Goo to Zoo to Me

Here are some facts which we each have to interpret.
....wouldn’t you agree that it is also absurd to say that this happened by chance? You might comment that natural selection is a 'non-random process', but going back further you must believe in 'chance' and how did a non-random process evolve from randomness? Is randomness not the right word? Do you think it is reasonable to suggest the universe was always orderly from nothing? Or how would you put it?
Do you just have to shrug your shoulders and say 'existence is weird' and leave it at that?
How do you see the world?  

 I see the world as a scientist, chemist to be precise.

 

Once the plasma of the Big Bang cooled sufficiently for protons and electrons to form, electromagnetics will cause them to form hydrogen.  Gravity clumps up the hydrogen and collapses it eventually getting it hot enough form a star which blows up scattering hydrogen and helium which forms new stars with the carbon – nitrogen - oxygen fusion cycle.  These blow up scattering carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen and oxygen all over the universe.  These are the main building blocks of amino acids which are found everywhere in the universe.  The other extremely stable compound formed from this mess is water.  No chance just chemistry.

Get these all together on a big rock orbiting a star at the right distance that the water is liquid and all sorts of weird chemistry happens.  Carbon in particular is a promiscuous chemical and joins up with almost anything including itself to form all sorts of stuff including  goo and lipid membranes and bubbles which don’t really dissolve in water but mix with it.  Again no chance just chemistry.

Big complicated carbon molecules with amino acids and bases tend to fold up in ways that keep the amino acids and bases out, again chemistry, carbon bonds tightly to itself and other radicals stick out. Acids and bases sticking out tend to attract other carbon compounds with acids and bases sticking out sometimes end to end sometimes side to side.  The side to side match-ups tend to fall apart, but the end to end are fairly stable.  Still just goo, but some of the goo gets trapped in a lipid bubble which concentrates goo stuff.  But after a while, measured in millions of years, give or take a million, one of those folded goo molecules probably a simple RNA molecule attracts goo stuff sideways in a way that matches up with the RNA.  As mentioned the sideways bonds are weak and the matched goo splits off.  Now there are two replicators attracting goo stuff.  In a while one of the replicators adds something that makes it better able to attract goo stuff, and it becomes the most successful and the other replicators disappear.  In a while a matchup containing thiamine instead of uracil proves to be even more stable and DNA becomes the dominant replicator. Still just goo making more goo. 

When the DNA and RNA start working together to manipulate the lipid membrane we begin to move from goo to zoo.  DNA which splits the lipid membrane when it replicates can be called the beginning of the zoo.  The single cell organisms compete for resources and the most successful live to split again.  Some cooperate with other organisms to be even more successful and become more common.  One group develops a way to react to the environment to compete better for resources and again some compete well enough to replicate and the others die off taking their inadequate DNA with them.  The groups get better and smarter about reacting to the environment in each case surviving long enough to replicate.  This continued for countless generations, each generation getting better at filling its niche on the rock until I won. Hat tip to Mary-Ella Holst from her Lottery 

http://jcarlinsv.blogspot.com/2009/07/lottery.html