The terrible human journey

Reading  Genomes- The Autobiography of Species in 23 Chapters by Matt Ridley gives a clear insight into the depth of evolutionary biology.

The story told by our genes are one the best you can hear. It has been carried a long journey forward, with the past delicately inscribed on it.

For evolution to happen, we would need more than just natural selection. Here are five point listed which are important when it comes to evolution to function.

1. Population can shrink.
2. Constant mating to mix the genes.
3. Mutation- Changes should happen. It is necessary.
4. Gene flow- Movement of genes(in this case, the carrier) from one geographical location to another.

This video from TED Education gives a better description.

In his book Ridley states a very interesting fact about the history of our species on the planet. 

15 millions year ago, we as ape were almost struggling to survive with a better designed monkey.

45 millions year ago, we as primates were finding it difficult to co-exist with rodents.

200 millions year in past, we as tetra-pods were again almost extinct in comparison with highly evolved dinosaurs.

360 millions year ago, we as limbed fishes were again in competition with ray-finned fishes.

500 millions year in part, we as chordates survived the Cambrian era having competition with a better designed arthropods.

We are not special. We don't live a privileged frame of reference. We are not the center of the universe. We are just a species on the fragile little particle of dust in the vastness of the oceans. We are lost, never to be found again.

Here is the link to the book.

Some of the best I have

Here are some of the most thought provoking jpeg I have. I have seen a lot more than these, but I downloaded few of them. Here are all for you.!

Click here

Why am I an atheist?

Occam Razor. The simple, The Better.

"Everything Should Be Made as Simple as Possible, But Not Simpler" 

--- Albert Einstein.

Ever heard this quote anywhere? What does it means? It's been long I have written a stuff. This is a second start!

Let’s take an example. A situation is given. People are asked to analyse it, and publish their results. There are three people doing it, Aman, Babli, Chiku. The illustration is below.

Situation -- 

A cat is chasing a mouse. After a 50 meter run, the cat is successful to claw up that little mouse and starts eating it. 

What just happened?

Aman --  I think maybe yesterday or the day before yesterday, the mouse was roaming around, and saw a fat old cat. She maybe was in a mood for the gag, and hence, went up to the cat, started biting her skin and running away as soon as the cat reacted. This went on for an hour or so, the cat skin was so much chewed, it started concentrating germs, bacteria and was now septic. The poor cat, after 6 hours of agony, succumbed to her injuries. The cat was having a younger sister cat. When she saw this, she was furious and hence was in search of the mouse. Sighted her today, she was chasing the cat to take revenge. I think this is what is happening. Thank You!

Next was the turn of Babli. Lets see what she has one her plate.

Babli --  I think that the cat is hungry and hence he is chasing the mouse in order to eat it.

Now it is the turn of Chiku.

Chiku -- I think, nobody was in fact chasing nobody. The cat us still in its position, the mouse was still in its position. Their legs just performed simple oscillation. It was the earth that was moving in the opposite direction. Slowly, the distance between them starting decreasing. This was because, the space-time between them was getting dissolved into a micro black hole. This black hole was curving the space and time. Hence at the end, we see two of them met. Once in contact, the mouse was suddenly pulled into the cat mouse, in order to be saved from all the black hole effects.

Now which is the most appropriate of all the answers?

The easiest way to come up is to know Occam's razor.

" It states that among competing hypotheses, the hypothesis with the fewest assumptions should be selected."

Moving on, we now know which one of the above three hypotheses we should consider.

The one given by Aman is not logically impossible, but doesn't happen in daily life. There has been no scientist discoveries suggesting that cats do remember enemies (they do remember the house that feed them unlike the dog, which remembers the individual who feed him) or take revenge.  So the probability of this happening is although sparingly very less, this may be the case. But just because it is not what we observe on a daily basis, and in order to mark this hypothesis as correct, we land up creating more questions like how does cat remember, what are the associative, why did the mouse acted this way, etc. etc. We can ignore this answer.

The other answer by Chiku is again making lots of complexity and assumptions. Although micro black hole is possible, physicist claims that it is harmful and it is getting created in the LHC every second.  Again space-time warp is easily said than done. Also Chiku claims that nobody is walking and running, the planet is moving in the opposite direction. This is again possible but not probable. The observer should have also felt the same effect as the object of experiment(in this case, the cat and mouse) did. This hypothesis is again a very cumbersome one and requires more assumptions and new explanations. 

The answer given by Babli is considerably small, logical and observational. Cats, like humans, do get hungry. It is evident from the animal history that the prey run and the predator chases. This answer requires very less assumptions and new theory. Hence we can mark this as good to go.

Islam : The Untold Story

For every religion, they believe they are the parents of all other religion. This is a paradoxically view, but there is no authoritative evidence as to which was first(*story). 

Here is a wonderful documentary, studying a very ancient and huge religion - Islam.

In this controversial and ground-breaking documentary, historian Tom Holland who is taking the chance to enter the risky waters, suggests that we have absence of historical evidence about the beginning and rise of the Islam. Muslims believe that from the very beginning, the great Arab conquest were all about Islam. But in the 7th century, you can barely find a new religion called Islam anywhere in the historical records.

Even Mecca may not have been the real birthplace of the prophet. The earliest biographies we have were written nearly 200 years after the prophet's lifetime. This is a world founded on stories of Mohammed.

It is not suprising that the program received a torrent of complaints after the broadcast.

Click for more info.

The Limitation of God

Profoundly many. I am not sure of any square km on this planet where you can point out and say, hey look, the God has done things correctly here.

The reason I am an agonistic-atheist is one simple fact. The existence of sorrow. I know it may sound as a lame argument, but given a suitable thoughts, this ought to be the greatest attack against the imaginary friend.

As a child I used to ask my parent, why some people are happy and rich and smart and good looking, while the other completely ugly, sluggish, and bad. Why do some people keep their doors open for happiness while some others struggle to push away the pain? My parents use to tell me, this all is Karma. The fruit of previous life. They said, these people have done something wrong, very wrong in their previous life, and hence they are suffering in this life. So that they would again get a fresh chance in next life, and then at that time, they would probably do well. Initially, I subscribed to this illogical answer. For at that time, the words of elder where the only source of truth to me.

But now I realized, it’s a stupid concept. Firstly nobody ever has proved that ‘multiple’ life do exists. You could have seen it on Aaj Tak, but that was just a TRP. In religion too, this concept of multiple life differ for door to door. In Hinduism, we have seven life, whereas in Christianity, only one. That’s the reason most western country’s people have multiple marriages in one life span. While for Hindus, we have seven lives to enjoy the heaven of feminine.

You might be aware that good and bad are subjective and not an objective concept. That is, something  good for you, may be bad for me and vice-verse. And we have no way to decide the most good and the most bad. So does God have objective explanation of good and bad? Or does he decide based on his mere fantasy.

People generally say that happiness and sorrow are the two sides of same coin. They  say, suffering is mandatory and inevitable. Then comes the next big question, who decide who suffers?

What kind of God created a world like this? There is more suffering and struggle than joy and happiness.  I hear 70 girls’ been raped daily, 100’s of elderly brutally killed by youngster. I see a mother cheeks swollen red by the slap she gets from her own son. I see father raping his daughter with the same penis which was crucial to give birth to her, I see Osama Bin Laden living for 60 years, whereas a 16 year old girl getting into coma for the bullet she received just for starting a female literacy camp in Pakistan. I see murderers enjoying free air, and millions of kids in African desert dying daily for single drop of water. I see corrupt politician earning billions of dollars in their life time, and then I see innocent farmer ending their beautiful life just for 600/- Rs they cant pay. What a irony. 

Is this how an intelligence god creates the world? Is this the best design he can ever do? *^%$$^&#.  Did the almighty god who created the vastness of universe, who created billions and billions of galaxies in which there are trillions of stars and planets, can make such a stupid design mistake? If he was a sole maker of this world, why didn't he crafted a more thoughtful world? Why didn't he formed a world where there is no sorrow and only happiness. You may find this as stupid idea, but for a designer, who has made the world from bits and scratches, he could have well planned it nicely. He should have made the law of universe in such a way, so as to make everyone happy and to have everyone satisfied. He seems to me as an unskilled designer after all. And if he did this kind of mistake in design purposely, what kind of God he is. 

Think about it… 

Life arises from non-life

Life arises from non-life.

This is a rather a bold statement. But not so challenging. Many researchers and scientists made great leap to understand the reason for the wonderful lovely and fabulous play-station of life we have on earth. Not all succeeded, but surely all advanced.

We need to initially make clear the difference between evolution and origin of life. Darwin Theory of Evolution explain how so many variety of organism and species exist. Why do we have so many difference kinds of life-form. Ranging from trees to lion, man to rat, etc. So evolution is not the theory we need to look towards when we want to study how life exactly originated.

Succinctly speaking, evolution is just three things. Survive, survive and survive. No matter what it take. The unit of evolution is genes. This is a very important phenomenon and must be understood very keenly. This unit of survival, the genes, wants it copies to propagate and survive. If a particular individual fails to reproduce and deliver its offspring, he is so sure to end his legacy there and there. His genes won’t play in the orchestra of evolution. We all evolved from same ancestor. We all are cousin. Not me and you, but you, me, the stray dog, the dolphins, Osama Bin Laden, Tom Cruise and everyone. We all came from the same root. Such a beautiful reality.

Let me give you brief about the theory as to how life originated on this planet. This theory is based on a process termed as Abiogenesis. This process helps us understand how a non-living thing can turn into a living this. In order to be called life, anything needs to qualify for three criteria – grow, multiply and mutate. That what all life’s on this planet is all about.

Abiogenesis explains how this might have happen ‘chemically’ and thus forming this fuzzy cream of life. This process is not so complicated, but rather difficult to explain. But let me push you done this. For life to be formed we need to understand what it takes to make one. Speaking of protein, oxygen, DNA would be useless here. All of these are the products of life, rather than ingredient of life. So we need to look on other planet and in the vastness of space to find out what all material was already available. We found that organic material are quite common everywhere.  Secondly, we should accept the fact that initial life has to be very simple. So no mitochondria, no DNA, no nucleus, no ribosomes, etc.

Life started with simple fatty acid. The pre-biotic life contained simple fatty acids. Under the action of pH, and constant cosmic condition, these fatty acid formed vesicle, or a container. These containers were permeable(permit able) to small organic molecule. So here we have a container and some organic material in it (a very minute resemblance to modern cell).  Now when the vesicles, moving around did encounter any free fatty acid, it used to take it inside itself. So eventually, the size of vesicle started increasing. This is due to pure thermodynamic process. It’s quite logical that if I go on increasing the content, the size/volume would gradually increase. This process can be compared to modern time eating and growing.  Now when the size of vesicle increased, it started to break apart due to natural physical forces (winds, water, earthquake, rocks, etc.). Now when the division occurs, no content of the vesicle are lost. It’s a pure conservative division.  So here we have, just using natural process, something which grows and divide. You can call it life right away, but it’s better to wait rather some more lines to complete.

There are numerous nucleotides. DNA and RNA are made from nucleotide (or at least, it plays important role in formation of DNA and RNA). In order to form a nucleotide, all it takes takes to form one is self-polymerization. This process of polymerization is chemical process. Monomer can self-replicate. It is just a covalent hydrogen bond which they need to form. Now the vesicles can only take-in monomer and not polymer (simply because polymer is bigger is size than monomer).  Once a monomer enters the vesicle, and start polymerizing, it forms a polymer and now it cannot escape from the vesicle. This is easy to understand. The entry to the vesicle is confined by size. If the entry door size is 2*2, we cannot remove a package of 5*5. Now these polymers can be considered to separate itself from each other (not from the vesicle). As a when more and more polymer enters the vesicle, the size of vesicle increases.  Now the vesicle with more polymer will now start taking away lipids from the vesicle having less polymer (again pure thermodynamic). It’s interesting that we have found out competition among these vesicles. This is the origin of competition.  A vesicle which contains monomer which can replicate faster would grow and divide faster, eventually increasing in number.  Thus aroused (natural) selection.

Now it’s easy to know why Mutation + Natural Selection = Increased Information.  Thus we have derived a rather beautiful and considerable explanation as to how the early life originated.  Once initial simple life was created, evolution took the charge of setting up the drama of life of which you and I are part. In billion and billion years of evolutionary times, some trait of these polymers would have been selected, some getting rejected, just to increase in size and number. That is what life is. I used to think this a radical event. But now researcher claim that if we give enough time to any planet (with all the resources and condition), life is bound to arise on it. On some of it, life would have being created like a soap bubble and in a matter of moment, disappeared never to come back. On some other planet, there might be earth like habitat believing like we human do; that they are alone is this vast cosmic arena. On some other planet, which would have been billion and billion year older than earth, life would have born, survived and perish due to some internal war, or rather a cosmic fight. We don’t know it yet, we want to know...