We find ourselves with life suddenly, and very unlikely, having arrived on the scene.  But now we have to ask ourselves where things are going?  This week we start to lay out the very complex journey that lies ahead.  Can natural selection do it without the guiding hand of a Creator (a Creator who loves you)…“Nevertheless, it may be that the origin of life is not the only major gap in the evolutionary story that is bridged by sheer luck, anthropically justified.  For example, my colleague, Mark Ridley in Mendel’s Demon, has suggested that the origin of the eukaryotic cell (our kind of cell, with a nucleus and various other complicated features such as mitochondria, which are not present in bacteria) was an even more momentous, difficult and statistically improbable step than the origin of life.  The origin of consciousness might be another major gap whose bridging was of the same order of improbability.  One-off events like this might be explained by the anthropic principle, along the following lines.  There are billions of planets that have developed life at the level of bacteria…  Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006Firstly, life – even a single, ‘simple’ cell – is a miracle of complexity.  Every cell in your body, for example, has molecular machines for moving itself, tagging and transporting molecules, processing food, defending against invaders, DNA duplication and repair, producing proteins and receiving and processing outside signals.  On top of all that, this entire machine can tear itself in half and produce a complete working copy in about 20 minutes.  Lewis and Barnes, A Fortunate Universe, 2016“Owing to this struggle, variations, however slight and from whatever cause proceeding, if they be in any degree profitable to the individuals of a species, in their infinitely complex relations to other organic beings and to their physical conditions of life, will tend to the preservation of such individuals, and will generally be inherited by the offspring.”  Charles Darwin, The Origin of the Species, 1859“I have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if useful, is preserved, by the term Natural Selection, in order to mark its relation to, man’s power of selection.”  Charles Darwin, The Origin of the Species, 1859“On the other hand, we may feel sure that any variation in the least degree injurious would be rigidly destroyed.  This preservation of favorable individual differences and variations, and the destruction of those which are injurious, I have called Natural Selection, or the Survival of the Fittest.”  Charles Darwin, The Origin of the Species, 1859“In Climbing Mount Improbable, I expressed the point in a parable.  One side of a mountain is a sheer cliff, impossible to climb, but on the other side is a gentile slope to the summit.  On the summit sits a complex device such as an eye or a bacterial flagellar motor.  The absurd notion that such complexity could spontaneously self-assemble is symbolized by leaping from the foot of the cliff to the top in one bound.  Evolution, by contrast, goes around the back of the mountain and creeps up the gentle slope to the summit: easy!” Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006 “Religion is so wasteful, so extravagant; and Darwinian selection habitually targets and eliminates waste.  Nature is a miserly accountant, grudging the pennies, watching the clock, punishing the smallest extravagance.” Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006 

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