Page 3 of 4
LifeCesare Emiliani, in his text, Planet Earth: Cosmology, Geology, and the Evolution of Life and Environment, says in his chapter on the origin of life: “People are awed by life. Some call it “unique”. Many call it “a miracle”. All are puzzled and bewildered by it. Indeed, there is excellent cause for bewilderment – life, as we know it today, is the end product of 15 billion years of cosmic and terrestrial evolution and therefore is utterly complex. We see a fantastic machine with billions of moving parts, a machine that has been fine-tuned by nature to the utmost degree – and we are bewildered. I hope, however, that this book will convince you that, far from being a miracle, life is a necessary and inevitable consequence of the way the world originated and evolved. Indeed, the origin and evolution of life on Earth were foregone conclusions right from the beginning, given the mass, the chemical composition, and the physical and astronomical parameters of our planet.”
The process called mutation played an indispensible role in the development of life. One of the many life forms that appeared around 4 billion years ago was a cell that somehow discovered how to convert photons of light from the sun into energy. Capturing solar energy zipping into the cell at the speed of light, the cell was able to invent the biochemical machinery to convert nitrogen in the air into proteins for feeding itself. Modern-day animals (including humans) have still not mastered the trick of converting nitrogen in the air into the proteins required for their existence. We still rely on plants for this job. All mammalian food chains have plants at the bottom. Early plants flowered forth with many different forms, each tossed out into the great adventure to see what might come of them. They all entered existence. An aside: The complexity of modern plants (they have over two times the number of genes as humans) continues to challenge the understanding of 21st century science.
Ozone built up in the upper atmosphere, filtering out the most energetic rays from the Sun. Once again, the self-organizing patterns of creation played out their wondrous influences, and symbiotic cell life evolved. Interconnected life forms appeared and flourished in the shallow oceans, now protected from the killing ultraviolet rays of the Sun. The rhythms of life of these creatures had evolved to enmesh with each other as they shared the environment, each taking resources unneeded by the other, each providing an element to the environment required by the other. About 1 billion years ago a cell invented sexual reproduction, a major step forward in the creation of new life forms. Sexual reproduction ensured that both mating cells will possess the advanced and defining characteristics of the lineage. This powerful preservation of lines of creativity led to the emergence of the multicellular organism, another major step toward the evolution of higher forms of life. Only 700 million years ago, the first multicellular animal appeared. (1)
We tamed dogs 10,000 years ago; tamed cattle 8,800 years ago, Sumeria in Mesopotamia arose about 7,000 years ago, and we settled Europe 5,000 years ago. About 3,000 years ago civilizations were arising along the Indus, Nile, and Tigris-Euphrates valleys, the time of our narrative creation story recited at the beginning of our time together this morning. |
Video Clips
Dr. Joerg Rieger,
Our Fall of 2012 Lecture Speaker
Dr. Joerg Rieger on Anselm of Canterbury
Dr. Joerg Rieger, Perkins School of Theology, on Progressive Christianity
Rev. Robin Meyers,
Our Spring 2012 Lecture Speaker
Oklahoma Minister Claims Jesus Is Not God
Robin Meyers on the Christian Right
Bishop John Shelby Spong,
Our Fall 2011 Lecture Speaker
Beyond Theism -- John Shelby Spong
The Call of Jesus -- John Shelby Spong
Michael Dowd and Connie Barlow
Our Spring 2013 Lecture Speakers
Michael Dowd - "Darwin Day Celebration" 2011, Omaha
Fred Plummer
Our Fall 2011 Lecture Speaker
Newsletter
To subscribe to our newsletter,
please contact us.