Evolution without Creation

@xris,

xris wrote:

So if there was two there must have been numerous, it then means thousands upon millions happening all the time.What is this mysterious formula for life ? I know it needs constant nourishment once it succeeds in being alive and it also needs an adequate means of replication.This formula is very complex and instantly successful or it will not succeed..How does it do it once without engineering , can you imagine the chances of success it needed ? The very exact amount of amino acids in the correct environment with that amazing ability to recreate multiply and self nourish.. Sorry but its beyond my comprehension..

Eh? If two biogeneses could occur, then thousands of millions must occur all the time..? How on Earth did you get to that point? It's a question of resources and statistical probability.

1 Reply

@Bones-O,

Bones-O! wrote:

Eh? If two biogeneses could occur, then thousands of millions must occur all the time..? How on Earth did you get to that point? It's a question of resources and statistical probability.

Its down to the laws of probability and how long the world has been capable of recreating the same environment that first created life.If you dont believe it happened more than once it smacks of engineering and if it happened more than once then it must have occurred millions of times.Try describing the environment that could possibly create life and for it then to be so unusual and not to be repeated millions of times,it defies logic.

1 Reply

@xris,

xris wrote:

Its down to the laws of probability and how long the world has been capable of recreating the same environment that first created life.If you dont believe it happened more than once it smacks of engineering and if it happened more than once then it must have occurred millions of times.Try describing the environment that could possibly create life and for it then to be so unusual and not to be repeated millions of times,it defies logic.

Not really. That's like saying if two comets might have struck the Earth then millions must strike it a second.

1 Reply

@Bones-O,

Bones-O! wrote:

Not really. That's like saying if two comets might have struck the Earth then millions must strike it a second.

Now you being purposely silly..So how many times do you think it was possible for life to be created? and just give me a supposed scenario where it could possibly have occurred?.

1 Reply

@Holiday20310401,

Holiday20310401 wrote:

Is it true that all life pretty well shares the same DNA? I think this piece of evidence kinda diminishes creationism coupled with the ability to re-create 19 of the 20 amino acids there are.

Sort of... there are utterly profound differences between the DNA of bacteria and the DNA of plants, animals, even protozoa, and the differences are in many domains (regulation, structure, replication, transcription, introns, etc). On the other hand, there is no question that we have originally evolved from bacteria (more properly prokaryotes), because we share numerous common genes that retain sequence homology. Fundamental genes involved in things like metabolism and RNA translation.

Don't go down the amino acid road -- there are differences with that, too.

Viruses, however, have all kinds of different genomes. Some have double stranded DNA genomes, some have single stranded antisense genomes, some have single stranded sense genomes, some have single stranded RNA genomes, and some have double stranded RNA genomes. That's right, RNA genomes. There isn't a single living cell on planet earth that has ever been described that has an RNA genome. RNA has multiple roles in living cells, but being the genome is not one of them.

This supports the contention that viruses have probably evolved multiple times, and since they are wholly dependent upon parasitizing a host cell, they almost certainly evolved after cells did.

0 Replies

@xris,

xris wrote:

Now you being purposely silly..So how many times do you think it was possible for life to be created? and just give me a supposed scenario where it could possibly have occurred?.

Then I'd say you were being accidentally silly. Smile

Off the top of my head, I'd suggest that self-contained environment, small environment (to increase probability), temperature and temperature changes, abundance of required materials... I don't think all these factors would be available 'thousands of millions of times'.

2 Replies

@Bones-O,

Bones-O! wrote:

I don't think all these factors would be available 'thousands of millions of times'.

But they could be available once for thousands of millions of years. If you have a raging lightning storm that goes on for a month, then lighting probably will strike twice in the same place.

0 Replies

@Bones-O,

Bones-O! wrote:

Then I'd say you were being accidentally silly. Off the top of my head, I'd suggest that self-contained environment, small environment (to increase probability), temperature and temperature changes, abundance of required materials... I don't think all these factors would be available 'thousands of millions of times'.

Well i think it is highly unlikely that given a certain formula for life to exist when certain elements are provided it would only occur on very rare occassions, given the life span of this planet.Give me a scenario however unusual and it will happen millions of times in billions of years.Is this formula so precise? If nature finds it exacting then we have no chance of replicating it.

0 Replies

@Patty phil,

You should look at what people have generated in tiny microscale models of the primordial soup in just decades. Not life, but a diversity of novel organic molecules.

1 Reply

@Aedes,

Aedes wrote:

You should look at what people have generated in tiny microscale models of the primordial soup in just decades. Not life, but a diversity of novel organic molecules.

It still begs the question how difficult is this formula ? why is it not seen more often and how often did it occur? Either way it gives food for thought.If we consider even with all the complex experiments by man and nature it does not occur, then this complex formula could be considered engineered.

2 Replies

@xris,

xris;51572 wrote:

It still begs the question how difficult is this formula ? why is it not seen more often and how often did it occur?

The energetic conditions on this planet aren't anywhere near what they were 3 billion years ago, when there was much more solar energy and the earth's temperature was much hotter. This is thought to have been critical for catalyzing the chemical reactions that eventually produced the basic macromolecules needed for life. And this is what the experimental conditions seek to reproduce -- they take a hot soup mixed with simple inorganic things like phosphate, carbon dioxide, nitrate, salts, water, and put it in a hot environment -- and low and behold organic molecules begin to show up after some time.

So is that really difficult? It requires a lot of heat, a lot of water, a lot of substrate, and a lot of time. Over hundreds of millions of years with conditions like this, it may have happened innumerable times -- no one knows. All we know is that only once to our knowledge did it produce life successful enough to take over the planet and outcompete all potential others.

1 Reply

@Aedes,

I still find it bit bewildering, i cant help but think this formula is something really special and for it only to be relevant in a planets early life and not once it has become more favourable for the life that has developed is awesome . A bit like a seed can start germinating at a particular time of the year and not afterwards so the established plant does not have to vi with new growth.Either nature is super nature or this plan is pointing to another conclusion, as an agnostic i can see that wonderful footprint again.

1 Reply

@xris,

xris wrote:

I still find it bit bewildering, i cant help but think this formula is something really special and for it only to be relevant in a planets early life and not once it has become more favourable for the life that has developed is awesome . A bit like a seed can start germinating at a particular time of the year and not afterwards so the established plant does not have to vi with new growth.Either nature is super nature or this plan is pointing to another conclusion, as an agnostic i can see that wonderful footprint again.

Yea it is, it is awesome. And who knows, there's always the possibility that life's genesis has happened more than once; but along the same patterns as it first did, making it indistinguishable from previous forms.

As a side note, I think our minds have a hard time grasping the sheer magnitude of both Time and Complexity.

3.5 to 4 Billion years for a planet's life is extremely hard to conceptualize (thus we hear the "How'd this all Just happen?"-argument. We can't quite grasp the passage of that much time with our minds; one tries to visualize the changes in the biological world and somehow it just doesn't jive with the way we think

For complexity, the volume and dynamics of all the elements present on this planet (initial planetoid fragments, collision residue, asteroid additions, interstellar dust as well as all the resultant elements these can combine into) is extremely difficult to account for. Add to this soup of variables, the divergent conditions on the planet as a whole and how each region changed - at different points - as a result of climate, orbital and catastrophic events and you have an equation we're not likely to solve.

So yea, I'm with you all the way. It's something to wonder at and appreciate. As each tibit of evidence - each new piece of the puzzle - comes to light it's yet another awesome piece of that hard-to-conceive equation.

good stuff, thanks

1 Reply

@xris,

YO!

Is it not obvious that conditions proceed existence of any kind, thus we are assured that the conditons necessary did indeed occur, just as the conditions for the end of our existence seem to be forming upon the horizion. Of those conditions two numerous to get into right now, two would be global warming and population growth and the correlation between those two--that's a condition. A condition which threatens the preexisting state of nature. Did this state of population explosion and global warming happen just once, no its been a long road towards critical mass and extinction--an ever developing condition, a condition which seems destined to become the new conditon of nature, a nature that does not include humanity.

1 Reply

@boagie,

boagie wrote:

YO!

Is it not obvious that conditions proceed existence of any kind, thus we are assured that the conditons necessary did indeed occur, just as the conditions for the end of our existence seem to be forming upon the horizion. Of those conditions two numerous to get into right now, two would be global warming and population growth and the correlation between those two--that's a condition. A condition which threatens the preexisting state of nature. Did this state of population explosion and global warming happen just once, no its been a long road towards critical mass and extinction--an ever developing condition, a condition which seem destined to become the new conditon of nature.

We overestimate our importance in the scheme of things, we are but blink in the cycle of life and death. If we survive it will be by luck rather than judgement.Super nature will survive us,we are nothing but a summer cold.

1 Reply

@Khethil,

Khethil wrote:

Yea it is, it is awesome. And who knows, there's always the possibility that life's genesis has happened more than once; but along the same patterns as it first did, making it indistinguishable from previous forms.

As a side note, I think our minds have a hard time grasping the sheer magnitude of both Time and Complexity.

3.5 to 4 Billion years for a planet's life is extremely hard to conceptualize (thus we hear the "How'd this all Just happen?"-argument. We can't quite grasp the passage of that much time with our minds; one tries to visualize the changes in the biological world and somehow it just doesn't jive with the way we think

For complexity, the volume and dynamics of all the elements present on this planet (initial planetoid fragments, collision residue, asteroid additions, interstellar dust as well as all the resultant elements these can combine into) is extremely difficult to account for. Add to this soup of variables, the divergent conditions on the planet as a whole and how each region changed - at different points - as a result of climate, orbital and catastrophic events and you have an equation we're not likely to solve.

So yea, I'm with you all the way. It's something to wonder at and appreciate. As each tibit of evidence - each new piece of the puzzle - comes to light it's yet another awesome piece of that hard-to-conceive equation.

good stuff, thanks

Can you get a glimpse of why i am agnostic when we have these wonderful puzzles.

0 Replies

@xris,

xris wrote:

We overestimate our importance in the scheme of things, we are but blink in the cycle of life and death. If we survive it will be by luck rather than judgement.Super nature will survive us,we are nothing but a summer cold.

Xris,

Quite right, however our own existence should be of concern to us in the scheme of things, for we ourselves are aborting our own existence with our lack of self-control and lack of respect for the foundation of our very existence, nature is indifferent and will remain so--not a tear will she shed, the Xwife syndrome.

0 Replies

@Patty phil,

Xris, it is all a wondrous, sublime, fascinating thing.

But as Khetil says, the amount of time, energy, and mass of substrate is impossible for us to conceptualize.

If you're familiar with organic chemistry, this will be routine stuff, but just think about how easy it is to get organic molecules from elemental materials. Organic molecules are defined by carbon and hydrogen, but commonly include phosphorus, oxygen, nitrogen, and sulfur.

The early earth had H2O, water, at some point, which was the major source of both hydrogen and oxygen (an electrons to donate to covalent bonds). CO2 (carbon dioxide), PO4 (phosphate), SO4 (sulfate), NH4 (ammonia), NO2 (nitrate), H2 (elemental hydrogen), O2 (elemental oxygen), etc, were all probably abundant since the formation of the planet.

It would not take much energy to catalyze the production of very simple organic molecules like CH4 (methane), H3COH (methanol), H2C=O (formaldehyde), H3C-CH3 (ethane), etc.

What do you get if you put together a string of methanes, CH3-CH2-CH2-CH2OH, for instance -- that's a fatty acid.

The longer your chain of fatty acids, the more hydrophobic it gets. These form micelles, or globules of fat. A phospholipid is three fatty acid chains attached to a glycerol backbone (a simple 3-carbon sugar), and phospholipids form bilayers -- a hydrophobic layer that is hydrophillic on both the outside and inside, so it can contain water inside. That is the basic structure of a cell.

The simplest amino acid, alanine, is 3HN-CH2-COOH. It's a simple two carbon molecule. There are hundreds of naturally occurring amino acids, it just happens that 20 of them can be genetically encoded.

Nucleic acids are not much more complicated.

These things are not hard to imagine arising even in routine experimental conditions. The development of things like a self-replicating genome, catalytic proteins (enzymes), regulatory mechanisms, etc, is something much more complicated, but hey, there was a lot of time and the building blocks were already there.

1 Reply

@Aedes,

Thanks for the information..I have read certain articles in the new scientist and try to understand the complexities of trying to recreate life as we dont know it.I understand that even though we may be able to construct basic chemical reactions forming what appears as biological molecules, it is a long way of from forming what we might consider as living.The ability to be self sufficient and reproductive are the leaps of understanding we have not even began to understand.Its not the process, its how nature has secured this chain of events without an engineer that i find bewildering.We must have had an occasion that started this process and then circumstances changed so this process ceased to be a possibility. A time table of events laid down, i dont know when and could have been written before the BB..A formula for life eternal always available when the circumstances occur..incredible absolutely incredible..

0 Replies

@Patty phil,

The line between living and not living might have been blurry. There could be self replicating genomes catalyzed by much simpler mechanisms than what we now have. The real question is not so much when we would consider it true life. Rather, the question is when did it become chemically stable enough that it became amplified and preserved by a selective advantage?

1 Reply

Evolution without Creation

Related Topics

Quick Links

My Account

able2know