On hemoglobin (sort of)

This evening in the first session of my microbiology class, the professor was talking about RNA and whether or not viruses are alive (or something-- I don't entirely actually recall how this tied in to the topic. But I didn't really mind, because it is awesome).

But anyhow, he read an excerpt from Richard Dawkin's The Selfish Gene, which was first published in 1976 (and is not about genes that don't know how to share, but rather about a concept of genes as the evolutionary units. Which is not relevant to this story either, but I just didn't want you to be confused as to where we're going with this).

So anyway, Dawkins is an (outspoken) atheist. Which I didn't know for an absolute fact until I came home and Googled him, but was pretty clear from the passage my professor read, as Dawkins seemed to desperately grasp at how to find an explanation for the absolute complexity of the world (he read more than just the paragraph below; you can check it out for yourself, if you want-- the text is pretty easy to find online. This part is from chapter 2).

As the professor read, I wanted to laugh at Dawkin's confused grasping, all the while refusing to accept the one answer that makes it all make sense. But it was this passage that really got me excited:

"Sometimes when atoms meet they link up together in chemical reaction to form molecules, which may be more or less stable.    Such molecules can be very large.    A crystal such as a diamond can be regarded as a single molecule, a proverbially stable one in this case, but also a very simple one since its internal atomic structure is endlessly repeated.    In modern living organisms there are other large molecules which are highly complex, and their complexity shows itself on several levels.    The haemoglobin of our blood is a typical protein molecule.    It is built up from chains of smaller molecules, amino acids, each containing a few dozen atoms arranged in a precise pattern.    In the haemoglobin molecule there are 574 amino acid molecules.    These are arranged in four chains, which twist around each other to form a globular three-dimensional structure of bewildering complexity.    A model of a haemoglobin molecule looks rather like a dense thornbush.    But unlike a real thornbush it is not a haphhazard approximate pattern but a definite invariant structure, identically repeated, with not a twig nor a twist out of place, over six thousand million million million times in an average human body.    The precise thornbush shape of a protein molecule such as haemoglobin is stable in the sense that two chains consisting of the same sequences of amino acids will tend, like two springs, to come to rest in exactly the same three-dimensional coiled pattern.    Haemoglobin thornbushes are springing into their 'preferred' shape in your body at a rate of about four hundred million million per second, and others are being destroyed at the same rate."

(model of a hemoglobin molecule)

400 million million per second. If I understand that correctly, that's 400,000,000,000,000. Either way, I don't really "understand" it. It is incomprehensible to me. Yet it has happened dozens of times since I began just this short paragraph.

Um... whoa.

Anything I can say here just sounds overly simplistic and obvious. So I'll leave it that way:

God. He made it. All of it. All the crazy, complex... everything.

Mr. Dawkins, there is no other explanation that works with the brilliant science you describe. I'm sorry. I hate to be the one to break your bubble. But so it is.



P.S.: I just remembered about this video:

Acceptable ambition

In this society, there are certain life ambitions that are acceptable. Well, not just acceptable, but encouraged, demanded, required to be stated and bragged about, even: the ambition to complete college (or various advanced degrees thereafter); the ambition to enter a career field; the ambition to move up at work; the ambition to start a business, or buy a vacation home, or upgrade to a more reliable or fancier vehicle... the list goes on. If you lack ambition in any of these areas, if you aren't passionate about accomplishing them, or even just not passionate about talking about those goals, you are somehow seen as not participating fully in society-- you are somehow forfeiting your claim on your little share of the American Dream.

But other ambitions are less socially acceptable. For instance, while starting your own business or making partner at the firm are admirable ambitions, saying you want to get married or have a family are much less so. They are seen as misguided at best, desperate at worst.

But, screw it. I want these things.

So why is it less acceptable to say that?

These desires are no less Biblical. Maybe they are more ok to state in the church? But, still... from my observation, they have a similar stigma, just to less degree, perhaps. These desires are just less "cool" by society's standards-- a society in which we are all supposed to be independent, driven, and self-sufficient-- while women are simultaneously denigrated if unable to "get a man."

...That paradox is a whole 'nother can of worms. But it is not the particular one I am pondering today. The one I am pondering today is the one that says it is not only ok, but admirable, to pursue ambitions which may even be to the detriment of others (depending on your business practices, the economic and environmental impact of the homes or vehicles you seek, etc.). But that's another aspect of our society-- the "dog-eat-dog world" ethic, in which those practices are all ok. But seeking love? Not so much.

So maybe somebody needs to start by saying it's ok. If I have to be the first one in the entire world to outright state it (though I don't think, and I'm really hoping, I'm not the very first one), so be it: I want a husband, and a family. I would like to find someone to do life with, before I'm so old that I have to rush to have babies while it's still reasonably healthy to do so. And that has not a thing to do with any fact that I don't have a full life now-- I have school, and an enjoyable job, and really fantastic friends, and am involved in church, and actually really enjoy the freedom that being single allows me at this time. I like decorating my own home and letting the cat crawl up under my neck as I'm watching TV and eating tortilla chips in the evening (more on this general satisfaction with current man-less-ness, probably to come in another post in the near future. But my life being generally awesome does not mean that it is how I wish things to be forever. And that is ok, dammit. Regardless of what anyone else may think of that ambition.