©2001 Jon Youngblood Unity Through Understanding A Guidebook for the Recently Alive

Part Two: Physics

Chapter Seven: The Very, Very Small

7.2 Biology

Life is an effect of the cause existence.  Life appears spontaneously given certain conditions are present.  Biology is the study of Life.  Or more specifically the life processes.

One of the most fascinating lessons learned from the biological sciences is how each of us reenacts the process of evolution within the womb (egg, pouch, what have you). Beginning with the single cell, and following instructions compiled over millions of years, divide into a multi-cellular organism, then on to a vertebrate, gain and loose a tail, and so on until a human baby is born. Even then some would argue that, although homo sapiens, a human baby does not become a human being until it reaches that point (usually sometime after the onset of puberty) that it Understands death. The entire concept of spirit rests upon a transcendence of death and so we become fully human when we truly Understand life and death, good and evil, right and wrong.

I was about eleven years old when I recall waking up on morning and knew that my mother was going to die. I ran screaming to her in tears “I don’t want you to die!”. She consoled me with assurances that she wasn’t going to die. She passed away in 1989. To another world or another life I cannot be sure. But I can be sure that on that day I became a member of the human race - with all its fears and concerns, loves, hurts, and questions to many to count.

Understanding biology - life - is more than a purely academic pursuit towards medical proficiency. Understanding the life processes, specifically DNA, we are discovering the language of God (however you perceive him/her to be). Indeed, The Word, like its human counterpart of language which allows information to be carried forward into the future assisting man in his progress, The Word of God could be seen as the language (DNA) in which the Life Force is carried forward into the future for the betterment of Life.

Life is turning out to be far more ubiquitous than previously assumed. In the frozen wastes of the Arctic. At the bottom of the ocean at bone crushing depths where not a single photon of light ever reaches. Miles into the earths crust in solid rock. In acid caldrons and boiling hot water, life seems capable of making incredible adaptations in order to survive. Perhaps even in the vacuum of space itself, life can find a way. As a scientist and a healthy skeptic, I pointed out in Part One some of the new age belief systems that seem to defy credibility. Beliefs in Aliens, alien abductions, interbreeding, and even mass suicides with the hope of spiritual [read: religious] transformations all based upon the existence of beings - sentient and technological - sharing the same space and time as ourselves. As a skeptic and advocate of scientific discipline, I must also point out that the very same science that directs our attention to phenomena such as, schizophrenic episodes, hypnosis and False Memory Syndrome, sleep paralysis and the vivid images that accompany it, cult [read: religious] indoctrination techniques demonized as “brainwashing” in the 70’s, and other readily explainable circumstances wherein one could fervently believe that they had seen and /or been abducted by alien beings, or that they are being guided through life by someone with a greater knowledge of existence because of interaction with aliens (Heavens Gate for example) is the very same science that is now making it clearer than ever before just how hardy and probably prevalent life is. As to aliens, gray or Nordic, reptilian or floating brains, I have no personal knowledge. I would not be shocked or even surprised if all of the alien accounts were true. Science seems to show that it is certainly more possible than we generally believed in the early years of the UFO debates back in the 40’s and 50’s. But like death, for me, I figure I’ll find out when I get there and no amount of debate one way or the other should settle the matter in my mind if I am to keep it open.

On a more mundane level, biology, and the medical sciences we most associate with the word, in last decade of the twentieth century has seen a great surge forward in Understanding. Cancer is promising to be a thing of the past. Headlines are proclaiming a "cure" for cancer from every direction. Recent improvements in the treatment of Aids has resulted in a 75% decrease in the death rate in 1998.

Several years ago, in a popular prime time news program, Magic Johnson’s wife declared before the world her gratitude to Jesus for answering her prayers. Here, more than by alien abduction, I was as a scientist shocked and outraged. This was a flagrant abuse of Faith and amounted to no less than biting the hand that fed her. Anyone could understand her need to feel a greater level of control over a condition that leaves those in its wake totally helpless. She was powerless to participate or aid in circumstances that were, at an everyday level, totally beyond her control. She would want to believe that it was her involvement, through prayer, that at least, in part, helped in her husband's (and all HIV persons) good fortune. In that line of thought she could be seen by the cynic as patting herself on the back instead of thanking her ‘savior’. Prayer, her prayer, had come through.

But what was painful to me and hardest to understand, was the total lack of acknowledgment, or even mention, of the numbers of dedicated people who worked long hard hours in a lab somewhere for years on end¹. Don't those people deserve some of the credit. Yet not one word about them was mentioned. It was all the work of Jesus. Or Jesus acting as proxy for the praying masses. One could argue that divine intervention came in the form of increased inspiration from God into the minds of the scientists, without which, none of the current treatments would have come into being. (Although it would not be cause for much inspiration for a young student to stay in school studying very difficult chemistry and biology textbooks if he/she thought that praying, clapping and singing would really achieve the same results without all the hard work…) But this more reasonable perception of God giving man the brains to fix himself seems to be the oddity rather than the norm among the Faithful. Most of the mainstream Christian sects would settle for nothing less than direct intervention from Jesus himself.

It was interesting to note that Magic Johnson himself was somewhat less committal on evoking divine intervention in the situation, but acknowledged his faith in the abilities of this religious figure.

What is the harm in this you might ask? She needed her belief system to get through a traumatic period you might argue. Exactly so. It is during times of personal crisis or rapid changes in ones environment that we are most vulnerable to the seeming warm embrace of religious groups. And the positive reinforcement that it was the groups leader (living or deceased) that was responsible for happy outcomes only serves to further enslave the minds and wills of the followers. So perhaps on an individual basis there is only the harm of self-delusion. But on a societal basis this is tantamount to driving a moving vehicle with a blindfold on. If a time comes to bite, it would be wise to recognize the hand that has been feeding you - and the ones that have been feeding you a line of, well, you get it. How sad it would be for the truly faithful if their savior’s works had not been recognized and recorded into history as his miracles, but instead praised as the technological feats of an advanced civilization. So please, credit where credit is due.

While biology as Life raises many issues for theological discussion, it can at the same time provide a very down to earth experience of ourselves as well. There are several ways in which we can immediately 'connect' with our most human very animal selves. Sex, eating, and it's opposite, and other ‘biological’ functions quickly serve to remind us just how animal we really are. Here is an interesting one to try: Stick your finger into you belly button (or on it if you have an outy) and wiggle it around. Now think about just what it is. Does it give you the willies? It's (or was) your umbilical cord. Your direct link to your mother’s womb. It fed you while you were a fetus. For me, that reminds me in a very deep way just how human and mortal I am. It evokes that kind of primal or "divine discomfort" that causes us to seek out the Other World - a world in which we continue to exist when this ever so temporal bag of water and films ceases holding itself together and returns to the inanimate materials of which it was composed.

We explored briefly the importance of healing in Religion in Part One (2.3 The Human Intermediaries & 3.2 Miracles ) and will explore it in more detail from sciences perspective in the next section.

Much of our understanding of the body and it’s processes comes from the discipline of Chemistry. Understanding the very stuff of which our bodies are made. My favorite chemical is Oxygen. One of the fundamental elements it is one of the most magical. That it should be so vital to the processes of life is truly wondrous. Because Oxygen, necessary for all animal life, is one of the most volatile of the elements. It is a powerful corrosive and causes such deterioration as rust on metal. It breaks down more complex compounds through a process know as oxidation. It is a combustive gas and in high concentrations will create quit a bang if exposed to flame. It amazes me that such a caustic, destructive, element is the key to something so productive (well, at least reproductive) as life. Indeed, it is the destructive and ‘flammable’ nature of oxygen that gives life. Oxygen is the fuel that cells ‘burn’ in order to acquire the raw energy necessary for motion - the hallmark of living organisms.

Our universe is friendly to life - anthropomorphic as that my be. Given the right temperature, the right combination of molecules, life seems to form. It's as if the molecules were ‘designed’ to do so. Well, in a very real sense, they are! The life that we are discussing at this point is actually only considered life by the criteria that it can reproduce. Replicate would be a more correct term. These simple molecules, in the right conditions, spontaneously - according to well understood chemical processes - connect themselves into long 'chains' called amino acids.

Over time these amino acids - again by chemical reactions resulting from various physical forces that are well understood - begin to adhere to one other to form even longer chains called proteins.

These proteins, by virtue of their shape and size, can perform a myriad of "tricks". One of those is the ability to assemble copies of itself. Mad Cow disease is nothing more than a protein. A simple protein that has learned the trick of self replication; to the detriment of its animal host. It has no DNA, no cell structure, and is not living in the ordinary sense of the word at all.

Combinations of these simple proteins one day billions of years ago learned to clump together into a simple cell and make copies of itself. There is admittedly a ‘missing link’ in our understanding of how the first simple amino acids became replicating cells with a nucleus and a DNA instruction manual at its heart. Deoxyribonucleic acid or DNA directs the combining of amino acids into the larger more complex protein molecules so there is a bit of the which came first chicken or egg problem that remains at the most fundamental level. It is now suspected that RNA - a simpler nucleic acid, not DNA - the familiar double helix, may have been the first instruction manual that life used. RNA in current cell biology acts as the ‘interpreter’ of DNA, acting as a go-between for DNA and the protein that will be built from DNA’s ‘blueprint’ instructions.

Most proteins contain more than 100 amino acids. Hemoglobin, for example is made of 287 amino acids arranged into four chains.

More to come...

#1  Although I am dismayed to discover the greed of Big Business has been profiting from the work of others. Some of the most widely used AIDS drugs were not discovered at a cost of millions by the companies making them. See New York Magazine, January 28, 2001. [Back to Text]