|| By: Bhakti Niskama Shanta, Ph.D. ||

Sri Chaitanya Saraswat Math, New Pal Para (Netaji Sarani), Hayder Para, Siliguri – 6, West Bengal, India. Email: bns@mahaprabhu.net, Phone: +91-9748906907 (M)

The archaeological record is very limited and its analysis has been contentious. Hence, molecular biologists have shifted their attention to molecular dating techniques. Recently on April 2013, the prestigious Cell Press Journal Current Biology published an article entitled “A Revised Timescale for Human Evolution Based on Ancient Mitochondrial Genomes”.[1] This paper has twenty authors and they are researchers from the world’s top institutes like Max Planck Institute, Harvard, etc. In the present article the author discusses a few significant fallacies of the methodology employed by this paper in Current Biology.

The introduction to this Current Biology paper begins with:

Respected authors of this paper have emphatically accepted that the fossil record is inadequate and unreliable. These statements clearly substantiate that now biologists are agreeing that fossil records do not provide any significant evidence at all for conventional evolution theory. Despite the well-recorded fact of the continual grand propaganda of Darwinism based on fossil evidence for more than 150 years, in recent times biologists are surprisingly coming up with such statements, based on their confidence that evolution can be explained purely by the genealogical/genomic record provided by modern molecular biology. Still many respected journals (for example the Nature[2]) continue to publish articles on fossil evidence to support Darwinian evolution. These incoherently diverse claims prove that Darwinists are struggling with unscientific ideological approaches to explain biodiversity. The author of the present article highlighted these points in his paper “A Scientific Basis for Vedantic View of Biodiversity” published in the February 2013 issue of the Newsletter The Harmonizer. In that article the author elaborated the problems associated with the fossil record and dating techniques, and its implication on the neo-Darwinian mechanistic misconception of biological life as mere molecular chemistry or abiology. The article in The Harmonizer was an abridged version and the full article is also available online. Very recently the author presented a part of that paper at Indian’s premier institutes like IIT-BHU, Allahabad University and IIT-Kharagpur. To convey these scientific facts among prominent scientists in India on this field, the author will be presenting a similar paper entitled “Modern Geological Evidence Undermines the Chronology of Geologic Column” in the upcoming conference: 18th Convention of Indian Geological Congress & International Symposium on “Minerals and Mining in India-The way forward, inclusive of cooperative mineral – based industries in SAARC countries”, from 27th – 29th April 2013 at M. P. Council of Science and Technology, Vigyan Bhawan, Nehru Nagar, Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, India.

Coming back to the Current Biology paper, the introduction of the paper also states:

This further establishes that not only is the fossil record unreliable but also two methods (Phylogeny-based and Pedigree-based) used in the human mitochondrial molecular clock are also not in agreement with each other. Let us understand first what is ‘mitochondrial molecular clock’ and how it works.

Mitochondrial Molecular Clock (MMC)

Mitochondria are the energy-producing sections of the cell. Mitochondria extract energy from food molecules floating in the cytoplasm outside the nucleus of the cell and covert that energy into ATP. Hence, mitochondria are the important organelles of cells, without which biological processes would collapse. Mitochondria have their own DNA (mtDNA) and they are located outside the nuclear DNA. Believing that mtDNA (contains around 97 genes) is much simpler as compared to the cell’s nuclear DNA (contains around 60,000 genes), biologists try to build the Mitochondrial Molecular Clock (MMC) by making two oversimplified assumptions: (1) MtDNA is only passed down along the matrilineal line, and (2) mutations in mtDNA occur at a statistically uniform rate. We will discuss below the unscientific nature of these two over-simplified assumptions. The schemes employed in MMC dating are deceptively simple. Biologists believe that point mutations on a gene sequence represent copy errors and such errors build up randomly in due course. They think that the total sequence difference found between homologous genes of two taxa is a function of time since they have been diverted. It is important to note that MMC must depend on dating techniques which are used in the fossil record to determine the age of partition for one pair of taxa. Only after knowing the age of partition can the rate at which genetic change has occurred be estimated. Thereafter they simply extrapolate this data of one pair of taxa to date the times of divergence of other pairs of taxa. Hence, the techniques employed in MMC must depend on volatile calibration points and also there is no tangible way to establish accurate phylogeny with correct branching order and branch-length estimates.

Who is the human mitochondrial ancestor: Adam, Eve or both!

It is a general notion that paternal leakage is prevented in sexual reproduction because paternal mitochondria within the sperm are dynamically destroyed by the egg cell after fertilization. However, evidence started challenging this commonly accepted concept. Some studies report that the tail of the sperm, which have extra mtDNA, can successfully enter the egg. Numerous studies also report paternal mtDNA inheritance in animals, for example in the case of Mytilidae[3], sheep[4], Drosophila simulans[5] and so on. These empirical observations directly invalidate the assumption that mtDNA is only passed down along the matrilineal line.

There is a Mitochondrial Eve hypothesis and it assumes that in humans all mtDNA can only be passed from mother to offspring without any recombination. Based on this unverified assumption, the Mitochondrial Eve hypothesis explains that mtDNA in every living person has directly descended from a hypothetical woman called Eve (named after Biblical Eve). According to this hypothesis all present humans came from Mitochondrial Eve. Thus biologists simply assume that mtDNA is passed intact from great-grandmother to grandmother to mother to daughter with virtually no input from males. In such assumption there is no mixing, no blending of father’s and mother’s genes and the reason for such assumption is that mixing can jumble, complicate, and thus obscure the history of mtDNA.

In order to maintain this view, past researchers believed that human paternal mtDNA is never transmitted to offspring.[6] The concept of mtDNA inheritance from the maternal side only greatly simplifies the analysis and hence researchers use it to trace maternal lineage far back in time. MtDNA phylogenies, founded explicitly on the assumption of strict maternal inheritance, have been employed to narrate the story of Mitochondrial Eve, the hypothetical female who carried the last common ancestor of all human mtDNA.[7] Based on this simplistic molecular clock analysis, researchers had explained that Eve was living in Africa 20,000 years ago.[8] The same analysis is also extended to trace the lineages of other geographical locations, and in studies for European ancestry, female names (like Helena and Jasmine) have been given to these mtDNA based ancestors.[9]

MtDNA can be a handy molecular tool for reconstructing evolutionary events only when the simplicity of its inheritance (maternal and without recombination) is valid. However, in recent times several studies report that paternal mtDNA transmission is possible in the case of humans and it also includes recombination similar to the cell’s nuclear DNA. In 1999 a study published in the prestigious journal Science states[10]:

In the same year, another article[11] published in Science also highlighted this mixing of maternal and paternal mtDNA in humans and chimpanzees. Consequently many such studies have established recombination in human mtDNA. In 2004 Ladoukakis and Eyre-Walker summarized[12] the situation:

In 2008 an invited review[13] in Molecular Ecology also highlighted the presence of paternal leakage, recombination and heteroplasmy and its impact on analyses based on mtDNA:

The paper in Current Biology (that we have discussed in the beginning of this article) considers only maternal relatedness and completely ignores the paternal leakage. The paper states:

As the authors of this paper employed an outdated analysis which ignores paternal leakage, their conclusions are unreliable. The actual fact is that mtDNA analysis cannot explain who the human mitochondrial ancestor is: Adam, Eve or both.

Demise of uniformitarian belief about mutation rates in mtDNA

Uniformitarian thinking is the heart of Darwinism and hence Darwin’s objective evolution theory cannot survive without uniformitarian analysis. Darwin stated in chapter 6 of his Origin of Species “If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down. But I can find no such case.” Neo-Darwinism or Modern Synthesis also followed the same doctrinaire approach, and for the past six decades Darwinists based their studies on the false assumption that inheritable novelty is the consequence of chance or slight accidental modifications or mutations. Towards the end of the first half of the 20th century, Darwinists established a molecular interpretation for this standpoint. The way DNA worked was translated into conventional evolutionary theory, and random mutations were considered as copying errors that changed the DNA sequence one base-pair at a time, and, as a result, protein sequences were changed one amino acid at a time. They believe that the organism has no control over the alteration process, and that the genome mechanically decides organism characteristics. For them genome is a ROM (read-only memory), which is modified only by accident. This claim of Darwinists about randomness and accident became dogmatic with the intent to reject all possible revivals of the role of a supernatural agent found in religious explanations as the cause of origin of diverse living organisms. However, with advancement of molecular biology it is observed that large parts of DNA alteration in bacteria and eukaryotes are a result of a coordinated accomplishment of natural genetic engineering. Hence, the traditional understanding of genome variation as stochastic events or unpredictable accidents is now replaced by a controlled and coordinated accomplishment of cellular biochemistry. Now we know that cellular biochemistry is based on guided mechanisms and thus acts in predictable ways. In contrast to Neo-Darwinism, DNA changes are now known as nonrandom with respect to time, physiology and life history. The emerging alternative view of 21st century biology explains the genome as a RW (read-write) memory system subject to nonrandom change by sentient cell functions. Lynn Margulis’ research also highlighted the importance of symbiogenesis in swift genetic alterations and hence directly challenged the Darwinian belief of gradual alteration. This paradigm shift is a major setback to uniformitarian-based Neo-Darwinism. The author of the present article discussed this topic with more details in one of his papers published in the November 2012 issue of The Harmonizer.

Uniformitarian thinking can be found in every aspect of Darwinism including the fossil record analysis. A typical stratigraphic column shows a series of sedimentary rocks, with the oldest rocks on the bottom and the youngest on top. Stratum is an essential fundamental element to study geologic time scale. Geologists, paleontologists and other earth scientists use the stratigraphic principle to describe the timing and relationships between events that have occurred during the history of the Earth. In the 17th century Danish scientist Nicolas Steno (1669) formulated the basic principle of Stratigraphy based on three major assumptions: (1) Principle of superposition, (2) Principle of continuity, and (3) Principle of original horizontality. Evolutionists recognize the age of the fossil according to the geologic time scale based on the vertical location of the strata in which the fossil was discovered. Based on Steno’s uniformitarian assumption, fossils obtained from the bottom of the geologic column are recognized by evolutionists as the most ancient fossils. Steno’s three basic assumptions on which stratigraphy stands were never substantiated by either experimentation or empirical evidence. French sedimentologist Guy Berthault could recognize the defects in Steno’s simplistic assumptions and carried out the most fundamental experiments on sedimentation in Colorado State University with Pierre Julien (Professor of hydraulics and sedimentology) to invalidate Steno’s stratigraphy theory. In the February 2013 issue of The Harmonizer the author of the present article discussed the demise of this uniformitarian assumption based on a hypothetical representation of the Earth’s surface as an ‘onion skin’ with successive layers representing the events throughout the history of the globe.

The same uniformitarian assumption is also used for mutation rates to construct the so-called universal molecular clock. The first paragraph of the paper in Current Biology that we have discussed in the beginning of this article also states, “Under the assumption of constant rates of change among lineages, molecular clocks have been used to estimate divergence times between closely related species or between populations.” However, we know that such assumptions were discredited long ago.[14] Instead, researchers reported a great deal of rate variation among loci on a gene, between branches on a tree and within single lineages over time.[15] Researchers rigorously condemned the blind assumption of molecular rates of variation[16] because they may lead to either underestimation or overestimation.[17] This rate heterogeneity is a severe problem for precise evaluation of divergence times using a molecular clock.

Depending on the cell type, mammalian cells have a few hundred to hundreds of thousands of mtDNA. Even though the quantity of mtDNA seems to be firmly regulated in a tissue-specific manner, the quantity of mtDNA may change in due course through extremely complex regulatory mechanisms.[18] Pathogenic mutations can abruptly influence a varying section of several mtDNA molecules and hence is the cause of heteroplasmy–the presence of a mixture of more than one type of mtDNA. The mutation rate can differ from person to person and even between adjacent cells within the same individual.[19] The existence of heteroplasmic individuals in a sample may extremely obscure the estimation of mutation rates.[20] Research also confirms that human mtDNA does not alter in a clock-like manner.[21] Moreover, sufficient calibration points are absent for exact time estimates for human MMC.[22] Hence the values of the mutation rate of human mtDNA differ significantly depending on the available data and the method used for estimation. These scientific facts and its impact on MMC are also ignored by the paper in Current Biology.

Faulty Fossil Record and Faulty Mitochondrial Molecular Clock!

Interestingly the paper in Current Biology states that,

To overcome the problems in fossil record the authors used only a new term ‘direct method’ but in reality it is the same old radioisotope method commonly employed in fossil records. Hence the calibration of the molecular clock is again dependent on fossil data only. It is most important to note that the authors simply presume that radiocarbon dates are reliable. The author of the present article recently discussed the several problems that are associated with the radiocarbon dating and the full article is available online. In the Current Biology paper, the authors used samples within a span of 40,000 years of human history because they know very well that anything beyond 50,000 years will lead to a situation where it is not possible to find a sample with high enough concentration of C-14 (half-life period is merely 5,730 ± 40 years) to perform the tests. It is also a well-known fact that C-14 concentration in atmospheric CO2 often varies[23] due to solar activity[24], geomagnetic field strength[25] (Bucha, 1970) and numerous other factors. Due to these variations, the C-14 clock runs at a varying pace throughout the history of Earth, thus an unimaginable calibration would be needed to establish a relation between C-14 time and the anomalous MMC. Hence the use of carbon dating in the MMC of thousands of years is unrealistic. The MMC is based on erroneous assumptions and for its calibration it has to depend on the anomalous fossil record. Hence such methods are doubly deceptive and conclusions derived from such approaches must remain unstable.

Conclusion

We have seen that MMC is entirely based on extremely over-simplified assumptions and it is not suitable for any scientific analysis. Ignoring all the gaps discussed above, Current Biology has embraced the misfortune of adopting an unreliable clock. To support his objective evolution theory throughout, Darwin had also claimed that first life spontaneously originated from dead chemicals. However, evidence is forcing many biologists to conclude that, if Darwin had known some of what has been discovered since the publishing of his theory, he probably wouldn’t have believed in his own theory of evolution. Most unfortunately, conclusions from several anomalous approaches like MMC are continuously used by a few atheistic scientists (for example, Richard Dawkins) to attack bonafide religions conceptions. In Srimad Bhagavad-gita 7.15 Supreme Absolute Sri Krishna stated:

na mam dushkritino mudhah prapadyante naradhamah

mayayapahrita-jnana asuram bhavam asritah

TRANSLATION: Those miscreants who are grossly foolish, lowest among mankind, whose knowledge is stolen by illusion, and who partake of the atheistic nature of demons, do not surrender unto Me.

Hence it is necessary to scientifically inform the real situation to everyone so that they can confidently practice bonafide religions to achieve the ultimate goal of the human form of life. Under the guidance of Sripad Bhakti Madhava Puri Maharaja, Ph.D., (Director of Bhakti Vedanta Institute of Spiritual Culture and Science located in Princeton, NJ: www.bviscs.org) devotee scientists from Sri Chaitanya Saraswat Math in India (www.mahaprabhu.net/scsmath.siliguri) are continuously traveling and delivering talks on these subjects and informing scientists about the scientific basis of the teachings of ancient Indian wisdom contained in Srimad Bhagavad-gita and Srimad Bhagavatam. A list of these talks at several leading institutes, universities and colleges (like IITs, BHU, JNU, etc) can be found at: http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=810794001AF7B29C

We invite one and all to join us in this noble attempt to rescue our human civilization from the load of Darwinian ignorance (maya) and thus help each other to progress towards a harmonious God centered scientific civilization.

Abstract

The term biology is of Greek origin meaning the study of life. On the other hand, chemistry is the science of matter, which deals with matter and its properties, structure, composition, behavior, reactions, interactions and the changes it undergoes. The theory of abiogenesis maintains that chemistry made a transition to biology in a primordial soup. To keep the naturalistic ‘inanimate molecules to human life’ evolution ideology intact, scientists must assemble billions of links to bridge the gap between the inanimate chemicals that existed in the primordial soup and anatomically modern humans. Even though the proponents of a natural origin of life expressed much optimism for providing their theories, presently there is a detailed compilation of information seriously questioning this doctrine. This reductionistic ideology has always failed to answer two simple questions: (1) What is the minimum number of parts that are essential for a living organism to survive? (2) By what mechanism do these parts get assembled together? Evolutionists say a series of prebiotic processes and developments guide networks of dynamically linked small molecules and amphiphiles to form biological macromolecules, membraneous compartments, and finally primitive cells. However, none of these proposed pathways to life appears to be credible. The continuous advancement in various fields of science are not only providing major challenges to reductionistic ideology but are supplying increasing evidence for a systemic concept of life as an organic whole. Several leading researchers in the field of ‘origin of life’ are continually concluding that there are major scientific problems attached with all existing naturalistic ‘origin of life’ hypothesis. Only by taking into account all biological activities collectively as a system can a satisfactory elucidation of the living state be realized. In this present paper an attempt has been made to present a few significant challenges to the theory of abiogenesis based on the peer reviewed scientific literature. Subsequently, a non-reductionistic concept of life as a system is proposed as an alternative for resolving some of the problems inherent in origin of life research.

Introduction

The ‘spontaneous generation of life’ hypothesis includes a conspicuous history of unrelenting derision from several prominent personalities in science. At various times in its history, ‘spontaneous generation’ has been identified by two different concepts. They are: (a) abiogenesis, and (b) heterogenesis. Abiogenesis is the field of science dedicated to study how life might have arisen spontaneously for the first time from inorganic chemicals. On the other hand, the notion that life can arise from dead organic matter, such as the appearance of maggots from decaying meat is known as heterogenesis. For a long time major western thinkers like Newton, Harvey, Descartes and von Helmont accepted heterogenesis with full confidence.

Francesco Redi by his experiments demonstrated that meat placed under a screen of muslin never developed maggots. The works of Schulze, Schwann, von Dusch and Schroeder provided significant challenges to heterogenesis, and finally in 1864 Louis Pasteur’s famous swan-neck flask experiment sounded the death knell for this theory. Pasteur famously stated that “Never will the doctrine of spontaneous generation recover from the mortal blow of this simple experiment”.[1]

However, soon after establishment of Pasteur’s famous biogenesis theory, the reductionist school proposed an even more intricate and incredible form of spontaneous generation – abiogenesis. This hypothesis gathered its support mainly due to the collapse of the false dilemma of organic and inorganic matter (synthesis of urea in 1828 by Wohler), and the development of the concept of conservation of energy.[2] The modern form of chemical evolution theory began to develop following the proposal by Russian biochemist A.I. Oparin.[3] According to this claim, complex molecular arrangements and functions of living systems evolved from simpler molecules that preexisted on the lifeless, primitive earth. Thus, abiogenesis provided an ideal sense of balance to Darwinian evolution theory, requiring billions of years to go from dead atoms and molecules to cells, and then, via random mutation or natural selection, from cells to the varieties of living beings present today.

Abiogenesis was popular for years as an explanatory theory of self-assembly as the starting point for chemical evolution. Recently however, the abiogenesis hypothesis has been experiencing critical shortcomings and rapid advancements in cellular biology have led biologists to seriously doubt the veracity of this hypothesis. The present article aims at summarizing a few crucial scientific facts, which are leading us towards a paradigm shift in our understanding of the ontogenesis of life.

Primordial Bombardments Dumped in Darwin’s ‘Warm Little Pond’

Charles Darwin (1809 –1882) proposed an elucidation for life’s origin that complimented his evolution theory. In a famous letter[4] to his botanist friend Joseph D. Hooker in 1871, he stated

“It is often said that all the conditions for the first production of a living organism are now present which could ever have been present. But If (and oh what a big if) we could conceive in some warm little pond with all sorts of ammonia and phosphoric salts, light, heat, electricity etc. present, that a protein compound was chemically formed, ready to undergo still more complex changes at the present such matter would be instantly devoured, which would not have been the case before living creatures were formed.”

For more than one hundred years this idea of Darwin’s was accepted dogmatically as scientists were ignorant about the primordial bombardments. In recent times however, scientists have come to believe that the earth’s first billion years witnessed murderous bombardments by large projectiles.[5]-[7]Many leading scientists in the field of ‘the origin of life’ now feel that the hostile conditions of early earth warrant a total reconsideration of this preceding conviction. James Kasting, who chaired a Gordon Conference on the origin of life, and who was coauthor of one of the key papers dealing with the early bombardment, says that “The field is in ferment.” An additional apparent confirmation of the same can be found from the first two paragraphs of the article ‘Goodbye to the Warm Little Pond?’[8], published in Science magazine:

“Ever since 1871, when Charles Darwin made his oft-quoted allusion to life’s beginnings in a “warm little pond,” scientists have tended to imagine the origin of life as being a rather tranquil affair-something like a quiet afternoon in a country kitchen, with a rich organic soup of complex carbon compounds simmering slowly in the sunlight until somehow they became living protoplasm.

Sorry, Charles. Your Warm Little Pond was a beautiful image. It’s been enshrined in innumerable textbooks as the scientific theory of the origin of life. But to hear the planetary scientists talking these days, you were dead wrong. The Warm Little Pond never existed.”

Consequently, numerous new speculations are attempting to provide different explanation for the location of the origin of life on earth. There are several suggestions ranging from life beginning in deep sea thermal vents to bacterial life arriving from other places in the universe (Panspermia). Some of these hypotheses may be more credible than others, but it is an astringent fact that scientists have no existent evidence about the possible location for the first life on earth. Science magazine also outspokenly substantiated that science has no concrete answer to the question of how and where did life on earth arise?[9]

Chemical Evolution Cannot Ride a Substantially Incredible Barbed Ladder

The chemistry of prebiotic worlds is used on the opposite side of the defining moment for life, when Darwinian evolution theorized it first started functioning. It is perhaps impractical that even the simplest existing cells could have evolved spontaneously, even more so that exceptionally complex modern life forms could have done so. To keep chemical evolution alive, chemists and biologists are utilizing the early earth data provided by geologists and astronomers and are proposing numerous hypotheses in support of chemical evolution. Chemists select the likely prebiotic environment projected by geologists and study probable pathways for how organic molecules and biomolecules could be manufactured in such an environment, how they might have interacted, and how this might lead to more complex living systems. Biologists more often than not see biomolecules in a slightly different context, starting from the high complexity of a modern organism and searching for the vital biological cycles and interactions and then trying to find how something alike but much more simple might have evolved. The open literature is escalating with theories on the origin of life.[10] Different theories claim different starting points. For example, some propose that life originated with template replicating polymers,[11] pyrites,[12] thioesters,[13] clays,[14],[15] polypeptides,[16]-[19] and the claims are neither complete nor ending. Also, there is an ever increasing list of speculations on the site of the origin of earth’s first life. For example, life originated in an oceanic thick soup,[16] hydrothermal vents,[12] microscopic confinements,[16]-[18], and again the speculations are neither complete nor ending. From the scrupulous reviews[20],[21] we can realize the impractical range of speculative chemical evolution theories back from the chemistry of the existent cellular metabolism to the chemistry of the prebiotic world. The sections below present the vulnerable state of the theory of chemical evolution and its failure in outdoing the steps: (1) Prebiotic synthesis – Primordial soup, (2) Polymerization, (3) Pre-RNA World, (4) RNA world, (5) DNA/Protein world, and (6) Primitive cell.

‘Primordial Soup’ with an Impossible Recipe!

Following Oparin,[3] in 1929 John Haldane proposed that in a reducing primitive atmosphere and with a suitable supply of energy, such as lightning or ultraviolet light, a wide range of organic compounds might be synthesized.[22] According to Haldane, the primordial sea was the source of a vast chemical laboratory motorized by solar energy. Haldane explained that, in due course of time, the sea turned into a ‘hot diluted soup’ containing large populations of organic monomers and polymers. The term ‘prebiotic soup’ was coined by Haldane, and is well-known as Oparin-Haldane’s view of the origin of life. In 1953 Stanley Miller[23] offered experimental support for the theory of prebiotic evolution. Miller experimentally produced amino acids such as glycine, alanine, aspartic acid, and glutamic acid by passing an electric discharge through a gaseous mixture of methane, ammonia, hydrogen, and water vapor. Thus, he suggested that the implausible complexity in the molecular organization of living cells might someway have been produced from nothing more than simple chemicals interacting at random in a primordial ocean. However, we will see below in the light of scientific developments that, such a claim is far from the truth.

Thermodynamics disagreement with Miller’s trick

Oparin, Haldane, Miller and his successors suggested unguided energy as the means by which simple molecules can be organized into more complex molecules. However, from the law of nature or from the second law of thermodynamics we know that order that emerges from undirected external forces not only has a momentary disposition, but does not get bigger, unless a directed external exertion is supplied. Miller’s explanations give us the impression that he may be ignorant about this fact. Random flashes of electricity used by Miller can transform simple molecules into more complex building blocks. But the very next moment, new electrical flashes supplied by him may destroy these same building blocks. The larger the building blocks, the faster they will be damaged. Hence, to protect building blocks from the destruction by new flashes of lightning, intelligent Miller guided the building blocks towards a distillation flask. In this manner clever Miller cooked a more and more concentrated organic soup. Who had performed this inelegant job of Miller’s in the primordial earth?

Chemistry fails to convene the demands of biology in primordial soup

The building blocks of life formed in primordial soup exist only in extremely small amounts and decompose rapidly into a tar-like substance.[24] We know that, the ozone layer in the upper atmosphere blocks harmful ultraviolet radiation. However, ozone is composed of oxygen and is the biggest obstacle for the synthesis of building blocks of the life like the ones obtained from Miller’s experiments. The chemistry does not function if there is oxygen, but if there is no ozone (O₃) in the primordial atmosphere, the amino acids would be quickly destroyed by harmful ultraviolet radiation.[25],[26]Moreover, ‘chirality’ in biology demands chemistry to supply ‘left-handed’ amino acids and ‘right-handed’ genetic molecules. However, most of the chemical reactions in nature (except living organism) yield ‘racemic’ mixtures.[27]

Reducing environment fiasco

The idea of the primitive reducing atmosphere has been severely challenged by the available data from geology, geophysics and geochemistry.[28],[29] There is no geologic evidence for either a reducing primitive atmosphere or an early earth containing large amounts of methane gas. Moreover, a quick disappearance of ammonia may take place, because the effective threshold for degradation by ultraviolet radiation is 2,250Å.[30] Also, a quantity of ammonia equivalent to the present atmospheric nitrogen would be destroyed in approximately 30,000 years.[31] Experiments confirm that irradiating a highly reducing atmosphere produces hydrophobic organic molecules that are absorbed by sedimentary clays. This indicates that the earliest rocks should have contained an extraordinarily large amount of carbon or organic chemicals. However, this is not supported by the observed data. Based on observations from the stratigraphical record, Davidson explained that there is no evidence that a primeval reducing atmosphere might have persisted during much of Precambrian time.[32] Theoretical calculation also confirms that dissociation of water vapor by ultraviolet light must have produced enough oxygen very early in the history of the earth to create an oxidizing atmosphere.[33]

Now for many decades it is well known that the primordial environment was most likely not composed of methane or ammonia, and thus would not have been favorable to Miller-Urey type chemistry. David Deamer, an origin of life theorist says, “This optimistic picture began to change in the late 1970s, when it became increasingly clear that the early atmosphere was probably volcanic in origin and composition, composed largely of carbon dioxide and nitrogen rather than the mixture of reducing gases assumed by the Miller-Urey model. Carbon dioxide does not support the rich array of synthetic pathways leading to possible monomers…”[34] Jeffrey Bada and his co-researchers also echoed the similar statement: “Geoscientists today doubt that the primitive atmosphere had the highly reducing composition Miller used…”[35] Interestingly, it is reported in Earth and Planetary Science Letters that chemical properties have been effectively unvarying over earth’s history, and thus concludes that “Life may have found its origins in other environments or by other mechanisms.”[36] In 1996 Miller himself stated, “We really don’t know what the Earth was like three or four billion years ago. So there are all sorts of theories and speculations. The major uncertainty concerns what the atmosphere was like. This is a major area of dispute.”[37] Many prominent scientists in recent time have discarded the Miller-Urey experiment and the ‘primordial soup’ hypothesis it claimed to support. In 1990 the Space Studies Board of the National Research Council suggested that origin of life scientists should undertake a “reexamination of biological monomer synthesis under primitive Earthlike environments, as revealed in current models of the early Earth.”[38] In a review, Leslie Orgel has expressed that, “The relevance of all of this early work to the origin of life has been questioned because it now seems very unlikely that the Earth’s atmosphere was ever as strongly reducing as Miller and Urey assumed.”[39] In a recent NPR report biochemist Nick Lane states that the primordial soup theory is now expired.[40]

However, this does not lead to an end to speculation on the chemical origin of life. Many new hypothetical primitive atmospheres have been proposed.[41]-[44]It is also speculated that organic compounds required for the origin of life may have come from outer space, for instance interplanetary dust particles, comets, asteroids and meteorites.[45] However, the major question will be: was extraterrestrial organic material ever efficiently delivered intact to the Earth?[46] Scientists may continually arrive at many such alternative theories about the unknown past. However, updated science textbooks should at least inform new generations about this now-outmoded recipe of ‘primordial soup’.

Polymerization Riddle

Polymerization is a necessary process for synthesizing complex organic molecules (polymers) from simple organic molecules (monomers). Biology demands chemistry to supply not just any polymers, but very specific ones. The natural synthesis of amino acids and the development of peptides under the early earth atmosphere is one of the big problems in abiogenesis.[47] The February 1998 special issue of Earth magazine also states that, “And even if Miller’s atmosphere could have existed, how do you get simple molecules such as amino acids to go through the necessary chemical changes that will convert them into more complicated compounds, or polymers, such as proteins. Miller himself throws up his hands at that part of the puzzle. “It’s a problem,” he sighs with exasperation. “How do you make polymers? That’s not so easy.””[48]

Polymerization yields water molecules as one of the end products along with polymers. Le Chatelier’s Principle explains that the presence of a product (in present case, water) in the reaction medium will substantially slow the reaction. Darwinists proclaim that first life originated in water over a long span of time by a self-organization of molecules. The equilibrium concentration of biological polymers is sufficiently low and thus they have a propensity to break apart in water, not organize.[46] Consequently, an increase in time will only facilitate water to destroy the polymers. This crisis is one of the biggest headaches for the Darwinists.[49]

To overcome this problem, polymerization in primordial earth requires dehydration synthesis. Because, the polymerization process needs an input of energy, some researchers proposed heating as a means to get rid of the water. However, many researchers including Miller himself reported that a hot prebiotic environment would accelerate the breakdown of biological polymers and hence this is not a suitable option for primordial biochemical synthesis.[50],[51]

Scientists are not able to know how the earliest biopolymers were formed in the prebiotic Earth. The characteristics of such polymers are so distinctive that it is impossible to conjecture about their development. Scientists can only evidently attempt various methods to synthesize them under an assumed primordial-like environment. For instance chemists can only manufacture homopolymers or short co-oligopeptides, but not long co-polymeric chains.[52]-[57] The Merrifield method can be adopted to produce amino acid by amino acid, as identical co-polymers. However, this is not a prebiotic technique.[58] A range of remarkable reactions have been projected and considered in the prebiotic scenario. However, the questions, ‘how to produce long and chain specific polymers under possible prebiotic circumstances?’, and ‘why a specific polymer chain was formed, and not a different one?’ are still unanswered. Chiarabelli also confirms that, “…it is reasonable to agree with the statement, proposed by the editor, that we do not know, neither conceptually nor experimentally, how to make macromolecular sequences under prebiotic conditions.”[59] Therefore, it appears to not be viable for scientists to overcome this polymerization riddle.

Pre-RNA World – A Jumbled and Gloomy Pathway to RNA

The primordial synthesis of self-replicating molecules is a further and more intricate problem than that of polymerization. In the 1980s Noble-prize winner Thomas R. Cech discovered self-replicating RNA molecules, and thus scientists started believing that RNA molecules could supply the satisfactory explanations for the transition of chemistry to biology in the primordial environments. However, soon researchers observed that there are too many problems with RNA for it to have been the molecule responsible for the transition from chemical to biological. As a result, scientists are now coming up with several new proposals for a variety of mechanisms and molecules by which the transition from chemical to biological can be explained in a world existing before RNA. In recent years the pre-RNA world concept created a great interest among the origin of life researchers, in spite of the absence of direction from known metabolic pathways in biology regarding the chemical nature of a predecessor to RNA.

In 1966, Cairns-Smith came up with a drastic proposal supporting that the first appearance of life was not based on organic polymers at all, but rather on inorganic clays.[60] This model explained the partaking of inorganic clays in creating a replicating system capable of storing information. Information was represented by the distribution of charges or shapes along the surface of the clay. On the other hand, replication is meant to copy that information to newly formed clay layers. The role of natural selection comes into picture when the number of ions in a layer influences how quickly and efficiently the new layer can be made. Suggestions of these kinds not only force chemists to consider more broadly the nature of heritable chemical information, but challenge them to develop and provide experiments to investigate these proposals.

Researchers then started the search for alternative genetic materials. For example, Eschenmoser has proposed a molecule called pyranosyl RNA (pRNA) that is very much correlated to RNA but incorporates a different edition of ribose.[61] In natural RNA, ribose contains a five member ring of four carbon atoms and one oxygen atom. On the other hand, Eschenmoser’s ribose structure is rearranged to contain an additional carbon atom in the ring. Eschenmoser finds that complementary strands of pRNA can unite by typical Watson-Crick pairing to give double-strand units that allow a smaller amount of undesirable variations in structure than are achievable with normal RNA. Furthermore, the strands do not twist around each other, as they do in double strand RNA. In a pre-RNA world, where protein enzymes were absent, twisting could stop the strands from unraveling cleanly in replication process. Hence researchers believe that, pRNA appears superior and more suited for replication in a primordial environment than RNA itself. However, scientists have yet to discover an effortless means for synthesizing ribonucleotides containing a six-member sugar ring. Consequently, pRNA failed to gather sufficient experimental support to be considered a strong candidate.[62]

In a very different approach, Nielsen and his team have used a computer model to design a peptide nucleic acid (PNA) that combines a protein-like backbone with nucleic acid bases for side chains.[63] Similar to RNA, one strand of PNA can combine soundly with a complementary strand. Like RNA, PNA may be able to act as a template for the building of its complement. Scientists are hopeful that perhaps PNA was involved in an early genetic system. Even though Aminoethylglycine has been synthesized in spark discharge reactions from nitrogen, ammonia, methane and water[64], to date the prebiotic synthesis of an entire PNA monomer has not been achieved. Although PNA is non-chiral, it is vulnerable to cross-inhibition of the opposing enantiomers when directing the polymerization of activated D,L-ribonucleotide.[65],[66] In addition, PNA monomers can go through an intramolecular N-acyl transfer reaction that would stop any predictable mechanism for their polymerization.[67] Both pRNA and PNA dependent on Watson-Crick base pairs as the structural element that makes complementary pairing possible. Researchers engrossed in discovering simpler genetic systems are searching for complementary molecules that do not depend on nucleotide bases for template-directed copying. In reality, there is no encouraging evidence that polymers produced from such building blocks can replicate.

Threose-based nucleic acid (TNA) is a recent suggestion and evolutionists believe that TNA might be better candidate for pre-RNA world, compared to other possible sugar-based nucleic acids.[68] TNA is alike to DNA and RNA. In addition, it contains a simpler 4-carbon sugar called threose in its backbone instead of deoxyribose found in DNA or ribose in RNA. Threose is a simpler sugar than ribose. Advantageously, TNA also displays superior base pairing properties. Inspired by these properties of TNA, some researchers projected that TNA could be a long-lost predecessor to RNA. However, there are several technical problems attached to this proposal. In 2000 Leslie Orgel listed several of them in his paper published in Science magazine.[69] “Nucleotides containing a tetrose sugar have not been considered likely components of an early genetic polymer because they cannot be joined together by phosphate groups to give a backbone with a six-atom repeat.” Orgel further reported that, “In the alternative gradualist scenario, ribonucleotides were at first substituted a few at a time and at random in TNA sequences. The proportion of RNA components increased over time from almost zero to 100%. The information present originally in the TNA sequence was, at least in part, preserved in the final RNA sequence. This attractive theory suffers from one major drawback. Introduction of a substantial number of ribonucleotides at random might not prevent replication of TNA, but it would almost certainly destroy the catalytic function of any particular TNA sequence and thus would render evolved TNA sequences useless when rewritten accurately as RNA.” That means none of the existing life forms today retain any TNA. Jeffrey Bada also points out, “TNA suffers from the chirality quandary associated with all sugar-based nucleic acid backbones. Although the presence of a 4-carbon sugar in TNA reduces this problem to 2 sugars and 4 stereoisomers, it remains a formidable challenge to demonstrate how oligonucleotides composed of only Lthreose could be preferentially synthesized under pre-biotic conditions …. the selection of chiral sugar component of TNA would have required some sort of selection process to be in operation.”[46]

The catalytic potential of proposed predecessor of RNA (pRNA, PNA, TNA, etc) has not yet been established. Hence, every rational supposition regarding pre-RNA life must reflect on whether that preceding genetic system could have facilitated the manifestation of RNA.

The RNA World Reverie

The term “RNA World” was originally used by the Nobel Prize winner Walter Gilbert in 1986, in an interpretation on findings of the catalytic properties of different types of RNA.[70] However, the notion of RNA as a primordial molecule can be found in several old published literatures.[71]-[73] In the real RNA world observed in present available biological systems, RNA plays dynamic roles in catalyzing biochemical reactions, in translating mRNA into proteins, in regulating gene expression, and in the continuous scuffle between infectious agents trying to destabilize host resistance systems and host cells shielding themselves from infection. Even though scientists have no understanding about how it works, they have the tools to carry on their examination of this existing RNA world and distill their understanding. On the other hand, the primordial RNA world is a made-up age when RNA exhibited both information and function, both genotype and phenotype. Thus, verities of unending speculations are continually coming forward, attempting to apply the data of the present RNA world to understand the primordial RNA world.[74]

Astrobiologists investigating the origin of life on Earth struggle with the question about the nature of the molecules that were the precursors for life. The molecular basis for the storage of genetic information in existing living organisms is deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA. The instructions enclosed in molecules of DNA are expressed by the organism with the use of RNA to make proteins that, in turn, are essential to mediate reactions in the cell. In the absence of RNA, DNA would not be translated into proteins. Similarly, without proteins, the needed reactions could not be catalyzed. This has been the chicken and egg problem of the naturalistic origin of life from chemicals – “which came first – DNA or protein molecule?”

Moreover, DNA is an extremely out-sized and intricate molecule and is more stable when two strands come together to form the double helix. It cannot replicate without the help of RNA and enzymatic proteins to catalyze the essential reactions. DNA also seeks the help of proteins to unwind its two strands for replication and to keep the strands from getting tangled up during replication. On the other hand, RNA is often observed as a single strand of nucleic acids. Its backbone structure is produced in fewer steps than DNA. Moreover, as it is comprised of a four letter alphabet, it also can restrain hereditary information. In 1983, Cech and Altman, separately revealed that ribozymes enzymes could be made exclusively of RNA instead of protein. This has lent to the notion that RNA was the primitive information-storing molecule of preference. As discussed in the previous section, some researchers also consider that there were other molecules even prior to RNA (pre-RNA world) that were used by the first life forms. Those that think that RNA was the first molecule with this function assume that RNA, instead of proteins, could catalyze all of the reactions essential for replication. They refer to the era when RNA exhibited this task as the “RNA World”.

All these appear attractive possibilities, but researchers have reported a number of serious problems associated with RNA world. At the outset, the sugar molecule that is required to produce RNA molecules is ribose.  In an attempt to find the chance development of organic molecules in the laboratory, scientists failed to produce a reaction that could gave rise to a high yield of ribose in place of a random mixture of sugars.[75] Even if they discover a natural reaction that can readily gives rise to ribose in large quantities, they would then have to face the issue of the fast rate at which sugars would have decomposed in primordial conditions. Stanley Miller and his research group have reported, “ribose and other sugars have surprisingly short half-lives for decomposition at neutral pH, making it very unlikely that sugars were available as prebiotic reagents.”[76] Finally, if somehow sugars are manufactured, how would primordial life have selected the structure of sugar out of a mixture that was exactly half “right handed” and half “left handed”? There are many such practical problems attached with both the prebiotic synthesis and the stability of ribose.[77]-[81]

One of the major assumptions of the RNA world hypothesis is that in the primordial conditions, ribonucleotides spontaneously condense into polymers to form RNA molecules. Once RNA molecules have formed, by its catalytic activity to replicate itself a population of such self-replicating molecules would arise. “It is difficult to believe,” says RNA World research scientist Steven Benner, “that larger pools of random RNA emerged spontaneously without the gentle coaxing of a graduate student desiring a completed dissertation.”[82] In addition, researchers believe that even if RNA could have formed spontaneously, the spontaneous hydrolysis and other destructive conditions operational on the early Earth would have caused it to decompose.[2] Joyce and Orgel recommend that “…myth of a self-replicating RNA molecule that arose de novo from a soup of random polynucleotides. Not only is such a notion unrealistic in light of our current understanding of prebiotic chemistry, but it should strain the credulity of even an optimist’s view of RNA’s catalytic potential.”[83]

Francis Crick confirms that, “At present, the gap from the primal “soup” to the first RNA system capable of natural selection looks forbiddingly wide.”[84] Furthermore, RNA fails to perform all of the functions of DNA sufficiently to support replication and transcription of proteins. Consequently, Leslie Orgel pointed out the inability of the RNA world: “This scenario could have occurred, we noted, if prebiotic RNA had two properties not evident today: A capacity to replicate without the help of proteins and an ability to catalyze every step of protein synthesis.”[75] Orgel further acknowledged that, “The precise events giving rise to the RNA world remain unclear … investigators have proposed many hypotheses, but evidence in favor of each of them is fragmentary at best. The full details of how the RNA world, and life, emerged may not be revealed in the near future.” Consequently the RNA world reverie appears to be dreadfully hopeless.

DNA/Protein World Dilemma

The RNA world notion discussed in the previous section, claims that, in the beginning phases of evolution, RNA behaved as both template and catalyst. All existing biological organisms exhibit the partition of tasks between template and catalyst. In existing biological systems, the partition of tasks is an elemental property: DNA stores genetic information whereas proteins function as catalysts. However, scientists are struggling to answer major questions such as: how did the DNA/Protein world come about, why would such partition of tasks evolve in the RNA world, and which came first, DNA or Protein? Again, we find the ‘chicken and egg’ problem.

Proteins may seem superficially better than RNA as chemical catalysts due to their larger range of chemical moieties and structural flexibility. On the contrary, due to the nonexistence of mechanisms for template directed replication, proteins are greatly substandard to RNA for the storage of genetic information. Because of the absence of the 29-hydroxyl at its sugar moiety, as compared to RNA, DNA is usually not as much of a reactive molecule. Especially, DNA is significantly more resistant to hydrolysis than RNA[85], particularly in the presence of metal ions.[86] For this reason, time and again it is recommended that DNA has an edge over RNA as a means of genetic information storage.[87] Nevertheless, Forterre reported that the superior stability advantage of DNA could not account for the origin of DNA because the benefit of using DNA for information storage depends on the chance of evolving a longer genome, which in itself would not offer any direct selective advantage to the systems that included DNA.[88] There is also no apparent experimental confirmation indicating that DNA is substandard to RNA as a chemical catalyst.[89] The chemical properties of DNA do not inevitably support the conclusion that the function of DNA is limited to information storage. Takeuchi and his research group asked the question, “Given these considerations, we ask: What selective advantage could there be for an RNA-based evolving system to evolve an entity that is solely dedicated to the storage of genetic information, i.e., an entity that is functionally equivalent to DNA?”

The sequence of emergence of different types of biopolymers during primordial evolution is an extremely controversial issue.[90],[91] There is an impasse attached to both the cases: (1) proteins preceding RNA, and (2) RNA preceding proteins. In existing biological systems, DNA synthesis is fully reliant on RNA. For instance, the monomer units for DNA synthesis, 2’-deoxyribonucleotides, are produced by the alteration of ribonucleotides, and the primers utilized to start DNA polymerization are oligoribonucleotides. It is observed that the catalytic portion of the ribosome, which produces proteins, is made completely of RNA. This is the significant reason touted for proteins preceding RNA. If one accepts that RNA is an inferior and less flexible catalyst than proteins, then the immediate question would be: what is the selective pressure responsible for the evolution of RNA catalysts? Transitioning from RNA to DNA as the hereditary molecule significantly enhanced genomic steadiness. This is believed to improve the possibility that a given organism or molecule would be around long enough to reproduce. Transmission of the task of primary catalyst to proteins also presents major advantages. Both transitions provide understandable advantages to a ribo-organism, nonetheless in fundamentally different ways. Hence, both would manifest following different evolutionary pathways. If we presume RNA was the first of the three macromolecules, an unsolved dilemma is which came next, DNA or protein?

Primitive Cell – A Miniaturized Walled City at Work

Darwin suggested that algae, amoebae and other such simple living beings were blobs of protoplasm which might have just appeared in some warm little pond by the chance combination of chemicals. Darwinian ideology imagines that a small number of relatively effortless changes in this protoplasm could show the way to developmental alteration. Natural selection would make sure that better adaptation would be preserved. On the other hand, changes which led to poorer adaptation would die out. Scientists influenced by this ideology believe that natural processes produce complex life forms from simple ones, which in turn came from dead chemicals. Based on such a foundation, abiogenesis proclaims that the first life had arisen by a chance accumulation of chemicals. The same is evident from the statement of Julian Huxley, one of the most influential evolutionists, “Evolution, in the extended sense, can be defined as a directional and essentially irreversible process occurring in time, which in its course gives rise to an increase of variety and an increasingly high level of organization in its products. Our present knowledge indeed forces us to the view that the whole of reality is evolution – a single process of self transformation.” However, the advancements of microbiology have helped the scientists to look at life in a better way. Darwin’s portrait of organisms made of a small number of simple chemicals has given way to one of astounding complexity even in the simplest living entities. The ordinary E coli bacterium has not only miniature electric motors of exceptional efficiency, but also the equipment to fabricate, repair, maintain, operate and power them with an electricity generating mechanism.

Consequently, the notion of natural origin of primitive cells in the primordial earth is being severely challenged by the modern explosion of knowledge in microbiology and cellular biology. The issues attached to the ‘natural origin of life’ doctrine will not come to an end, even if one assumes that the necessary chemical building blocks were accessible in the primordial atmosphere. Any theory of ‘natural origin of life’ on Earth needs the practical description of plausible pathways for the conversion from complex prebiotic chemistry to simple biology, understood by evolutionists as the appearance of chemical accumulation capable of Darwinian evolution. The primitive cellular life requires a certain minimum number of systems, like (1) the means to transmit heredity (RNA, DNA, or something similar), (2) a mechanism to obtain energy to generate work (metabolic system), (3) an enclosure to hold and protect these components from the environment (cell membrane), and finally (4) a unique principle to connect all of these components together (appearance of first life). It is incredulous for evolutionists to believe that all of these four systems appeared simultaneously. Hence, the majority of followers of abiogenesis hypothesis are debating on the sequence of appearance of these events in the early earth. In the light of modern scientific advancements, the subsequent subsections illustrate the major hurdles in the pathway connecting chemical building blocks and the primitive cells.

Centre of unabated conflict: ‘metabolism first’ or ‘replication first’?

The origin of life theory should clarify the origin of the distinctive phenomena which maintains life, such as reproduction, metabolism, and their corollaries (cell division, information carriers, genetic code, growth, maintenance, response to external stimuli, etc.). Reproduction is undoubtedly crucial for the continuation of any form of life. For this reason, evolutionists believe some form of molecular replication must have been started spontaneously in the prebiotic environment as a simple, entirely physicochemical form of reproduction. On the other hand, cellular metabolism is understood as a set of chemical reactions that occur in biological systems to maintain life. This vital process helps organisms to grow and reproduce, maintain, and respond to their environments. The metabolism process is classified in two different classes, catabolism and anabolism. Catabolism process produces useful energy and the anabolism process uses that energy to build components of cells such as proteins and nucleic acids. Through metabolic pathways, in a number of steps one chemical converts itself into another chemical by a sequence of enzymes. Enzymes are essential for the metabolic processes, since enzymes permit biological systems to make necessary reactions that require energy. Hence, some researchers believe in the supremacy of metabolism[12],13],[15]-[19] and others assume the supremacy of reproduction.[11],[21],[72],[92],[93] Once again, scientists confront the same difficulty, ‘‘which came first, the chicken (metabolism) or the egg (reproduction)?’’

The contest between proponents of ‘metabolism first’ and ‘replication first’ persists unabated with both speculations subject to criticism. The ‘metabolism first’ speculation has been criticized by some of the prominent researchers in the field based on the judgment that major steps in the construction of such a metabolic scheme are exceedingly doubtful.[21],[92],[94],[95] The ‘replication first’ notion is also challenged, considering the observation that the de novo manifestation of oligonucleotides is questionable, and that there is no apparent pathway from an RNA world to the existing dual world of proteins and nucleic acids.[77],[96]

How a primitive cell developed its skin?

Abiogenesis hypothesis must also supply the means and pathways for primitive cell growth and division, as well as the mechanism by which cells could take up nutrients from their environment. All existing biological cells are membrane enclosed workspaces. The cell membrane is the container which holds a cell together. It manages to retain an internal milieu different from its environment within which genetic materials can reside and metabolic activities can take place without being lost to the environment. Existing cell membranes on earth are made of composite mixtures of amphiphilic molecules like phospholipids, sterols, and several other lipids, plus miscellaneous proteins that carry out transport and enzymatic works. Modern biological membranes are pretty secure under different environments and can tolerate a wide range of temperatures, pH, and salt concentrations. These biological membranes are exceptionally fine permeability barriers, so that present cells have comprehensive power over the intake of nutrients and the evacuation of wastes all the way through the dedicated channel, pump and pore proteins implanted in their membranes. Besides, immensely intricate biochemical machinery is mandatory for the growth and division of the cell membrane in a cell cycle. How a structurally simple primitive cell could accomplish all these essential membrane functions in primordial earth is a difficult problem to address. As compared to the research efforts on replications and metabolism, the starting point of primitive membranes is one of the most neglected fields in origin of life investigations. While the unrelenting disagreements in abiogenesis have been around the ‘metabolism first’ versus ‘replication first’ issue, there have also been competing thoughts for the origin of the cell membrane. We will ascertain below that the attempts to produce biological membranes under primordial earth are also suffering from multifaceted unsolved problems.

The experiments of Oparin’s[16],[97] and Fox[98] on coacervates and proteinoid respectively were accepted as a significant historical step in the field of prebiotic synthesis of cell membranes. However, neither coacervates nor proteinoid microspheres have a factual boundary membrane that can perform as a selective permeability barrier. Coacervates and proteinoid are prominently detailed in present high school biology textbooks, even though they are essentially unstable, lacking the capacity to supply a permeability barrier, and incapable of carrying metabolism. Consequently, the present concentration of research has transferred from colloid phenomena and protein chemistry to nucleic acids.[99],[100] Researchers proclaim that amphiphilic boundary structures contributed to the appearance of life on earth in primordial conditions.[101]-[103] As an expansion of this view, some scientists suggest a ‘Lipid World’ situation as an early evolutionary step in the appearance of cellular life on Earth. Moreover, some researchers have proposed that lipid membranes may have a hereditary potential because the majority membranes are produced from other membranes but not created de novo.[104],[105] However, these approaches have not received much attention, most likely due to the comparative scarcity of experimental evidence. Studies also claim that, in the middle of the abundance of the molecular variety anticipated to be originated in prebiotic Earth, lipid-like molecules have a discrete property. That is: a capability to carry out spontaneous aggregation to form droplets, micelles, bilayers and vesicles contained by an aqueous phase through entropy-driven hydrophobic exchanges.[106],[107] However, the concentration of biomolecules in the aqueous primordial Earth has been expected to be roughly 1 micromolar,[108] essentially insufficient for typical covalent chemical reactions indispensable for formation of hydrophobic and amphiphilic molecules.

Even if one ignores the difficulties in connection with the production of amphiphilic molecules in primordial earth, still we are left with several technical problems on the path of prebiotic synthesis of membranes. The physical and chemical properties of aqueous surroundings can considerably slow down self-assembly of amphiphilic molecules, perhaps significantly restricting the environments in which cellular life first emerged. For example, temperature significantly controls the stability of vesicle membranes. It has been suggested that the primitive life forms were hyperthermophiles that originated in geothermal regions such as hydrothermal vents[109] or deep subterranean hot aquifers.[110] However, under these conditions, the intermolecular forces that stabilize self-assembled molecular systems are relatively weak. Hence, such locations are not suitable for lipid bilayer membranes to assemble. There are also several similar restrictions attached with the ionic composition and pH of the environment proposed for the origin of life.[111],[112]

To escape similar impractical situations, many researchers are speculating that amphiphilic compounds existed in carbonaceous meteorites. These compounds might have self-assembled into membranous vesicles under suitable circumstances and were latter delivered to the early Earth from outer space by meteoritic and cometary infall.[113],[114] Even though lipid-like materials were claimed to be detected in the Murchison meteorite,[114],[115] successive research suggested that those compounds were contaminants, rather than endogenous materials.[116] The fabrication of appropriate biomolecules in the interstellar medium is of no significance to the origin of life unless these biomolecules can be delivered unharmed to habitable planetary surfaces. The major question would be: can these noble biomolecules withstand the brutal, scorching delivery to a planetary surface? Even if in some way membrane building blocks landed safely through extraterrestrial resources, decomposition through hydrolysis, photochemical degradation, and pyrolysis would have drastically diminished the quantity of such materials.[34] Hence, we remain with the unanswered question: how did a primitive cell develop its skin?

What collectively linked the components in the first living cell?

Despite the massive advancements in the field of cellular biology, the changeover from microscopic chemical mechanisms to the macroscopically evident emergent properties that illustrate life remains unanswered. Even if creation of an enclosed vesicle is achieved, it does not assure functionality of a primitive cell. In order to be practical as a mechanism implicated in abiogenesis, membranes must be linked with all the materials indispensable to instigate life. A membrane must be capable of transporting material in and out of the boundary. Some type of transport system for nutrients and wastes would be compulsory to uphold the metabolism of the primitive cell. Moreover, both a primordial replicator and metabolic system must be interconnected in the primitive cell. Hence, such an arrangement would manipulate, generate and release the necessary chemicals during each cycle. However, it is uncertain what sort of equilibrium would ultimately need to be accomplished to make a transition from chemical system to a biological system. In a purely physicochemical sense, if a stable membrane is synthesized, passive transport systems can be easily arranged. However, such a provision would robotically attain equilibrium, making continuation of further transport impractical.[117]

Even insignificant unicellular living entities are self-guided and are utilize millions of special molecules dedicated for specific responsibilities within a functional cell. Advanced cellular biology now confirms that a functional cell is made up of a sophisticated network of co-dependent biomolecules. Many of these biomolecules are only observed in biological cells and not anywhere else in nature. Robert Shapiro stated in one recent publication in Nature,[118] “In June 2005, a group of international scientists clustered around a small, near-boiling pool in a volcanic region of Siberia. Biochemist David Deamer took a sample of the waters, then added to the pool a concoction of organic compounds that probably existed 4 billion years ago on the early Earth. One was a fatty acid, a component of soap, which his laboratory studies suggested had a significant role in the origin of life.

Over several days, Deamer took many more samples. He wished to see whether the chemical assembly process that he had observed in his laboratory, which eventually produced complex ‘protocell’ structures, could also take place in a natural setting. The answer was a resounding no. The clays and metal ions present in the Siberian pool blocked the chemical interactions.”

Hence, those claims appear perverse which suggest a prebiotic existence of these biomolecules, which are only created by life. Such stubborn ideologists ignore the fact that biological systems display astonishing accomplishments not because of an exceptional form of chemistry, but because a conscious creature can control chemical processes and subordinate them to a purpose intrinsic to the self-guided living being. Scientists are only making futile attempts at the moment to synthesize separately all the essential biomolecules by purely physicochemical means. The further and more complicated steps towards synthesizing functional cells are certainly beyond their thinking. A purely physicochemical transition from chemistry to biology is impossible.

Recent experiments have already revealed a biological system containing in excess of 7 million protein sequences and over 50,000 protein structures.[119] Rapidly advancing cellular biology, especially metagenomics, assures that countless further molecular components are in the pipeline to be revealed. Biologists must give careful thought towards the principle that unites these large bio-molecular networks. It is suggested by scientists that the potential resources of energy for primitive cells are heat, chemical, and light energies.[34] However, the major impasse is: how can unguided physical energies manufacture a state of such massive complexity and specificity as a living cell? Srila Bhaktisvarupa Damodara Maharaja (Dr. T.D. Singh) once asked molecular evolutionist Stanley Miller at one of his lectures on the origins of life at the University of California, Irvine, “Suppose you were given all the necessary cellular chemicals. Could you create a living cell in the test-tube?” Miller’s immediate answer was, “I do not know.”[120] Sripad Bhakti Madhava Puri Maharaja, Ph.D. further made it more overt in an online discussion forum, “Anyone can take a single cell and put it into a sterile test tube with all the necessary ingredients to sustain its life. If you then puncture that cell with a sterile needle, the contents of the cell will pour out into the solution. Even if you wait for hundreds of years, life will not be generated from those original biochemicals of the cell. This tells us that life is not simply cellular in nature. The life principle is the apriori formative cause of the cell or the body of any multi-cellular creature. We can see this in action by watching any seed or egg or embryonic zygote go through its development to maturity. Science cannot explain this development by simple reference to chemical activity.”[121] Hence, to seek the truth, sincere thoughtful scientists should make an attempt to understand the fundamental nature of life and thereby should reject the tradition of producing endless reductionistic speculation under the banner of the chemical evolution of life.

Future Research Suggestions to Prevail Over the Fundamental Mistake

Biology is misconceived as an amalgamation of physics and chemistry

What is the most fundamental particle that our universe made up of? The reductionistic school has not yet figured that out. In the past, the atom was considered the most fundamental indivisible unit. However, later it was found to be made up of three particles: electron, proton and neutron. These days scientists are talking about further finer subatomic particles. Hence, there is serious doubt about the prospect of scientists settling down to a lasting finish regarding the most fundamental particle that our universe made of. Moreover, from the most fundamental particle (if ever scientists can manage to find one) to the functional primitive cell level, life forms handle extreme parallels and interactive courses of actions over several orders of magnitude of size. Without a proper understanding of the life principle, biologists captured by the ghost of the naturalistic origin of life believe that they can explain this scale of complexity through purely physicochemical means. Biologists conclude that it doesn’t matter what takes place within the organisms, for they can reduce all of that to chemistry and physics.

Using physics and chemistry, scientists try to explain the building of matter from atoms and molecules. The atomic relations are illustrated by chemistry. On the other hand, the lump of matter produced from an accumulation of atoms is explained by laws of physics. Based on this, biologists may argue that the whole matter of which a life form is composed does fit into the dominion of physics and chemistry. Based on this impression, they visualize that the protein–protein, protein–DNA or other bimolecular interactions within a living cell are merely the outcome of physical processes. However, anyone can understand the distinction between living (animate) objects and non-living (inanimate) objects through a simple observation of their movements. The trajectory of motion of an inanimate object like a satellite can be predicted in terms of laws of mechanics. However, the motion of an animate object like a bird cannot be understood with the same principle. This is because an animate object is self guided. To stress the same idea we would like to present one more example: Newton’s first law of motion is applicable to a marble (inanimate object), but it cannot be applied to a tortoise (animate object). The motion of inanimate objects is determined by an external force. We need an external force to move a marble at rest. On the other hand, animate objects display a self driven spontaneous movement. A tortoise at rest can decide when it wants to move and no law in physics can determine that decision. By a simple observation of an organisms’ growth, irritability, reproduction, metabolism, etc. one can make out remarkable distinctions between animate and inanimate objects. Hence, biologists must inquire about the deeper question: what automates the animate or living objects.

Following a reductionistic ideology, scientists in general invent novel laws using either a top-down or a bottom-up approach. External observation is the beginning point in the top-down approach. Scientists by intuition envision a set of elements, a set of relations and a mathematically describable structure (equation) to unite the two. Elements are intertwined into a mental map, and experiments are premeditated to validate or invalidate the model. A law is established when the experimental observations repetitively substantiate the model under a set of different environmental conditions. The top-down approach (from imagination to observation) is frequently used in physics. Newton’s laws of motion are the examples, which are developed following a top-down approach. On the other hand, the bottom-up approach starts by accumulating data on each and every element. Properties of components are experimentally examined in segregation and in alliance with other interrelated elements. Data collection is done under different environmental conditions and patterns are studied. To confirm observations, experiments are repeated to determine consistent patterns. A law manifests when there is a substantiation of a consistent link among interacting components in different environmental conditions. Both bottom-up (from observation to imagination) and top-down (from imagination to observation) approaches are commonly used in chemistry.

Searching for a consistent pattern is the common means in both top-down and bottom-up approaches. In non-biological systems we observe a consistent behavior of elementary particles, which is not the case in a biological system. Cellular interactions are inconsistent and irreproducible.[122] A living cell is a milieu of pure dynamic activity.[123] Due to this reason we cannot apply top-down and bottom-up approaches to develop laws for a biological system. We may observe some consistent patterns of behaviors in living organisms. For example, by listening to the clap of our hands a bird close by will certainly fly away with a reliable degree of predictability. However, it is impossible to explain this repeatable pattern in terms of a bird microarray profile before and after the clap. The modern researchers should recognize the fact that the molecular level explanation is undoubtedly insufficient to elucidate the complex activities of living organisms.

21^st century biology – View of organism as a sentient system

A bottom-up approach as discussed before was used by Mendel to deduce the laws of inheritance in biology.[124] Mendel attempted to provide a molecular reason for the inheritance of traits, which is now known as the concept of genes. The modern synthesis of Darwinian evolution along with Mendelian genetics is known as Neo-Darwinism. Following in Mendel’s footsteps modern biologists attempted a total reduction of an organism to its genes. They are under the impression that knowledge of genes is the knowledge of the organism. However, it is a fact unnoticed in modern science that Mendel’s genetics meticulously overlooks vital features of the biological system, or life principle. Mendelian genetics attempts to provide an explanation of an organism by treating it as a combination of evidently distinct, unchanging traits. It does not address the developmental potential of the biological system, which allows it to interact with its environment and alter itself depending on varying conditions. Modern genetics fails to incorporate the plastic propensities of a living organism. Moreover, Mendel used the traits “yellow seed” or “violet flower” etc., which are nothing but abstraction from the whole (pea plant). Mendel envisaged the responsible factors for inheritance in the form of inanimate objects. Like mechanical objects, these factors don’t have any internal relations. They have a superficial external relation. Hence these discrete entities cannot explain the inherent process of transformation that occurs in the plant right from germination of the seed until the death of the plant.

With the advancement of molecular biology the concept of chromosome, DNA, RNA, gene, etc came into the picture. Biologists believe that the gene is made up of a specific number and sequence of nucleotides. Furthermore, they consider that the sequence of nucleotide reveals the message of a gene. The central dogma of molecular biology was first formulated by Francis Crick in 1958.[125] This central dogma attempts to provide a mechanism by which genes could decide traits through protein synthesis. This wishful thinking of rigid mechanism for a biological system can be sensed from the words of Crick: “a boundless optimism that the basic concepts involved were rather simple and probably much the same in all living things.”[126] It is a vision of oversimplification of the transfer of sequential information in an organism. According to this concept, sequential information in biological systems can only flow from the gene to the proteins and it cannot be transferred back from protein to either protein or gene. Following this idea, geneticists proclaim that by the assistance of RNA, structure of DNA can decide the structure of proteins.

Central Dogma: DNA ? RNA ? Protein (Enzyme) ? Trait

However, soon biologists recognized that the transmission of biochemical specificity within the cell is fundamentally circular rather than linear. The ‘chicken and egg’ problem became the biggest challenge to this dogma.[127] It is observed that RNA is altered by enzymes prior to its information being translated into protein. Hence, there is no one to one communication between DNA sequence and proteins.[128] Researchers further confirmed that genes also switch their positions. Additionally, based on the new position of the gene, its function might alter. Consequently, the position effect on genes revealed that genes are not as rigid to their context as had been contemplated.[129] The dynamic nature of genetic functioning is further confirmed from the works of Barbara McClintock. Her studies revealed that, the nature of emergence of different traits are greatly influenced by the movement of the gene.[130] Genes are considered to be located in the chromosomes. To come up with an explanatory model, by considering DNA as the material foundation of the genes, some researchers concentrate on the structural aspect of DNA. To construct the double-helix representation of DNA, its x-ray crystallography pictures are necessary. To achieve this, they place DNA in a crystalline form to produce such pictures. However, it is an unrealistic conception of the real scenario. DNA does not undergo crystallization in the watery environment of a living cell. In an organism, DNA is constantly constructed and broken down during the process of cell division, growth and death. Thus a few biologists have now begun to believing that a gene cannot be conceived as a mere molecule located in the cell. Thus, they think that the gene is a function that a cell has to achieve. Hence genes cannot be studied as objects or as molecules separate from the whole organism.[131] A reconsideration in modern genetics is essential and biologists should overthrow the dogmatic believe that an organism can be reduced to its genes.

Reductionists misconstrue the organism by identifying it as the organs within the organism, the tissues inside the organs, the cells contained by the tissues, cell nucleus manufacturing the chromosomes, various substances in the chromosomes and finally the DNA. In such an approach they lose the context of the whole which is irreducible to simply the component parts. A biological system is a dynamic whole and is not a mere accumulation of parts. It is an inseparable unit of dynamic participants. Modern biology is an exceedingly valuable means to attain narrow, nevertheless very precise knowledge. Considering the boundaries of this limited approach biologists should overcome the habit of conceiving biological systems as a mere substances. They must know precisely the answer for the question: where does the real biology begin? In 1944, directed by the question ‘what is life?’, Schrödinger explained that biological systems cannot be nourished on energy as are artificial machines.[132] Considering the energy, matter and thermodynamic imbalances offered by the surrounding atmosphere, Schrödinger claimed that consuming negative entropy is a central necessity for the existence of life. Recent findings in cellular biology and advanced research on the behavior of bacterial colonies confirm that besides Schrödinger’s criterion of ‘consumption of negative entropy’, ‘consumption of latent information’ is an additional basic necessity of Life.[133] Hence all biological systems have to sense the environment and carry out internal information processing for surviving on latent information rooted in the complexity of their environment. Astonishingly, insignificant bacteria can effortlessly transfer inorganic substances into organic matter. To achieve this task bacteria employ chemical communication to create hierarchically structured colonies, made of 10⁹–10¹³ bacteria each.[134]-[136] Through cooperative action, they are capable of using any accessible resource of energy and imbalances in the environment to manufacture the spontaneous path of entropy creation. Thus they produce life sustaining organic molecules for themselves and for the usage of all other organisms. The essential elements of cognition in such sentient biological systems can take into account the interpretation of chemical messages, distinction between internal and external information, and also the ability to discriminate between self and non-self.[133] These cognitive acts of bacterial colonies include coordinated gene expression, regulated cell differentiation and division of responsibilities.[137],[138] Communally, bacteria can collect information from the environment and from other organisms, interpret the information in a meaningful way, build up common knowledge and learn from past experience. The bacterial colony works very similarly to a multicellular organism[139] or a social community.[140] Due to high complexity and plasticity, the colony can exhibit superior adaptability to any encountered growth circumstances.[138] In order to attain the appropriate balance of individuality and sociality, bacteria communicate by means of a large collection of biochemical agents.[141] Each individual in the colony also possesses complicated intracellular signaling mechanisms which include signal transduction networks[142] and genetic language.[143] These capabilities are employed to produce built-in meaning for contextual interpretations of the chemical messages and for creating suitable responses.[138] Biochemical messages are also utilized to exchange meaningful information throughout the colonies of diverse species, and also with new organisms.[141] Ben Jacob and his research group thus state that, “…we reason that bacterial chemical conversations also include assignment of contextual meaning to words and sentences (semantic) and conduction of dialogue (pragmatic) – the fundamental aspects of linguistic communication. Using these advanced linguistic capabilities, bacteria can lead rich social lives for the group benefit. They can develop collective memory, use and generate common knowledge, develop group identity, recognize the identity of other colonies, learn from experience to improve themselves, and engage in group decision-making, an additional surprising social conduct that amounts to what should most appropriately be dubbed as social intelligence.” Ben Jacob and team also outlined how intra-cellular self-organization jointly with genome plasticity and membrane dynamics might, in principle, offer the intra-cellular mechanisms required for these fundamental cognitive functions. They stated that, “In regard to intra-cellular processes, Schrödinger postulated that new physics is needed to explain the conversation of the genetically stored information into a functioning cell. At present, his ontogenetic dilemma is generally perceived to be solved and is attributed to a lack of knowledge when it was proposed. So it is widely accepted that there is no need for some unknown laws of physics to explain cellular ontogenetic development. We take a different view and in Schrödinger’s foot steps suggest that yet unknown physics principles of self-organization in open systems are missing for understanding how to assemble the cell’s component into an information-based functioning “machine”.”[133]

The present engineering tactic is to construct the mechanical systems following a pre-designed plan to achieve fashionable and financially viable ways of satisfying the predetermined preferred objectives.[144] Such machines can execute a narrow range of definite odd jobs by connecting the parts that are accurately pre-designed and manufactured based on a particular plan. The design plan aims to achieve the maximum accuracy by utilizing minimum essential parts, without any scope for randomness and errors. Although such an approach is effective and prevailing in modern engineering applications, it cannot be used to assemble cognitive biological systems (living cells or organisms). Biological systems are excessively complex. Participants in a biological system are flexible, with a high degree of randomness, and might be uneconomical from the current engineering prospective. Nonetheless, scientists in the recent past began realizing that authoritative properties exist that provide the necessary complexity and allow biological systems to execute novel jobs as necessary. These special tasks are unattainable by existing engineering means.[138] To comprehend properly life and its origin, scientists have to overcome this reductionistic mindset. At the moment they are under the false notion that biological systems are also governed by the same laws of logic that are applicable to mechanical and chemical systems. It is therefore essential to properly grasp the distinction between mechanical, chemical and biological objects. What is the difference between a rock, a salt and a living cell? Sripad Bhakti Madhava Puri Maharaja, Ph.D. has given a cogent presentation of this difference in his article “The logic of life”.[123] In conclusion of this present section we are presenting those differences in a tabular format below.

Conclusions

A biological system is not a machine-like a gathering of superficially assembled parts. A serious attempt is very much essential towards a new comprehensive understanding of the concept of the biological system as a whole. In a biological system the participants are dedicated to the whole, and the whole too, survives in each of its participants. As explained above, many contemporary researchers have already started recognizing each organism as a sentient unit or organic whole. This can be understood as the scientific confirmation of the ancient Eastern Vedantic philosophical concept of atma, Aristotle’s concept of Soul and Hegel’s explanation of Concept. Vedantic scholars, Aristotle, Kant (using the argument of teleology) and Hegel all claimed that biological systems (organisms) are distinct from inanimate objects (mechanical and chemical systems).[123] Purpose and meaning are inseparable aspects of life. We cannot expect those in dead molecules. We don’t give any moral and ethical importance to an accumulation of dead molecules, but such a consideration is a must to the life principle. Hence, abiogenesis is an insult to the life force. There are several ethical problems attached to abiogenesis.[145] Scientific recognition of sentience in the organisms has seriously dented the reductionistic picture of the organism as a mere accumulation of biochemicals. Advanced scientific research is continuously providing an abundance of new scientific data. However, all of that has failed to provide any tangible elucidation as to what actually constitutes consciousness and what are its factual characteristics. Abiogenesis, Darwinism and post-Darwinism do not have sufficient tools to accommodate cognitive phenomena in a sentient biological system and hence they do not have very promising prospects. Therefore, both origin and evolution of life must be rewritten on the basis of sentience. Objective evolution is a misconception that biologists must overcome and should instead find the proper tools to explain the evolution from the realm of sentience. The book Subjective Evolution of Consciousness[146] composed by Srila Bhakti Raksak Sridhar Dev-Goswami Maharaja will be an appropriate guide for this endeavor.

The participants in a biological system come into view or grow out of the germinal organism and reveal the manner in which the biological system as a whole relates to its environment. This establishes that life can only come from life. Moreover, evidently each species of life produces their unique biochemicals. The inanimate objects (dead chemicals) don’t display sentience. Sentience is a unique property observed only in biological systems (animated objects). This in turn establishes the fact that there must be an original sentient being from whom the life forms and their related matter have emerged. This is also a confirmation of the Vedantic conclusion depicted in the second aphorism of the Vedanta sutra and its commentary in the first verse of Srimad Bhagavatam: janmady asya yato ‘nvayad itaratas cartheshv abhijnah svarat – the origin of everything is “abhijnah svarat” – the unitary Supreme Cognizant Being. These interesting advancements in modern science are leading us towards an authentic scientific understanding of the reality of nature and origin of life. For the benefit of humanity, sincere scientifically minded scholars should overthrow the misconceived reductionistic ideology of deep rooted materialism, and should carry forward further studies on these purely scientific, rational explanatory viewpoints.

Acknowledgements

This E-book is a humble offering to our divine spiritual master Srila Bhaktisvarupa Damodara Maharaja (Dr. T.D. Singh) on the occasion of his fifth annual disappearance anniversary festival on Vijayadasami (6^th October, 2011). This humble offering is only made possible by the divine force of the affectionate guidance and continuous encouragements we are receiving from our Siksha Gurudev Sripad Bhakti Madhava Puri Maharaja, Ph.D. We also pray for the blessings of our divine masters Srila Bhakti Sundar Govinda Dev-Goswami Maharaja and Srila Bhakti Nirmal Acharya Maharaja so that this humble attempt may attain its actual goal. We sincerely acknowledge the editorial support provided by Sripad Matura Nath Prabhu, Sripad Brajeshwara Prabhu, Sripad Jagadananda Prabhu and Sripad Purushottama Jagannatha Prabhu, Ph.D.

References

[146] Sridhar, B.R. (1989). Subjective evolution of consciousness – The play of the sweet Absolute. Published by Sri Chaitanya Saraswat Math. Refer: http://scsmath.com/books/Subjective_Evolution.pdf

Visitors:

Sripad Bhakti Madhava Puri

Darwinism, or the original theory of evolution proposed by Darwin 150 years ago in his Origin of Species, in which he introduced the idea of natural selection, was laid to rest about a half century ago when it was succeeded by the neo-Darwinian theory involving genetic mutation and natural selection, also known as the modern synthesis. Since then an endless stream of textbooks, courses, media presentations and “genetic toolkits”[1] have been used to indoctrinate students and the public with these ideas causing many to give up their religious conviction in God or the soul as integral to their understanding of life.However, with the advancement of science, especially in the field of biology, more detailed knowledge of the genes and genome have revealed a far more complex dynamic relation between the genome and phoneme and its environment than can be explained by appeal to simple genetic mechanisms. This has been a dawning realization among biologists during the last few decades, but the “evolution industry” (Suzan Mazur, The Altenberg 16: An Exposé Of The Evolution Industry (2010)) has kept the public in the dark about the real scientific overthrow of the modern evolutionary synthesis. Now all of that is about to change. 

Scientist were invited to attend a 2008 conference in Altenberg, Austria, to address this critical junction: “The challenge seems clear to us: how do we make sense, conceptually, of the astounding advances in biology since the 1940s, when the Modern Synthesis was taking shape? Not only we have witnessed the molecular revolution, from the discovery of the structure of DNA to the genomic era, we are also grappling with the increasing feeling – for example as reflected by an almost comical proliferation of “-omics,” that we just don’t have the theoretical and analytical tools necessary to make sense of the bewildering diversity and complexity of living organisms.”

A senior investigator at the National Center for Biotechnology Information, National Library of Medicine, and National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, has published two peer reviewed papers on the current status of the “modern evolutionary synthesis,” wherein he states, “The edifice of the modern synthesis has crumbled, apparently, beyond repair.” [Eugene Koonin, The Origin at 150: Is a new evolutionary synthesis in sight?" Trends in Genetics, 25(11), November 2009, pp. 473-475] and [Eugene Koonin,  Darwinian evolution in the light of genomics, Nucleic Acids Research, 37(4), 2009, pp. 1011-1034].

From the abstract of his second paper: “Comparative genomics and systems biology offer unprecedented opportunities for testing central tenets of evolutionary biology formulated by Darwin in the Origin of Species in 1859 and expanded in the Modern Synthesis 100 years later. Evolutionary-genomic studies show that natural selection is only one of the forces that shape genome evolution and is not quantitatively dominant, whereas non-adaptive processes are much more prominent than previously suspected. Major contributions of horizontal gene transfer and diverse selfish genetic elements to genome evolution undermine the Tree of Life concept.[2] An adequate depiction of evolution requires the more complex concept of a network or ‘forest’ of life. There is no consistent tendency of evolution towards increased genomic complexity, and when complexity increases, this appears to be a non adaptive consequence of evolution under weak purifying selection rather than an adaptation.” 

The concept that natural selection provides the foundation for evolutionary change has long been challenged for its failure to explain how different forms arises in nature, but only how they may be favored once they do arise. Through the work of scientists like Motoo Kimura, Tomoko Ohta [Theoretical aspects of population genetics, Motoo Kimura and Tomoko Ohta (1971)] and others, it has been concluded both theoretically and empirically that natural selection has little or no effect on the vast majority of the genomes of most living organisms.

In this regard, Dr. Koonin adds (see above): “There is no consistent tendency of evolution towards increased genomic complexity, and when complexity increases, this appears to be a non adaptive consequence of evolution under weak purifying selection rather than an adaptation.” Purifying evolution refers to the cell’s coordinated elimination of harmful mutations. 

Allen MacNeill [teaching biology at Cornell University, Ithaca, NY] writes on his blog[3]: “Kimura, Ohta, Jukes, and Crow dropped a monkey wrench into the “engine” at the heart of the modern synthesis — natural selection — and then Gould and Lewontin finished the job with their famous paper on The Spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian Paradigm.” [4]

Suzan Mazur, laying down the gauntlet recently wrote [5]: “Let’s begin with the facts: The days of evolutionary science being an exclusive old boys club are over. The public is a party to the discourse now and knows the emphasis in evolutionary science is on VISION and not textbook rules. And while Rutgers philosopher Jerry Fodor’s and University of Arizona cognitive scientist Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini’s new book, “What Darwin Got Wrong.” does not showcase amateur evolutionary theories, the authors do indeed reach out to the public “hop[ing] to convince” through Fodor’s sublime ability to argue a point and Piattelli-Palmarini’s wit, charm and biophysics savvy that we as a people have got to move on because the central story of the theory of evolution — natural selection — is wrong in a way that “can’t be repaired”. They are careful not to say what the public also knows, i.e., that a critical mass of people is simply tired of Darwin’s vision. It’s out of vogue.”

And, as if to add yet another nail to the coffin: “Unless the discourse around evolution is opened up to scientific perspectives beyond Darwinism, the education of generations to come is at risk of being sacrificed for the benefit of a dying theory.” – Stuart Newman ( professor of cell biology and anatomy at New York Medical College in Valhalla, NY) [6]

It was Darwin, himself who explained how he should be buried: “If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.” [7]

Suzan Mazur writes, “Stuart Newman’s now got a seductive theory about the origin of form of all 35 or so animal phyla–”it happened abruptly” not gradually, roughly 600 million years ago via a “pattern language”–which serves as the centerpiece of the “Extended Synthesis.”" [8]

While what is being called the “Extended Synthesis” does not outright dispense with natural selection and gene mutations, it subordinates them to minor roles. And while the concept of evolution itself is certainly not yet rejected by these scientists, the gradual march of science is demonstrating how scientific understanding is constantly subject to error and revision because of its inherently finite, incomplete view of reality.

In order to assuage the feelings of the Darwinian ideologues like Richard Dawkins, Eugenie Scott of the National Center for Science Education in the US, and others the term “expanded synthesis,” is being promoted with the assurance that neo-Darwinian mechanisms are still being brought into the picture, although in a subordinate way, in order to ease their transition into what is not only a change in thinking about life, but a change in how to think about life in a non-mechanistic, dynamic, and holistic way, e.g. Complexity Philosophy’ [9]  

Vedantic science does not suffer the fate of finitistic science but has  proposed for millennia that the cause of the diversity of species is due to the underlying variety of conscious living entities that manifest such bodies as indicated by theistic Samkhya philosophy. Modern science has not yet progressed to the finer level of understanding that requires advancement beyond a purely materialistic ontology. It must be properly appreciated that Vedantic knowledge is also systematic, scientific and rational but requires a different epistemic-ontological grounding than the impersonal/materialist paradigm assumes.  

And it is condescending to think that the ancient cultures were somehow more primitive, mythological, or somehow less informed about nature and reality than modern scientists. The chronological conceit of authors like Jean Gebser, Brian Swmimme and others think modern man to be superior to all previous civilizations that they know of based on a narrow materialist, Eurocentric education and the hegemony that the history of civilizations from that perspective has gained. Of course, there are civilizations mentioned in the Vedas that they simply have no knowledge of or they consider mythological. Nonetheless, their ideas are simply not true when considered from the conscious basis upon which reality is grounded according to Vedic understanding, from which a strong case may be made for their superior advancement. Much evidence of those civilizations has been lost through the course of history but what remains in the form of sacred literature has never been excelled.

Descartes laid the philosophical groundwork for the modern scientific period by separating subjective cognition from objective bodies, thereby also dividing epistemology from ontology reducing knowing to indifferent “observation.” This is the perspective of consciousness and its object, of which material science only imperfectly studies the object. In reality these two are not separated but dialectically related and sublated in the higher comprehending original unity of self-consciousness. Physical scientists fail to study these higher categories of reality and are therefore left with an incomplete understanding of a mere superficial nature that is inadequate to comprehend the core truth.  

But scientific, rational inquiry will not stop until a comprehensive idea is reached that is coherent with the full range of our knowledge of life. That spectrum of knowledge is not circumscribed merely by chemistry, physics and mathematics. ThusVedanta-sutra advises, that you will have to continue your search, athatho brahma jijnasa, until you reach brahma, the underlying spiritual source, janmady asy yatah, the fountainhead where all inquiry will reach its purpose. Then beyond knowledgeBhagavatam will guide us to the ultimate search - raso vai sah,  the search for our highest fulfillment, sweetness and love.

References:

Visitors:

Professor Werner Arber (right), a Nobel Laureate and Emeritus Professor of Molecular Biology at the University of Basel, Switzerland, greets Srila Bhaktisvarupa Damodara Maharaja (Dr. T. D. Singh).

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This is an excerpt of the dialogue between Professor Werner Arber and Srila Bhaktisvarupa Damodara Maharaja (Dr. T. D. Singh) on October 12, 2001 at University of Basel, Switzerland.

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Srila Bhaktisvarupa Damodara Maharaja (Dr. T. D. Singh): While looking into some of the literatures, I find that some of your thoughts regarding life and its origin are very interesting. Your view is different from most of the other molecular biologists and evolutionary chemists. I have been waiting for an opportunity to discuss with you some of the scientific and philosophical questions about life and I feel very happy that we are meeting now.

First of all, molecular evolutionists[1] around the globe are trying very hard to simulate the atmospheric chemical reactions in the hope of generating various chemical steps going from simple to complex biomolecules in the laboratory. They hope that this type of research may lead to the production of a primordial living cell in the laboratory.

However, it seems to me that these studies may not be so necessary because we already have the know-how and techniques to isolate practically all the biomolecules from existing living bodies. Hence, we can start with these ready-made biomolecules instead of starting from simpler molecules at immense expense of time, manpower and finances. Somehow or the other if we can assemble these biomolecules in a reaction flask it could be possible to tell, whether or not life is a product of the combination of these biomolecules. Chemical evolutionists often claim that given a cosmic time scale or a long time span, life could generate spontaneously from the assembly of these molecules. However, if we can find a super-catalyst or a super-enzyme, then the problem of a long time span will be solved. That would be more reasonable than doing research on how small molecules would become big molecules, for example, from amino acids to protein molecules, which in turn might or might not lead to the first primordial living cell. Scientists in this field can design some research work on how to find some special enzymes[2] in order to accelerate these chemical reactions. I would appreciate your opinion in this regard.

Professor Werner Arber: Of course, we can accelerate the chemical reactions by having appropriate enzymes. But the manifestation of life is much deeper than that. For me, I think the mystery of life is still to conceive how these organic molecules, which are already similar or equal to what we know today to represent components of organic life, come together such that some living primordial cell may become functioning. This, I don’t understand. So, that is a difficult problem. In addition, I think that life could be beyond the assembly of biomolecules. For a number of years I had concentrated on exploring molecular evolution, and I had also raised questions on the origin of life which is of wide interest. But, I have given up trying to find answer to these latter questions. I know how difficult it is. However, many scientists still think that the properties of matter, organic molecules, are such that life could be a probable event. I guess the question is: how probable will that be?

“I think that life could be beyond the assembly of biomolecules.”
– Professor Werner Arber

Srila Bhaktisvarupa Damodara Maharaja (Dr. T. D. Singh): It seems to me that we cannot all agree even over the definition of life. Molecular evolutionists define life as complex molecular reactions whereas spiritualists describe life as a divine spark.

Professor Werner Arber: Yes. Well, this is not so easy.

Srila Bhaktisvarupa Damodara Maharaja (Dr. T. D. Singh): If we take the religious or spiritual viewpoint, especially the Vedic viewpoint, there are two principles of reality, the material realm and the spiritual realm. Physics and chemistry are within the first category whereas life belongs to the nonphysical spiritual realm and it follows its own spiritual laws.

Professor Werner Arber: Oh, it is not so easily accessible. I don’t know. I work with microorganisms, mainly bacteria. I guess you generally believe in the existence of a spiritual soul. With which organisms does that start? Is it limited to human beings only?

Srila Bhaktisvarupa Damodara Maharaja (Dr. T. D. Singh): Well, to answer your first question, yes, I do believe in the existence of a non-chemical or non-molecular spiritual soul. We all agree that the living bodies are made up of organic matter, molecules. But according to the Vedic science, these bodies are animated by the presence of the soul, just like the analogy of a car and the driver inside. When the driver goes away, the car cannot move. Similarly, when the spirit soul goes away, or what we call death, the body can no longer be animated in spite of the fact that all the molecular machineries that make up the body are still intact.

According to the spiritual paradigm contained in Vedanta, the seed of life, the spiritual soul, has been existing since eternity and life manifests itself from the very moment of conception at least in higher living beings, such as human beings.

“So, according to the spiritual paradigm of Vedic science the presence of the spirit soul is not limited to human beings only. However, we should note that some religious traditions do not accept the existence of the soul and some others proclaim that the soul is present in human beings only. The ancient Vedic science of India does not accept such statements. Rather the Vedic science states very firmly that all living entities have spirit souls.”

– Srila Bhaktisvarupa Damodara Maharaja (Dr. T. D. Singh)

In Vedic cosmology, there are periodic cycles known as yuga cycles and creation and annihilation of the material world along with living beings take place continuously like changes of seasons. There are four yugas in each yuga cycle namely, Satya, Treta, Dvapara and Kali and the seeds of life are injected by the Supreme Lord into the womb of material nature. When the appropriate cosmic cycle appears, many different biological forms manifest in that particular yuga cycle. Also according to Vedanta, since all biological forms have already been existing in subtle states, either manifested or unmanifested, embodied life on earth would start, in principle, from any organism –bacteria, plants, birds, animals, human beings, etc., according to the subtle laws of karm.[3] The word karma is a Sanskrit word and it means the action – both psychological and physical – performed by the living entity under the influence of the three modes of material nature (gunas).

Vedic cosmology or Vedantic cosmology supports the simultaneous manifestation of many organisms. This principle is in direct contradiction with the Darwinian paradigm. If the existence of the soul is recognized in Darwinian paradigm then the spiritual paradigm of Vedanta could integrate the Darwinian paradigm. Thus the missing element in neo-Darwinian paradigm or molecular biology is the spiritual soul. However, in vedantic paradigm, consciousness evolves and the biological forms are designed in such a way that each form can accommodate the evolving conscious level of the living entity. This process is also known as the transmigration of the soul.

So, according to the spiritual paradigm of Vedic science the presence of the spirit soul is not limited to human beings only. However, we should note that some religious traditions do not accept the existence of the soul and some others proclaim that the soul is present in human beings only. The ancient Vedic science of India does not accept such statements. Rather the Vedic science states very firmly that all living entities have spirit souls.

Professor Werner Arber: All living entities?

Srila Bhaktisvarupa Damodara Maharaja (Dr. T. D. Singh): Yes, all living entities including microorganisms.

Professor Werner Arber: That sounds quite interesting.

References:

[2] Enzymes: A class of proteins serving as catalysts in biochemical reactions. Each enzyme is specific to a particular reaction or group of similar reactions.

[3] Law of Karma states that every living entity has a predestined happiness and distress in his/her present body according to the actions performed by the living entity in his/her previous and present life.

Sripad Bhakti Madhava Puri Maharaja, Ph.D.

Bhaktivedanta Institute

Below is a brief list of some recent books and media on the Scientific Critique of Science, especially dealing with Darwinian evolution and the paradigm change in biology.

1. “Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design” by Stephen C. Meyer. Stephen Meyer forcefully outlined the positive case for design and refuted arguments that ID isn’t science in his seminal book, Signature in the Cell, published by HarperCollins in June of 2009. The book was named one of the top books of 2009 in the prestigious Times Literary Supplement (TLS) annual “Books of the Year” issue. The selection was made by prominent philosopher (and noted atheist) Thomas Nagel at New York University. A companion three minute animated video, Journey Inside the Cell was released providing a stunning visual illustration of Meyer’s points.

 2. “Darwin’s Dilemma: The Mystery of the Cambrian Fossil Record” (DVD). The final film in Illustra Media’s long-planned Intelligent Design trilogy, Darwin’s Dilemma, was released in September 2009 and quickly made headlines when it was barred from public viewing by the California Science Center. The documentary examines what many consider to be the most powerful refutation of Darwinian evolution—the Cambrian explosion. The Cambrian explosion is the sudden appearance of the majority of phyla over the history of life. Darwin’s Dilemma is a high-quality documentary that includes interviews with world-class paleontologists Simon Conway Morris and James Valentine, as well as leading intelligent design theorists and scientists Paul Nelson, Jonathan Wells, Stephen C. Meyer, Paul Chien, Doug Axe, and Richard Sternberg. As with the first two Illustra Media ID documentaries, Unlocking the Mystery of Life and The Privileged Planet, Darwin’s Dilemma is full of high quality animations to help the viewer visualize the amazing complexity and design of the Cambrian creatures.

 3. “Seeking God in Science: An Atheist Defends Intelligent Design” by Bradley Monton. In the breakthrough book of the year, an atheist professor of the philosophy of physics at a secular university has written a book to defend intelligent design. As Professor Monton would admit, it’s a partial defense, as he does not find all ID arguments overwhelmingly convincing, but he also does not find them trivial, and he believes they should be allowed on the table and in the classroom for discussion. He even went so far as to defend intelligent design in a public debate in 2008, and his position as a true educator seeking truth has brought the wrath of Darwinists and fellow atheists down on his head. But that did not prevent him from publishing his position in Seeking God in Science. Monton’s work on a rigorous definition of intelligent design in chapter one is worth the price of the book alone. The good news is you don’t have to be a philosopher to understand this book. Monton has done a great job of making his arguments accessible to the general reader.

4. “Nature’s IQ” by Balazs Hornyanszky and Istvan Tasi. Hungarian scientists Balazs Hornyanszky and Istvan Tasi offer a novel contribution to the intelligent design literature by extending Michael Behe’s theory of irreducible complexity from biological form to biological behavior. Where did the mysterious instincts of animals originate? Nature’s IQ. The authors document more than 100 astonishing, unexplained phenomena from the animal kingdom, with 200 amazing color pictures. The authors point out how Darwinian “just so” stories fail to explain these irreducibly complex instincts and behaviors. This book is a valuable addition to any library for its amazing photos of animal life and its catalog of fascinating animal behavior regardless of whether you believe they were a product of random mutations and natural selection or a product of artful, purposeful design.

5. “Why Us? How Science Rediscovered the Mystery of Ourselves” by James Le Fanu. The second international book to make the Top Ten list this year is Why Us? by James Le Fanu, a British medical doctor who publishes in peer-reviewed medical journals like the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine and the British Medical Journal, a columnist for the London Telegraph, winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Award for his book The Rise and Fall of Modern Medicine (2001). In Why Us? we discover Dr. Le Fanu is also a Darwin doubter. Le Fanu’s main point is that the more science reveals about the most important question a human can ask—What is man and how did he come to be?—the more we have to admit that we don’t know. Le Fanu demonstrates this by masterfully recounting the epic demise of expectations that prevailed until recently for the prospects of three scientific enterprises. Darwinian evolution, genetics, and brain research were supposed to combine to give a compelling, coherent and united naturalistic account of man’s origin and nature. They did no such thing and the prospect of their doing so in the future appears hopeless. This is a great book to give your Darwin-devoted friends. Intelligent design is never mentioned, but the foundation for the materialist, reductionist worldview is systematically dismantled by a well-known authority on science and medicine.

6. “The Darwin Myth” by Benjamin Wiker. According to Wiker’s provocative new biography, The Darwin Myth: the Life and Lies of Charles Darwin, Charles Darwin was an honorable and likable man, a family man. He loved his siblings; he was devoted to his wife; he loved his children and grieved deeply over his daughter’s death. But Darwin was also someone who presented to the public an elaborate and even deceptive story about himself and his work to advance a philosophical agenda. While there are many biographies of Charles Darwin, Wiker’s deserves attention because of its fascinating account of the complex interaction between Charles Darwin, the man, and Darwinism, the theory he advocated and popularized. Wiker’s presentation of Darwin’s human contradictions is a valuable contribution to the 2009 Darwin anniversary literature (the 200th anniversary of Darwin’s birth and the 150th anniversary of the publication of The Origin of Species). Anyone wishing to probe the broader implications of Darwin’s theory, as well as the contradictions of Darwin’s character, will want to read Wiker’s book.

7. “Alfred Russel Wallace’s Theory of Intelligent Evolution” by Michael A. Flannery. Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913), co-discoverer of natural selection, was second only to Charles Darwin as the 19th century’s most noted English naturalist. Yet his belief in spiritualism caused him to be ridiculed and dismissed by many, leaving him a comparatively obscure and misunderstood figure. In this volume Wallace is finally allowed to speak in his own defense through his grand evolutionary synthesis The World of Life published nearly a century ago in 1910. More than just a reprinting of a near-forgotten work, Michael A. Flannery places Wallace in historical context. Flannery exposes Charles Darwin’s now-famous theory of evolution as little more than a naturalistic cover for an extreme philosophical materialism borrowed as a youth from Edinburgh radicals. This is juxtaposed by his sympathetic account of what he calls Wallace’s intelligent evolution, a thoroughly teleological alternative to Darwin’s stochastic processes. Though based upon very different formulations of natural selection, the Wallace/Darwin dispute as presented by Flannery shows a metaphysical clash of worldviews coextensive with modern evolutionary theory itself – design and purpose versus randomness and chance. This book will be of value to scholars and students alike seeking to understand the historical and philosophical roots of a controversy that still rages today.

8. “The Deniable Darwin & Other Essays” by David Berlinski. It only takes one dose of Berlinski to get hooked. His wit, his way with words, his sharp mind, and the ease at which he is able to poke holes in the Darwinian worldview catch you off guard. Those who watched Expelled were treated to a taste of Berlinski as Ben Stein interviewed him in his flat in Paris. Now you can get a “seven course meal” of Berlinski with this new compilation of 32 of his best essays written over the past fifteen years. The volume is named after his 1996 essay “The Deniable Darwin” that appeared in Commentary and launched Berlinski into the middle of the Darwin or Design debate, where he has happily remained ever since. What makes this volume so great is it includes not only Berlinski’s essay but also reprints the dozens of letters received in protest and support from notable scientists and philosophers (Allen Orr, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Arthur Shapiro, Paul Gross, Tom Bethell, Michael Behe, Phillip Johnson, M.P. Shutzenberger, etc) along with a response to the letters by Berlinski. Berlinski’s replies are witty and sharp. For the first time, The Deniable Darwin collects all of these essays and exchanges into a single volume.

9. “The Edge of Evolution: The Search for the Limits of Darwinism” by Michael Behe. The top intelligent design book honors for 2007 goes to Michael Behe’s The Edge of Evolution. Biochemist Behe reviews the scientific data and lays out clearly what evolution can and cannot do which he identifies as the “Edge of Evolution.” The genomes of many organisms have been sequenced, and the machinery of the cell has been analyzed in great detail. The evolutionary responses of microorganisms to antibiotics and humans to parasitic infections have been traced over tens of thousands of generations. As a result, for the first time in history Darwin’s theory can be rigorously evaluated. The results are shocking. Although it can explain marginal changes in evolutionary history, random mutation and natural selection explain very little of the basic machinery of life. The “edge” of evolution, a line that defines the border between random and non-random mutation, lies very far from where Darwin pointed. Behe argues convincingly that most of the mutations that have defined the history of life on earth have been non-random.

11. “The Design Matrix: A Consilience of Clues” by Mike Gene. Ask a group of scientists how life on earth arose, and you will get a multitude of answers. In the field of origin-of-life research there is little consensus and much speculation. Any good researcher knows this, and is careful to remember that what seemed clear today may be wrong tomorrow. It is with this in mind that that the author proposes the Design Matrix. The Design Matrix is a method for assessing a design inference and can help when using the hypothesis of design to guide research. This method is both tentative and open-ended, and can be used by both supporters and critics of intelligent design. The book is an attempt to make sense of a question where the evidence about origins is ambiguous. In The Design Matrix, the author considers a number of clues that, when merged together, point to new ways of thinking about evolution and intelligent design.

12. “Explore Evolution: The Arguments for and Against Neo-Darwinism.” Finally, a biology textbook that presents the scientific evidence both for and against key aspects of Darwinian evolution. Co-authored by two state university biology professors, two philosophers of science, and a science curriculum writer, Explore Evolution was peer-reviewed by biology faculty at both state and private universities, teachers with experience in both AP and pre-AP life science courses, and doctoral scientists working for industry and government. The textbook has been pilot-tested in classes at both the secondary school and college levels. The textbook looks at five areas of biology that are typically viewed as confirming the modern theory of evolution: fossil succession, anatomical homology, embryology, natural selection, and natural selection and mutation. For each area of study, Explore Evolution explains the evidence and arguments used to support Darwin’s theory and then examines the evidence and arguments that lead some scientists to question the adequacy of Darwinian explanations.

13. God’s Undertaker: Has Science Buried God? by John Lennox. This captivating book written by John Lennox, M.A., Ph.D., D.Phil., D.Sc. (a professor of mathematics and the philosophy of science at Oxford University), is an excellent short primer providing basic coverage of key intelligent design issues and is written for a lay audience. Lennox addresses topics such as worldview and the impact it has upon our thinking and reasoning; the limitations and scope of science; information theory and other topics as they relate to faith, science and the interaction between the two. Throughout his book, he fastidiously presents his positions with remarkable clarity and insight. Lennox also takes on several arguments proposed by Richard Dawkins and others who dismiss intelligent design theories.

14. “There is a God: How the World’s Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind” by Anthony Flew and Roy Abraham Varghese. In one of the biggest science and religion news stories of the new millennium, the Associated Press announced that Professor Antony Flew, the world’s leading atheist, now believes in God. Flew is a pioneer for modern atheism. His famous paper, Theology and Falsification, was first presented at a meeting of the Oxford Socratic Club chaired by C. S. Lewis and went on to become the most widely reprinted philosophical publication of the last five decades. Flew earned his fame by arguing that one should presuppose atheism until evidence of a God surfaces. He now believes that such evidence exists, and There Is a God chronicles the logic, evidence, and journey that converted Flew from staunch atheism to belief in a designed universe.

15.”Probability’s Nature and Nature’s Probability” by Don Johnson. The author once believed anyone not accepting the “proven” evolutionary scenario that was ingrained during his science education was of the same mentality as someone believing in a flat earth. With continued scientific investigation, paying closer attention to actual data (rather than speculative conclusions), he began to doubt the natural explanations that had been so ingrained in a number of key areas including the origin and fine-tuning of mass and energy, the origin of life with its complex information content, and the increase in complexity in living organisms. It was science, and not religion, that caused his disbelief in the explanatory powers of undirected nature. The fantastic leaps of faith required to accept the undirected natural causes in these areas demand a scientific response to the scientific-sounding concepts that in fact have no known scientific basis. Scientific integrity needs to be restored so that ideas that have no methods to test or falsify are not considered part of science. Too often “possible” is used by scientists without considering that “possible” has a scientific definition within the nature of probability. For example, one should not be able to get away with stating “it is possible that life arose from non-life by …” or “it’s possible that a different form of life exists elsewhere in the universe” without first demonstrating that it is indeed possible (non-zero probability) using known science. One could, of course, state “it may be speculated that … ,” but such a statement wouldn’t have the believability that its author intends to convey by the pseudo-scientific pronouncement. This book reviews the many prevalent scenarios that are widely accepted, but need closer examination of their scientific validity. It will also examine the scientific validity of Intelligent Design (ID) as a model that can be empirically detected and examined. For example, the book uses known science (including Shannon and Functional information principles) to prove that it is impossible (zero probability) for life’s complex information system to have an undirected natural source. The usefulness of the ID model for furthering scientific inquiry is also analyzed. One chapter is devoted to exposing fallacies, presuppositions, and beliefs that attempt to prevent acceptance of ID as “science.”

16. “Evolution: A Theory In Crisis” by Michael Denton, Australian biologist, agnostic.

17. “Biocentrism” by Robert Lanza, M.D. is currently chief scientific officer at Advanced Cell Technology, and a professor at Wake Forest University School of Medicine.

How could a Big Bang create a universe that is exquisitely fine tuned to support life?

Rather than being a belated and minor outcome after billions of years of lifeless physical processes, life and consciousness are absolutely fundamental to our understanding of the universe. This new understanding is called biocentrism.

Life is not an accidental by product of the laws of physics that we have been taught since grade school.

The atomic materialist model of the universe has brought us many insights but with advances in science it has reached the end of its useful life and needs to be replaced with a radically different paradigm that reflects a deeper reality.

Consciousness is not just a issue for biology, it is a problem for physics.

18. “Biology Revisioned” by William Harman and Elisabet Sahtouris. Harman and Sahtouris base their logical groundwork on a concept of all being organized into holons (identity units) which are part of a larger holarchy (complex of identity units). Holons, say these two, take their purpose from the holarchy in which they are embedded, and take their ability from the holons which are embedded within them. Thus, your liver exists to serve your body, and draws its capacities from the health of its individual cells.

Take this concept outward to Gaia–nay, to the penultimate Cosmos–and you may find, as I do, profound spiritual implications. You will also understand why these two respected scientists had to present this book as a speculative conversation. Pushing the outer edges of thought, challenging academia’s entrenched mindset, is professionally risky. But Sahtouris has no less a motive than the saving of the planet. She holds that only by understanding what we are, can we save Ourselves from physical destruction. Some online videos featuring Elisabet Sahtouris:

Confessions of a Creationist Evolution Biologist

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7xPMfUlS1c&feature=related

After Darwin

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_immL2m1tg

Marcel-Paul Schützenberger

Until his death, the mathematician and doctor of medicine Marcel-Paul Schützenberger (1920-1996) was Professor of the Faculty of Sciences at the University of Paris and a member of the Academy of Sciences, and author of “The Miracles of Darwinism”. In 1966, Schützenberger participated in the Wistar Symposium on mathematical objections to neo-Darwinism. His arguments were subtle and often misunderstood by biologists. Darwin’s theory, he observed, and the interpretation of biological systems as formal objects, were at odds insofar as randomness is known to degrade meaning in formal contexts. But Schützenberger also argued that Darwin’s theory logically required some active principle of coordination between the typographic space of the informational macromolecules (DNA and RNA) and the organic space of living creatures themselves — which Darwin’s theory does not provide.

The following post is modified from a copyrighted transcript of an interview found at: http://www.arn.org/docs/odesign/od172/schutz172.htm.

What is Darwinism?

The most current definition, of course, is a position generically embodied, for example, by Richard Dawkins. The essential idea is well-known. Evolution, Darwinists argue, is explained by the double action of chance mutations and natural selection. The general doctrine embodies two mutually contradictory schools — gradualists, on the one hand, saltationists, on the other. Gradualists insist that evolution proceeds by means of small successive changes; saltationists that it proceeds by jumps. Richard Dawkins has come to champion radical gradualism; Stephen Jay Gould, a no less radical version of saltationism.

What is the role of mathematics in evolutionary biology?

The participation of mathematicians in the overall assessment of evolutionary thought has been encouraged by the biologists themselves, if only because they presented such an irresistible target. Richard Dawkins, for example, has been fatally attracted to arguments that would appear to hinge on concepts drawn from mathematics and from the computer sciences, the technical stuff imposed on innocent readers with all of his comic authority. Mathematicians are, in any case, epistemological zealots. It is normal for them to bring their critical scruples to the foundations of other disciplines. And finally, it is worth observing that the great turbid wave of cybernetics has carried mathematicians from their normal mid-ocean haunts to the far shores of evolutionary biology, endeavoring to apply the concepts of mathematics to the fundamental problems of evolution — the interpretation of functional complexity, for example.

What is functional complexity?

It is impossible to grasp the phenomenon of life without the concept of functional complexity, the two words each expressing a crucial and essential idea. The laboratory biologists’ normal and unforced vernacular is almost always couched in functional terms: the function of an eye, the function of an enzyme, or a ribosome, or the fruit fly’s antennae — their function; the concept by which such language is animated is one perfectly adapted to reality. Physiologists see this better than anyone else. Within their world, everything is a matter of function, the various systems that they study — circulatory, digestive, excretory, and the like — all characterized in simple, ineliminable functional terms. At the level of molecular biology, functionality may seem to pose certain conceptual problems, perhaps because the very notion of an organ has disappeared when biological relationships are specified in biochemical terms; but appearances are misleading, certain functions remaining even in the absence of an organ or organ systems. Complexity is also a crucial concept. Even among unicellular organisms, the mechanisms involved in the separation and fusion of chromosomes during mitosis and meiosis are processes of unbelieveable complexity and subtlety.. Organisms present themselves to us as a complex ensemble of functional interrelationships. If one is going to explain their evolution, one must at the same time explain their functionality and their complexity.

What makes functional complexity so difficult to comprehend?

The evolution of living creatures appears to require an essential ingredient, a specific form of organization. Whatever it is, it lies beyond anything that our present knowledge of physics or chemistry might suggest; it is a property upon which formal logic sheds absolutely no light. Whether gradualists or saltationists, Darwinians have too simple a conception of biology, rather like a locksmith improbably convinced that his handful of keys will open any lock. Darwinians, for example, tend to think of the gene rather as if it were the expression of a simple command: do this, get that done, drop that side chain. Walter Gehring’s work on the regulatory genes controlling the development of the insect eye reflects this conception. The relevant genes may well function this way, but the story on this level is surely incomplete, and Darwinian theory is not apt to fill in the pieces.

Biologists think of a gene as a command.

Schematically, a gene is like a unit of information. It has simple binary properties. When active, it is an elementary information-theoretic unit, the cascade of gene instructions resembling the cascade involved in specifying a recipe. Now let us return to the example of the eye. Darwinists imagine that it requires what? A thousand or two thousand genes to assemble an eye, the specification of the organ thus requiring one or two thousand units of information? This is absurd! Suppose that a European firm proposes to manufacture an entirely new household appliance in a Southeast Asian factory. And suppose that for commercial reasons, the firm does not wish to communicate to the factory any details of the appliance’s function — how it works, what purposes it will serve.. With only a few thousand bits of information, the factory is not going to proceed very far or very fast. A few thousand bits of information, after all, yields only a single paragraph of text. The appliance in question is bound to be vastly simpler than the eye; charged with its manufacture, the factory will yet need to know the significance of the operations to which they have committed themselves in engaging their machinery. This can be achieved only if they already have some sense of the object’s nature before they undertake to manufacture it. A considerable body of knowledge, held in common between the European firm and its Asian factory, is necessary before manufacturing instructions may be executed.

Does the genome contain the requisite information for explaining organisms?

Not according to the understanding of the genome we now possess. The biological properties invoked by biologists are in this respect quite insufficient; while biologists may understand that a gene triggers the production of a particular protein, that knowledge — that kind of knowledge — does not allow them to comprehend how one or two thousand genes suffice to direct the course of embryonic development.

Is this the argument of preformationism?

My position is strictly a rational one. I’ve formulated a problem that appears significant to me: how is it that with so few elementary instructions, the materials of life can fabricate objects that are so marvelously complicated and efficient? This property with which they are endowed — just what is its nature? Nothing within our actual knowledge of physics and chemistry allows us intellectually to grasp it. If one starts from an evolutionary point of view, it must be acknowledged that in one manner or another, the earliest fish contained the capacity, and the appropriate neural wiring, to bring into existence organs which they did not possess or even need, but which would be the common property of their successors when they left the water for the firm ground, or for the air.

Darwinism doesn’t explain much.

It seems to me that the union of chance mutation and selection has a certain descriptive value; in no case does the description count as an explanation. Darwinism relates ecological data to the relative abundance of species and environments. In any case, the descriptive value of Darwinian models is pretty limited. Besides, as saltationists have indicated, the gradualist thesis seems completely demented in light of the growth of paleontological knowledge. The miracles of saltationism, on the other hand, cannot discharge the mystery I have described.

Does the idea of natural selection have a certain explanatory value?

No one could possibly deny the general thesis that stability is a necessary condition for existence — the real content of the doctrine of natural selection. The outstanding application of this general principle is Berthollet’s laws in elementary chemistry. In a desert, the species that die rapidly are those that require water the most; yet that does not explain the appearance among the survivors of those structures whose particular features permits them to resist aridity. The thesis of natural selection is not very powerful. Except for certain artificial cases, we are yet unable to predict whether this or that species or this or that variety will be favored or not as the result of changes in the environment. What we can do is establish after the fact the effects of natural selection — to show, for, example that certain birds are disposed to eat this species of snails less often than other species, perhaps because their shell is not as visible. That’s ecology: very interesting. To put it another way, natural selection is a weak instrument of proof because the phenomena subsumed by natural selection are obvious and yet they establish nothing from the point of view of the theory.

Isn’t the significant explanatory feature of Darwinian theory the connection established between chance mutations and natural selection?

With the discovery of coding, we have come to understand that a gene is like a word composed in the DNA alphabet; such words form the genomic text. It is that word that tells the cell to make this or that protein. Either a given protein is structural, or a protein itself works in combination with other signals given by the genome to fabricate yet another protein. All the experimental results we know fall within this scheme. The following scenario then becomes standard. A gene undergoes a mutation, one that may facilitate the reproduction of those individuals carrying it; over time, and with respect to a specific environment, mutants come to be statistically favored, replacing individuals lacking the requisite mutation. Evolution could not be an accumulation of such typographical errors. Population geneticists can study the speed with which a favorable mutation propagates itself under these circumstances. They do this with a lot of skill, but these are academic exercises if only because none of the parameters that they use can be empirically determined. In addition, there are the obstacles I have already mentioned. We know the number of genes in an organism. There are about one hundred thousand for a higher vertebrate. This we know fairly well. But this seems grossly insufficient to explain the incredible quantity of information needed to accomplish evolution within a given line of species.

A concrete example.

Darwinists say that horses, which were once mammals as large as rabbits, increased their size to escape more quickly from predators. Within the gradualist model, one might isolate a specific trait — increase in body size — and consider it to be the result of a series of typographic changes. The explanatory effect achieved is rhetorical, imposed entirely by trick of insisting that what counts for a herbivore is the speed of its flight when faced by a predator. Now this may even be partially true, but there are no biological grounds that permit us to determine that this is in fact the decisive consideration. After all, increase in body size may well have a negative effect. Darwinists seem to me to have preserved a mechanic vision of evolution, one that prompts them to observe merely a linear succession of causes and effects. The idea that causes may interact with one another is now standard in mathematical physics; it is a point that has had difficulty in penetrating the carapace of biological thought. In fact, within the quasi-totality of observable phenomena, local changes interact in a dramatic fashion; after all, there is hardly an issue of La Recherche that does not contain an allusion to the Butterfly Effect. Information theory is precisely the domain that sharpens our intuitions about these phenomena. A typographical change in a computer program does not change it just a little. It wipes the program out, purely and simply. It is the same with a telephone number. If I intend to call a correspondent by telephone, it doesn’t much matter if I am fooled by one, two, three or eight figures in his number.

Do biological mutations genuinely have the character of typographical errors?

Yes, in the sense that one base is a template for another, one codon for another, but at the level of biochemical activity, one is no longer able properly to speak of typography. There is an entire grammar for the formation of proteins in three dimensions, one that we understand poorly. We do not have at our disposal physical or chemical rules permitting us to construct a mapping from typographical mutations or modifications to biologically effective structures. To return to the example of the eye: a few thousand genes are needed for its fabrication, but each in isolation signifies nothing. What is significant is the combination of their interactions.. These cascading interactions, with their feedback loops, express an organization whose complexity we do not know how to analyze (See Figure 1). It is possible we may be able to do so in the future, but there is no doubt that we are unable to do so now. Gehring has recently discovered a segment of DNA which is both involved in the development of the vertebrate eye and which can induce the development of an eye in the wing of a butterfly. His work comprises a demonstration of something utterly astonishing, but not an explanation.

But Dawkins, for example, believes in the possibility of a cumulative process.

Dawkins believes in an effect that he calls “the cumulative selection of beneficial mutations.” To support his thesis, he resorts to a metaphor introduced by the mathematician Emile Borel — that of a monkey typing by chance and in the end producing a work of literature. It is a metaphor, I regret to say, embraced by Francis Crick, the co-discoverer of the double helix. Dawkins has his computer write a series of thirty letters, these corresponding to the number of letters in a verse by Shakespeare. He then proceeds to simulate the Darwinian mechanism of chance mutations and selection. His imaginary monkey types and retypes the same letters, the computer successively choosing the phrase that most resembles the target verse. By means of cumulative selection, the monkey reaches its target in forty or sixty generations.

Can a monkey typing on a typewriter, even aided by a computer, produce anything rational?

Dawkins demonstration is a trompe-l’oeil, and what is more, he doesn’t describe precisely how it proceeds. At the beginning of the exercise, randomly generated phrases appear rapidly to approach the target; the closer the approach, the more the process begins to slow. It is the action of mutations in the wrong direction that pulls things backward. In fact, a simple argument shows that unless the numerical parameters are chosen deliberately, the progression begins to bog down completely.

The model of cumulative selection, imagined by Dawkins, is out of touch with palpable biological realities.

Dawkins’s model lays entirely to the side the triple problems of complexity, functionality, and their interaction.

How to formalize the concept of functional complexity…

I would appeal to a notion banned by the scientific community, but one understood perfectly by everyone else — that of a goal. As a computer scientist, I could express this in the following way. One constructs a space within which one of the coordinates serves in effect as the thread of Ariane, guiding the trajectory toward the goal. Once the space is constructed, the system evolves in a mechanical way toward its goal. But look, the construction of the relevant space cannot proceed until a preliminary analysis has been carried out, one in which the set of all possible trajectories is assessed, this together with an estimation of their average distance from the specified goal. The preliminary analysis is beyond the reach of empirical study. It presupposes — the same word that seems to recur in theoretical biology — that the biologist (or computer scientist) know the totality of the situation, the properties of the ensemble of trajectories. In terms of mathematical logic, the nature of this space is entirely enigmatic. Nonetheless, it is important to remember that the conceptual problems we face, life has entirely solved; the systems embodied in living creatures are entirely successful in reaching their goals. The trick involved in Dawkin’s somewhat sheepish example proceeds via the surreptitious introduction of a relevant space. His computer program calculates from a random phrase to a target, a calculation corresponding to nothing in biological reality. The function that he employs flatters the imagination, however, because it has that property of apparent simplicity that elicits naïve approval. In biological reality, the space of even the simplest function has a complexity that defies understanding, and indeed, defies any and all calculations.

The saltationists are more moderate: they don’t pretend to hold the key that would permit them to explain evolution.

Before discussing the saltationists, I must say a word about the Japanese biologist Mooto Kimura. He has shown that the majority of mutations are neutral, without any selective effect. For Darwinians upholding the central Darwinian thesis, this is embarrassing… The saltationist view, revived by Stephen Jay Gould, in the end represents an idea due to Richard Goldschmidt. In 1940 or so, he postulated the existence of very intense mutations, no doubt involving hundreds of genes, and taking place rapidly, in less than one thousand generations, thus below the threshold of resolution of paleontology. Curiously enough, Gould does not seem concerned to preserve the union of chance mutations and selection. The saltationists run afoul of two types of criticism. On the one hand, the functionality of their supposed macromutations is inexplicable within the framework of molecular biology. On the other hand, Gould ignores in silence the great trends in biology, such as the increasing complexity of the nervous system. He imagines that the success of new, more sophisticated species, such as the mammals, is a contingent phenomenon. He is not in a position to offer an account of the essential movement of evolution, or at the least, an account of its main trajectories. The saltationists are thus reduced to invoking two types of miracles: macromutations, and the great trajectories of evolution.

In what sense is the word ‘miracle’ applicable to Darwinism?

A miracle is an event that should appear impossible to a Darwinian in view of its ultra-cosmological improbability within the framework of his own theory. Now speaking of macromutations, let me observe that to generate a proper elephant, it will not suffice suddenly to endow it with a full-grown trunk. As the trunk is being organized, a different but complementary system — the cerebellum — must be modified in order to establish a place for the ensemble of wiring that the elephant will require to use his trunk. These macromutations must be coordinated by a system of genes in embryogenesis. If one considers the history of evolution, we must postulate thousands of miracles; miracles, in fact, without end. No more than the gradualists, the saltationists are unable to provide an account of those miracles. The second category of miracles are directional, offering instruction to the great evolutionary progressions and trends — the elaboration of the nervous system, of course, but the internalization of the reproductive process as well, and the appearance of bone, the emergence of ears, the enrichment of various functional relationships, and so on. Each is a series of miracles, whose accumulation has the effect of increasing the complexity and efficiency of various organisms. From this point of view, the notion of bricolage [tinkering], introduced by Francois Jacob, involves a fine turn of phrase, but one concealing an utter absence of explanation.

The appearance of human beings — is that a miracle?

Naturally. And here it does seem that there are voices among contemporary biologists — I mean voices other than mine — who might cast doubt on the Darwinian paradigm that has dominated discussion for the past twenty years. Gradualists and saltationists alike are completely incapable of giving a convincing explanation of the quasi-simultaneous emergence of a number of biological systems that distinguish human beings from the higher primates: bipedalism, with the concomitant modification of the pelvis, and, without a doubt, the cerebellum, a much more dexterous hand, with fingerprints conferring an especially fine tactile sense; the modifications of the pharynx which permits phonation; the modification of the central nervous system, notably at the level of the temporal lobes, permitting the specific recognition of speech. From the point of view of embryogenesis, these anatomical systems are completely different from one another. Each modification constitutes a gift, a bequest from a primate family to its descendants. It is astonishing that these gifts should have developed simultaneously. Some biologists speak of a predisposition of the genome. Can anyone actually recover the predisposition, supposing that it actually existed? Was it present in the first of the fish? The reality is that we are confronted with total conceptual bankruptcy.

Appeals to such notions as chaos.

There is a succession of highly competent people who have discovered a number of poetic but essentially hollow forms of expression. I am referring here to the noisy crowd collected under the rubric of cybernetics; and beyond, there lie the dissipative structures of Prigogine, or the systems of Varela, or, moving to the present, Stuart Kauffman’s edge of chaos — an organized form of inanity that is certain soon to make its way to France. The Santa Fe school takes complexity to apply to absolutely everything. They draw their representative examples from certain chemical reactions, the pattern of the sea coast, atmosphere turbulence, or the structure of a chain of mountains. The complexity of these structures is certainly considerable, but in comparison with the living world, they exhibit in every case an impoverished form of organization, one that is strictly non-functional. No algorithm allows us to understand the complexity of living creatures, this despite these examples, which owe their initial plausibility to the assumption that the physico-chemical world exhibits functional properties that in reality it does not possess.

Final words.

All we can hear at the present time is the great anthropic hymnal, with even a number of mathematically sophisticated scholars keeping time as the great hymn is intoned by tapping their feet. The rest of us should, of course, practice a certain suspension of judgment.

Slightly modified from the article Copyright © 1996 Marcel-Paul Schützenberger. All rights reserved. International copyright secured.

James Shapiro of Fermilabs in a recent (Jan 22, 2010) lecture there said that Dawkins “lives in a world of fantasy.”

The difficulties on which Intelligent Design focuses — e.g., the sudden origin of new features — are real, and need to be answered. Current theory is not adequate. Genes are not in the driver’s seat of life, Shapiro urged; rather, the organism is. Biology needs to understand how organisms intelligently modify their genomes in response to challenges. Genetic change is not random, but controlled. Shapiro repeatedly contrasted his ideas with neo-Darwinism, and had nothing but scorn for Richard Dawkins, whom he said “lives in a world of fantasy.”

The simplistic idea of the causal primacy of DNA or RNA held by Dawkins and other evolutionists, most of whom are outside the field of practicing micro-biologists, is a central feature of the random mutation and natural selection theory that characterizes neo-Darwinianism. But such a theory is overwhelmingly refuted by the more sophisticated studies of actual molecular biologists.

Nascent or naked DNA (or RNA) on its own produces nothing. DNA + 0 = 0.

The actuality that micro-biologists deal with in cellular life puts the whole problem of the origin of life in a more realistic perspective. Compare the primitive notion of Crick’s formulation of the central dogma of molecular biology with the more modern version of the same:

• Crick’s central dogma of molecular biology:

1. DNA –> 2X DNA

2. DNA –> RNA –> Protein –> Phenotype

• Contemporary picture of molecular information transfers:

1. DNA + 0 –> 0

2. DNA + Protein + ncRNA –> chromatin

3. Chromatin + Protein + ncRNA –> DNA replication, chromatin
maintenance/reconstitution

4. Protein + RNA + lipids + small molecules –> signal transduction

5. Chromatin + Protein + signals –> RNA (primary transcript)

6. RNA + Protein + ncRNA –> RNA (processed transcript)

7. RNA + Protein + ncRNA –> Protein (primary translation product)

8. Protein + nucleotides + Ac-CoA + SAM + sugars + lipids –> Processed and decorated protein

9. DNA + Protein –> New DNA sequence (mutator polymerases)

10. Signals + Chromatin + Protein –> New DNA structure (DNA rearrangements subject to stimuli)

11. RNA + Protein + chromatin –> New DNA structure (retrotransposition, retroduction, retrohoming)

12. Signals + chromatin + proteins + ncRNA + lipids –> nuclear/nucleoid localization

SUMMARY: DNA + Protein + ncRNA + signals + other molecules: Genome Structure & Phenotype

To conceive that all these necessary steps happened by accident or chance, and fortuitouly in just the right order, demonstrates a commitment to an ideological mindset that would rather put chance in the driver’s seat, than conceded any purposeful directive at work in Nature.

Actually, science does not affirm evolution – scientists are the only ones who affirm anything. Scientists who affirm the existence of purpose in Nature, and consequently the existence of a purposeful End or Goal to what is essentially a creation, are no less committed to what scientific evidence reveals, without being blindered by a materialist indoctrination that colors their interpretation of that evidence.

Suzan Mazur

Sripad Bhakti Madhava Puri Maharaja, Ph.D.

Bhaktivedanta Institute

In addition to any content, another essential element must be the order or form of that content. Content implies a container. Generally, the container is not thought of as having any determinate influence upon the content. This is a mistake. If we have a bowl-shaped container, the marbles at the bottom will form a concave shape. A square-shaped container will exhibit the marbles in a planar pattern. Thus the container does influence the order or form of its content. Similarly, the Concept(container) of an object (content), shows a similar influence. Thus there is a causal influence of the concept on the content, and as far as the form the content takes is intrinsic, the Concept is not only externally causitive but intrinsically constitutive of the object as well, i.e. its essence.

For example, a cow, a dog, and an elephant are all animals. Take away the conceptual essence of “animality” from these objects and we can no longer say what they are. It is not that the classification “animal” or “mamal” is a mere nominal reference. It is what is essential to or intrinscially constitutive of those objects.

In constructing a house, for example, clearly a concept (idea) is an essential cause of the final structure that the house assumes.  In making a pot out of clay, the concept the potter has of a pot is causally connected to the formation of the pot. Thus we have ample experiential evidence that concepts are capable of being causal forces or influences on matter. This manifestly evident feature of actuality is totally neglected or ignored by modern science when ALL the forces of nature are limited to the merely physical and chemical.

A laptop computer can never be explained merely in terms of its physical parts. Without an apriori concept in accord with which the parts are causally ordered by an engineer, we remain unable to properly explain the existence of such a machine merely in terms of its physical parts and physical forces.

It should be clear that physical and chemical explanations of natural phenomena are therefore incomplete, and that conceptual causality is a required element in explaining natural artifacts, which we can call intentionally constructed objects, or objects that bear the imprint of intention, or purpose, as opposed to naturally formed objects. And this purpose is also defined in what we are calling the concept. Thus the purpose (or concept) acts as a cause in the formation of the object. Another term we may use for purpose is End – what something tends toward, or for which it is int-end-ed.

Aristotle proposed this type of quite realistic understanding when he ascertained that there are four causes required to explain objects in nature: material, formal, efficient and final. He also gave the following as an example of the insufficiency of material causes:

“If we limit our explanation of the formation of a wall to its material causes, then we might attempt to explain it by saying the stones being heaviest formed the foundation at the bottom, the bricks being lighter came next, and the wood at the top being the lightest achieved its appropriate place. If we accept this purely material explanation invoking only physical causes (of heaviness in this case), we have neglected the most essential cause – the movement and arrangement of the material parts for the purpose of providing shelter, i.e. the original concept or that end for which the whole project was conceived.”

This conceptual “cause” is not found among the physical and chemical laws and principles of matter, yet who can deny the essentiality of such a cause whenever we consider the formation of a wall in actuality. To dispense with the concept as such a cause therefore seems to be utterly without justification in the real world.

To attempt to “explain away” concepts by eliminatavist and reductionist appeals to instinct, habit, genetic disposition, etc. negelect to address the fact that all such “attempts” are also concept-driven. Even physicalist explanations are concept-ladden and dependent on a particular intellectual stance. To say there are no concepts is to deny that content must of necessity have a container in order to be a content. A “known” object cannot be isolated from the act of knowing or knowledge and the agent of such act, the knower. These are necessary conclusions of logic.

In philosophy, the manifestation of purpose in nature is traditionally called design.  With the advent of the conception of DNA in biology, the pattern of amino acids that constitute DNA has come to signify pattern or arrangement of molecules in organisms, and with that the interest in probabilities for the formation of specific arrangements or sequences of amino acids by chance. This association of design with pattern or arrangement is a narrowing down (one might say, dumbing down) of the design concept to pattern or configuration rather than purpose, End or concept. The central dogma of biology holds that DNA “codes” for the formation of essential proteins within a cell. Codes signify information, and thus information theory has become associated with DNA. This informational aspect being non-physical and non-chemical seems to turn us more closely back to the original conceptual cause that has traditionally occupied the philosophers of nature.

Inorganic materials also form specific patterns as we find, for example, in snowflakes. Here, the innumerable patterns exhibit exquisite designs that are apparently created by random agglomeration of water molecules, according to the specific stereochemisty (shape) and stoichiochemistry (molecular bonding) of the molecule. Such formations may be called unintelligent design since they are a function of mechanical (regulative) principles, whereas the design of artifacts exhibit what may be called intentional or intelligent design. The word intelligent is required to indicate intention or purpose since the word “design” on its own has come to mean mere pattern according to modern interpreters.

Living organisms are a special case of what we may call intentional objects, but they are not formed by any apparent external intelligence, as in the case of an artifact.. Their intentionality is intrinsic to the organism itself.

For example, the most common intentionality/purpose for organisms is survival. Living objects actively pursue life and avoid whatever attempts are made to kill them. They tend to multiply or reproduce themselves, preserving their species. And organisms produce their own parts or members from themselves, unlike artifacts which are created from already existing parts that do not depend upon the whole of which they are parts. The parts or members of an organism serve a function or purpose in the organism as a whole, and the organism as a whole seems to create the parts to serve itself, as much as the parts share in creating the whole and other parts. Thus the intentionality of an organism is entirely internal to the organism, unlike artifacts which arise from completely external intentional forces, or conceptual causes. Therefore we can say that the intention/purpose/cause/concept (or soul) is fully intrinsic to an organism and essential to its generation, maintenance, development and formation.

The three categories of mechanical, chemical and teleological analysis, where teleology refers to objects that have an (internal or external) intentional or purposeful nature,  have traditionally been applied to the study of the divisions of physics, chemistry and biology, respectively. While teleology is required to understand natural objects such as artifacts, internal teleology has been neglected in biological explanations, as is generally the case in modern science. Yet causes of intention/purpose are not eliminable even in our ordinary understanding of natural things as mentioned above.

The main problem seems to arise because while objects explicable in terms of mechanical or chemical causes do not require or depend upon teleological causes, the automatic assumption that such explanations apply to biological systems is not at all necessary. For example, probability analysis of the letters in a book will not yield any information about the content of the book. Material analysis of the book will not yield any information about its meaning. Such analyses may be consistent, but they do not provide a complete explanation of the book. Likewise, physical and chemical analysis of organisms may be consistent in accordance with their respective principles, yet at the same time provide incomplete description of the totality we call organisms.

“Why don’t Darwinists who say that DNA came by chance do the math to prove their claim. Isn’t it scientific to back one’s claims in science by doing the math? Yet, those who do the math always conclude that chance is not sufficient to prove evolution of DNA by chance.”

- Sripad Bhakti Madhava Puri Maharaja, Ph.D.

“The wise man must not be ordered but must order, and he must not obey another, but the less wise must obey him”

- Aristotle

Sripad Bhakti Madhava Puri Maharaja, Ph.D.

Bhaktivedanta Institute

There is a nested hierarchy of wholes that characterizes reality, and especially life. The most fundamental principle is that Reality in the Vedantic/Bhagavat conception is based on Personality, as mentioned in the very first aphorism of the Bhagavat Purana, “janmady asya yatho nvayat itaratas charteshu abhijnah svarat.” Here and in many other scriptures the foundation or origin of everything is centered upon the abhijna or cognizant (conscious) primordial Personality of Godhead.

Modern science in the West has become centered on matter as the foundation of everything, and this is called materialism. But matter is impersonal. The question is: how can a person come from what is impersonal? We consider such an approach to be backward. Person cannot come from an impersonal material substratum. It is very difficult to conceive how a rock can give rise to a concept of rock. But it is quite natural to understand that a rock exists as a concept for a conscious person. So too can the concept of objectivity, concreteness and perception arise from a personal substratum, and historically, this has been demonstrated by the detailed philosophical study of these ideas by numerous philosophers.

We can call this the Vedantic/Bhagavat paradigm, but it was also re-developed in the period of modernity that began with Descartes in the Western tradition of Idealism, especially among the Germans in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Accordingly, if the ultimate ground is personal, then every atom has a soul or latent personality within it. Every living cell certainly has a soul or life principle, and therefore every multicelled organism is not only an aggregate of such soul-based cells, but there is also a predominating soul or personality for each multi-celled organism. Thus, even from the cellular level we can understand the beginning of the nested hierarchy of Life.

We may note that it is only with the modern development of advanced biological techniques that the vast complexity of the cell has come to light. This complexity has proven to be a major challenge to the Darwinian-minded scientists who believed that such cells could have been formed by chance aggregation of molecules in a primordial soup of the primitive earth. Even such elementary cellular life forms show such a systematic unity that a only pre-existing bijam (seed/soul) or implicit concept could explain its formative origin.

Plants represent a particular level of aforementioned nested hierarchy. In the mundane sphere we find the basic mineral, vegetable, and animal levels of Nature. There are other intermediate levels also, but these represent the general types or kinds in Nature. Life in the Mineral kingdom is only what goes on outside the apparently inert minerals, and which utilizes them for the life processes. The Vegetable kingdom, type or kind is a little more advanced in that the life process is what actually constitutes the vegetable organism. Yet the living principle is still quite primitive here because the parts of the vegetative organism are not wholly dependent upon the predominating life that unifies the organism as such. In other words, the parts of the plant can exist semi-independently from the rest of the plant. And this is why we can take a cutting from a plant and have it grow another entire organism.

However, under natural conditions, we cannot take a limb from an animal and expect that another animal can be produced from it, or that the limb will grow back. This is because the animal represent another type or kind of life process that is higher, in the sense of more unified or integrated, than that of the plant/vegetable kingdom.

Thus we can see a hierarchy forming here. Minerals are easily separable from one another because they are organized (or unified) by a life chiefly outside or around them. Vegetables, on the other hand, are more integrated, but at the same time not so tightly as we find in the animal kingdom. Therefore, the parts of plants can be segregated to a certain degree without destroying their unity, and still constitute other whole plants.

Minerals are in a sense consumed by plant life, and plants are consumed by animal life, so even in this sense we can see a natural hierarchy among them in Nature. This is, therefore, not a violation of the organic whole principle, but a verification of it when understood in conjunction with the principle of nested hierarchy.

Beyond animal life is human life. Human life has the same principles as animal organisms, but it has the additional principle of rationality, which is a still higher and more refined unity than the vegative or reproductive processes found in the lower rungs of the hierarchy.

Now the details of all this is a great science, and it has to be studied carefully in order to understand the principles involved. This is the work of the Institute and those who wish to study it are welcome to come and learn this science. Basically, as we explained in our previous post, the Earth itself is also part of the personal hierarchy, called Bhumi, and the universe has its predominating personality, Brahma, and beyond that, all the way to the Complete Whole Personality of Godhead, the Ultimate Reality, Sri Krishna, Who is non-different from Ultimate Reality.

Just as any developed science is not so easy to understand without proper training and education, so too, the science of the Absolute Truth requires proper training and development in order to come to a proper comprehension of it. So this cannot all be expected to be fully digested upon a first acquaintance with it.

Regarding the identification of species, this is a difficult problem even for modern scientists who still do not have a proper definition of species. An ancient scriptures does, however, point out that there are 84 lakh yonies, or species, i.e. 8,400,000 forms of life. This is interesting because it not only posits a particular number, but it also implies that there must be a particular method by which that number is deduced, no doubt connected with the trigunas, by which the entire material creation is manifest. We must leave it to further study to find the origin of such calculations.

The most fundamental principle is that Reality in the Vedantic/Bhagavat conception is based on Personality, as mentioned in the very first aphorism of the Bhagavat Purana, “janmady asya yatho nvayat itaratas charteshu abhijnah svarat.” Here and in many other scriptures the foundation or origin of everything is centered upon the abhijna or cognizant (conscious) primordial Personality of Godhead.

Modern science in the West has become centered on matter as the foundation of everything, and this is called materialism. But matter is impersonal. The question is: how can a person come from what is impersonal? We consider such an approach to be backward. Person cannot come from an impersonal material substratum. It is very difficult to conceive how a rock can give rise to a concept of rock. But it is quite natural to understand that a rock exists as a concept for a conscious person. So too can the concept of objectivity, concreteness and perception arise from a personal substratum, and historically, this has been demonstrated by the detailed philosophical study of these ideas by numerous philosophers.

We can call this the Vedantic/Bhagavat paradigm, but it was also re-developed in the period of modernity that began with Descartes in the Western tradition of Idealism, especially among the Germans in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Accordingly, if the ultimate ground is personal, then every atom has a soul or latent personality within it. Every living cell certainly has a soul or life principle, and therefore every multicelled organism is not only an aggregate of such soul-based cells, but there is also a predominating soul or personality for each multi-celled organism. Thus, even from the cellular level we can understand the beginning of the nested hierarchy of Life.

We may note that it is only with the modern development of advanced biological techniques that the vast complexity of the cell has come to light. This complexity has proven to be a major challenge to the Darwinian-minded scientists who believed that such cells could have been formed by chance aggregation of molecules in a primordial soup of the primitive earth. Even such elementary cellular life forms show such a systematic unity that a only pre-existing bijam (seed/soul) or implicit concept could explain its formative origin.

Plants represent a particular level of aforementioned nested hierarchy. In the mundane sphere we find the basic mineral, vegetable, and animal levels of Nature. There are other intermediate levels also, but these represent the general types or kinds in Nature. Life in the Mineral kingdom is only what goes on outside the apparently inert minerals, and which utilizes them for the life processes. The Vegetable kingdom, type or kind is a little more advanced in that the life process is what actually constitutes the vegetable organism. Yet the living principle is still quite primitive here because the parts of the vegetative organism are not wholly dependent upon the predominating life that unifies the organism as such. In other words, the parts of the plant can exist semi-independently from the rest of the plant. And this is why we can take a cutting from a plant and have it grow another entire organism.

However, under natural conditions, we cannot take a limb from an animal and expect that another animal can be produced from it, or that the limb will grow back. This is because the animal represent another type or kind of life process that is higher, in the sense of more unified or integrated, than that of the plant/vegetable kingdom.

Thus we can see a hierarchy forming here. Minerals are easily separable from one another because they are organized (or unified) by a life chiefly outside or around them. Vegetables, on the other hand, are more integrated, but at the same time not so tightly as we find in the animal kingdom. Therefore, the parts of plants can be segregated to a certain degree without destroying their unity, and still constitute other whole plants.

Minerals are in a sense consumed by plant life, and plants are consumed by animal life, so even in this sense we can see a natural hierarchy among them in Nature. This is, therefore, not a violation of the organic whole principle, but a verification of it when understood in conjunction with the principle of nested hierarchy.

Beyond animal life is human life. Human life has the same principles as animal organisms, but it has the additional principle of rationality, which is a still higher and more refined unity than the vegative or reproductive processes found in the lower rungs of the hierarchy.

Now the details of all this is a great science, and it has to be studied carefully in order to understand the principles involved. This is the work of the Institute and those who wish to study it are welcome to come and learn this science. Basically, as we explained in our previous post, the Earth itself is also part of the personal hierarchy, called Bhumi, and the universe has its predominating personality, Brahma, and beyond that, all the way to the Complete Whole Personality of Godhead, the Ultimate Reality, Sri Krishna, Who is non-different from Ultimate Reality.

Just as any developed science is not so easy to understand without proper training and education, so too, the science of the Absolute Truth requires proper training and development in order to come to a proper comprehension of it. So this cannot all be expected to be fully digested upon a first acquaintance with it.

Regarding the identification of species, this is a difficult problem even for modern scientists who still do not have a proper definition of species. An ancient scriptures does, however, point out that there are 84 lakh yonies, or species, i.e. 8,400,000 forms of life. This is interesting because it not only posits a particular number, but it also implies that there must be a particular method by which that number is deduced, no doubt connected with the trigunas, by which the entire material creation is manifest. We must leave it to further study to find the origin of such calculations.

 

Sripad Bhakti Madhava Puri Maharaja, Ph.D.

Bhaktivedanta Institute

The neo-Darwinian theory of genetic random mutation and Natural Selection, does nothing to explain speciation. Thus, what has been called “natural selection” has come under much scrutiny and critique in recent times.[1]

The problem is that natural selection requires the existence of a stable array of species from which selection can be made. So natural selection does not perform the speciation, only the selection after speciation has occurred. The activity of creating new species must therefore lie in the random mutations of the genome. But this raises the problem that such mutations are generally always fatal to the organism, plus a whole host of other problems that modern advances in molecular biology have revealed about the detailed mechanisms occurring in DNA replication processes, including such things as intrinsic error correcting mechanisms during DNA transcription.[2]

Thus a theory of how species arise (speciation) does not currently exist in biology.

The Vedantic/Bhagavat paradigm rejects the objectivist theory of evolution as not only wrong but an impediment to the actual scientific comprehension of Nature. As explained in a previous post, the Vedantic conception of Life is a fully differentiated/determinate one that displays its variety in and as an dynamic organic whole. The crucial element of interdependence that is missing in modern theories of insular organism life is fully embraced in what we may call the Post-Darwinian, post-reductionist, post-modern conception of Life the Vedantic/Bhagavat conception offers. Organic wholism is a conception that has its inception as far back as the writings of Sri Isopanishad, where the first aphorism states: om purman adhah purnam idam, purnat purnam udachyate.[3] The Organic Whole produces organic wholes. An organic whole cannot arise from parts that have to be assembled. That process can only produce inorganic, mechanical machines or chemical processes, not living organisms.[4]

In order to understand this new conception, one only has to consider the empirical evidence that is apparent to all ordinary observation, namely, that a developing organism shows that an obvious pattern or blueprint exists at the most fundamental level of embryonic development, or ontology, which guides the formation of the adult organism. We may call this the soul, or concept of the individual organism, which belongs to a particular species, which in turn corresponds to a universal concept or genus to which the organism belongs. In this UPI (universal, particular, individual) structure we have the fundamental features of every rational Concept.[5]

Here we find a nested hierarchy in which the individual organism is fully determined endogenously and exogenously. This system has to be studied in detail before one can understand the great utility and scientific value it has for explaining individuality. Sankhya and Vedantic philosophy go to great length in explaining these details, which we hope to bring to modern scientific understanding. This is one of the current projects of the Bhaktivedanta Institute in which we encourage the participation of all interested scientists, philosophers, etc.

The idea of predetermined forms establishing teleological processes to actualize such forms has been found to be an acceptable premise by numerous scientists, although such views have generally been ignored and unreported by the evolution-obsessed hegemony that has taken hold of western science. Here we give quotes by a few of those who reject the random chance scenario and have come to accept the more determinative view.

————————————
John A Davison (2005)

“There is no question that artificial selection can significantly alter the phenotype as demonstrated with dogs, goldfish, and a host of other domesticated forms, both plant and animal. Nevertheless, the products of the most intensive selection have not exceeded the species barrier. It seems that sexual reproduction is incapable of transforming species even to new members of the same genus. Even if this could be demonstrated, it seems very unlikely that such a process could ever produce the higher categories of genus, family, order or class.”

“It is the responsibility of the scientist to expose failed hypotheses, but it is equally his responsibility to offer a replacement for them…. I propose that the information for organic evolution has somehow been predetermined in the evolving genome in a way comparable to the way in which the necessary information to produce a complete organism is contained within a single cell, the fertilized egg….Viewed in this way, ontogeny and phylogeny become part of the same organic continuum utilizing similar mechanisms for their expression.”

J.A. Davidson, “A Prescribed Evolutionary Hypothesis” [2005]
http://www.uncommondescent.com/dr-john-davison-biologist/a-prescribed-evolut
————-
Leo S Berg ;
“Evolution is in a great measure an unfolding of pre-existing rudiments.” ([1969],page 406)

Berg, L.S. [1969], Nomogenesis or Evolution Determined by Law. M.I.T. Press, Cambridge. (original Russian edition, 1922)
———————-
Otto Schindewolf [1993]
“At most, the environment plays only a similar role with regard to organisms; it can only provoke and set in motion some potential that is already present.”

Schindewolf, O. [1993], “Basic Questions in Paleontology.” The University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London. (original German edition, 1950).
—————-
A.R. Wallace finally abandoned the whole scheme of contingent evolution as is so obvious from the title of his last book, “The World of Life: A Manifestation of Creative Power, Directive Mind and Ultimate Purpose.” (Wallace [1911]).

Wallace, A.R. [1911], The World of Life: A Manifestation of Creative Power, Directive Mind and Ultimate Purpose. Moffat Yard and Co., New York.
————-
Pierre Grasse commented on the Darwinian view as follows: “A cluster of facts makes it very plain that Mendelian, allelomorphic mutation plays no part in creative evolution.”

“…the existence of internal factors affecting evolution has to be accepted by any objective mind.”

“Directed by all-powerful selection, chance becomes a sort of providence which, under the cover of atheism, is not named but which is secretly worshipped. We believe that there is no reason for being forced to choose between “either randomness or the supernatural,” a choice into which the advocates of randomness in biology strive vainly to back their opponents. It is neither randomness nor supernatural power, but laws which govern living things; to determine these laws is the aim and goal of science, which should have the final say. (Grasse, page 107)

Grasse, P.P. [1977], Evolution of Living Organisms. Academic Press, New York. (original French edition 1973).
——————————————

References:

[2] J. Shapiro, “Bacteria are small but not stupid: cognition, natural genetic engineering and socio-bacteriology.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Science 38 (2007) 807-819.

[3] A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, “Sri Isopanisad,” Bhaktivedanta Book Trust [1969].

[4] Hannah Ginsborg Journal of the History of Philosophy, vol. 42, no. 1 (2004) 33-65.

[5] G.W.F. Hegel, “Science of Logic,” translated by A.V. Miller, London: George Allen & Unwin [1969].

Sripad Bhakti Madhava Puri Maharaja, Ph.D.

Bhaktivedanta Institute

It is not that scientists make an hypothesis first, [1] and then try to find the data to fit that hypothesis. Rather, the process is first observation, then an hypothes is made to describe the data, then conclude that the data has been described by the hypothesis. But this is not an explanation of the phenomenon. It is merely a description of the data in different terms, usually mathematics. It is essentially a tautology.

Thus to observe various points and connect them by a line or curve, then to find the mathematical formula that will construct that curve is said to be the law of the curve or the law governing the data points. If those data points happen to be the positions of a planet in space at different times, then the mathematical equation that produces the points on that curve is called the law of motion of the planets.

Now, in origin of life studies, observation reveals that life comes from life only. There is no evidence whatsoever to indicate that life is produced out of non-living matter. It was Louis Pasteur who disproved this theory of abiogenesis. From a purely empirical viewpoint, therefore, we have no justification for stating that life comes from inanimate matter. The evidence is that throughout the entire history of modern science such a production of life from matter has never been observed.

The question is: Why make a hypothesis about something that has never been observed? If we want to be scientific, then our hypothesis must match the data. Life comes from life is observed all over the Earth, and we might say, all over the universe as far as we have observed it. So where is the justification for claiming otherwise? Rather, we must conclude that the claim that life comes from matter is completely unscientific because it is not a conclusion based on any empirical observation at all. It is purely wishful thinking — a “naturalistic” or materialistic ideology that is masquerading as science. It is thus doubly deceitful since it is not only an unproven belief but an ideology that poses as a scientific theory.

Another area where ideology overrules scientific observation is the hypothesis of Darwinian evolution. A variety of different species is observed, but what has never been observed is one species producing another. Dogs give birth to dogs, however many breeding varieties may be produced. We have never in the course of human history observed a dog give birth to a horse. We have never observed populations of plants giving rise to a population of insects, etc.

For the sake of a hypothesis based on no conclusive evidence whatsoever, the evolutionary ideology has taken control of biology to such severe degree that any other conception of the nature of life and its origin is not even considered part of science. But as we have noted here, ideology is not science. Or if we assume that ideology is part of science, then we must be willing to accept other ideological premises that at least agree with observed empirical facts.

The facts are: the Cambrian explosion [2] occurs in which (a) species appear suddenly without any precursor species, and (b) no transitional forms have ever been observed being produced from any species in the history of mankind.

The conclusion from the data should be: there is no such thing as evolution of species. This should be the working hypothesis based on observation. If such data is found that this hypothesis must be changed, then we will have to deal with that. But the data available at present has never supported evolution.

The original idea of Darwin was based on specious reasoning only. The change in the size of bird beaks, does not indicate a drastic evolution of giraffes from zebras. Adaption within a species is a well known phenomenon. But this adaptability does not encompass a complete change of species.

Modern advances in biology since the time of Darwin, that have allowed observation of the inner workings of simple cells, have created another great hurdle to Darwinian evolutionary thinking. The vast complexity of even the smallest cell shows that such organisms have no conceivable chance of ever having arisen by a random combination of chemical or biological parts.

Thus advancement of science has provided more substantial evidence against evolution than ever before. The so-called tree-of-life has been completely chopped down to a very tenuous bush [3] due to the tracing of genetic lines through various species. The root of this bush is merely posited an extra, without any evidence whatsoever or even a plausible hypothesis for how a supposed original cell created the bush.

The whole idea that we bring to the study of Nature, is that living organisms are each independent, self-subsisting life forms that somehow evolve or transmutate from one form to another. However, this viewpoint completely ignores the well-known interdependence of life forms on one another and on their environment. The true ecological unity of life on Earth, which is known as the Gaia principle (called Bhumi in Sanskrit texts), is not acknowledged in the insular concept of cellular life that is maintained today.

We propose that Life is an organic unity that appears in a myriad of forms throughout the planet displaying its inherently determinate nature (as a unity in difference) as a varigated display of species from the lowly microbe to the dominate Bhumi conception, and beyond to encompass the rest of the universe. This is in keeping with the Vedantic worldview. Thus Life is a universal organic unity that exhibits itself as a complete spectrum of living unities, as much as white light when passed through a prism exhibits itself as a rainbow of colors. One color does not evolve from another, and so too does Life exhibit itself in a variety of forms that constitute the wholeness of Life in its full determinateness.

Since the beginning of time, Veda has plainly stated the obvious that has always been observed by every man, woman and child who ever lived. “janmady asya yato” – the origin of everything is “abhijnah svarat” – the unitary Supreme Cognizant Being, as given in the very first text of Bhagavat Purana. [4] Consciousness, in other words, comes from consciousness. It does not come from unconscious matter, as materialism dogmatically avers without trace of even the slightest logical reasoning. Where there is cognition or consciousness, there is life. So life comes from life. This is the Vedic conclusion “janmady asya yatah” – the conclusion of Vedanta-sutra. [5] And it is scientific. This implies that whatever contradicts such conclusion must be unscientific, based purely on dogmatic ideology, or misguided ideology.

Our position is that real scientific knowledge is based on the Vedantic viewpoint. And we are engaged in presenting that from a purely scientific and rational viewpoint for all the world to confirm and accept, and to overthrow the misconceived materialist ideology that has gained hegemony over the modern mind and soul of Man. This is the aim of the Bhaktivedanta Institute and We are ready to debate any challengers to convince them in the clearest way that Vedanta and Bhagavatam is to be the paradigm to guide future humanity toward genuine scientific knowledge. We request all scientists to learn this wisdom and verify it in their scientific research in order to establish the Vedanta and Bhagavatam as the authentic scientific knowledge by which humanity can make real progress in understanding the true nature of material nature and the spiritual self.

References

[1] Of course today, the mathematical system that is adopted for explaining physical phenomena is used to make predictions that are only later observed as proof of the validity of the mathematical equations. Thus the mathematical system of physics has its own symmetry laws that govern its validity without reference to the empirical data. The assumption is that the a priori system yields results that can be verified by empirical observation. But this is the reverse of the original observation-hypothesis-conclusion method of empirical science.

[2] Much has been written about the Cambrian explosion or Biological Big Bang. See for example, Simon Conway-Morris, “The Cambrian explosion of metazoans and molecular biology: would Darwin be satisfied?” Cambridge Earth Sciences Publication ES 7550.

[3] See for example, Graham Lawton, “Why Darwin was wrong about the tree of life”, “New Scientist,” Issue 2692, 21 January 2009. Also, Eugene V Koonin, “Darwinian evolution in the light of genomics”, a review in “Nucleic Acid Research,” 2009.

[4] Srimad Bhagavatam 1.1.1 (see http://srimadbhagavatam.com/1/1/1/en1)

[5] Vedanta-sutra 1.1.2