A new hobby

Hi. You might be wondering why I have not been posting for a long time. The reason for that is I have been learning some biology. However I cannot call myself 'a bio student'; I have not undergone a formal education. At school I must have learned some preliminary topics, but the last of that I can recall was probably 7yrs ago.

So what is it like learning biology now? Hmm. Well it is real slow. Not exactly perpetually dragging, but real slow. If I were to study it in some institution things would have moved on at a faster pace. The only thing that I'd brag about then is the lack of time devoted for certain important topics. (Yeah, what can I say. My ego rules!!).

The motivation behind this new hobby is to understand the processes that created life. Research into this area still requires more exploration. I mean there are still things (life processes) out there we need to have a good understanding of. (At least relatively in my case!). Well, you might be interested in things that I have found so far.

Hmm well I feel there is nothing new. Everything was once long ago told. But however I find it all fascinating. I have learned about the different kingdoms of life - Monera, archaea, protista, plantae, animalia & fungi. There is another classification - prokaryotes & eukaryotes. But strictly speaking the latter classification pertains to cells, I think.

I next learned about cells. How do you call something a cell. Here what fascinated is the ambiguity regarding viruses. People don't think is a cell in a strict sense. Because they are only active when they feed/destroy other cells, i.e. their metabolic activity is dormant until they find a host cell to feed on. But like other cells they reproduce and divide themselves. Most importantly they have no form unlike a cell (which has a cell wall).

But how and why did these living organisms become? And that question takes us back to the oceanic soup from where life once sprang! But wait a minute - what is this thing about a soup? Well, one point in the history of earth, long before any sort of terrestrial creatures evolved, life was present - in the oceans!! Water was the mother of all life back then. How did life become in these oceans? It is hard to say exactly how but theories say that under immense physical conditions (high temperature & pressure), and under strange combinations of various molecules life could have formed. It is hard to simulate such conditions in a lab because we don't have a clear knowledge of there conditions (and reactions), and there is no technology that could simulate such an environment.

Anyway there was a time where cells became...Almost all living things need food, oxygen, etc. In a population that consisted of such cells. There were parasites. These organisms like all organisms needed food, oxygen, etc. But they relied on a host to get a source of energy. So in an environment like this viruses must have come about.

Well, thats the story of viruses. There is more - protein synthesis, reproduction, DNA sequencing etc. If you click on the title of this post you'd be directed to a tutorial site. If you are interested you can pursue from there. If you have never ever really touched biology, then this is probably a good place to start. It is never too late for change.

The concept of God

You might find this post odd. This is probably the first time I am discussing about an abstract subject - God. However it is not without reason. The idea behind life seems incomplete with out some discussion on this subject. But why is this subject so important? Even before science was established in societies it was religion or rather the concept of God that shaped almost all the ancient religions. My guessing is that almost all the concepts of God (i.e. most of the religions) map to the same thing - the One who created this universe.

However so many questions come to surface while we are even thinking about this concept. Like for e.g. why would you think that there is only one force? The concept of God was not founded on logical arguments, but rather on observations of phenomena that people had no way of explaining in the ancient times. Child birth and death. Archaelogical evidence has hinted that people who lived in civilizations that are 3000 yrs old even paid respect to the dead. This fact is amazing. But why would we want to pay our respects to the dead? We do it even today?!


Earlier I guess people believed in after-life, i.e. life after death. This was the main reason the egyptians mummified great kings and queens. They somehow believed that they would be reincarnated somewhere in the future... This was the fundamental belief of the egyptian civilization.

But why is it that people think of God? Is it to find the meaning of life? Is it to define some purpose for life? Is it to say, God created the universe. Then why is it that we are so interested in living?

Sounds like madness doesn't it?

Then would you want to believe in my philosophy rather and believe that life on earth was co-incidence?

This was where I wondered what makes our mind behave so special. Special in the sense why we relate to spiritual things... Of course we can construct a scientific answer, but then you'd hate life for that! I ventured in trying to realise a model for our brain. I tried to understand concepts such as memory. I was going literally crazy at one point of time. My current model of the brain is simply a network of neurons designed to either instigate signals due to some brain chemistry or to propogate signals from nieghbouring neurons, or inhibit them. It is not a complicated model.

I tried wondering what if this model was subjected to some strange signals? What strange signals? Seeing something out of the ordinary - like miracles or seeing a ghost etc. When we see some object our neurons work through predefined channels and propogate signals. At the end of this process there is always a result. Either an action or response. These responses can be chemical in nature. These chemical can in turn influence brain activity by making other neurons that are normally dormant to fire. When this happens there is no regularity in the way the neurons direct signals; there is no particular channel. Its like chaos. There are many channels that are normally not supposed to be there. Somehow I feel that this particular condition is the same as fear. Fear of not knowing what happens next.

Although this is only a hunch. The pattern when one sees a miracle is the same as that of fear. This was what I concluded from the above discussions.

The concept of God. Back to square one. Miracles are the back bone of faith. Not everyone will agree with this view. And those who don't believe in this view are truly considerate people. They think about religion at some point in their life. Now was the concept of God born out of chaos in the mind? Could be; we don't really know.

All that I've discussed here are not the result of lucubrative scientific studies. Rather it is the output of probably preconceived thought. It could have come to my head before.