Lichens are formed from more than one organism, and they are important

lichens, Blowing Rock, North Carolina, USA

Lichens are inconspicuous entities, usually. They don't stand up high. Most of them aren't colorful. They are interesting, and important.

One interesting aspect of lichens is that they are made up of two or more types of organism, I was taught, and taught, that these were a fungus and an alga. The fungus provided structure and protection for the alga, and the alga provided food, from photosynthesis. That's true, but not true of all lichens. Some of them are a combination of an alga, and a yeast and/or a bacterium. 

Since they are more than one type, they can't reproduce as most organisms do -- by producing a copy of themselves. Lichens increase in numbers when a piece of a lichen breaks off.

Lichens are able to grow where other organisms, or groups of organisms, can't. They are capable of growing on bare rock or concrete, perhaps even on metal. For more about that, see here.

Although lichens are small, there are so many of them in some Arctic regions that they furnish much of the food for reindeer populations.

Thanks for reading!

 

Let me get this straight -- musing about lines in nature

Natural objects very seldom contain perfectly straight lines. Man-made objects often do.

True, there are some nearly straight lines in natural objects. Some tree trunks are almost perfectly straight. Still water has a flat surface, a straight line expanded to two dimensions, as it were. Salt crystals are sometimes nearly perfect cubes, or, at least, they often have one or more flat surfaces. Some leaf veins are almost perfectly straight. But these examples are rare.

Spider webs do have what appear to be straight lines, but they usually don't go very far before joining with another line, which goes in a different direction, and, like power lines, the threads usually sag in the middle. I am not sure that there are any really straight lines in the photo above. (The photo is from my Flickr photostream. If you want to see a larger version, go here.)

Covalent bonds, such as the 4 bonds that Carbon atoms can form


are depicted as straight, as in the image of cyclohexane, above, where the dark gray balls represent carbon atoms, and the rods between the balls represent covalent bonds. But the angles of the bonds are such that, even in this model, the straight lines can not continue in the same direction. Besides, the bonds aren't really little rods, any more than the atoms are little spheres. And, even if they were little straight rods, they are very short -- just the distance between two adjacent atoms in a tiny molecule.

The two examples above, and some tree trunks, are about as close to really straight lines as you are going to find, in natural objects. Look, for example, at the trees and leaves in the first photo, or at almost any natural scene. You will see all sorts of shapes, many of them difficult to describe, but you will almost never see straight lines.

Why is that? I don't know. But this fact suggests that it is very difficult to grasp nature clearly. In a way, our use of straight lines, angles, flat surfaces, and curves, in the things we build for ourselves, is a reflection of our power over such artifacts. But we have much less power over nature -- we can't create it. Its shapes are too complicated for us to easily duplicate, and comprehend.

The word, "straight," is used several times in the Bible. Of the twelve versions that the Blueletter Bible offers, the New International Version has the most occurrences, 40. Here they are.

I am not sure that any of these 40 refer to a straight line, as such. Most of them are used in the sense of going straight toward some destination.

Here's one instance of the use of "straight" in the Bible:
Matthew 3:3 For this is he who was spoken of by Isaiah the prophet, saying,
“The voice of one crying in the wilderness,
make ready the way of the Lord.
Make his paths straight.” (This is referring to Isaiah 40:3, which uses much the same wording.)

Did the people of Bible times understand the concept of straight lines, or straightness? Surely they did. In Acts 9:11, a street in Damascus is called Straight Street. 2 Kings 21:13 uses the concept of a plumb line as a measure of straightness.

To sum it up, God, and God's nature, are more complex than we often like to make things. But that is not to say that God doesn't understand our simple patterns and constructions, often with straight lines all over the place. He does. He made straightness possible. We should see beauty in the seemingly complex, and  difficult to describe, shapes that we find in nature, such as the lichen below:

(Larger sizes here.)

 

Thanks for reading! Keep yourself straight, but appreciate complexity.

Emergent processes

Jeremiah 1:4 Now the word of the Lord came to me, saying,

5 “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,

and before you were born I consecrated you;

I appointed you a prophet to the nations.” (ESV. For information on copyright and usage policies of the ESV, see here.)

This passage is often taken as support for opposition to abortion, and that may be a legitimate use. I quote it here because it may be supporting another idea, that of emergent processes.

Young-earth creationists believe that the earth, and the universe, are no more than a few thousand years old. They believe that, although there may have been some changes in the appearance of living things, and even in humans, these are minor, because there hasn't been time for major changes. As a consequence, they believe that the creative processes described in Genesis 1 were instantaneous, or nearly so. I believe that those who believe in Young-earth creationism would say (if they thought about this specific example) that the lichens were created by the command, or commands (possibly one for each type of lichen) of God, on the third day, and that they would have been much like the lichens of today. This view may be correct.

But young-earth creationists, though they don't often say this, seem to go further in their thinking. They assume that only an instantaneous creative act shows the power of God.

Other Christians, believing that a proper interpretation of Genesis 1 does not demand that the earth is only a few thousand years old, probably haven't thought about this specific example very much either, but would suppose that the algae and the fungi found in lichens both evolved, over long periods of time, and that, also during long periods of time, the mutualistic association of fungi and algae that makes lichens also developed. Not only that, but not all the lichens necessarily originated at the same time. Some kinds of them are probably older than others. These other Christians would also say that God's preparation, His planning, and the various processes, including natural selection, that He put into play also show the power of God, just as much, if not more, than an instantaneous creative act would show it.

Jeremiah 1:4-5 refers to the process of formation in the womb, an emergent process. Newborn Jeremiah was not created instantly at the instant of his birth. He had gone through nine months of development. The fertilized egg that he came from contained complete instructions for, say, producing a circulatory system, over the course of these nine month. Jeremiah, and you and I, came about through emergent processes. These emergent processes, although unfortunately taken too much for granted, show the power of God as much, if not more so, than as if Jeremiah had been created instantly, from nothing, as a baby.

God's use of emergent processes doesn't seem to be limited to embryonic development. It seems that God's work, through Noah, Abraham, Moses, the prophets, and finally through Christ, was also an emergent process. Couldn't God also have used emergent processes to bring about the universe, the earth, and living things?

Every view of origins has problems. There is no argument for any of them so convincing as to demolish all opposing views.

See here and here for previous posts on the idea of emergent processes, or emergent creation.

Thanks for reading.

Colossians 1:16-17 poster

(For ESV copyright and usage information, see here.)

The passage speaks for itself. However, I have previously posted about the implications for Christian stewardship of the environment.

Thanks for reading and looking.