Terrestrial life is a thing, singular. Every shred of life on Earth (two million species we know about, plus maybe another 50 million we don’t) — plants, animals, bacteria, fungi and all the rest — derives from a single organism that began replicating nearly 4 billion years ago. Our ur-ancestor is shown at the very bottom of the black line in the accompanying phylogenetic diagram. Since then, evolution has given us the wild exuberance of life that’s around, above, below and inside us.
Dozens of lines of evidence lead to the conclusion that all species are interconnected. For instance:
All organisms use the carbon-based DNA molecule, built on four nucleobases (CGAT: cytosine, guanine, adenine and thymine), to transmit genetic information from one generation to the next.
Despite the existence of about 140 naturally occurring amino acids, all living organisms select from a set of just 23 of these.
And all of those are “left-handed,” though “right-handed” amino acids exist in nature. (Handedness, or “chirality,” of molecules is analogous to how our two hands are essentially different: one can’t be superimposed on the other.)
All life on Earth is uniquely powered by charged hydrogen atoms, packed in ATP (adenosine triphosphate) molecules.
If life had arisen multiple times instead of just once, we’d expect to see variance in the above basic molecules, such as the occasional right-handed amino acid or another genetic transfer mechanism besides DNA (RNA, for instance, which is similar to DNA except it substitutes uracil for thymine).
When we attempt to trace our family tree back to its origin, we find that micro-organisms called “extremophiles” dominate the earliest forms of life. The “extreme” part of the term implies that they live in hostile environments — only from our point of view, of course. These little critters thrive just about anywhere. Sites with strong acids, alkalis or radiation, boiling springs, frozen Antarctic lakes, deep underground caverns — bring it on! After all, that’s where these guys came from. (Think of Brer Rabbit, “born and bred in a briar patch.”) They didn’t so much adapt to Earth’s early environment as they sprang from it. Later, what we think of as “ordinary” life descended from them, as the diagram shows. (Humans come under the tag “animalia,” just one twig on the “eucaryia” branch.)
The unity of life on Earth is what makes the search for it elsewhere so exciting. Finding life in the oceans beneath the ice of Europa, or in the hydrocarbon lakes of Titan (moons of Jupiter and Saturn respectively), would double our sample size. And if we do find extraterrestrial life, what will it look like? How will it reproduce? Will it be based, like ours, on carbon, or silicon, or …? Are its basic molecules right- or left-handed? Are we sure we’ll even recognize it as alive?
All this is moot if life is unique to Earth. But I’m pretty optimistic we’ll find something out there. The question is, what?
This article appears in The Ripple Effect.
Also moot if we make life on our planet so inhospitable for us human organisms (and others) to survive long enough to actually find those other life forms. I love your writing, Barry!
I understand the connection (it is obvious) in the similarities of organisms, hands vs fins vs wings. The genetic connection is a superb example of just how similar all known life actually is. Even ‘extremophiles’ are not really different as you eluded to. They, as you said, are relatively extreme. But when compared to the extremes of the universe they survive in exceedingly narrow parameters. The universe is extremely hostile to organic life.
The typical drawing, that is- the typical illustration (think extrapolation or even metaphor) of the tree of life makes good intuitive sense as a visual for the narrative to explain the now ubiquitous TOE. And admittedly, the evidence powerfully suggests a common origin. It would at this stage be quite unscientific (in the logical sense) to deny it. It is a very consistent pattern. Can you feel the ‘but!’ coming?
However (I always thought that less rude than the word but), there is another explanation to explain this pattern. There is a logical competitor to explain the clear pattern: common design.
When we see the design of automobiles for instance, we see many similarities because they serve a common purpose in a common environment.
If life were designed, one would expect that because of the common environment such as the shared laws of physics and chemistry, as well as the planet, that the design would be constrained in just the same kind of way. In fact, given the same universe, let alone planet, it would be foolish to think that life would NOT be highly constrained and related no matter what the ultimate point of common origin is.
By definition, biological life is self replicating, and as we now know, that requires a mind-bendingly complex assemblage of molecular machines. At the genetic level, biological life is an information processing system that puts our most modern computing systems to shame. The software (the DNA and RNA) has dimensions of coding that are far from linear, neat, or intuitive. It is technology utterly alien in complexity. The only reason we can begin to comprehend it is because of our own computer coding systems and the engineering required. As one biochemist said, “If we have to be chemical engineers to understand these systems, what does that tell you?” He is implying they are engineered of course.
I have spent a fair deal of time studying Origin of Life research, and even debated it pretty extensively (particularly for a layman), so there so much I could say my brain is exploding. The simple point is, the unity can be explained by design. The lines of evidence do not give exclusive support to the narrative of common decent. The discovery of unity is hardly relevant to establish one explanation over another, in a relational universe.
As for other life, it is interesting to note that astrobiologists confine their search to carbon based life. This is done for good scientific reasoning. The laws of physics are uniform throughout the Universe. And from what we can observe (which is what good science is) the same elements and chemical process are taking place. Assuming a materialistic origin of life, one of them put it this way: “It is not as if life could have arisen from silicon unless carbon based life was to invent it. We know the elements and no other element has the abilities of carbon for the incredibly complex bonds required for life” (paraphrased).
What most people fail to appreciate is the immense problem that the metabolism of cellular life presents to a materialistic origin. I really think you have glossed over this difficulty for your audience Barry. From extremophile to whale it is always the same as you mentioned. It is ATP. Interestingly, adenine is synthesized by the organisms themselves and must do so for two very provocative reasons. The first is the chirality you mentioned. Organisms synthesize left handed adenine molecules and only use left handed molecules. The second and biggest problem is that adenine has not been observed (what good science is) to exist in nature apart from being manufactured by living organisms.
Now if life must have adenine in order to exist, but we need life in order to get it, where did the first molecules of adenine (we would need many more than just 1 in order to establish a self replicating cycle) come from.
Theories abound, and meteor seedings have been prominent among them, but when these claims are seriously examined they are found hollow if you ask me. A lot of hype, and clever popular philosophy, but not good science.
I’ve been waiting all day to get to your other comments. Work, picking up one of the kids from baseball practice, then a 12 step meeting. Finally…
Barry writes: “And if we do find extraterrestrial life, what will it look like? How will it reproduce? Will it be based, like ours, on carbon, or silicon, or …? Are its basic molecules right- or left-handed? Are we sure we’ll even recognize it as alive?
All this is moot if life is unique to Earth. But I’m pretty optimistic we’ll find something out there. The question is, what?”
Those are some very intelligent and relevant questions. In particular, the understanding that we may not recognize it. People do not appreciate enough the notion that something truly alien might very well escape our notice since we have so many preconceptions and such bias. We kind of pack the jury by defining ahead of time what it is we are looking for. It is also curious that we we are looking for something to begin with. And not just ‘something’, but life other than our own. But by and large, the fact is we are.
I remember how my heart raced in anticipation when the character played by Jody Foster was finally going to meet that other life in the movie Contact. Many books and films have filled us with this hope and awe.The reason is so clear, we are looking for answers. We are looking for someone, not something, to shed light on so much mystery about existence. For we have learned that science is mute on these matters. Our deepest questions are not scientific. Science cannot answer our questions about origin, meaning, morality, and destiny.
Once again, I cannot help but notice that the bible comes through, NOT with a primitive answer to this, but a superbly sophisticated answer by comparison to our modern narratives.
In the modern narrative, the life we seek is really nothing more than what would be the gods of ancient Babylon or Greece. Like us, they are creatures INSIDE this universe. I found it a let down, but fitting (in fact I laughed out loud in the theater) when Jody Foster finally met the aliens and they had no meaningful answers. They didn’t even know who built the Star gate. It was a brutal anticlimax.
But how could they? Like the writers of the script, they were inside this world and have no answers. Answers that must necessarily come from an objective perspective outside. If there is any life out there that can ‘shed light’ (notice the metaphor) on our deepest hungers, that life would have to come from beyond our space time.
The idea of life in another galaxy, or another planet in our own Milky Way, that is, life like our own is so congenial to our preconceptions that it most certainly is the more primitive when compared to the idea of a life coming from the ‘heavenly places’ (notice also the fitting metaphor for that which is outside our space time).
To be truly alien, in the most sophisticated sense, and to have any possibility of objective answers, it would have to be “not of this world.”
1 John 1:2 The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us.
John 1:9 The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world. 10 He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. 11 He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. 12 Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God— 13 children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.
John 18:Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jewish leaders. But now my kingdom is from another place.”
John 6:35 Then Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty. 36 But as I told you, you have seen me and still you do not believe. 37 All those the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away. 38 For I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me. 39 And this is the will of him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all those he has given me, but raise them up at the last day. 40 For my Father’s will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day.”
What is being claimed here is staggering. All of our hunger for answers from outside the system all wrapped up in this life that came into history in our time and space. We were not expecting the life to be human. Just what do we expect from such a life? But if man was made in the image of God perhaps some of the answers to our questions have been in front of our noses this whole time and we were simply blinded by our preconceptions.
There is one more thing to be said about Kant (I know you will understand Barry because of past comments of mine at LoCo). Kant really closed the philosophical deal in articulating the idea that we cannot know. We are stuck in this phenomenal world, and God in the noumenal. He had a point as we have no way to cross from here to there. But Kant failed to notice that if someone could come from there to here, then light could be shed, at least in theory. He gave us a half truth.
If nothing else, this is another example of what I touched on in my response in your article about Atlantis. Now that I grasp some of what the bible is communicating in terms of philosophy, theology, and the natural order, I see immediately that it is not primitive or superstitious like the nature religions. It is way ahead of its time even now in the 21st century, let alone for the times in which it was penned.
There is one more thing (until the next thing) that I need to clarify about alien life appearing as human in the biblical sense. And it needs to be clarified because a human life could easily be construed as not alien at all. We need to be sure this is not another anthropomorphic projection on our part (or part of the gospel writers).
We need to notice that according to the texts, God did not come from heaven in human form. so it is not as if something from this nature is coming from another nature. If that were the case, it would raise serious doubts in my mind. On the contrary something far more queer and astonishing takes place. God in spirit form, moves into our space time, overshadows a humble and willing woman, and incarnates into our nature.
This is utterly fantastic conceptually. It is a very complex claim. If it were primitive, I would expect some significant inconsistencies if for no other reason, their utter lack of experience both philosophically and scientifically.
Why is it that I not only find no relevant contradiction, but find instead such a sophisticated and complete picture? That is not to say that every question I have has been answered. but the information that is given, from Genesis to Revelation is totally consistent. And even though I would like more, there is much more information given than I would expect from a primitive legend.
For instance, it is not as if the new testament writers invented the idea of God impregnating a virgin woman so as to give us our messiah. It was prophesied long before that ‘the woman shall be with child’.
Also, it is consistent with the claims of John and Genesis that God created the universe and life, and that the word was the life. That is to say, the very mind or spirit of God is the author of the laws of physics, chemistry, and the genetic code. And he would have to be in order to pull something like this off.
Not that last point may be consistent, but I can’t help but notice that it is also obvious and in that way convenient. But what is not convenient is that the writer/s of Genesis and the writers of the new testament could have colluded to get the story straight. They are separated by as much as 100 centuries.
Then there is the most astounding consistency of all. I lean heavily on the work of so many others for wrestling through these things and I don’t always give credit (my posts are long enough in a format like this). But C.S. Lewis in his book Mere Christianity, helped me put these next pieces together.
God reveals himself all the time, we are just too deaf and blind to see and hear him. He is too obvious and omnipresent to notice. We forget him as we forget we are breathing air. It is taken for granted. But at no time in history did he reveal himself so clearly as when he entered space time and incarnated in human flesh. He translated himself into human terms, and what a queer human he is.
But Lewis’ point was roughly this. Humanity from God’s point of view is not a series of disconnected individuals. To him mankind is one organism like a tree root spread out in time. Every human being is part of every other human being past, present and future. I think we can all see that plainly enough.
It is man who is fallen. Not you, not me, or Adolf Hitler, but mankind. In order to bring man back up into union with the deity, it was our very organism as a whole that needed redemption. Just as one man sinned and brought all of mankind down with him, so one man did not sin, and took all of man back up with him. This is a huge topic but I hope I have successfully abreviated the point.
I cannot say that without context, and this is something that came up in the jail awhile back. Part of our lessen that night referred to passages in Genesis where a reference to Adam and Eve was made. That is a rather awkward subject for a modern mind, and understandably so. One of the inmates inquired about the nakedness and all. He wanted to know what it was all about. He wondered if it was a sexual thing of some kind.
I told him, no I don’t think so and then tried to explain it as follows:
We have to understand that Adam and Eve were immortal. They had real life, the life of God. They were fully alive in a way we do not know. I told him that I am not sure it would be right to say they were like the resurrected Christ, but something like that.
When they sinned and fell for the temptation to be God (another huge topic) they died just as God said. Their very bodies changed. The death was visible in their flesh and on their skin. Not only was the inward change something they immediately moved to hide, but also the visible representation of what they had done. They were ashamed through and through just as we are at times.
Now it must be mentioned that this is my own personal take on the matter though I am sure it is not new. If I were well read enough I would likely find that this has been covered and seen long before. This is not official church teaching or anything like that because it cannot be known with that degree of certainty. We are trying to make sense of it all. What surprises me is that we can at all. We should not be able to do this if it were nonsense or imaginative legend.
I have mountains of unanswered questions about Eden and vegetarianism, the list goes on. But what answers have been provided thus far are of the kind that do not fit a convenient just-so kind of story. they are real answers, not philosophize it away kind of fluff, utterly beyond my understanding as I found when test driving other philosophies in my youth. I don’t want to denigrate other religions by naming them.
You know, I cannot but notice the fascination with zombies today. We are enraptured by the idea of the walking dead, and I think it is to make ourselves feel more alive by contrast. But if this text is telling us the truth (and I believe it is), the WE are the zombies.
It is like Pinnochio in reverse. Adam was like a real boy who became a wooden boy by contrast. And as Jesus said, “I come to give life and life to the full… I have come to restore that which has been lost”. And in the person of Jesus the wooden man became a real boy once again.
Nothing is required of us to fix ourselves and achieve this. We can’t. He has accomplished it already. The only thing required of us is to believe it. And he gives us ample intellectual, scientific, and existential reasons. It is not as if there is a lack of evidence. It does not require blind faith. Quite the contrary. It requires reasonable faith, the kind of faith Jesus talked about.
The craziest part is this. And although it can be told it must be experienced individually. Jeus said, “I am the gate…”.
He is not talking about a wooden door. He is not talking about a star gate to another galaxy. He is talking about a gate to beyond the singularity and directly to God himself. When a blind man sees for the first time in the sense Jesus meant, he sees what Emanuel Kant said we could never know. Jesus enables us to not just believe that there is a God or life elsewhere in the ether, but to experience Him in our own flesh.
“…then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”
I meant to say 10 centuries. In the future, I will try to slow down and proof read before posting.