The Origin of Life After spending one almost sleepless night tormented by mosquitoes, yesterday I went to visit my friend, the Kabbalist Leon, at his farm of Scicli, to see if he could explain a riddle. The riddle was: mosquitoes were created by God, the Almighty Father, Creator of Heaven and Earth, or they had created themselves, from a perverse evil design of the law of probability that gave rise to life on Earth? What did the Kabbalah say? Let me frame the problem. We are about a month before the summer solstice and Spring is well established here in Santa Maria del Focallo, so mosquitoes have begun to reproduce themselves: not only those homegrown, the Latin ones inherited from our Roman ancestors, the so-called Culex Pipiens, but for some years there are also the Tiger mosquitoes, refugees from outside the European Community, which are even more fierce than ours. Since the holiday makers and the beach people have not arrived yet, these blood suckers, these perpetually thirsty female vampires, got excited last night all over me, the innocent and unique mammal at hand, or better, at sting, within a radius of one hundred meters from my bedroom. A few days ago I finished the book: A Brief History of Biology by Isaac Asimov, who besides being a famous writer of science fiction books, is a biochemist by profession, besides being a wizard, a Ph. D. and a former professor of biochemistry at Boston University School of Medecine. Now on what Asimov writes it doesn t rain, so to speak, and what he thinks should be taken very seriously. So, according to what he says, Asimov, there seems to be evidence that life developed on Earth spontaneously, without the hand of the Creator, starting from simple substances that existed in a primordial Earth surrounded by a reducing atmosphere rich in hydrogen and gas containing hydrogen, such as methane and ammonia, and free of oxygen. According to the theory of the American chemist Harold Clayton Urey, the effect of cosmic rays and ultraviolet radiation from the
Sun, with time, would have formed in the primitive oceans nucleic acids complex enough to serve as duplicating molecules and this was the key to life. The theory of Urey was then demonstrated in the mid-1900 by one of his disciples, Stanley Lloyd Miller, who made an experiment that remained famous. Starting with distilled water, hydrogen, ammonia and methane in a hermetically sealed box Miller sent an electrical lightning that mimicked the effects of ultraviolet rays. After a few weeks he was able to create in that box some simple organic compounds and even some of the smallest amino acids. Other experiments were made by the University of California in 1962, that starting from the same mixture of gases but with the addition of ethane, were able to form a wide range of organic compounds. The Asimov's question was: if in a week they had achieved these amazing results in the lab, what would have happened in the primitive oceans after millions of years? The Kabbalah As usual I found Leon sitting on his stone bench in the shade, under his carob tree. He was reading a thick book with a black cover, which from a distance looked like one of the books of Kabbalah. Upon arriving I went straight to the point and explained my dilemma, without jumping to a tangent, and finally I said: "Asimov is a Jew, although he professed to be an atheist, and you Jews have invented the myth of a Creator God, Creator of
Heaven and Earth. Now Asimov wrote a book in which he gives conclusive evidence that life on Earth developed by itself, from physical and chemical natural causes, without divine intervention. What does your Kabbalah say about it? " Leon smiled indulgently, looking at me with condescension, as if I were a poor fool, and in reply he said: "Sit here on the bench and wait for me to go get a bottle of Nero d'avola and two glasses, because the answer to your question is a complex one..."and after pronouncing these words Leon disappeared into the house. On his return, after a few minutes, he poured wine into two glasses, making sure that the liquid level in the two glasses were the same height. After drinking the first sip, Leon clicked his tongue and began to speak: "Unfortunately Asimov is a scientist who is not familiar with the teachings of the Kabbalah. "Leon pointed to the big book that he had closed and had placed carefully on the stone seat and said," The truth is written there... " "Let me specify my question in the simplest terms..." I said, "my question is this: how can a merciful and good God have created mosquitoes? What are they? " And Leon smiled and answered: "El malè rahammim, that is the merciful God knows what he does, believe me... Let's see what the Kabbalah has to say. " Leon flipped through the book and after a few minutes he read: "The Holy of Holies created men and, against them, he created the demons... has created beasts and animals and, against them has created bears, lions and leopards... and created the pure birds and, against them, he has created the eagle and the vulture. " So says the Midrash-Konen, i.e. the Study of Creation attributed to Rabbi Isaaq ha- Zaqen, that is Isaac the Elder. And I would add: "And He has created mosquitoes and, against them has created insects useful to man, such as bees and hornets, who with their incessant activity create honey and fertilize the flowers, creating the fruits which man eats. " For me everything is clear: God the Eternal Father expresses Himself with comparisons and parables. To make us understand the usefulness and advantages of Goodness, He makes us touch the disadvantages of Evil, with practical examples... "
As I startled, I found nothing else to say: "But there was no need to go to the extreme to create the mosquitoes, to make us understand the utility of the bees? " And Leon replied: "God is subtle but not malicious, as your Prophet Einstein says. If He created mosquitoes, maybe He thinks that man, to believe, needs practical examples, man needs to touch the truth with his hand. But the explanation is not limited to these concepts: there is a hidden truth that escapes us... " "And what is this truth? Do you know it? "I asked. "I'm just worried to understand, because who can ever know the ways of the Lord? And behold, after years of studying, here is my theory: the Eternal Father has no hands to act on the Universe and to change the events, but with His Mind that some call the Universe s Intelligence He prepares the space-time so that His will be done. It is the geometry of His Holy Substance that directs the events, so that they go where they should go... " "And so he created mosquitoes? " "No, this is where you are mistaken. He did not make them, but He left to the forces of evil, which are always present with the task to delimit the forces of goodness, the freedom to create the mosquitoes, so that the evolution of the species will be free to win. God cares about justice and fairness is His law... if you know what I mean! " I protested, saying: "But didn t you preach that God is powerless against the future, saying that it s the probability that manages the evolution. Now you are saying instead that God has plans and a purpose to be accomplished? " "Sure, I am the one that mentioned in one of my essays that " living beings on the one hand benefit from the stability of the statistical laws of physics, because they consist of billions of billions of billions of atoms behaving statistically well. But their reproductive system, their DNA consists of genes composed of a few atoms, which can easily mix, because they are few, and behave statistically wrongly giving rise to mutations. Mutations are very important because through mutations evolve all living things, according to the laws discovered by Darwin and the Abbot Gregor Mendel. If living beings were stable, they would remain always equal to themselves and there wouldn t have been the evolution that formed Man, which is the measure of reality and contains within itself the idea of God. Got that concept? "
Finally God, through evolution, which by the way has also created the mosquitoes, made sure that will be verified at the end of his project: Man. " "And so He let mutations free to create mosquitoes? "I asked, now that I was kind of desperate to understand that absurd logic. "Sure, that's right! "Leon said, and poured another glass of wine for both of us, trying to be impartial. "Just tell me one thing: why? "I asked, exasperated. "What do I know? "Leon said, slightly irritated:" Who am I to say what are the plans of God? Do you think that God plans to stop evolution after Man? Maybe in the future He will allow the creation of an intelligent mosquito that will conquer the Universe after us, when we're extinct... " Faced with that logic, I did not have the strength to answer, and I limited myself to laugh and applaud after drinking my wine. clicking my tongue.