Birth and Upheaval of Our Planet Earth

 Birth and Upheaval of Our Planet Earth 

Dr Abe V Rotor 

Living with Nature School on Blog [ avrotor.blogspot.com ]

Primordium mural on canvas (4ft x 8ft) by the author 2007 

Primordium of a protoplanet born from a star, the sun, orbiting with eight others; ours the Earth - the third planet, fiery and chaotic  beyond imagination but gradually cooling off until some one billion years ago;   

• Early earth was lifeless with ever-changing landscape, fiction portrays, simulating the geologic processes gradually and spontaneously giving birth to protolife in pre-cellular forms;  

• Protolife scientist Alexander Oparin offered an explanation: molecules combined in random under remote possibilities until giant protein molecules produced "the spark of life;" 

• The ancestral origin of life, the Monerans evolved from prokaryotes to eukaryotes - the Protists, and later multicellular organisms, many of them are living fossils today; 

• Explosion and proliferation of life occurred as Oxygen, the by-product of early photosynthesis by cyanophytes favored aerobic organisms to spread out in number and complexity; 

• Proliferation of life everywhere defies the principles that govern the natural world we know today; life however is always part of Nature; without Nature our planet would be a lifeless one;   

• Nature deepened by faith in a Great Maker, began to reveal more mysteries, challenge great minds, seek adventure, build universities and churches, and other institutions;  

Integration and interconnections of living things on one hand, and the living and the non-living world on the other, gave rise to ecosystems, collectively comprising the biosphere;   

Exploitation of Nature from nomadic life to agriculture and growth of communities, pushed the frontiers of Green Revolution, and lately modifying the genetic makeup of organisms;  

Genetic engineering is playing God's role, defying age-old values and blindly embracing change in the name of progress in materialistic and immediate gains to attain the "Good Life;"  

The Good Life led to population explosion, global warming, destruction of natural resources, pollution, etc.,

Inventions gone wild threaten man as a species, and the whole world itself: splitting the atom, cracking the code of life, inventing the microchips, and their consequent and collective effects;

Shrinking the world into a village condenses man's lifetime into careers, riches, pleasures save true happiness, resulting in millions losing hope and failure to find meaning in their lives; 

• Myth and legends tell of  Icarus, Narcissus, the madman who defaced the Pieta; while we ask where is the boy who saved Holland, the likes of Malala, of Wangari who planted a million trees?; 

• Reverse evolution which Darwin downplayed warns of the return of man to his early beginnings as survivors of weapons of mass destruction, threatening the world of a postmodern Armageddon;   

• Armageddon takes us back into pre-civilization, unless we heed Malthus, Nostradamus,  Hardin's Tragedy of the Commons Toffler's Future Shock, so with Gibbon's Rise and Fall of Civilization;

• "Progress" and breakthroughs in science and technology, advancement of civilization, make a curtain on the stage, behind it are the Four Horsemen of Apocalypse marching - discreet but real. ~