What is wrong with hypothesizing like that?

Nothing.

But one of the fundamental assumptions of the paper is problematic, i.e., that certain things have remained the same during a period of split second Big Bang changes going way faster than the speed of light.

Additionally they may have overly associated their rear view mirror analysis with Moore's Law, which concerns the technological evolution of computers within human society when they write "The increase of genetic complexity follows Moore’s law" (PDF, page 1).

Additionally, they do not adequately overturn a basic tenet of the Big Bang Theory, which is that carbon formed in stars as those stars eventually declined and went Nova, releasing that carbon into space to later make its way to planets.

From there biological evolution is said to have resulted in carbon based life we see on Earth today.

The additional assertion in the paper that "Earth was seeded by panspermia" reminds me of what S.E. Cupp said on The Cycle (MSNBC) recently ("There are too many penises in Washington, D.C.") ... so isn't it fair to ask "what about panseggia?" (which came first, sperm or eggs?)

Seriously, let's face it, there are denominations in science just as there are in religion.

To take the pose of some mechanistic purity of scientific thinking or doctrine, or to take the pose of some mechanistic purity of religious thinking or doctrine, is to overly simplify reality.

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What Kind of Intelligence Is A Lethal Mutation?

Lethal Mutation?

Regular readers know that several recent series on Ecocosmology Blog have dealt with various concepts of intelligence as well as variations within several "types of intelligence."

For example, in What Kind of Intelligence Is Prescience? and What Kind of Intelligence Is Prescience? - 2 we looked at ancient writings of two well known religions to contemplate intelligent ancient views of environmentalism which seem to be prescient.

In Did Abiotic Intelligence Precede Biotic Intelligence? we contemplated whether or not there are two types of intelligence as well as which type came first.

In the series Putting A Face On Machine Mutation we lament the dearth of peer reviewed papers (compared with those on biological evolution) concerning molecular-machine evolution in the context of the evolution of intelligence.

Today, we are going to indulge the notion of noted American biologist Ernst Mayr, who unabashedly hypothesized that human intelligence is a lethal mutation which is likely to lead to the extinction of the human species, as well as most other species on the planet Earth.

Let's begin with a debate between astrophysicist Carl Sagan and the American biologist Ernst Mayr; two scientists who saw human intelligence in a different light:

I'LL BEGIN with an interesting debate that took place some years ago between Carl Sagan, the well-known astrophysicist, and Ernst Mayr, the grand old man of American biology. They were debating the possibility of finding intelligent life elsewhere in the universe. And Sagan, speaking from the point of view of an astrophysicist, pointed out that there are innumerable planets just like ours. There is no reason they shouldn't have developed intelligent life. Mayr, from the point of view of a biologist, argued that it's very unlikely that we'll find any. And his reason was, he said, we have exactly one example: Earth. So let's take a look at Earth. And what he basically argued is that intelligence is a kind of lethal mutation ... you're just not going to find intelligent life elsewhere, and you probably won't find it here for very long either because it's just a lethal mutation ... With the environmental crisis, we're now in a situation where we can decide whether Mayr was right or not. If nothing significant is done about it, and pretty quickly, then he will have been correct: human intelligence is indeed a lethal mutation. Maybe some humans will survive, but it will be scattered and nothing like a decent existence, and we'll take a lot of the rest of the living world along with us.

(Human Intelligence and The Environment, Dr. Noam Chomsky, 9/30/10). Dr. Chomsky argues that Dr. Mayr had a good point if we take into consideration our "intelligent" use of the Earth's resources, including producing weapons of mass destruction, like hydrogen bombs and other nuclear weapons that threaten the existence of life on Earth.

Which brings to mind the photo of Dr. Einstein at the top of the post, in as much as it was his intelligence in large part that made weapons of mass destruction and human extinction possible.

The Tenets of Ecocosmology counsel against the improper use of the Earth's environment in any way, urging instead that all species contain some germane bit of information which humanity is likely to need in order to continue to exist.

The Toxins of Power Blog cautions that the source of toxins that do damage to intelligence so as to render it lethal, arise only in the presence of a certain type of power.

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What Kind of Intelligence Is Prescience? - 2

In this series we are looking at various ancient writings to discern various concepts about human responsibility for taking care of the Earth.

The notion of prescience comes along with the ride because these are ancient writings, some of them containing warnings about consequences for not being good stewards of the resources of the good Earth.

Let's take a look at Islam and the Koran this time.

Like the U.S. where no debate on climate change took place during the presidential election campaign, politicians from some nations were mum on the subject:

Not a word about climate change, even though the Middle Eastern nation of Qatar is hosting a U.N. conference where nearly 200 countries are trying to forge a joint plan to fight global warming, which climate activists say is the greatest modern challenge to mankind.

‘‘Unfortunately the Arab and Islamic countries have political and economic problems,’’ said Adham Hassan, a worshipper from Jordan streaming out of the al-Khatabb mosque in Doha.

(Boston dot com). They are like us, "political and economic problems" so we forget to mention the most important things some times.

But don't let the politicians fool you, Islam is concerned with taking good care of the Earth in terms of instructions from ancient writings:

‘‘Islam calls for the protection of the environment, but the Muslim countries are mostly poor and they didn’t cause pollution and aren’t affected by climate change.’’

Of six mosques contacted ... one included an environmental message in the Friday prayers, telling those in attendance to plant trees, shun extravagance and conserve water and electricity.

The Quran, Islam’s holy book, is filled with more than 1,500 verses to nature and Earth.

(ibid, emphasis added). Like any nation there are citizens who are more concerned than others about environmental matters.

There is a publication called EcoIslam which deals with environmental matters from the perspective of ancient writings combined with modern writings:

"The London march against Climate Change on 3rd December 2005 attracted 10,000 people from diverse backgrounds, all concerned about the damage being caused to the environment. Amongst them, a group of Muslims called for individuals and nations to act more responsibly towards the earth. Human beings have been divinely appointed as guardians of the earth, they believe."- EcoIslam, Issue 01, Jan. 2006

"In today's climate of uncontrolled extraction and destruction of the Earth's resources, preserving the environment is a priority that requires creative solutions, including the revival of traditional ways of conserving our natural surroundings. In order to preserve its surroundings, the Daarul 'Uluum is utilising the wisdom of Islamic traditions which provide a method for environmental management.

This particular project addresses the stresses put on rivers and water systems by human habitations and uses the harim system that lays down a code of behavior for those living in or near threatened habitats. For example, creating a harim zone in a river system requires that half of the width of the river on each side of the river bank is designated as a pristine area where all human activity is prohibited."- EcoIslam, Issue 06, August 2009

(Islamic Foundation for Ecology and Environmental Science). The following video explains, among other things, that Muslims have practiced these tenets from the time of Muhammed. [full screen works best]



K.H. Ahmad Yani: "The 'Harim Zone'" from Green Islam in Indonesia on Vimeo.