Nothing is created NEW. Everything is a dispersion and adaption of existing matter which evolves out of antecedents. Organisms, no less so, Homo sapiens, are patched together from spare parts. Ontology does NOT recapitulate phylogeny. Not one organism has been created de novo.
"Now ask yourself, if you were designing the optimum exit for a fetus, would you engineer a route that passes through the narrow confines of the pelvic girdle? Add to this the tragic reality that childbirth is not only painful in our species, but downright dangerous and sometimes lethal, owing to occasional cephalopelvic disproportion (literally, the baby's head being too large for the mother's birth canal), breech presentation, and so forth. This design flaw is all the more dramatic since there is plenty of room for even the most stubbornly misoriented, large-brained fetus to be easily delivered anywhere in that vast non-bony region below the ribs!..." (David Barash, Natural Selections, 2008)
It would have been a better design to put the vagina somewhere else than where it is at however it is NATURAL as tetra-pods whose ancestors carried their spines parallel to the ground. Since we adapted to an environment where standing up and walking on two limbs became an advantage; a benefit of fitness, the pelvis has to be rotated; the result of which was a tight birth where in other mammals birth-ing has always been an easy process. If there was an intelligent designer you would have to conclude the part about intelligence was missing from his design. Perhaps given enough time the materials available, Eve's vagina will migrate to her belly button?
"...If God created `man' in his image, does this imply that He, too, has comparably ill-constructed knee joints, a poorly engendered lower back, dangerously narrow birth canal, and ridiculously ill-conceived urogenital plumbing? A novice engineer could have done better..." (ibid)
Darwin said evolution is descent with modification, which explains a lot. Bacteria evolved and modified itself to adapt to various environments and out of that life came a recycling of life through a process of death of consciousness, then life, but energy and matter are never destroyed; they are only dispersed and dissipate to something else. That should be good news to all of you who anticipate your death with dread. We never fully die.
Are we the sum total of our chemicals in our cells? We are the result of - and distinguished by the behavior of those chemicals which comprise our constituent parts and the prokaryotes which exist in relationship to them.
I would bet you thought all (or even most) bacteria is bad for you? Most of it isn't. Most of it is symbiotic. Only about 5% of the bacterial population which lives in your body is pathogenic. The other 95% is natural and it is necessary. Without it, you would not survive. The mistake doctors make is too often killing good bacteria and too many antibiotics and wide-spectrum antibiotics will cause them not to work when you may need them.
Each of us has about 10 trillion human cells which are outnumbered by 100 trillion bacterial cells.
Biologist and author Dr Lynn Margulis, the first wife of Carl Sagan, who is also brilliant theorized a mutually beneficial relationship with bacteria called endosymbiosis - where both the host and cohabitating bacteria provide benefits to each other. At first the preponderant view was to reject her theory, as the scientific community has done on other occasions - after years of scientific inquiry has gradually accepted this view.
Bacteria is not classed as a species, yet there are tens of thousands of strains and they have been around for over 4.5 billion years and changed very little from their original form - because they don't utilize sexual recombination like eukaryotes. For 80% of the time line of the planet prokaryotes (bacteria) have been the only life and without microbes there would be no eukaryotic life and it is estimated that bacteria is 5 to 20 times the total mass of all aquatic and terrestrial animal life.
Life is the ability to maintain itself and to reproduce. That ability defines life. It is called autopoiesis.
It is reasonable to postulate that bacteria is the intelligence which has designed life. Bacteria is not the scourge it is too often accused of being. Bacteria is a regulator of life aiding respiratory and metabolic pathways.
Organisms with nucleated cells, which includes you and me and all animals and plants are limited to a very narrow way of living but bacteria have figured out the whole life thing and are versatile; they can obtain energy from anything, whether organic or inorganic. Bacteria can use anaerobic fermentation, aerobic respiration or photosynthesis. AND all life evolved from bacteria. We were once them - or perhaps it is more correct to say we were made from them?
And then there is us. We moderns; that is Homo sapiens, migrated from Africa about 120,000 years ago and by competition and guile or whatever made us more survivable, we proved more fit and our last remaining closest relatives, the Neanderthals died out about 30,000 years ago. Humans during this time lived by hunting and gathering and when our small groups ran out of game and fruits and roots the groups of several dozen individuals moved to where food was more plentiful and this pattern repeated itself over and over again.
Sometimes groups grew larger and an area had to be contested. Tension would lead to quarrels and to fighting. This aggressive behavior maintained and is a prehistoric instinct for survival.
Then about 10,000 years ago groups began domestication of wild animals and settlements for longer periods. Agriculture developed and pecking orders, i.e. hierarchies were reinforced to defend areas against other groups and individuals. And towns and villages were established if defendable.
When we are no longer adaptable and become extinct as a specific species there will still be life. And one thing is very certain. There will be bacteria. And the tape of continuous adaption and "real change" can run again.
Hank Roth
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Today is Friday September 03, 2010
