- Framing The Picture
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- How did life begin on Earth? More intellectual
and literal blood has been shed and spilled attempting to answer this question
than any other in any aspect of science or religion. Why? Because the
answer, if it could be determined beyond doubt, would reveal to us the
deepest meanings behind ourselves and all that we see around us. More importantly,
it would demolish once and for all the thorny tangle of conscious and
unconscious thought and belief that causes most of the bloodshed.
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- At present there are only two socially
acceptable explanations for how life has come to be on Earth. Science
insists it has developed by entirely natural means, using only the materials
at hand on the early planet, with no help from any outside source, whether
that source be divine or extraterrestrial. Religion insists with equal
fervor that life was brought into existence whole and complete by a divine
Creator called by different names by the worlds various sects. Between
these two diametrically opposed viewpoints there is no overlap, no common
ground where negotiation might be undertaken. Each considers its own position
to be totally correct and the other totally wrong, a certainty bolstered
by the fact that each can blow gaping holes in the logic/dogma of the
other.
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- Science is quick to point to the overwhelming
technical proofs that life could not, and indeed did not, appear whole
and complete within the restricted time frame outlined in the Biblical
account. Of course, people of faith are immune to arguments based on fact
or logic. Faith requires that they accept the Biblical account no matter
how dissonant it might be with reality. Besides, they can show that not
a shred of tangible evidence exists to support the notion that any species
can transmute itself into another species given enough time and enough
positive genetic mutations, which is the bedrock of Charles Darwins theory
of incremental evolution, or "gradualism."
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- In the early 1800's Darwin visited the
Galapagos Islands and noticed certain species had developed distinct adaptations
for dealing with various environmental niches found there. Finch beaks
were modified for eating fruit, insects, and seeds; tortoise shells were
notched and unnotched for high-bush browsing and low-bush browsing. Every
variation clearly remained part of the same root stock--finches remained
finches, tortoises remained tortoises--but those obvious modifications
in isolated body parts led Darwin to the logical assumption that entire
bodies could change in the same way over vastly more time. Voila! Gradualism
was conceived and, after gestating nearly three decades, was birthed in
1859 with the publication of the landmark On The Origin Of Species. Since
then Darwin and his work have been topics of intense, usually acrimonious
debate between science and religion.
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- The irony of a two-party political system
whose members spend the majority of their time shooting holes in each
others policies is that it becomes abundantly clear to everyone beyond
the fray that neither side knows what the hell it is talking about. Yet
those standing outside the science-religion fray do not grow belligerent
and say, "Youre both wrong. An idiot can see that. Find another explanation."
No! In this emotionally charged atmosphere nearly everyone seems compelled
to choose one side or the other, as if seeking a more objective middle
ground would somehow cause instant annihilation. Such is the psychological
toll wrought on all of us by the take-no-prisoners attitude of the two
sides battling for our hearts and minds regarding this issue.
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- Facts Will Be Facts
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- Because those of faith insist on being
immune to arguments based on facts, they remove themselves from serious
discussions of how life might have actually come to be on Earth. So if
anyone reading this has a world view based on divine revelation, stop here
and move on to something else. You will not like (to say the least!) what
you are about to read. Nor, for that matter, will those who believe what
science postulates is beyond any valid doubt. As it turns out, and as
was noted above, neither side in this two-party system knows what the
hell it is talking about.
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- To move ahead, we must assign a name
to those who believe life spontaneously sprang into existence from a mass
of inorganic chemicals floating about in the early Earths prebiotic seas.
Lets call them "Darwinists," a term often used for that purpose.
Darwinists have dealt themselves a difficult hand to play because those
prebiotic seas had to exist at a certain degree of coolness for the inorganic
chemicals floating in them to bind together into complex molecules. Anyone
who has taken high school chemistry knows that one of the best ways to
break chemical bonds is to heat them.
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- Given that well-known reality, Darwinists
quickly postulated that the first spark of life would no doubt have ignited
itself sometime after the continental threshold was reached around 2.5
billion years ago. At that point land would have existed as land and seas
would have existed as seas, though not in nearly the same shapes we know
them today. But the water in those seas would have been cool enough to
allow the chemical chain reactions required by "spontaneous animation."
So among Darwinists there arose a broad consensus that the spontaneous
animation of life had to have occurred (again, because they do not allow
for the possibility of outside intervention, divine or extraterrestrial),
and it had to have occurred no earlier than the continental threshold
of 2.5 billion years ago.
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- These assumptions were believed and taught
worldwide with a fervor that leaves religious fundamentalists green with
envy. Furthermore, they were taught as facts because that is what science
inevitably does. It reaches a consensus about a set of assumptions in a
field it has not fully mastered, then those assumptions are believed as
dogma and taught as facts until the real facts become known. Sometimes
such consensus "facts" endure for a short time (Isaac Newtons
assumption that the speed of light was a relative measure lasted only
200 years), while others endure like barnacles on the underside of our
awareness (the universe doggedly expands beyond every finite measure given
for it).
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- In the same way Newtons fluctuating speed
of light was overturned by Albert Einsteins theory of relativity, the
continental threshold origin of life was blown out of the water, so to
speak, by discoveries in the 1970's that indicated lifes origins were
much older than anticipated. So old, in fact, it went back nearly to the
point of coalition, 4.5 billion years ago, when the Sun had ignited and
the protoplanets had taken the general shapes and positions they maintain
today. Ultimately, 4.0 billion years became the new starting point for
life on Earth, based on fossilized stromatolites discovered in Australia
that dated to 3.6 billion years old.
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- For Darwinists that meant going from
the frying pan into the fire, literally, because at 4.0 billion years
ago the proto-Earth was nothing but a seething cauldron of lava, cooling
lava, and steam, about as far from an incubator for incipient life as
could be imagined. In short, right out of the gate, at the first crack
of the bat, Charles Darwin was, as they say in the south, a blowed-up
peckerwood.
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- Limbo Of The Lost
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- The fossilized stromatolites discovered
in Australia had been produced by the dead bodies of billions of prokaryotic
bacteria, the very first life forms known to exist on the planet. They
are also by far the simplest, with no nucleus to contain their DNA. Yet
in relative terms prokaryotes are not simple at all. They are dozens of
times larger than a typical virus, with hundreds of strands of DNA instead
of the five to ten of the simplest viruses. So it is clear that prokaryotes
are extremely sophisticated creatures relative to what one would assume
to be the very first self-animated life form, which can plausibly be imagined
as even smaller than the smallest virus.
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- (By the way, viruses do not figure into
this scenario because they are not technically "alive" in the
classic sense. To be fully alive means having the ability to take nourishment
from the immediate environment, turn that nourishment into energy, expel
waste, and reproduce indefinitely. Viruses need a living host to flourish,
though they can and do reproduce themselves when ensconced in a suitable
host. So it seems safe to assume hosts precede viruses in every case.)
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- Needless to say, the discovery of fossilized
prokaryotes at 3.6 billion years ago left scientists reeling. However,
because so many of their pet theories had been overturned in the past,
they knew how to react without panic or stridency. They made a collective
decision to just whistle in the dark and move on as if nothing had changed.
And nothing did. No textbooks were rewritten to accommodate the new discovery.
Teachers continued to teach the spontaneous animation theory as they had
been doing for decades. The stromatolites were consigned to the eerie
limbo where all OOPARTS (out-of-place artifacts) dwell, while scientists
edgily anticipated the next bombshell.
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- They didnt have to wait long. In the
late 1980's a biologist named Carl Woese discovered that not only did
life appear on Earth in the form of prokaryotes at around 4.0 billion
years ago, there was more than one kind! Woese found that what had always
been considered a single creature was in fact two distinct types he named
archaea and true bacteria. This unexpected, astounding discovery made
one thing clear beyond any shadow of doubt: Life could not possibly have
evolved on Earth. For it to appear as early as it did in the fossil record,
and to consist of two distinct and relatively sophisticated types of bacteria,
meant spontaneous animation flatly did not occur.
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- This discovery has been met with the
same resounding silence as the stromatolite discovery. No textbooks have
been rewritten to accommodate it. No teachers have changed what they are
teaching. If you can find a high school biology teacher that religious
fundamentalists have not yet terrorized into silence, go to their classroom
and you will find them blithely teaching that spontaneous animation is
how life came to be on Earth. Mention the words "stromatolite"
or "prokaryote" and you will get frowns of confusion from teacher
and students alike. For all intents and purposes this is unknown information,
withheld from those who most need to know about it because it does not
fit the currently accepted paradigm built around Charles Darwins besieged
theory of gradualism.
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- Outside Intervention
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- The ongoing, relentless assaults on gradualism
by religious fundamentalists is the principle reason scientists cant afford
to disseminate these truths through teaching. If fundamentalists would
keep their opinions and theories inside churches, where they belong, scientists
would be far more able (if not inclined) to acknowledge where reality
does not coincide with their own theories. But because fundamentalists
stand so closely behind them, loudly banging on the doors of their own
bailiwick, schools, scientists have no choice but to keep them at bay
by any means possible, which includes propping up an explanation for lifes
origins that has been bankrupt for more than two decades.
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- Another reason scientists resist disseminating
the truth is that it would so profoundly change the financial landscape
for many of them. Consider the millions and billions of tax dollars and
foundation grants that are spent each year trying to answer one question:
Does life exist beyond Earth? The reality of two types of prokaryotes appearing
suddenly, virtually overnight, at around 4.0 billion years ago provides
overwhelming testimony that the answer is "Yes!" Clearly life
could not have spontaneously animated from inorganic chemicals in seas
comprised of seething lava rather than relatively cool water. So billions
of dollars of funding would vanish if scientists ever openly conceded
that life must have come to Earth from somewhere else because it obviously
could not have originated here.
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- A third reason scientists avoid disseminating
this knowledge is that spontaneous animation is a fundamental tenet of
their corollary theory of human evolution. As with life in general, scientists
insist that humanity is a product of the same protracted series of gradual
genetic mutations that they feel produced every living thing on Earth.
And, again, all this has been done by natural processes within the confines
of the planet, with no outside intervention of any kind, divine or extraterrestrial.
So, if spontaneous animation goes out the window, then the dreaded specter
of outside intervention comes slithering in to take its place, and that
idea is so anathema to scientists they would rather deal with the myriad
embarrassments caused by their blowed-up icon and his clearly bankrupt
theory.
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- So What Is The Answer?
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- Life came to Earth from somewhere else--period.
It came to Earth whole and complete, in large volume, and in two forms
that were invulnerable to the most hostile environments imaginable. Given
those proven, undeniable realities, it is time to make the frightening
mental leap that few if any scientists or theologians have been willing
or able to make: Life was seeded here! There...its on the table...life
was seeded here.... The Earth hasnt split open. Lightening bolts have not
rained down. Time marches on. It seems safe to discuss the idea further.
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- If life was actually seeded here, how
might that have happened? By accident....or (hushed whisper) deliberately?
Well, the idea of accidental seeding has been explored in considerable
detail by a surprising number of non-mainstream thinkers and even by a
few credentialed scientists (British astronomer Fred Hoyle being perhaps
the most notable). The "accidental seeding" theory is called
panspermia, and the idea behind it is that bacterial life came to Earth
on comets or asteroids arriving from planets where it had existed before
they exploded and sent pieces hurtling through space to collide some millennia
later with our just-forming planet.
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- A variation of this theory is called
directed panspermia, which replaces comets and asteroids with capsules
launched by alien civilizations to traverse space for millennia and deliberately
home in on our just-forming planet. However, the idea of conscious direction
from any source beyond the confines of Earth is as abhorrent to science
as ever, so directed panspermia has received little better than polite
derision from the establishment. But for as blatantly as undirected panspermia
defies the scientific tenet that all of life begins and ends within the
confines of Earth, it is marginally acceptable as an alternative possibility.
There have even been serious, ongoing attempts to try to determine if
the raw materials for life might be found in comets.
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- The point to note here is that no one
wants to step up to the plate and suggest the obvious, which is that some
entity or entities from somewhere beyond our solar system came here when
it was barely formed and for whatever reason decided to seed it with two
kinds of prokaryotes, the hardiest forms of bacteria we are aware of and,
for all we know, are creatures purposefully designed to be capable of
flourishing in absolutely any environment in the universe. (Understand
that prokaryotes exist today just as they did 4.0 billion years ago...unchanged,
indestructible, microscopic terminators with the unique ability to turn
any hell into a heaven. But more about that in a moment.)
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- If we take the suggested leap and accept
the notion of directed-at-the-scene panspermia, we are then confronted
with a plethora of follow-up questions. Were all of the planets seeded,
or just Earth? Why Earth? Why when it was a seething cauldron? Why not
a couple billion years later, when it was cooled off? Good questions all,
and many more like them can be construed. But they all lead away from
the fundamental issue of why anyone or (to be fair) anything would want
to bring life here in the first place, whether to the proto-Earth or to
any other protoplanet? And this brings us to the kicker, a question few
of us are comfortable contemplating: Is Earth being deliberately terraformed?
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- Welcome To The Ant Farm
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- The concept of terraforming does indeed
conjure up images from the recent movie "Antz." Nevertheless,
for all we know that is exactly what we humans--and all other life forms,
for that matter--are, players on a stage that seems immense to us, but
(visualize the camera pulling back at the end of "Antz") in
reality is just a tiny orb swirling through the vastness of a seemingly
infinite universe. An unsettling and even unlikely scenario, but one that
has to be addressed. Well, so what? What if we are just bit players in
a cosmic movie that has been filming for 4.0 billion years? As long as
we are left alone to do our work and live our lives in relative peace,
where is the harm in it?
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- Is this fantastic notion really possible?
Is it even remotely plausible? Consider the facts as we know them to be,
not what we are misled into believing by those we trust to correctly inform
us. The simple truth is that life came to our planet when it (Earth) had
no business hosting anything but a galactic-level marshmallow roast. The
life forms that were brought, the two prokaryotes, just happen to be the
simplest and most durable creatures we are aware of. And, most important
of all, they have the unique ability to produce oxygen as a result of
their metabolic processes.
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- Why oxygen? Why is that important? Because
without an oxygen-based atmosphere life as we currently know it is impossible.
Of course, anaerobic organisms live perfectly well without it, but they
would not make good neighbors or dinner companions. No, oxygen is essential
for complex life as we know it, and quite possibly is necessary for higher
life forms everywhere. If that is the case, if oxygen is the key ingredient
for life throughout the universe, then from a terraformers perspective
bringing a load of prokaryotes to this solar system 4.0 billion years
ago begins to make a lot of sense.
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- Lets put ourselves in their shoes (or
whatever they wear) for a moment. They are a few million or even a few
billion years into their life cycle as a species. Space and time mean
nothing to them. Traversing the universe is like a drive across Texas
to us...a bit long but easily doable. So as they travel around they make
it a point to look for likely places to establish life, and 4.0 billion
years ago they spot a solar system (in this case ours) forming off their
port side. They pull a hard left and take it all in. At that point every
protoplanet is as much a seething cauldron as the proto-Earth, so they
sprinkle prokaryotes on all of them in the hope that one or more will
allow them to flourish.
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- What the terraformers know is that if
the prokaryotes ultimately prevail, then over time trillions of them will
produce enough oxygen to, first, turn all of the cooling planets free
iron into iron-oxide (rust). Once that is done...after, say, a billion
years (which, remember, means nothing to the terraformers)...oxygen produced
by the prokaryotes will be free to start saturating the waters of the
seas and the atmosphere above. When enough of that saturation occurs (say,
another billion years), the terraformers can begin to introduce increasingly
more complex life forms to the planet.
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- This might include, for example, eukaryotes,
Earths second life form, another single-celled bacteria which clearly
appeared (rather than evolved) just as suddenly as the prokaryotes at
(surprise!) around 2.0 billion years ago. Eukaryotes are distinctive because
they are the first life form with a nucleus, which is a hallmark of all
Earth life except prokaryotes. We humans are eukaryotic creatures. But
those second immigrants (which, like prokaryotes, exist today just as
they did when they arrived) were much larger than their predecessors,
more fragile, and more efficient at producing oxygen.
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- After establishing the first portion
of their program, the terraformers wait patiently while the protoplanet
cools enough for "real" life forms to be introduced. When the
time is right, starting at around half a billion years ago, higher life
forms are introduced by means of what today is called the "Cambrian
Explosion." Thousands of highly complex forms appear virtually overnight,
males and females, predators and prey, looking like nothing alive at present.
This is what actually happened.
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- The terraformers continue to monitor
their project. They notice Earth suffers periodic catastrophes that eliminate
50% to 90% of all higher life forms. (Such mass extinction events have
in fact occurred five times, the last being the Cretaceous extinction
of 65 million years ago, which wiped out the dinosaurs). They wait a few
thousand years after each event while the planet regains its biotic equilibrium,
then they restock it with new plants and animals that can make their way
in the post-catastrophe environment. (This, too, is actually borne out
by the fossil record, which scientists try to explain away with a specious
addendum to Darwinism called "punctuated equilibrium.")
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- For as outrageous as the above scenario
might seem at first glance, it does account for the real, true, literal
evidence much better than either Darwinism or Creationism ever have...or
ever will. This produces the bitterest irony of the entire debate. With
pillars of concrete evidence supporting outside intervention as the modus
for lifes origins on Earth, the concept is ignored to the point of suppression
in both scientific or religious circles. This is, of course, understandable,
because to discuss it openly might give it a credibility neither side
can afford at present. Both have their hands quite full maintaining the
battle against each other, so the last thing either side wants or needs
is a third wheel trying to crash their party. However, that third wheel
has arrived and is rolling their way.
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