Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Home
Latter-day Saint
Fantasia on a Theme from Cellular Biology

Fantasia on a Theme from Cellular Biology

Last updated on: December 1, 2021 at 9:29 pm by Dan Peterson

Fantasia on a Theme from Cellular Biology 2021-12-01T21:29:56-07:00 Dan Peterson

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

The structure of a cell, simplified (Wikimedia Commons public domain image)

***

When I get too sleepy to read while I’m inflight on international trips, which I usually start sleepy because of packing but also because of long lists of last-minute things to do, I watch movies. It’s a good opportunity to catch up on movies that I haven’t seen and to review movies that I haven’t seen in a long time. I watched several films on my long recent flights from Salt Lake City to Minneapolis/St. Paul to Paris to Cairo and from Cairo to Paris to Atlanta back to Salt Lake City. Including at least two or three that were billed “classics.” Several of them were either quite good or quite interesting or both.

One of them was Walt Disney’s 1940 film Fantasia — a true classic that, during a theatrical reissue when I was a teenager, played a major role (along with my magnificent high school German teacher, Lenore Smith) in creating my love for classical music.

Watching Fantasia this time through, a line jumped out at me from Deems Taylor’s introduction to Igor Stravinski’s The Rite of Spring:

According to science, the first living things here were single-celled organisms, tiny little white or green blobs of nothing in particular that lived under the water.

“Little . . . blobs of nothing in particular”? Really?

Maybe that really was the view of science in 1940. Years ago, my late friend Frank Salisbury, who taught plant physiology for several decades at Colorado State University and then at Utah State University, told me that, when he was a doctoral student at the California Institute of Technology, they knew very little about plant cells. Such cells, he said, were regarded as pretty much just gobs of goo.

Well, things seem to have changed a bit since then. I quote here Michael Denton (M.D., Bristol University; Ph.D., King’s College London), but I don’t believe that what he has to say on this point is especially controversial now:

Molecular biology has shown that even the simplest of all living systems on earth today, bacterial cells, are exceedingly complex objects. Although the tiniest bacterial cells are incredibly small, weighing less than 10-12 gms, each is in effect a veritable micro-miniaturized factory containing thousands of exquisitely designed pieces of intricate molecular machinery, made up altogether of one hundred thousand million atoms, far more complicated than any machine built by man and absolutely without parallel in the non-living world.

Denton speaks of a

recently revealed world of molecular machinery, of coding systems, of informational molecules, of catalytic devices and feedback control.

See Michael Denton, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis (Bethesda, MD: Adler and Adler, 1985), 250, 271.

“Little . . . blobs of nothing in particular,” indeed.

Previous Post

December 1, 2021

Egyptological

Next Post

December 2, 2021 Coming right up to the edge of politics

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Uncategorized

Select a Month October 2026 September 2026 August 2026 July 2026 June 2026 May 2026 April 2026 March 2026 February 2026 January 2026 December 2025 November 2025 October 2025 September 2025 August 2025 July 2025 June 2025 May 2025 April 2025 March 2025 February 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 October 2024 September 2024 August 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 January 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 March 2014 August 2013 February 2012

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

Which Christian denomination follows the teachings of John Wesley?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Catholic Baptist Methodist Lutheran