Sunday, February 2, 2003 Bill Chess

“Life, the Universe and Everything, Sequel” in which I further speculate on the subject. Among other things, I will touch on the book: “The Seven Daughters of Eve” from a rather unexpected viewpoint.

ORDER OF SERVICE

Chalice Lighting

Opening Words

Hymn # 288

Affirmation #2 in order of service

Reading

Special Music- Music Box

Meditation

Offering followed by Doxology #379

<<<MAIN PRESENTATION>>

Hymn #323

Closing Words

Reading from A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking:

A well‑known scientist (some say it was Bertrand Russell) once gave a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the center of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy. At he end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: "What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise." The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, "what is the tortoise standing on?" "you're very clever, young man, very clever," said the old lady, "But it's turtles all the way down!"

From the Prolog of “The Seven Daughters of Eve”:

Where do I come from?

How often have you asked yourself that question? We may know our parents, even our grandparents; not far beyond that, for most of us the trail begins to disappear into the mist.

But each of us carries a message from our ancestors in every cell of our body. It is in our DNA, the genetic material that is handed down from generation to generation. Within the DNA is written not only our histories as individuals but the whole history of the human race.

With the aid of recent advances in genetic technology, this history is now being revealed. We are at last able to begin to decipher the messages from the past. Our DNA does not fade like an ancient parchment; it does not rust in the ground like the sword of a warrior long dead. It is not eroded by wind or rain, nor reduced to ruin by fire and earthquake. It is the traveler from an antique land who lives within us all.

The history of our species, Homo sapiens, is recorded in the genes that trace our ancestry back into the deep past, way beyond the reach of written records or stone inscriptions. These genes tell a story which begins over a hundred thousand years ago and whose latest chapters are hidden within the cells of every one of us.

Meditation:

Hitherto the poets and philosophers of science have used the vast expanse and duration of the universe as a pretext for reflections on the unimportance of man, forgetting that man with "that enchanted loom, the brain" is precisely what transforms this immense electrical pulsation into light and color, shape and sound, large and small, hard and heavy, long and short.

In knowing the world we humanize it, and if, as we discover it, we are astonished at its dimensions and its complexity, we should be just as astonished that we have the brains to perceive it.

Hitherto we have been taught, however, that we are not really responsible for our brains. We do not know (in terms of words or figures) how they are constructed, and thus it seems that the brain and the organism as a whole are an ingenious vehicle which has been "given" to us, or an uncanny maze in which we are temporarily trapped.

In other words, we accepted a definition of ourselves which confined the self to the source and to the limitations of conscious attention.

This definition is miserably insufficient, for in fact we know how to grow brains and eyes, ears and fingers, hearts and bones, in just the same way that we know how to walk and breathe, talk and think- only we can't put it into words. Words are too slow and too clumsy for describing such things, and conscious attention is too narrow for keeping track of all their details.

[Alan Watts]

About four years ago (gee how time really flies) I gave a talk here about Life the Universe and everything. It was the combining of two talks I gave at the First Unitarian Society of Rockland County, New York, with some later thoughts.

That essay is still my favorite personal work and it still pretty much summarized my personal view of the universe.

I have copies of it available and will post it on the NCUU web site along with a copy of this talk.

Quoting from that talk: Most people would find the picture of our universe as an infinite tower of tortoises rather ridiculous, but why do we think we know better? What do we know about the universe, and how do we know it? Where did the universe come from, and where is it going? Did the universe have a beginning, and if so, what happened before then? What is the nature of time? Will it ever come to an end? Recent breakthroughs in physics, made possible in part by fantastic new technologies, suggest answers to some of these long standing questions. Someday these answers may seem as obvious to us as the earth orbiting the sun‑‑ or perhaps as ridiculous as a tower of tortoises. Only time (whatever that may be) will tell.

I will utilize some of the salient points of the original as jumping off points for my further thoughts this morning.

I postulated that all of existence is pattern imposed upon a substrate which to our first view is matter. But matter itself is pattern imposed upon substrates which turn out to be pattern imposed upon .... and on down forever. Modern physics keeps finding "fundamental particles". First the atom was thought to be the simplest form of matter. Then electrons, protons, positrons etc. were found, of which the atoms were composed. But there seems to be sub building blocks for those too.

I tend to use the words "pattern" and "information" somewhat interchangeably. Information in my current sense is a compilation of what we know of pattern.

We have discovered that we are not the soul possessors or utilizers of information, of patterns. Somehow the Universe is very adept at gathering, transmitting, storing and utilizing information with little help from us.

I postulate that all of existence is composed of just information and quite possibly nothing else. I go into the concept in depth in my original talk.

Perhaps some of you have seen the possibly PBS originated program on “evolution.” I happened to have caught it on the TechTV channel. Some of the things that intrigued me were the descriptions of DNA and how DNA programmed the production of proteins that are the building blocks of people and kittens and every other living thing.

If somehow the DNA gets slightly modified, either some essential proteins are not produced or some very detrimental proteins are produced. Either of these effects can or often do cause disease.

The pattern may be modified by random high energy radiation, effects of viruses, environmental pollutants or other mechanisms.

Some effects are a danger to the organism and some effects may give the organism an edge over its competition. Evolution in action!

In any case, the complex patterns contained in the DNA determine the entire structure of the resulting organism. The DNA gets replicated over and over again and most amazingly that very complex and large molecule gets replicated exactly! At least most of the time! The replication errors result in a new DNA, which will in turn replicate. This can be a big factor in evolution.

There are inherent error checking mechanisms which catch most of the changes and correct them. But some get through anyway.

The human genome project is an attempt to completely map human DNA. That is to determine the sequence of amino acids in the entire DNA of a human being. But that is just the beginning of a much larger project. Once the complete sequences are available, we must determine just what these sequences do and find where are the sequences that determine what proteins are formed to produce each cell of the human body.

This task is well under way, but is gigantic and formidable.

One thing has become apparent. There are long sequences of amino acids that do not do anything. They just seem to be there. No one can explain why.

I read a science fiction story a long time ago that was written on the premise that humans carried in their genetic code some sort of cosmic message left there by some “super-beings” to be preserved for a very long time. The message was eventually read by some other “super-beings” and the human race is just a left over message substrate.

Pretty far fetched! But I realize that there is a vast area in the DNA molecule for storage of information.

In computers we use binary, that is arithmetic using only ones and zeros, to store everything including, for instance the text for this talk, and pictures, and music, and directions for running computer programs—many things.

The DNA molecule uses a quaternary arithmetic. That is there are four possible states. They would be named zero, one, two and three if they were treated mathematically. The biochemist names them A, C, G and T, standing for adenine, cytosine, guanine and thymine. These may occur in most any order. The order often determines the structure of a growing organism. There are billions of these markers and the combinations and permutations of their order allow the specifications for the organism to function and grow.

Because of the almost endless amount of information which can be stored, specifications for all the variant life forms are easily available.

Bio-Scientists have developed ways to insert sections of DNA from one organism into the DNA of another organism. Thus we have bio-engineered corn and other plant life which has been made resistant to insect attack. We have pigs which can produce human components which may be of great future medical value. But we are still only scratching the surface.

So here we have an information system more powerful than that of any computer system of today. In one molecule of DNA is orders of magnitude more information than can be stored in the largest computer hard-drive array

So what of those long sequences of apparently inactive data? Scientists have found a valuable use for one of these sequences.

A type of DNA carried in the cell called mitochondrial DNA is only inherited from the mother. Thus there is no combining of male and female to result in an infinite variation. It is possible to trace entire populations back thousands of years toward a common female ancestor.

A section of DNA that is apparently useless has been used to study population history. The only things that would cause the sequence to vary over the generations are mutations caused by random hits by ionizing radiation. These mutations take place at statistically significant intervals. Therefore dating of the history of the related population can be accomplished.

Bryan Sykes, professor of genetics at the Institute of Molecular Medicine at Oxford University has written a book entitled “The Seven Daughters of Eve.” I know some of you have read it or are reading it. It goes into detail how they have traced the population of Europe back to just seven women who lived thousands of years ago, before the last ice age.

The book makes fascinating reading from a sociological and historic point of view. For instance the times which various populations settled in Europe and the origin or the populations have been determined.

They pretty well proved that the South sea islands were settled by migrations down from Asia, rather than from South America as Thor Hyerdol had proposed in the book “Con Tiki”.

Another book along the same lines is “The Great Human Diasporas, The History of Diversity and Evolution” by Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza and Francesco Cavalli-Sforza. Very recommended reading!

It has been proved that all dogs came from a common ancestor pool rather than being independently bred by a succession of indigenous people. For instance dogs kept by the “Indians” of the Americas have the same lineage as dogs in Asia and are only remotely related to wolves or other wild canine species.

But my interest here this morning is not the interesting sociological material in the “Seven Daughters of Eve”, but in the encoding contained in the DNA.

Who knows what other information may be kept in this vast information storehouse: DNA? Could there be clues about life out in the universe?

Another far-fetched question: Could the information for interstellar travel or faster-than-light speeds be stashed away there?

Are there unused traits just lying there waiting to be turned on? Telepathy or other person-to-person communication. The empathy that some people seem to have with plants- the “green thumb” syndrome.

Or could the answers to any number of needs be nicely encoded and stored in our DNA. The capacity is there.

And if so how did the coding get there? For that matter, how did the coding that we know about get there? Evolution accounts for most of it, but perhaps not all.

We have to learn how to decode and manipulate the information. That will be a long and arduous process. The returns are expected to be enormous.

I’m going to segue for a moment to make further set up for my final conclusion.

I know some of you have heard of Alan Watts. Others may not have. I have read a lot of his writings. They have influenced but not dictated my personal philosophy.

Alan Watts become widely recognized for his Zen writings and for The Book On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are. He died in 1973 at his home in California, and is survived by his second wife and seven children.

   For more than forty years, Alan Watts earned a reputation as a foremost interpreter of Eastern philosophies for the West. Beginning at age sixteen, when he wrote essay for the journal of the Buddhist Lodge in London, he developed an audience of millions who were enriched through his books, tape recordings, radio, television, and public lectures. In all Watts wrote more than twenty-five books and recorded hundreds of lecture and seminars, all building toward a personal philosophy that he shared in complete candor and joy with his readers and listeners throughout the world. His overall works have presented a model of individuality and self-expression that can be matched by few philosophers.

Anyway, I have a tape of his entitled “Out of the Trap” wherein he describes two great myths entertained by our current western society. The first is the Judeo-Christian-Islamic myth wherein we and the universe are created and ruled by some all powerful, all knowing “God”. You know the rest of it.

The second myth is the result of a reaction to the first- he calls it the “Newtonian” myth. The myth of a purely mechanical universe that is unfeeling, unseeing, unintelligent. A universe that we can live in without being judged or being subjected to divine intervention. This myth results in a fundamental sense of futility.

This is not to put down myth. It is a very useful tool for describing the formidable universe in which we live. But the “Newtonian” myth is just as much an over simplification as the first one.

It is just as much a myth as anything else, not really connected with the way things are at all.

I am becoming more and more convinced that there is a lot more intelligence at work on our earth and out in the universe than we can fathom with our present tools.

The religious people have simplified the concept by inventing “God” to account for it all. Then they bring that “God” down to the human level and essentially emasculate the entity to become a sort of superhuman tyrant.

We have much to learn about the universe. We won’t learn much if we continue to deny intelligence to the universe. The “Newtonian” myth seems to do just that.

We also won’t learn much if we continue to simplify the concept by inventing “God”.

Both the materialistic “Newtonian” myth and the Judeo, Christian, Islam myth are outmoded when it comes to understanding existence. We must have a new outlook that gets rid of pre-conceived ideas from any direction.

Closing Words:

Whatsoever things are TRUE,

Whatsoever things are HONORABLE,

Whatsoever things are JUST,

Whatsoever things are PURE,

Whatsoever things are LOVELY,

Whatsoever things are of good report;

If there be any VIRTUE,

And if there be any PRAISE,

THINK ON THESE THINGS

(Philippians 4,8)