Aspies For Freedom

Not really an aspie related topic--but it may overlap with someone's specialist interest.
Where and how do you think life begun?
A question that may put the cat amongst the pigeons; especially considering the science v religion debates that have raged in the past.
Did life develop naturally on earth? Was life seeded from outside the solar system? Was life sparked by a divine creator?

My own feeling on the subject are that life developed naturally on our planet--and is likely to arise anywhere else conditions are favourable.

I also believe that conditions on primeval earth--the chemical soup, lightning strikes and huge gravitational changes due to a closer moon--where very favourable for the emergence of life.

A type of life very different from life as we know it today.

If we were able to reach back in time and pluck this primordial life from the surface of the earth--and bring it forward to our time--it would not survive--so alien and so ill adapted would it be to the contemporary environment.

From these curious beginnings--life has had to adapt to a changing earth in order to survive; taking billions of years to evolve into what we would recognise as life today.

I firmly believe that if life were ever wiped out--totally and completely--down to the smallest single celled organism--then it would never restart on our planet. Only on primordial earth were conditions right for the emergence of life. Those conditions no longer exist.

Life can never restart it can only endure.

Anyone got any thoughts on the origin of life?

I believe that life formed purely naturally as well (not supernaturally). The evidence we have so far supports this, and it is effectively certain that future evidence will support this as well.

The thing I don't get about young-earth creationists is that they think if there is any debate at all about the origin of life on earth (and the theory of evolution), then you have to throw the entire thing out. Without debate it's not science, because science is just unbiased (in theory) human interpretation of data to determine the most likely scenario for what happened/what's happening. Overall, however, the evidence does support natural origins of life on Earth, even if we have to change what we think about some specific things as time progresses. There is nothing wrong with that.

The main difference between evolutionists and young-earth creationists is that evolutionists tweak their theories to fit the data they have, while creationists tweak the data they have to fit their theories (which, by definition, is unscientific).

I know this thread wasn't about creationists specifically, but they really get to me. I guess it's because they insult science, and science is pretty much what most of my life revolves around, so it's like they're insulting me personally.

An interesting subject. My view is:

First an artificial division is made between living organism and dead matter. This duality is created by us, it is not real. As a consequence of this division, a question becomes possible: what's the origin of life? But all answers to this are just words and theories, as I see it. To create answers and theories you need assumptions, because you're creating a system (an illusion, false). You need to assume that time, matter and laws exist. Added logic to these assumptions you get the Richard Dawkins's books. All very logically, seemingly supported on facts, scientific. But I don't believe it at all.

Secondly, there can be no origin of life because verbs are less untrue than nouns. Processes exist. Creating is true, not creation, not origin. A tree is continously growing, changing, moving, developing; it is "treeing", not "tree".

Thirdly, if something (we for example) is alive, everything must be alive. Nothing is separate, everything is connected with everything. So the universe is alive, conscious. Even a stone has a history too. A stone split of a rock (was born), became smooth in a river, was picked up, eroded (died) etc. A stone in the wall of a prison looks to us the same as the stone in the wall of a warm and happy house but it's not the same, the stone has a being, you can say it's alive.

I will post some of Ouspensky's thoughts in this thread (from the best book ever written: Tertium Organium). He can say it much better.

From Tertium Organum (P.D. Ouspensky):


Inanimate objects and mechanical phenomena are to us lifeless and irrational.

But this cannot be so.

It is only for our limited mind, for our limited power of communion with other minds, for our limited skill in analogy that rationality and psychic life in general manifest only in certain classes of living creatures, alongside of which a long series of dead things and mechanical phenomena exist.

But if we could not converse among ourselves, if every one of us could not infer the existence of rationality and of psychic life in another by analogy with himself, then everyone would consider himself alone to be alive and animated, and he would relegate all the rest of humankind to mechanical, "dead" nature.

In other words, we recognize as animated only those beings which have psychic life accessible to our observation in three-dimensional sections of the world, i.e., beings whose psyche is analogous to ours. About other consciousness we do not know and cannot know. All "beings" whose psychic does not manifest itself in the three-dimensional section of the world are inaccessible to us. If they contact our life at all, then we necessarily regard their manifestations as those of dead and unconscious nature. Our power of analogy is limited to this section. We cannot think logically outside of the conditions of the three-dimensional section. Therefore everything that lives, thinks and feels in a manner not analogous to us must appear dead and mechanical.

But sometimes we vaguely feel an intense life manifesting in the phenomena of nature, and sense a vivid emotionality the manifestations of which constitute the phenomena of (to us) inanimate nature. What I wish to convey is that behind the phenomena of visible manifestations is felt the noumenon of emotion.

In electrical discharges, in thunder and lightning, in the rush and howling of the wind, are seen flashes of the sensuous-nervous shudderings of some gigantic organism.

A strange individuality which is all their own is sensed in certain days. There are days brimming with the marvelous and the mystic, days having each its own individual and unique consciousness, its own emotions, its own thoughts. One may almost commune with these days. And they will tell you that they live a long, long time, perhaps eternally, and that they have known and seen many, many things.

In the processional of the year; in the iridescent leaves of autumn, with their memory-laden smell; in the first snow, frosting the fields and communicating a strange freshness and sensitiveness to the air; in the spring freshets, in the warming sun, in the awakening but still naked branches through which gleams the turquoise sky; in the white nights of the north, and in the dark, humid, warm tropical nights spangled with stars--in all these are the thoughts, the emotions, the forms, peculiar to itself alone, of some great consciousness; or better, all this is the expression of the emotions, thoughts and forms of consciousness of a mysterious being--Nature.

There can be nothing dead or mechanical in nature. If in general life and feeling exist, they must exist in all. Life and rationality make up the world.

If we consider nature from our side, from the side of phenomena, then it is necessary to say that each thing, each phenomenon, possesses a psyche of its own.

A MOUNTAIN, A TREE, A RIVER, THE FISH WITHIN THE RIVER, DEW AND RAIN, PLANET, FIRE--each separately must possess a psyche of its own.

If we consider nature from the other side, from the side of noumena, then it is necessary to say that each thing and each phenomenon of our world is a manifestation in our section of a rationality incomprehensible to us, belonging to another section, the same having there functions incomprehensible to us. In that section of space, one rationality is such and its function is such that it manifests itself here as a mountain, some other manifests as a tree, a third as a little fish, and so forth.

The phenomena of our world are very different from one another. If they are nothing else but manifestations in our section of different rational beings, then these beings must be very different too.

Between the psyche of a mountain and the psyche of a man there must be the same difference as between a mountain and a man.

We have already admitted the possibility of different existences. We said that a house exists, and that a man exists, and that an idea exists also--but they all exist differently. If we pursue this thought, then we shall discover many kinds of different existences.

The fantasy of fairy tales, making all the world animate, ascribes to mountains, rivers, forests a psychic life similar to that of men. But this is just as untrue as the complete denial of consciousness to inanimate nature. Noumena are as distinct and various as phenomena, which are their manifestation in our three-dimensional sphere.

Each stone, each grain of sand, each planet has its noumenon, consisting of life and of psyche, binding them into certain wholes incomprehensible to us.

The activity of life of separate units may vary greatly. The degree of the activity of life can be determined from the standpoint of its power of reproducing itself. In inorganic, mineral nature, this activity is so insignificant that units of this nature accessible to our observation do not reproduce themselves, although it may only seem so to us because of the narrowness of our view in time and space. Perhaps if that view embraced hundreds of thousands of years and our entire planet simultaneously, we might then see the growth of minerals and metals.

Were we to observe, from the inside, one cubic centimeter of the human body, knowing nothing of the existence of the entire body and of the man himself, then the phenomena going on in this little cube of flesh would seem like elemental phenomena in inanimate nature.

But in any case, for us phenomena are divided into living and mechanical, and visible objects are divided into organic and inorganic. The latter are partitioned without resistance, remaining as they were before. It is possible to break a stone in halves, and then there will be two stones. But if one were to cut a snail in two, then there would not be two snails. This means that the psyche of the stone is very simple, primitive--so simple that it may be fractured without change of state. But a snail consists of living cells. Each living cell is a complex being, considerably more intricate than that of a stone. The body of the snail possesses the power to move, to nourish itself, feel pleasure and pain, seek the first and avoid the last; and most important of all, it possesses the faculty to multiply, to create new forms similar to itself, to involve inorganic substance within these forms, subduing physical laws to its service. The snail is a complex centre of transmutation of some physical energies into others. This centre possesses a consciousness of its own. It is for this reason that the snail is indivisible. Its psyche is infinitely higher than that of the stone. The snail has the consciousness of form, i.e., the form of a snail is conscious of itself, as it were. The form of a stone is not conscious of itself.

In organic nature where we see life, it is easier to assume the existence of a psyche. In the snail, a living creature, we already admit without difficulty a certain kind of psyche. But life belongs not alone to separate, individual organisms--anything indivisible is a living being. Each cell in an organism is a living being and it must have a certain psychic life.

Each combination of cells having a definite function is a living being also. Another higher combination--the organ--is a living being no less, and possesses a psychic life of its own.

Indivisibility in our sphere is the sign of a definite function. If a given phenomenon in our plane is a manifestation of that which exists on another plane, then on our side evidently, indivisibility corresponds to individuality on that other side. Divisibility on our side shows divisibility on that side. The rationality of the divisible can express itself in a collective, non-individual reason only.

http://www.sacred-texts.com/eso/to/index.htm

From Tertium Organum:

... Among the animals known to us, even among domestic animals, the psychological differences are so great as to differentiate them into entirely separate planes. We ignore this, and place them all under a single rubric--"animals."

A goose, having entangled its foot in a piece of watermelon rind, drags it along by the web and thus cannot get it out, but it never thinks of raising its foot. This indicates that its mind is so vague that it does not know its own body, scarcely distinguishing between it and other objects. This would happen neither with a dog nor with a cat. They know their bodies very well. But in relation to outside objects the dog and the cat differ widely. I have observed a dog, a "very intelligent" setter. When the little rug on which he slept got folded and was uncomfortable to sleep on, he understood that the nuisance was outside of him, that it was in the rug, and in a certain definite position of the rug. Therefore he caught the rug in his teeth, turned it and pushed it here and there, the while growling, sighing, and moaning until some one came to his aid, for he was never able to rectify the difficulty.

With the cat such a question could not even appear. The cat knows her body very well, but everything outside of herself she takes as her due, as given. To correct the outside world, to accommodate it to her own comfort, never comes into the cat's head. Perhaps this is because she lives more in another world, in the world of dreams and fantasies, than in this. Accordingly, if there were something wrong with her bed the cat would turn herself about repeatedly until she could lie down comfortably, or she would go and lie in another place.

The monkey would spread the rug very easily indeed.

Here we have four beings, all quite different; and this is only one example: it would be possible to collect others by the hundred. And meanwhile there is for us just one "animal." We mix together many things that are entirely different; our "divisions" are often incorrect, and this hinders us when it comes to the examination of ourselves. To declare that manifest differences determine the "evolutionary grade," that animals of one type are "higher" or "lower" than those of another, would be entirely false. The dog and the monkey by their intellect, their aptness to imitate, and by reason of the dog's fidelity to man, are as it were higher than the cat, but the cat is infinitely superior to them in intuition, esthetic sense, independence, and force of will. The dog and the monkey manifest themselves in toto: all that they have is seen. The cat, on the other hand, is not without reason regarded as a magical and occult animal. In her there is much hidden of which she herself does not know. If one speaks in terms of evolution, it is more correct to say that the cat and the dog are animals of different evolutions, just as in all probability, not one, but several evolutions are simultaneously going forward in humanity.

The recognition of several independent and from one standpoint equivalent evolutions, developing entirely different properties,...

I see myself as more or an evolutionist than a creationist; that being said I still believe in god--but see 'him' as working through nature rather than being apart from it. For me god and the universe are sort of the same thing--just viewed from a different perspective. I feel the presence of god. I think about the universe. Thinking and feeling--different ways of knowing the same thing.

As a Christian I'd agree the division between living organisms and dead matter is artificial; The 'feel' universe is alive through the spirit and consciousness of god. And so asking the question:- 'what are the origins of life?--is meaningless.

But as a thinking scientist I see the world as made up of atoms, molecules and chemical compounds; and so the question of 'what are the origins of life?--becomes vitally important.

I would hold to the most recent sentiments -- that the formation of life is a natural stage in the life of any planet. (Although of course not all manage to reach this stage.)

I also believe that the kinds of life to be found are a lot more resilient and adaptable than science currently believes.

The origin of life might have something to do with polymers. Formation of polymer chains from small units has something in it which is "consumption" and something you can call "growth" and even "waste production" (splitting of small molecules during the polymerisation process). I don't know exactly but there may exist several theories about the formation of these polymers.

Still the problem remains, when do you start to call it life? If you're in the process of creating a statue out of a rock, when is it still a rock and when do you start to call it a statue? That shows we are trying to impose a duality which really isn't there. Reality isn't black and white, it's a whole scale of grays.

In my opinion scientific research should focus on more useful things, technology. If we know the origin of life, so what? Although I admit it would be interesting to know.

It's not something I think a lot about.

Why would it be vitally important?

All planet don't have the right conditions. Being habitable to life is not a natural stage in all planets' lives. In fact, it was just a month or so ago that we discovered the first planet outside our solar system that might be habitable to life. Most planets we've discovered have been too cold, or gas giants and such.

Yes, it's to some degree artificial, but there are some criteria for what would scientifically be regarded as life. I think wikipedia has a list.

Still the duality (life - dead matter) remains. In reality there is no duality, it is one whole. To say reality is 3 is better than 2 (2 is duality). Examples of 3: the observer, the observed, the observing. Answers to a question: yes, no, I don't know. Psychology: thinking, feeling and something you can call instincts/impulses (like sex).

If you don't believe 3 is a better description of reality than 2, I can defend 7 which is more complex but also gives a better description of reality. Truth is 1 or infinite.

So there is life, dead matter, and something beyond it, deathless.

About my example of rock - statue: it's a continuum. The distinction rock and statue is completely artificial. It's a range including a rock-like statue and a statue-like rock and all stages in between.