Sense, Reason and Intellect

Daniel Mann said:

You wrote, “Should not experience which is primary take precedence over beliefs which are rational derivatives. Would this not explain how there are many religions, and one existence?”

However important experience might be, it is dependent upon our cognitions and attitudes – the way we interpret our feelings. Without the cognitive factor, experience is no more than a set of passing stimulations.

My experiences have come and gone. It’s the UNDERSTANDING of my experiences that has proved transformational.

Actually without empiricism, belief is unchecked. I can believe that Prometheus stole fire from Zeus and gave it to mortals, but without substantiation it is no more and no less valid than Genesis. In both cases we have mythic stories which have or had meaning to a great many people. In neither case is there a shred of evidence to support them as anything other than mythic religious allegory.

Now if instead we look at the common types of altered states which can be found across cultural and religious boundaries, we have something which can be empirically tested. Human neurophysiology is not local to a religion (Q.E.D.), and so it is not surprising to see religious forms arising from that common ground within all human societies. What is interesting is the wide range of forms, including allegory, symbols and art which emerge, and the similarity of structure within the broad myths, (see the writings of Joseph Campbell, and Claude Levi-Straus.)

The primacy of human experience based upon a common physiology is not credibly deniable. Interpretation is derivative. Even, and especially in the realm of science, the physical is real, while models and paradigms are contingent. (Empiricism provides the only effective tool to cull away invalid interpretations of observations.) If in doubt, a mere 500 micrograms of LSD will show just how sensitive the brain is to an infinitesimal physical change, and it will show the subject that his or her "reality" is plastic.

As William Blake said:
If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.

The problem is, the hopes and fears of the ego bind a man to lesser gods. To experience the infinite, the finite and illusory "understanding" of the infinite must be set aside.

To answer your question, most scientists would say the cell came before DNA. The cell membrane can spontaniously form due to properties of phospholipids. - Dan

To add a bit to that: Eubacteria and Archaea (the simplest types of cells that exist now) have considerably different cells membranes and cell walls, but the same genetic code, suggesting that DNA and the processes that translate it via RNA into proteins preceded these types of cell at least. On the other hand, as you say, simple phospholipid membranes can form spontaneously in water. There's an article in a recent New Scientist describing work indicating that life may have begun in complex geological structures formed as hot alkaline fluids full of various chemicals bubbled out of the early sea-floor into an acid ocean, producing networks of small compartments lined with iron sulphide, which is a catalyst for a wide range of reactions. Within these complex non-living structures, both phospholipid proto-cells and RNA might have formed, and interacted. Translation of RNA into DNA and the origin of ribosomes (which self-assemble from RNA molecules) and the genetic code would then have preceded the origin of Archaea and Eubacteria, organisms able to survive indefinitely and reproduce in open water. Jack Szostak, a leading investigator of phospholipid membrane formation just awarded a Nobel prize for other work, has recently begun to investigate this idea, which was first suggested by researchers called Russell and Martin. Whether this particular idea is borne out or not, I think it very likely life first arose not in Darwin's rather unstructured "warm little pond", but in close association with already complex, multi-level structures able to concentrate and catalyse reactions between chemicals produced by non-living processes - so the first life "borrowed" much of its complexity from its environment.

Dan,
I was writing from memory, so couldn't give full details. It's called "The Cradle of Life", author Nick Lane, New Scientist 17 October 2009, pages 38-42. There's a lot I hadn't remembered, particularly about how cells generate energy by pumping protons through a membrane, building up an electrochemical gradient.