It has been commonly assumed that life started in some ‘primordial soup’ of chemicals on the planet, and that somehow these chemicals begat life. How life began was still a mystery, but this ‘primordial soup’ idea seemed the most plausible. However, on February 3rd, the 80-year-old theory involving the origin of life was overturned. Quoting the linked article, the primordial soup idea could not provide the “sustained driving force to make anything react, and without an energy source, life as we know it can’t exist.” The new idea is that life began at hydrothermal vents in the ocean, where there is bountiful energy and already-existing chemical processes that resemble what today’s cells use for respiration.
One goal of reasonable people is to never become attached to your beliefs about the world in any way. If we do this, we can easily and happily accept new and better ideas, discarding the old. This is how science works: being able to converge on truth by letting the evidence speak for itself. It can be a slow process sometimes - in this case an 80-year process - but it is sure and steady.
One reason I reject religion is its inability to find truth. There is no objective guide to what is correct and incorrect in religion; things cannot be falsified. So when someone has a new idea, who is to say whether they are right or wrong? This is why there are so many sects of all the different religions instead of a single unified one. How can we know which ideas are right? There are many competing ideas in science too, but they will be resolved eventually, just like all the other debates before them.
When we compare science to religion as far as a branching tree of ideas, we can visualize that religion, since the beginning, has branched off constantly, wandering about and creating thousands of incompatible and unverifiable ideologies, and has so far discovered nothing about the world. Visualizing the creation and discarding of ideas in science, we can see that science converges on itself, slowly weeding out the incorrect ideas and replacing them with good ones. New branches of ideas are common, but unless observations continue to validate their claims, the branch disappears entirely. If the new idea is validated, the entire scientific community accepts the idea and jumps on the train. Using this objective and evidence-based method, science has been our one and only way of making discoveries about the world.
To me, humbly and slowly approaching the truth by studying the world is better than having a faith-based belief that you already know the truth. Which one sounds better to you?
- Evan
Showing posts with label biology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label biology. Show all posts
Sunday, February 7, 2010
Thursday, January 21, 2010
The Universe: one big family
This is the story of the universe, according to science:
1) The Beginning: 14 billion years ago, everything in the universe was contained in a single infinitesimally small point. This point, smaller than an atom, had an infinite density and contained all the matter, space, and time of the universe. The point began to rapidly expand, and as the volume of the universe increased, the heat decreased, and atoms were able to form. The first atoms consisted of mostly hydrogen and helium, since these are the lightest, simplest elements. Through the force of gravity, these atoms began to accrete and accumulate in progressively larger and larger clumps.
2) Creation of Elements: Especially large clumps would be stars, which would get so massive that the matter on the inside of them experienced insanely high pressure from gravity. This pressure produced incredible heat, so much heat that the hydrogen and helium atoms were moving fast enough to overcome their repulsion to one another, and began to crash into each other and fuse. Bigger, heavier atoms began to form. Stars that were very high in mass were able to heat their cores enough to create every element up to iron (fusing iron takes more energy than it gives out), and if one of these stars died in a supernova explosion, the massive heat of the explosion was able to create even heavier elements than iron. The dusty, gassy remains of these dead stars were the building material for new solar systems. Our sun and planets formed through the same gravitational accretion process, and each had on it many elements, including those of life: hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen.
3) Life Stirs: After our planet cooled and formed its huge bodies of water, organic molecules began to form naturally form. There are a few different ideas on how life first began, and none are confirmed, but the following is the most plausible. The first life forms could not have been anything like a cell today; modern cells are far too complex. The first life may have been a single self-replicating molecule, a predecessor to RNA. In the water, there were organic molecules which had one end that was repelled from water and one that was attracted. This led to naturally forming spheres. If self-replicating molecule got caught up in on of these spheres, it would be protected and had a better chance to reproduce. These were the first cells: a self-replicating molecule surrounded by a layer of other molecules.
4) Adaption and Complexity: Single-celled organisms ruled Earth for billions of years. The most dominant form during this time was cyanobacteria, or blue-green algae. These algae are responsible for putting a significant amount of oxygen on the planet, and the presence of oxygen caused a diversification of life. Some cells could now metabolize oxygen, which was more energy-packed. The first multicellular life was colonial, then some cells in the colonies began specializing in one thing. These were the first organs. To talk of our own evolution in detail would be too lengthy, but it had operated on the same naturally selecting powers as the unicellular life before it. The tree of life (for humans) goes as follows:
Bacteria --> Colonial multicellular --> Polyps --> Fish --> Amphibians --> Reptiles --> Mammals --> Tree-dwellers --> Early hominids --> Humans
5) Our Place: According to science so far, life on Earth is literally one big family. All life today are very distantly related cousins; we are all offspring of previous organisms. However, life itself is made of atoms created in the cores of high-mass stars. So the cosmos, while not alive, are by definition our family, because they gave rise to life. Despite any overtones of silly new-age mysticism, the universe is literally all one. We are part of the universe, not merely observers.
- Evan
1) The Beginning: 14 billion years ago, everything in the universe was contained in a single infinitesimally small point. This point, smaller than an atom, had an infinite density and contained all the matter, space, and time of the universe. The point began to rapidly expand, and as the volume of the universe increased, the heat decreased, and atoms were able to form. The first atoms consisted of mostly hydrogen and helium, since these are the lightest, simplest elements. Through the force of gravity, these atoms began to accrete and accumulate in progressively larger and larger clumps.
2) Creation of Elements: Especially large clumps would be stars, which would get so massive that the matter on the inside of them experienced insanely high pressure from gravity. This pressure produced incredible heat, so much heat that the hydrogen and helium atoms were moving fast enough to overcome their repulsion to one another, and began to crash into each other and fuse. Bigger, heavier atoms began to form. Stars that were very high in mass were able to heat their cores enough to create every element up to iron (fusing iron takes more energy than it gives out), and if one of these stars died in a supernova explosion, the massive heat of the explosion was able to create even heavier elements than iron. The dusty, gassy remains of these dead stars were the building material for new solar systems. Our sun and planets formed through the same gravitational accretion process, and each had on it many elements, including those of life: hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen.
3) Life Stirs: After our planet cooled and formed its huge bodies of water, organic molecules began to form naturally form. There are a few different ideas on how life first began, and none are confirmed, but the following is the most plausible. The first life forms could not have been anything like a cell today; modern cells are far too complex. The first life may have been a single self-replicating molecule, a predecessor to RNA. In the water, there were organic molecules which had one end that was repelled from water and one that was attracted. This led to naturally forming spheres. If self-replicating molecule got caught up in on of these spheres, it would be protected and had a better chance to reproduce. These were the first cells: a self-replicating molecule surrounded by a layer of other molecules.
4) Adaption and Complexity: Single-celled organisms ruled Earth for billions of years. The most dominant form during this time was cyanobacteria, or blue-green algae. These algae are responsible for putting a significant amount of oxygen on the planet, and the presence of oxygen caused a diversification of life. Some cells could now metabolize oxygen, which was more energy-packed. The first multicellular life was colonial, then some cells in the colonies began specializing in one thing. These were the first organs. To talk of our own evolution in detail would be too lengthy, but it had operated on the same naturally selecting powers as the unicellular life before it. The tree of life (for humans) goes as follows:
Bacteria --> Colonial multicellular --> Polyps --> Fish --> Amphibians --> Reptiles --> Mammals --> Tree-dwellers --> Early hominids --> Humans
5) Our Place: According to science so far, life on Earth is literally one big family. All life today are very distantly related cousins; we are all offspring of previous organisms. However, life itself is made of atoms created in the cores of high-mass stars. So the cosmos, while not alive, are by definition our family, because they gave rise to life. Despite any overtones of silly new-age mysticism, the universe is literally all one. We are part of the universe, not merely observers.
- Evan
Sunday, January 17, 2010
Trees Grow Out of the Air
Richard Feynman is a renowned physicist, known for his lectures and interviews, and known in the physics world for his contributions to quantum mechanics and particle physics. In his interviews he often enjoyed talking about everyday objects or occurrences that are “fun to imagine” on the atomic level. There is a “Fun to Imagine” series of Feynman clips on YouTube, and I’d like to share one in particular that blew my mind. In the beginning of the 5-minute video, he speaks of how fire works, then he goes on to explain how a tree works. It’s the tree segment that I will paraphrase:
People think that trees grow out of the ground. In actuality, trees grow out of the air. The substance of a tree is mostly carbon, which comes from the air in the form of carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide goes into the tree, and the tree changes it, kicking out the oxygen, and uses the carbon as the base of all the new material it creates. The tree also uses water from the ground, but that water rained from the sky. There’s a little from the ground, some minerals and such, but most of the actual substance of a tree comes from the air.
We mentioned that carbon dioxide is changed by the tree to retrieve just the carbon. How is the tree so smart as to manage to separate the carbon from carbon dioxide? Ah, life! Life has some mysterious way! No - the sun is shining, and it’s the sunlight that comes down and knocks the carbon free. So it takes sunlight to get the plant to work.
What an amazing world we live in. As Feynman himself said, “nature’s imagination is so much greater than man’s, it’s never gonna let him relax!” My explanation can’t give the video justice, you’ll just have to watch it yourself!
- Evan
People think that trees grow out of the ground. In actuality, trees grow out of the air. The substance of a tree is mostly carbon, which comes from the air in the form of carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide goes into the tree, and the tree changes it, kicking out the oxygen, and uses the carbon as the base of all the new material it creates. The tree also uses water from the ground, but that water rained from the sky. There’s a little from the ground, some minerals and such, but most of the actual substance of a tree comes from the air.
We mentioned that carbon dioxide is changed by the tree to retrieve just the carbon. How is the tree so smart as to manage to separate the carbon from carbon dioxide? Ah, life! Life has some mysterious way! No - the sun is shining, and it’s the sunlight that comes down and knocks the carbon free. So it takes sunlight to get the plant to work.
What an amazing world we live in. As Feynman himself said, “nature’s imagination is so much greater than man’s, it’s never gonna let him relax!” My explanation can’t give the video justice, you’ll just have to watch it yourself!
- Evan
Sunday, December 27, 2009
Life: Complex and Clumsy
Many proponents of intelligent design (ID) claim that life is too complex to be the result of natural processes, and therefore must’ve been designed. To this argument I have the following responses:
1) Even if the complexity of life were unexplainable by evolution, it wouldn't give evidence of design.
2) Complexity is not the same as design. There are simple things that are designed and complex things that arise naturally (cave formations, weather patterns).
3) In known designs, innovations that occur in one product quickly get incorporated into others, but in eukaryotic life, innovations stay confined to one lineage.
4) In design, form follows function. Yet life shows examples of different forms with the same function (differing wings of birds, bats, insects, and pterodactyls), as well as similar basic forms with different function (same bone patterns in human hand, whale flipper, dog paw, and bat wing). This shows that life lacks a plan; there are no optimal specifications for living processes and structures.
5) Life is indeed complex, but doesn’t design aim for simplicity?
6) In almost all designs, the manufacturing process is separate from the design itself. Living things replicate themselves.
7) Life is wasteful. Many organisms do not get to reproduce, and most fertilized eggs die before growing much. Good design would minimize this waste.
8) Life itself shows poor design. There are parts that were jury-rigged out of other parts that were used for another purpose. The result is a form that is functional but is not optimal (many organisms have parts that are not even functional!). This is what we would expect from evolution, not from intelligent design.
9) Evolution itself can be considered a design process, and the complexity and arrangement we see in life is much closer to what we would expect from an evolutionary, accumulative design process than a purposeful, intelligent designer.
10) Some systems, like a cell or the human body, are irreducibly complex, meaning that if you remove one certain part, the whole system fails. But contrary to creationist argument, irreducible complexity shows a lack of design. For the designer’s purpose of keeping the creature alive, you would not want systems that would fail if any one part fails. You would want a robust system.
11) If complexity in life indicates a designer, then what about non-living things? Rocks and lava aren’t complex. Neither are solar systems and galaxies. These things are simply collections of matter mindlessly following natural laws. If complexity and purposefulness truly indicate a designer, does simplicity and purposelessness indicate no designer?
12) There are several evolutionary mechanisms that can result in irreducible complexity: deletion of parts, addition of multiple parts (sometimes accidental replication of entire systems), change in function, and gradual modification of parts. These observed mechanisms make irreducible complexity completely plausible.
Claiming intelligent design of the universe based off of life’s complexity and functionality has no ground to stand on. Combine that with the complete lack of evidence, predictions, and scientific research that ID has generated, it is safe to say that ID is a belief based on religious theology, not on evidence.
- Evan
1) Even if the complexity of life were unexplainable by evolution, it wouldn't give evidence of design.
2) Complexity is not the same as design. There are simple things that are designed and complex things that arise naturally (cave formations, weather patterns).
3) In known designs, innovations that occur in one product quickly get incorporated into others, but in eukaryotic life, innovations stay confined to one lineage.
4) In design, form follows function. Yet life shows examples of different forms with the same function (differing wings of birds, bats, insects, and pterodactyls), as well as similar basic forms with different function (same bone patterns in human hand, whale flipper, dog paw, and bat wing). This shows that life lacks a plan; there are no optimal specifications for living processes and structures.
5) Life is indeed complex, but doesn’t design aim for simplicity?
6) In almost all designs, the manufacturing process is separate from the design itself. Living things replicate themselves.
7) Life is wasteful. Many organisms do not get to reproduce, and most fertilized eggs die before growing much. Good design would minimize this waste.
8) Life itself shows poor design. There are parts that were jury-rigged out of other parts that were used for another purpose. The result is a form that is functional but is not optimal (many organisms have parts that are not even functional!). This is what we would expect from evolution, not from intelligent design.
9) Evolution itself can be considered a design process, and the complexity and arrangement we see in life is much closer to what we would expect from an evolutionary, accumulative design process than a purposeful, intelligent designer.
10) Some systems, like a cell or the human body, are irreducibly complex, meaning that if you remove one certain part, the whole system fails. But contrary to creationist argument, irreducible complexity shows a lack of design. For the designer’s purpose of keeping the creature alive, you would not want systems that would fail if any one part fails. You would want a robust system.
11) If complexity in life indicates a designer, then what about non-living things? Rocks and lava aren’t complex. Neither are solar systems and galaxies. These things are simply collections of matter mindlessly following natural laws. If complexity and purposefulness truly indicate a designer, does simplicity and purposelessness indicate no designer?
12) There are several evolutionary mechanisms that can result in irreducible complexity: deletion of parts, addition of multiple parts (sometimes accidental replication of entire systems), change in function, and gradual modification of parts. These observed mechanisms make irreducible complexity completely plausible.
Claiming intelligent design of the universe based off of life’s complexity and functionality has no ground to stand on. Combine that with the complete lack of evidence, predictions, and scientific research that ID has generated, it is safe to say that ID is a belief based on religious theology, not on evidence.
- Evan
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