Knowing our Lord, Part I

To begin working toward an understanding of our Lord, we need to first understand the nature and origin of Life on Earth. In particular, we need to understand that the origin of Life is also the origin of Mind.

Science, in its quest to find the origin of Life on Earth's surface, has failed to overcome the problems posed by forces of dissolution, such as oxygen and ultraviolet rays. The alternative of extraterrestrial origin is not convincing either, as it merely displaces the question elsewhere. The simplest and most compelling answer is that offered by Thomas Gold and his idea of a "deep hot biosphere": Life began in the interior of our planet, and later migrated outward.

A particularly important notion in support of this argument is the principle of purpose played by an entity that is contained within a larger one. Consider the relationship between the whole of a human body, and a single cell within it, say a liver cell. The liver cell may operate as if it were an independent agent, responding to its particular environment, which just happens to be of a very special and constant kind, but we who see the larger picture know that the cell is fulfilling a bodily function, serves a purpose within it.

Further, if we look at the evolutionary path of humans from the most primordial being to what we are today, we can see that the progress was twofold, our body evolved, just as the cells within it evolved. It is impossible for us to say that the liver cell could have evolved had it not had a purpose within the body, and the body could not have evolved without the liver cell. So the principle of the contained in the container is all-important in understanding evolution and the origin of Life.

It should therefore come as no surprise that to the nascent, growing Earth, becoming increasingly hot and pressurised in its interior, processes evolving there would serve a purpose. That purpose is one of cooling and de-pressurisation, and it continues today.

But why and how could those processes in the Earth's interior be considered the spark of Life? To arrive at the answer to this question there is another important concept to consider. At its most basic, a living being can be seen as an active, self-contained object. If it weren't active, it would be inanimate, and if it weren't self-contained, it would be no more than a dissolute part of a larger entity.

In addition, the processes that such active, self-contained objects engage in, within their container, can be seen to have a primary and a secondary purpose. When we see a fox eating its prey, we can say the primary purpose of the interaction is the fox feeding itself, and the secondary could be serving the needs of equilibrium in the biosphere. In fact, there could be any number of secondary purposes, some of greater import than others.

Looking at the conditions within a young Earth, we can say that the chemical and physical processes that were beneficial to the equilibrium of the Earth were the ones that would be fed by a developing feedback mechanism. In other words, whatever processes resulted in lowering of pressure and temperature would be the ones surviving the longest.

We can reasonably suppose that in time, if by no other means than physical accident, at least some of the beneficial, longer-lasting processes would become self-contained in the environment of Earth's interior. We can call them bubbles. Once the bubbles are formed, then the beneficial processes that sustain them are no longer directly interacting with the Earth's interior, they are now processes within the bubble, and the bubble is interacting with its environment. We are seeing a proto-cell, one step away from being alive.

Within the bubble, the processes can be said to serve both primary and secondary purposes. The primary purpose is to sustain the bubble, to grow it, but what of the secondary? The answer lies in the fact that as soon as the bubble is formed, other, incidental processes within it will begin to interact with the primary processes that were responsible for the bubble's formation. The incidental processes are subject to the same "laws of success" as the primary ones, they have to be of benefit to the bubble. It is in this interaction with initially incidental processes within the bubble that we can see the secondary purpose of the original processes: it is one of recording their activity, to gain efficiencies from the record. In other words, a primitive, most simple of minds emerges, starting to direct the very processes that sustain it. Now our proto-cell is alive, and on its way to transform that record into what we know as genetic material.

So the origin of Life is the origin of Mind.

With that insight we can begin to look for active, self-contained objects in the universe, which according to our discussion should possess minds, no matter how simple. We can quickly see that apart from biological beings on Earth there are not many other objects that satisfy our definition. Planets, stars and galaxies are the only ones that do.

While the mind of our planet Earth can be said to have given rise to Life within it, what of the mind of our star, the Sun? This will be the subject of our next posting.