A few thoughts… On monogenesis and Albert Schweitzer

By Sandy Compton
Reader Columnist

Digging in the dictionary recently led to monogenesis, a theory that all living things evolved from a single cell — some combination of proteins and acids and God-knows-what-else that somehow duplicated itself. Maybe this tiny accretion floated in primal seas for eons waiting for a magic ingredient; maybe it coalesced when a lightning bolt struck, but suddenly there were two of whatever it was. If this wasn’t miraculous enough, the duplicate duplicated and so began the miracle of us. And bears. And lobsters. Slime mold. Oaks. Dolphins. Tyrannosaurs. Centipedes. Knapweed. Dodos. Toucans. Black mambas. West slope cutthroat trout. All flora and fauna, great and small. 

The only clue about how long ago that first cell divided is that it was likely in Precambrian time, which ended about 570 million years ago and represents 90% of geologic time — the period since Earth formed about 4.6 billion years ago. Somewhere in there, life came to be. 

There’s a relatively new thought that life happened much sooner than previously thought. Maybe that cell divided within the first billion years after Earth fell in with the sun — long before anything grew shells hard enough to show up as fossils. 

A stray thought dragged me into my imagination when I stumbled across the concept of monogenesis: What if God said “Oops!” when the first bit of life amalgamated in the muck of the post-big-bang universe. 

“How did that happen?” God said. “I was just playing in the mud.” 

“Oh, well, hell,” God might have thought. “At the rate this bloody thing is reproducing, who knows what will become of it. Where’s the species swatter?” 

God couldn’t immediately find the species swatter, and spent much of Precambrian time rummaging for it. By the time it was found, there were already so many variations, it was impossible to decide which to swat first, and too many to swat, anyway. 

“Holy cow,” God might have said, “I guess we’ll just have to see what happens.”

And a couple of billion years later, here we are. 

Farfetched thoughts, for sure, but not much more far-fetched than any creation story. 

If monogenesis is true — it will likely never be proved otherwise — it reinforces the notion that we’re all connected. Other creatures have “memory” of what certain stimuli mean — pain or pleasure — so either avoid or approach depending on that. Humans may be — may be — the only derivation of that single cell blessed and cursed with sequential memory and foresight. We can remember why we remember and so make plans, worry and obsess about what’s remembered. 

That “intelligence” has caused us to mentally separate ourselves from other living things, but we are still part of them and they are part of us. Every time the species swatter falls, we lose part of ourselves.  

The spectrum of species is never going to live in complete harmony. The gentle humanitarian Albert Schweitzer wrote, “In nature, one form of life must always prey on another. However, human consciousness holds an awareness of, and a sympathy for, the will of other beings to live. An ethical human strives to escape from this contradiction so far as possible.” 

I’m never going to get up close and personal with a black mamba; but, it’s true that almost no living thing can survive without preying on something, sentient or not. Even ideals like vegetarianism and veganism are tied up in eating other species that have been alive. And there’s no way to really determine if a carrot or an apple still fit to eat is dead or alive. Or a tree on its way to the sawmill.

Don’t think about that too much. 

Schweitzer was a “radical Christian.” He became a doctor because Jesus told us to heal the sick. Schweitzer questioned dogma and the views of the institutional church. He lived for 90 years, much of the last 60 in Africa working in the hospital and leprosarium he built with donations and money made playing music, among other things. 

He was, above all, a creative thinker, and I wonder in what way would he consider monogenesis. He wouldn’t deny it out of hand, as some modern “radical Christians” might. He would at least ponder the idea, and probably find it fascinating. Me too. 

Maybe our creation story really begins, “In the beginning, something accidentally created a single living cell …”