Connectedness

A Speculation

By Romana Annette 03/02/2008

We are all connected to a reality we see, which has two parts: Objective Reality and Subjective Reality [Appendix A.] We are too often oblivious to the differences, especially the way we are always interfering with everything. Subjective Reality is active (philosophical) layers applied on top of Objective Reality. Connectedness in Objective Reality tends to be factual, while connectedness in Subjective Reality tends to be relational and philosophical. These differences are important for the sake of the following discussion.

As human beings, we can feel quite isolated in the modern world. If we are lucky, we belong to individual family groups, but few of us belong to what would be called a tribe anymore. All human beings share over 98% of the same genetic codes, and we believe or believe in at least 90% of a similar set of values; yet, it sometimes does not seem like enough for us to live in harmony. According to the Ten Percent Rule [Appendix B,] there will always be lop-sided differences in various parameters within populations and sub-populations, such as beliefs, politics, ethnicities, races, orientations, and so forth. There are likely circumstances in which nearly everyone can be considered to be a minority.

In past ages, our connectedness heavily depended on local social structures that were often reinforced by the prevailing religious authorities. Much of the religious dogma that was pushed was based on ignorance. However, scientific discovery has been whittling away at the ignorance for centuries, without any regard for the separation of objective and subjective concepts. Science can become very materialistic whenever it uses objective concepts to explain subjective concepts, which can make reasonable people reject the findings of science.

Modern physics can really make us feel insignificant and unconnected. The leading edge of modern physics [Appendix C] says that we, as beings composed of infinitesimally small structures, are a part of sets of infinitely large structures that are constantly evolving. As if this were not complex enough, there may be more dimensions than we can see, and individual universes may have relationships that we cannot comprehend.

We, as biological beings, are composed of a subset of organic molecules called DNA and RNA [Appendix D.] These molecules thoroughly ground us in Objective Reality; yet, due to their flexible nature, they also allow us to function in Subjective Reality. There is currently a scientific debate whether any ultimate truth can be derived from just the study of the way DNA and RNA work.

Except for viruses, living things are single cells or organisms made up of collections of cells, which react with their environment in some way and reproduce. Organisms have a higher identity that is different from their individual cells; that is, organisms are more than the sum of their parts. However, it is not possible to find any objective component that represents an entire organism, since killing for the purpose of dissection will destroy all the subjectivity. Life and subjectivity go together.

The Theory of Evolution [Appendix E] is our most valid theory, because the discovery of the chemical components, DNA and RNA, documents how it works. While the fossil record is only a chance glimpse at the enormous diversity of life that existed in the past, it clearly shows primitive organisms continuously evolving into more complex organisms. Evolution can seem to have an extravagant purpose: newer, bigger, more complex, stranger, and even better has seemed to be an ongoing goal. However, fossils mostly only represent objective history; the physical bodies of all lifeforms are like black boxes that have subjective lives and experiences.

Objective Reality and Subjective Reality have different rules and restraints. For animals, physical motion is a major part of being alive. Activity is part of a plan for survival, but activity also creates opportunity for exploration and enjoyment. We, as self-aware observers, have a special place in this scheme of reality. Not only can we observe things happening around us, but we can also make judgments about what it all means. Of course, any kind of judgment is strictly subjective. While we do see evidence of what is happening, our conclusions about meaning will be based upon feelings and experiential knowledge. However, we want to know more, such as whether there is an ultimate reality, or God, and whether our short lives have any meaning beyond our individual temporal existence.

Throughout history, organisms focused on staying alive so they could have their allotted share of life and experiences; few before the arrival of human beings, however, probably asked why they were alive and what it all meant. I have also described a much greater Cosmic Evolution taking place at the same time as our organic Evolution. Since it all looks so purposeful, we feel to compelled to ask about why this is all going on, and exactly who is doing it, since our personal endeavors often have a who and a why.

The story of life has been ongoing for a long time, but it does have a problem: neither the participants, nor their species, are around for very long. For those who have enjoyable, prosperous lives, this can seem like a dirty deal. We live; then we are cast off into the ground when we die. So, many people hope there is more going on than that which we see, which has given rise to theories of immortality [Appendix F.] If our current lives are good, many feel there should be an after-life that is even better. This is a subjective hope, not an objective equation that balances a life with an after-life.

I have my own beliefs [Appendix G] that are more objectively grounded than those of the average person. I seriously doubt that there is any after-life where people get their bodies back, such as in Subjective Immortality. Yet, I cannot discount the feelings of those people who seem obviously better subjectively connected than I. There may be something after all to all the claims of sensitive people that there is a God, and that they feel the presence of this God. While I now agree that there is likely some kind of a God, I still disagree with most of the fantastic attributes that people assign to this God. To me, God is more like a composite linking of all past knowledge, not a supernatural being. In this sense, God is ultimate subjectivity, far beyond any kind of proof.

I am more inclined to believe that there is a somewhat impersonal kind of Objective Immortality. I do not believe there is going to be any ground-breaking revelations from the study of mindless chemical DNA itself, without dealing with subjective experiences too.

I believe all living things on our planet are connected. Certainly, all terrestrial lifeforms somewhat share a base, ancestral DNA. This is connectedness by way of genetic relatedness. There is also external connectedness by way of sharing the same biosphere, and interacting in ways that could be considered to be symbiotic. Lastly, there is the innermost connectedness to Subjective Immortality, which I have already discussed.

Since anything that is subjective can be so difficult to prove or measure, people often refer to feelings and sensations that they cannot explain as supernatural. Since I believe that all of reality functions in a natural manner, I think the supernatural label violates proper philosophical methods. In turn, I belief that connectedness to Objective Immortality can explain many baffling (supernatural) things in life that have defied explanation:

· The presence of child prodigies, who seem to get experience from nowhere,

· Déjà vu, the feelings of repeated situations and past lives,

· The ability to see ghosts and dead people,

· Telepathy, precognition, and psychic experiences,

· Sudden invention of new concepts and ideas,

· Faith that timely insight will be received, and

· Revelatory Experiences.

Our connectedness is highly personal and limited. Few, if any people, would be likely to be endowed with all seven of the above supernaturally-attributed gifts. Materialistic scientists would claim that all causes for any giftedness will eventually be found within the DNA itself. However, that reasoning has a flaw, since it overlooks the collective subjective contributions of lifeforms throughout all of reality. In the end, we, not God, are doing it all.

Appendix A – Objectivity versus Subjectivity

Objective Reality

Objective reality, itself wondrous, is important for the existence all a things, inanimate and animate, in the Universe. Objective Reality provides the consistent framework for the existence and operation of all processes over very long periods of time. Denial of the importance of Objective Reality can lead to a very warped kind of moral relativism.

Objective Reality includes all matter, and the physical and chemical laws that bind the matter together. Objective reality includes all the DNA and RNA, the building blocks of life as we know it. While it has been aptly noted that no two of anything are exactly alike in the Universe, the wave nature of matter and energy allows infinitesimal differences to be ignored so that like objects can be grouped as being exactly the same.

Language can be confusing, since objective objects can be subjective. For instance, a television set is not alive, but it has a function that can only be observed by living things.

Some features of Objective Reality are:

• It was created at the same time as the Universe.
• It is facts that can be proven.
• It can be described with equations and text.
• It is highly predictable, though subject to randomness.
• It is a feature of inanimate matter.
• It is often labeled as being cruel and mindless.
• It is a necessary feature for everything in the Universe to exist.
• It cannot be used assign any meaning to life or to events in life.
• It cannot be used to postulate ultimate reality or the existence of God.
• It is synonymous with the scientific method.

Subjective Reality

Subjective Reality takes the wonder of creation to spectacular heights. However, Subjective Reality cannot exist without Objective Reality; it is layers of harmonics applied to portions of objective reality. Subjective Reality is an envelope effect, driven by energy, information, and relationships. The very nature of Subjective Reality makes it impossible to deconstruct it to its objective components without the loss of all the subjectivity.

As with Objective Reality, language can be confusing. For instance, classical art and music is often described as being more objective than modern art and music.

Some features of Subjective Reality are:

• It was created at the same time as the Universe.
• It is opinions that cannot be proven.
• It can only be alluded to using literature and the applied arts.
• It is a feature of animate matter.
• It is often labeled as messy and wasteful.
• It is often totally unpredictable and totally random.
• It is fueled by a certain amount of chaos.
• It can speculate about the nature of reality and the existence of God.
• It is synonymous with philosophy.

Appendix B – The Ten Percent Rule

This essay will be very speculative, since what I am discussing is quite subjective, and it will be from a minority point-of-view. I once read about this version of The Ten Percent Rule, also called The 90-10 Rule, but I have since been unable to find the original source. There are many similarly-named rules, but they are all different. Also, I do not want to create any notion that I am discussing something that cleanly breaks to a ratio of one out of ten.

This version of The Ten Percent Rule is about differences in populations of people according to race, ethnicity, belief, and personality. This rule is reflexive, which means that it also applies to sub-groups and sub-populations.

The reflexive nature of this rule impacts me, especially, since someone such as me represents a very small part of the general population. My Myers-Briggs personally type is INTJ/INTP, which places me in one percent of the population. Along with gays, lesbians, and bisexual persons, I as a transgendered person fall into a ten-percent sub-group of the general population. As a transsexually-oriented person, I fall into a ten-percent sub-group of the transgendered population. As someone suffering from Asperger’s Syndrome and being of Native-American ancestry, I may fall into a ten-percent or lower sub-group of the transsexual population.

The majorities in sub-groups can carry on the same kinds of discriminations that members of the sub-groups suffered in the larger population. This is because of mistaken assumptions that such sub-groups will be homogeneous, without much diversity. For instance, within the transsexual and transsexually-oriented population, there is much conflict about who is real and who does not belong.

Too often, psychological studies are all about why there is a minority ten-percent who are out of step with the majority ninety-percent. Many programs have been devised throughout history in attempts to fix this problem. People were even killed to cull them from the population; however, The Ten Percent Rule would just arise again within a different set of parameters. While the presence of minorities does create tensions within societies, it is minority persons who make all the social and technical changes and improvements. If the majority had always had their way, we would probably still be living in the Stone Age.

People have been discriminated against for their race or ethnicity, and even for being left-handed. Anyone who is obviously different, such as the case for gays and lesbians, can be accused of having subversive agendas. Destructive propaganda can be used to vilify various sub-groups in populations, despite the fact that such claims lack any biological validity.

This rule also shows up in the differences between various kinds of churches. Many attendees at small liberal and progressive churches once may have been in the ten-percent populations that did not fit in at more mainline and fundamentalist churches. However, they are often surprised to find out that The Ten Percent Rule still holds within their new congregations.

A variation of this same rule was discussed several years ago In Salt Lake City, at the Mormon Sunstone Symposium. The Mormon hierarchy did a study that indicated that ninety-percent of all Americans, including Mormons, believed in a similar basic set of values. This was disconcerting, since Mormons want to set themselves apart from the rest of the population. Equally disturbing, Mormons discovered that the Ten Per Cent Rule applied to their own ranks, which is why there are Sunstone Symposia in the first place. It should not be surprising that the late Mormon Prophet, Gordon B. Hinckley, devoted much time in his talks urging members to follow the standards of belief, dress, conduct, and appearance. Still, many churches that did not restrict the rate of change have suffered grievous loss of membership in recent times.

The Mormon Church is by no means alone in its quest to restrict the restless ten-percent. To some degree, this is a feature of all institutions. Long before there are official changes to rules, people will have enacted de facto changes, since it is always easier to be forgiven than to get permission.

As a final comment, I need to warn that not all ten-percent sub-groups are just benign liberal or progressive people, since sub-groups can also contain conservative persons that will resist majority-approved changes, as well as dangerous radicals that want to topple all hierarchies. Those in charge of institutions often cannot tell one sub-group from another, and will therefore label all ten-percent groups as subversive.

Appendix C --Scope of Reality

The scope of our physical reality is staggering. We do not even know where the middle is, since from our vantage point we can go infinitely small or infinitely large. Not long ago, scientists thought we were on the verge of discovering the actual nature of everything, but that ideal evaporated with the development of newer concepts in modern physics that might take tens of thousands of years of research.

We are fast reaching the limits of how infinitesimally deep our current technology can probe. Objective Reality is held together by enormous binding energies, which are so important for the stability of our environment. Soon, we will be at the point where it will take all the energy in the Universe just to break into the next sub-layer of matter.

Our cosmological scope can make us seem totally insignificant. Our planet circles a star that is just one of hundreds of billions in our galaxy, and our galaxy is just one of countless hundreds of billions in our Universe. We cannot see our entire Universe, because there is a light event horizon beyond which we cannot peer.

The Universe as we know it is composed of particles and fields. Fields are everywhere, but they are invisible unless particles of matter and energy react with them. There is an entire menagerie of particles, many of which have never been seen, but must exist to satisfy equations of physics. There are two basic types of particles: Bosons and Baryons. All particles possess an attribute called spin, which is loosely comparable to how particles move and orient themselves. Bosons have integral spin; they are very energetic with zero or negligible mass. Baryons have half-integral spin, which causes then to have mass, when they interact with a field known as the Higgs field. Bosons do not form structures, but Baryons do form structures, subject to rules of exclusivity that only allow certain types of constructs.

The structure of our Universe is physically asymmetrical. This was not the case shortly after the Universe was created, because it was totally symmetrical; then the symmetry broke as it cooled and expanded. This is extremely important, because our reality is asymmetrical. We are subject to four kinds of forces: the strong nuclear force, the weak molecular force, the electromagnetic force, and the gravitational force. Our existence is totally dependent on the asymmetry and non-interchangeability of these four kinds of forces.

Our universe clearly has design, and it is this design that is so important to us. We can observe the design, because it is part of all the naturally running processes that make up our reality. There was likely a time when the design we see did not exist, so we speculate whether there are higher-level processes that evolve local designs. There is no evidence of a master craftsman at work; rather, it all looks like it was designed by a committee, which is the mark of any objectively unguided evolutionary process.

Since the design is asymmetrical, it can never be elegant. This is why physicists literally end up tearing their hair out, in sometimes futile attempts to fit all the design together in a single model.

The search for the design in physics took an unexpected turn early in the Twentieth Century with the discovery of the Uncertainty Principle and Quantum Mechanics. At atomic and sub-atomic levels, classical physics totally breaks down and has to be replaced with a new physics that requires wave equations and quantum states, in which physical outcomes follow probabilistic random rules. The introduction of randomness disturbed people like Albert Einstein, who proclaimed, “God does not roll dice!” However, without these kinds of rules, there would be no way for the diverse components of reality to work together.

Just as we have been completely overwhelmed, speculation has stretched the scope of reality even farther. Our Universe may be a sub-universe of a larger universe, and there may be sub-universes beyond the light event horizon. The dimensionality of our universe may be much higher than the three we see plus time. Our Universe may be part of a much larger and far older structure called a multi-verse, that consists of countless universes and sub-universes that are constantly colliding and evolving.

The epitome of speculation has led us to the possibility of parallel universes. Our Universe has features that can best be explained by the existence of one or more codependent parallel universes.

Appendix D – The Structure of Life

In order for a universe to have observers, there has to be a way to create observers. Having no observers means that there will be no subjectivity and no search for meaning. Here, I will discuss the objective method by which this takes place. Atoms combine to form molecules, and the atoms of hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, and nitrogen combine to form a special class of molecules called organic molecules, so named because of their relationship to living things. Within this class of molecules, there is a subset called DNA and RNA.

DNA is at the core of the structure of life as we know it. DNA supplies a molecular bridge from Objective Reality to Subjective Reality. DNA creates a map from the microscopic realm to the macroscopic realm that determines most of the physical characteristics of all living things. Some believe that DNA is partly responsible for our behavior. DNA exists in every single organism, from the smallest virus to the largest mammal. DNA is passed on from generation to generation, and can trace its history back to the earliest organisms on our planet.

DNA is characterized by its double-helical structure. The major types of DNA form right-handed helices; they are asymmetrical. In addition, the two strands of DNA are themselves asymmetrical, consisting of different genetic components. DNA is the only known molecule that has ability to replicate itself.

DNA is like a biological recipe, not a blueprint, which contains over-defined instructions for building an organism. The instructions have to be filtered during the development of an organism, since 95% of the DNA available to the recipe will not be used.

DNA is the most-famous nucleic acid; however, there are a few other types of nucleic acids that play integral roles in the replication of DNA and the synthesis of proteins. These others are varieties of Ribonucleic Acid, or RNA for short. They are messenger RNA (mRNA), transfer RNA (tRNA), and ribosomal RNA (rRNA).

DNA: Deoxyribonucleic Acid

DNA stands for deoxyribonucleic acid. Strands of DNA are long polymers built of millions of nucleotides that are linked together.

The image below shows a simplified representation of a nucleotide. The P represents the phosphate molecule, the S represents the sugar (deoxyribose), and B represents one of the four nitrogen bases.

Individually, nucleotides are quite simple, consisting of three distinct parts:

1. One of four nitrogen bases

2. Deoxyribose (a five-carbon sugar)

3. A phosphate group

The structure of the phosphate group is shown below:

Nitrogen Bases

The four nitrogen bases are: Adenine, Guanine, Cytosine, and Thymine.

Nucleotides are named after which of the four nitrogen bases to which it belongs. These will be referred to as A, G, C, and T respectively. (Note: The words nucleotide and base are often used to represent the same thing: a nucleotide).

The A, G, C, and T bases can produce an infinite variety of organisms. While these bases can be used to trace ancestry, they cannot be used to predict future variation. Thus, it would have been impossible to examine early organisms and predict the evolution of human beings.

Adenine and Guanine are classified as purines since they are double-ringed molecules. Cytosine and Thymine as pyrimidenes due to the fact that they are single-ringed molecules. Structural diagrams of the four bases are shown in the table below:

Base	Adenine (A)	Guanine (G)	Thymine (T)	Cytosine (C)
Purine/ Pyrimidene	Purine	Purine	Pyrimidene	Pyrimidene
Chemical  Structure *
Simplified  Representation

* C = Carbon, N = Nitrogen, O = Oxygen.
A single line between atoms is a single bond.
A double line between atoms is a double bond.

A purine binds with a pyrimidene in DNA to form a base-pair. Adenine and Thymine bind together to form the A-T base-pair. Likewise, Guanine and Cytosine come together to form the G-C base-pair. The bases are joined together by weak hydrogen bonds, and it is this hydrogen bonding that produces DNA's familiar double helix shape. An image illustrating the how two bases pair with hydrogen bonding is shown below (The blue lines are the hydrogen bonds. )

Deoxyribose

Deoxyribose is a five carbon sugar, and to fully understand many of the concepts that are presented later on, one must know the structure of deoxyribose. A visual representation of the sugar and how it relates to the other two components of a nucleotide is shown below in figure 1.

The carbons of deoxyribose sugar are numbered sequentially from right to left. The first carbon is 1' (read as one prime), the second is 2' (two prime), and so on. The nitrogenous base attaches to the 1' carbon, and the phosphate group attaches to the 5' carbon. The nucleotide below is covalently bonded to the 3' carbon. This allows for a long strand to be built. An example of a single strand of DNA is shown below.

Molecular diagrams of DNA strands can be simplified by being represented by strings of letters, such as ATCTTAG. This string represents which bases are in a certain side of a strand of DNA. The above string (ATCTTAG) represents the string adenine-thymine-cytosine-thymine-thymine-adenine-guanine.

DNA has two strands. Whatever nucleotides are in one strand, they rigidly fix the sequence of nucleotides in the other strand the way base pairing occurs (A with T, G with C). The two strands are complementary. They are not identical, but fit together correctly.

In addition, the two strands are anti-parallel, which means that they run in opposite directions. One strand goes in a 5' to 3' direction while the other goes in a 3' to 5' direction. By convention, the strand which goes in the 5' to 3' direction is placed on the left in 2-dimensional drawing. Figure 2 gives a visual example of this concept as well as showing how the strands are complementary.

RNA: Ribonucleic Acid

RNA, as previously mentioned, is an acronym for ribonucleic acid. There are many forms of RNA which are quite similar to DNA. All types of RNA are transcribed from DNA in a process called transcription which is examined in detail in the Transcription and Translation section.

A quick comparison between the two effectively explains RNA generally.

1. The 5-Carbon sugar in RNA nucleotides is ribose instead of deoxyribose. (A structural diagram is shown below)

2. RNA nucleotides have Adenine, Guanine, and Cytosine as bases, but Thymine is replaced with Uracil (U), which forms a base-pair with Adenine.

3. DNA is double-helix, but RNA is usually a single strand which can have complex twisted and folded secondary and tertiary structures.

4. DNA is typically longer than RNA.

5. DNA is generally more stable than RNA. DNA is more resistant to spontaneous and enzymatic breakdown, and damage can be repaired because the opposite strand has complementary information. RNA is more reactive due to a reactive -OH side group on the ribose sugar. Direct repairs are not possible, because it is a single strand.

6. There are several classes of RNA, each with their own function

The types of RNA are: Messenger RNA (mRNA), Transfer RNA (tRNA), and Ribosomal RNA (rRNA).

1. Messenger RNA

mRNA is synthesized on DNA and contains the information needed to build a protein. mRNA travels from the nucleus of a cell to ribosomes, the place where protein synthesis occurs, and is read by the ribosomes. The result is a protein.

The information that mRNA carries is written in genetic code - a sequence of bases. The code is not complicated - it's like a sentence - a series of words. Each code word is called a codon, a sequence of three adjacent nucleotides that specifies one of twenty amino acids.

2. Transfer RNA

Transfer RNA, or tRNA for short, translates the language of nucleotides into the language of amino acids. It carries amino acids and places them in a protein that is being produced according to the instructions of mRNA.

Each tRNA molecule consists of approximately 90 nucleotides, but when it's longer when it's first produced. To reach its final state, introns are removed, and special enzymes remove segments from each end of it and change some of the bases so that it has more than four types of nucleotides. Finally, three nucleotides are added to the 3' end of every tRNA produced: CCA. In its mature form, the structure of tRNA is quite complex, but to simplify it, imagine a 3-leafed clover. That is the approximate shape since tRNA has 3 loops (the leafs) and one stem.

3. Ribosomal RNA

rRNA, or Ribosomal RNA, contributes significantly to the structure of the ribosomes in a cell. mRNA, and tRNA work together the ribosomes to synthesize proteins.

In eukaryotes, rRNA is transcribed exclusively within the nucleolus while other types of RNA are synthesized throughout the nucleus. After being produced, long primary rRNA strands are processed at once by a special enzyme to yield the specific shorter strands of rRNA that are needed for ribosome assembly.

In eukaryotes, there are three forms of rRNA: 18 S, 58 S, and 28 S.

There is also a 5 S form, but it is transcribed from a separate gene and prepared outside of the nucleolus. In case you are wondering, S is a sedimentation or density unit that is used in describing the results of ultracentrifugation and reflects the size and shape of a molecule or a particle. The larger the value of S is, the bigger the particle is.

rRNA forms the skeleton of ribosomes. The remainder of the ribosomes is comprised of proteins made in the cytoplasm. They enter the nucleus and then the nucleolus and then join rRNA. The assembly of ribosomes is completed in the cytoplasm.

Completed ribosomes have two parts: 60 S subunit and 40 S subunit.

The 60 S subunit contains the 28 S rRNA, the 58 S rRNA, the 5 S rRNA, and around 45 to 50 different proteins. The 40 S subunit contains the 18 S rRNA and around 30 different proteins. The final total size of the completed ribosome is around 80 S and half of the mass is proteins.

Ribosomes have specific attachment sites that allow tRNA molecules and mRNA to be in the proper close contact that they require to synthesize proteins. Two of these sites are tRNA pockets called the P-site and the A-site. The other sites are mRNA grooves. There is also a site where an enzyme called peptidyl transferase works to form bonds between adjacent amino acids, which will be covered in Transcription and Translation.

Transcription

Transcription is the first step in protein synthesis. It is synthesis of RNA under direction from DNA. In many ways transcription is quite similar to DNA replication, except, in this case, instead of new DNA nucleotides being added, RNA nucleotides are added to the DNA to form a RNA strand known as the primary transcript. The primary transcript eventually goes on to become a messenger RNA (mRNA) strand after some modification. It is mRNA that directs the steps of protein synthesis: translation.

Translation

Translation translates final mRNA to polypeptides (proteins) through a process that has three steps: Initiation, Elongation, and Termination.

Translation involves multiple molecules including mRNA, tRNA, the two ribosomal units and various enzymes and proteins.

Initiation
During initiation, everything is set up for translation. The various components come together. mRNA attaches to the small ribosomal unit, with the initiator codon, which is always AUG (methionine), being on the unit and the charged tRNA that has the mRNA and binds to the ribosomal unit with three proteins. Once this is done, the complex attaches to the large ribosomal unit with the mRNA-tRNA starting point in the P-site of the large unit.

Elongation
During elongation, a tRNA that matches the codon in the A-site comes in. With the help of the enzyme peptidyl transferase, an amino bond is formed between the two amino acids, the energy coming from the bond between the first amino acid and its tRNA. Once the bond is made, the now uncharged tRNA drifts away, and the whole complex moves over three bases (to the right). Each of the three base mRNA sequences, codons, instruct tRNA to bring a specific amino acid to the ribosome. This step repeats until a specific codon called the stop codon is reached. Termination now occurs.

Termination
Since there are no tRNAs that bind with the stop codons, useless proteins plug up the A-site. The bond between the last tRNA and the last amino acid on the now long poly-peptide is broken and the whole complex breaks up.

Appendix E- The Theory of Evolution

Charles Darwin published his epic book Origin of Species in 1859, several years before Mendel’s work on inheritance, and a century before the development of modern genetics. Evolution is the best documented theory we have, especially since we have physical chemical evidence in the form DNA and RNA to back it up; however, we likely have a different interpretation of the evidence than those who lived in Darwin’s time.

I will expound on this topic using principles found in Process Theology. DNA and RNA create a molecular bridge between Objective Reality and Subjective Reality. This bridge helps create a reality filled with stories, all of which are driven by the underlying molecular design. The design does wondrous things, but we need to be careful about being too awe-stricken, since it is simply part of the way things are. If it were not this way, I would not be here making my comments.

How did such a design come to be? It happened about fourteen billion years ago, when our Universe came into being. Due to a light event horizon, we are unable to see our entire Universe, let alone look back before the Universe was created. Speculative modern physics says that there was likely a before, when two prior universes collided and created our Universe. During the collision, older physical laws broke down, and new physical laws evolved in their place. I personally believe that, in the instant when chaos destroyed all physical laws, the force we call God could have created the replacement laws that reconciled the two previous sets of laws.

So, Evolution is not just a feature of DNA and RNA; all of reality is constantly evolving too. This is the Process Theological principle: that the purpose of reality is to evolve and create new and novel things. Some say this is a quest for ultimate perfection, but how can perfection ever be reached?

Early on, the force behind Darwin’s version of Evolution was termed, “Survival of the Fittest.” This was an unfortunate materialistic interpretation, and it continues to dog newer, evolving versions of the theory. The word fittest can imply that there are perfect, static organisms, but we all know that this never happens. The word fittest really cannot be used in the same sentence with the word evolve.

Individual organisms all die, but they can leave descendents. Species also die out and become extinct, but they can evolve into new species. Evolution happens, because it is the characteristic of underlying DNA to evolve. DNA exhibits the following characteristics:

· DNA is found in the form of genetic sequences.

· DNA is accumulative; that is, it contains recent and ancestral sequences.

· DNA is over-defined; that is, there are far more sequences available than are needed, so there has to be a filtering process to build an organism.

· DNA is fragile, so it is subject to mutation, the creation of new sequences of DNA.

There are thus two random processes in the creation of any organism: the filtering of current DNA sequences, and the mutation of current DNA sequences. This is the driving force behind Evolution. Besides the availability of the component atoms and molecules to make DNA, Evolution also requires the following conditions:

· A stable set of physical laws,

· A stable supportive environment fairly free of catastrophic changes, and

· A very long period of time for the above two conditions.

Evolution as we know it has been operating for the last 550 million years. I think this qualifies as a very long period of time. Prior to this last span of time, the Earth never satisfied the second and third conditions.

The characteristics of DNA stated above are not the only driving forces behind Evolution. Climate change and continental drift have been major factors in the creation of new species. Looking back on the fossil record, which is only a glimpse at the enormous totality of the work of evolution, individual species seem to last an average of three to five million years, with some lasting ten to twenty million years. Just a few survivors have managed to last a lot longer than that.

There is also intelligence at work in Evolution. No, this is not the intelligence of Intelligent Design, but the intelligence of organism as they influence their own Evolution. Evolution has often been termed messy and wasteful, because many of Evolution’s products seem too bizarre for our sensibilities. Process Theology also allows that the force we call God can influence Evolution by way of non-coercive suggestions.

Remember, I have equated fittest to the existence of perfect, static organisms. The perfection is in the processes, not the products. Any instance of an evolved species is automatically imperfect, because it is subject to being replaced by other species, especially related species. There is a tendency to speak of competition, which again can raise the specter of Survival of the Fittest. However, the competition is actually about the development of new diversity, so the defining attribute should be the Survival of the Most Diverse, instead.

Fittest can also carry the connotation of independence and isolation, but no species exist in isolation from other species. We cannot even claim total separation of DNA, since as much as fifty percent of the DNA in and on our bodies belongs to other organisms that live in symbiosis with us and are necessary for our physical well-being. All species are part of larger ecosystems.

We really cannot deduce very well why past species went extinct, because we cannot reconstruct the totality of their interrelated reality. Organisms do not exist simply to attain the basics: food, shelter, territory, and reproduction. Organisms, past and present, all have subjective lives filled with self-indulgent details, such as status, display, personality, skills, play, and so forth.

Appendix F- Theories of Immortality

Many people say they can sense that there is some kind continuation after death, which can lead to assumptions that some people will live again. Reality may have some aspect of immortality, but not the one for which people are wishing. While having children is a form of temporary immortality, this is not enough for most people.

When our ancestors first became self-aware, they immediately noticed that everyone was mortal, allotted only a short time on Earth. No matter how good or enjoyable anyone’s life might be, it will always come to an end. Self-importance and status do not matter; no one gets to cheat death. The invention of religion coincided with the creation of the first cultures, as early people honored their dead and undoubtedly speculated about the existence of an after-life.

At first, many of the details did not outlast the memories of survivors; then people invented writing, so they could document the entire story of a person’s life from birth to death. With advances in geology and paleontology, scientists discovered that the scope of life’s story was far greater than previously imaged, since countless animals, and even countless species, have come and gone during the last billion years. Even the dinosaurs, which were ultra-successful for 170 millions years, eventually died out.

On a materialistic level, this has led to two disturbing conclusions:

· Objective Reality is cruel and mindless.

· Subjective Reality is messy and wasteful.

Religion is a kind of philosophy that we developed to deal with our mortality and with the trials and suffering that occur during our lives. Starting three thousand years ago, we reached a threshold. Many formalized religions were born, complete with systems of doctrines and beliefs. While every religion was concerned with the conduct of people in life, many developed an eschatology that defined rules and places connected with a continuation of lives after death. Concepts of heavens and hells were born.

Subjective Immortality

As the name implies, Subjective Immortality implies that there is a subjective life after death that objective measures cannot detect. Some variations, such as those of the LDS Church, even predict that the faithful will get not only their family back, but their very bodies as well in a celestial paradise. For many believers, their ability to endure the tribulations of life depends heavily upon the promise of the coming heavenly rewards.

If there is no obvious purpose for life, people could suffer crises of faith. The situation is aggravated by materialistic trends in our current world. Objective materialism simply cannot help us deal with pressing subjective issues about who we are, what we are supposed to be doing, and what our place is in the scheme of reality. If we cannot deal with these issues, we as a species seem poised to self-destruct.

The speculation about parallel universe in modern physics leads credence to the possibility of all sorts of alternate realities. The existence of places we might call heavens and hells might be true after all; however, speculation that we might be connected to such places for future lives is not testable.

Objective Immortality

Objective Immortality was deduced by Process Theologians as a logical alternative to Subjective Immortality; however, it is not truly objective, nor is it provable or testable. Objective Immortality was based on the fact that all life is a set of harmonics, placed upon Objective Reality, that contain information, energetic movement, and relationships.

In Objective Immortality, all living things are connected to a vast shared storehouse of accumulated experience, the totality of Subjective Reality. Some philosophers refer to this as God, or as God-relatedness. This could also be viewed as similar to the Buddhist concept of karmic relationships, connected actions or deeds.

This has also been referred to as God of the Gaps. However, this is not the same as a similarly-named concept that is part of the Creationist concoction called Intelligent Design (ID.) In ID, God fixes problems in Objective Reality by coercive interference; whereas, in Objective Immortality, God can only offer persuasive ideas and helpful hints.

This connectedness is two-way, which means every living thing can both draw upon it and contribute to it. In this way, some kind of immortality is guaranteed. When an organism dies, the subjective connection is broken, but the organism’s subjective life experiences are not lost.

Observant researchers and philosophers have, for some time, sensed that all living things are somehow interconnected in ways we cannot easily deduce. For human beings, this means that our supposed separateness from the rest of reality is illusory and unfounded. This idea has been heavily influenced Buddhism, which has always claimed that we are not separate, and that those aspects of ourselves which we are always focused on, such as self or ego, never survive death.

Appendix G – My Beliefs

Since I have Asperger’s Syndrome (AS,) I have a strong objective, rational grounding. People are often surprised that I also have highly subjective beliefs, just like everyone else. Beliefs are always part of Subjective Reality; Objective Reality is just mindless physical laws and facts, which have no means of self-examination.

When I was young, like most AS persons, I was socially incompetent and only had one or two interests. The only literature that I read was science fiction, and I was intensely focused on subjects like astronomy and space travel. While I still often focus on just a few ideas, I have considerably broadened my areas of interest.

Since my connectedness, especially in my youth, has been so poor, it should not be surprising that my religiosity has also been poor. I have been atheistically inclined, and I am still that way to a certain extent. The question constantly arises: if so-called well-connected people believe that religion is natural and that there is a God, why are some of us simply not with that program?

Process Theologians have been studying this for a long time. Too many religious people overlook the implications of higher philosophical principles when they reach their conclusions. Whenever doctrine is taught with absolute authority, especially concerning unprovable subjective concepts, many of us will be forced into an opposing camp. After all, too much of religion is taught in a binary, either/or fashion. Many of us also cringe now, whenever extreme human-centering is added to the equations.

A former Unity minister once taught that everyone was a believer. He was careful to distinguish what we believe, from what we believe in. If God is intrinsically linked to all reality, then it makes more sense to believe God, rather than to believe in God. The same holds true for the teachings of Jesus Christ. Either his teachings are universally relevant and we should believe them, or they are not. Believing in Jesus Christ has nothing to do with following his teachings. People are too often forced to believe in things, but this smacks of unrighteous dominion being pushed by human authority, not by God. A true God would never require an oath of allegiance, because we are already connected to this God by virtue of being alive.

I have become a diehard Process Theologian. This suits me, especially because of my AS personality and my natural analytical nature. Fundamentalist often claim I am pursuing a type of liberal folly. In this context, the meaning of the terms liberal and conservative are strained to fit new meanings. Being a liberal is not the opposite of being a fundamentalist. We all have liberal and conservative sides to our personalities. As an AS person, I have a natural conservative bent. Somewhat painfully, I have come to conclude that there is a God after all. I have to learn to change my mind about things. Reluctance to change my mind is a feature of conservatism, not liberalism.

I marvel at the well-connectedness many people. I am also dismayed that such people can suffer crises of faith. Again, I think this is a problem of believing in things versus believing things. Believing in something is a way of objectifying Subjective Reality, but there is no such thing as an infallible subjective proof. People who can change their minds will suffer fewer crises of faith than those who stubbornly stick to a rigid doctrine.

It is now difficult for me to precisely say what I believe, because my whole belief system is constantly changing and evolving. Well-connected people have certain beliefs concerning religion and God that have an element of truth, but so do those of us who are more discerning and skeptically minded. However, I see the ability to change one’s mind as having extreme importance in any belief system.

Process Theology says that the most important feature in reality is the creative forces that continually produce new and novel things, which are a high-level kind of cosmic evolution. That is why the Process Theological story has no one at the helm of the ship of creation. To a theist, it seems impossible that God could be a participant in creation, but not the supreme composer. However, by leaving all beings out any ultimate decision making, there is no one to oppose the endless changes that are required for reality to evolve.

I believe that I have become a proper Process Theologian. For many people, this distinction is not enough, so some might say I am really a Process Naturalist, or just a Process Philosopher. This is the type of sub-categorization that Process Theology seeks to avoid, and it makes it more difficult for me to change my mind.

Many of my beliefs can make people wince. Extreme rationalism can lead me to unusual conclusions. For instance, I will stand behind my belief that we do not have an immortal soul. I view this as an objectification of Subjective Realty. This does not mean that we are any less alive; it just means that our physical bodies do not contain any essence that is ultimately us, nor will any kind of an objective search turn up anything that is the real us.

I also do not feel, as do many others, that simply having lived entitles me to an after-life. Models of salvation often have checklists to differentiate good deeds from bad deeds in a binary fashion; yet, subjective situations seldom lend themselves to binary logic of good versus bad. In addition, our ethical models are all culturally-dependent and species-dependent, so they are in no way any kind of universal standard whatsoever.

We simply cannot get away from the fact that any exploration of the mysteries of reality will be a form of speculative philosophy. If the multi-verse theory of reality should be true, then in trillions and trillions of (equivalent) years since the original creation, no one has yet succeeded in figuring it all out. Do we feel lucky that we can solve the mystery before the Universe ends, or else are we just going to live our lives and do the best we can?