Evolution? How?

Now for a serious question...how exactly is it proposed that the very first organisms came about? Like the first single-celled creatures?

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thunder_runner32 wrote:

Now for a serious question...how exactly is it proposed that the very first organisms came about? Like the first single-celled creatures?

As soon as some molecule formed, just by chance, that was self-replicating, natural selection took over and improvement began leading to molecules of greater complexity, and finally unicellular organisms.

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Thunder, I don't know.

Nobody knows what the first cellular organisms were like.

"The earliest self-replicator was likely very much simpler than anything alive today; self-replicating molecules need not be all that complex (Lee et al. 1996), and protein-building systems can also be simple (Ball 2001; Tamura and Schimmel 2001)."

No-one denies it's a tricky problem, but not impossible. Maybe Titan will help.

"Biochemistry is not chance. It inevitably produces complex products. Amino acids and other complex molecules are even known to form in space"

There are a whole bunch of theories though, and a whole bunch of ways it could have happened. The point is: not impossible.

Farmerman will be far better informed than I.

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How did the molecule form? I always thought that 'dead matter' could not create 'living matter'...

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thunder_runner32 wrote:

Now for a serious question...how exactly is it proposed that the very first organisms came about? Like the first single-celled creatures?

A proposal requires an engagement ring.
But a single organic molecule, on the other hand,
is a lonely sort of spontaneous, self-replicating, random thing.

A lighting bolt, or cosmic ray, or reactive reduction,
and the tentative cycle of reproduction
begins a virus then bacteria, then organic cell
feeding a million times on the muddy hydrocarbon swamp
until whence an organelle.

The instigation of Life must have occurred a thousand times
until one arrogant molecular sack decided that Ribonucleic
acids, a string of proteins and half-dozen enzymes
were enough to keep the game afoot.

A ploy. A scheme. And selfish chemical memes.
Have you noticed that most organic compounds are right-handed,
R-proteins instead of L-proteins?

Dear old dad was a one-sided molecule,
miraculously shazam'd into his own reactive state
but never considered flipping over.

We are a one-sided biology inhabiting the Earth
and the origin was just the mutation of dirt
that happened to capture . . . Light.

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dead matter such as sugar is converted into living matter such as me, all the time....sometimes more than I'd like !!

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thunder_runner32 wrote:

How did the molecule form? I always thought that 'dead matter' could not create 'living matter'...

With oceans of chemicals churning around for hundreds of millions of years, a molecule that could replicate itself finally formed in all of the chance combinations that occurred. I don't know that I'd call it living. As natural selection took over, and complexity increased in order to provide greater survival ability, at some point the word "life" became appropriate to use.

It's irrelevant, but the blanket injunction that dead matter cannot create living matter is certainly false. It doesn't happen by itself, but if you had the technical capability, which we don't, to perfectly duplicate a frog or whatever, you would get a living frog. Let's not get into that, though, since it is an irrelevant tangent, which is the last thing this conversation needs.

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I found this Thunder: it's just an outline of one possible theory:

Emerging hypercycles: This proposes a gradual origin of the first life, roughly in the following stages: (1) a primordial soup of simple organic compounds. This seems to be almost inevitable; (2) nucleoproteins, somewhat like modern tRNA (de Duve 1995a) or peptide nucleic acid (Nelson et al. 2000), and semicatalytic; (3) hypercycles, or pockets of primitive biochemical pathways that include some approximate self-replication; (4) cellular hypercycles, in which more complex hypercycles are enclosed in a primitive membrane; (5) first simple cell. Complexity theory suggests that the self-organization is not improbable. This view of abiogenesis is the current front-runner.

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Does this happen today? Just random combinations creating new life forms?

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thunder_runner32 wrote:

Does this happen today? Just random combinations creating new life forms?

I didn't say that a random combination created a new life form. I said that a molecule that could replicate itself finally formed by chance, and that natural selection then took over. As complexity increased, at some point it became appropriate to say, "this is life."

It probably took hundreds of millions of years of chance formation of molecules the first time, so it's not that frequent, but, yes, it happens today too. The thing is, though, that when it happens today, it's not much competition for the life that's already here.

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Apparently, not on earth, because all the complex chains of chemicals are quickly snapped up for use by all the biology.

But there is hope of seeing complex chemistry similar to early Earth on Titan.

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Sorry Brandon, I meant that as a response to Thunder, we both seem to be replying at the same time.

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Eorl wrote:

Sorry Rosbourne, I meant that as a response to Thunder, we both seem to be replying at the same time.

Rosborne?

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"Does this happen today? Just random combinations creating new life forms?"

It does happen today. But the simple molecules that are randomly created
have very little chance competing against the more advanced molecules that surround them.

The R-proteins have established a significant stronghold and advantage
against any other new mutations.

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LOL note edit above

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I think Eorl, CodeBorg, and I are pretty much saying the same thing.

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Thunder, I'll leave you in these guys capable hands.

If I could add anything helpful it would be: that it is possible to have a strong faith in God while accepting and understanding evolution.

There are plenty of people who manage both...such as the previous pope, for example.

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Eorl wrote:

If I could add anything helpful it would be: that it is possible to have a strong faith in God while accepting and understanding evolution.

No, you can't. Theistic evolution is a myth. It is simply atheistic evolution + God. The religion that is evolution cannot be combined with the religion that is Christianity.

There was no death before Adam. There was no death until man fell and sin entered the world. Beforehand, there was no death: All animals were vegetarians and Adam and Eve ate from the trees that gave fruit. Adam was also intelligent. He could think, write, and speak. There is no way that he could have lived as a primitive organism of some kind.

The world was created in seven days. Period. Seven 24 hour (give-or-take) days. If one interprets "day" as "1000s of years," then there would be many inconsistancies. The word "day" is used many more times in Genesis, each clearly being used in a literal sense. Furthermore, Adam was created on the 6th day, lived through the 7th day, and lived to be 930 years old. If "day" means "1000s of years," Adam would have been a lot older than 930!

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The amino acids have 2 stereoisomer configurations. Living molecules MOSTLY (but not exclusively) are D (dextro rotatory).
However there are , of the 20 or so active amino acids, a few that show up as L(levo rotatory).
We tried using the habit that, after death, proteins change their stereoisomer state through thermal processing.Lots of work went on to develop an amino acid clock which used this LtoD rate change (called racemization) to age date Quaternary fossils.
It worked somewhat but , because these L/D ratios werent fully dependable, it lacked a good rate constant.

So, it is possible that an L life amino acid base could develop, theres really nothing against it. It, like a silica life form, has , Im sure, been the subject of science fiction

eorl--The RC church has been actively supporting evolutionary reserch since the 1950s and has broken away from the "special evolution" clause since Pope John 23.

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00 Agent Kid wrote:

Eorl wrote:
If I could add anything helpful it would be: that it is possible to have a strong faith in God while accepting and understanding evolution.

No, you can't. Theistic evolution is a myth. It is simply atheistic evolution + God. The religion that is evolution cannot be combined with the religion that is Christianity.

There was no death before Adam. There was no death until man fell and sin entered the world. Beforehand, there was no death: All animals were vegetarians and Adam and Eve ate from the trees that gave fruit. Adam was also intelligent. He could think, write, and speak. There is no way that he could have lived as a primitive organism of some kind.

The world was created in seven days. Period. Seven 24 hour (give-or-take) days. If one interprets "day" as "1000s of years," then there would be many inconsistancies. The word "day" is used many more times in Genesis, each clearly being used in a literal sense. Furthermore, Adam was created on the 6th day, lived through the 7th day, and lived to be 930 years old. If "day" means "1000s of years," Adam would have been a lot older than 930!

Speaking of myths, do you have any evidence for any of this being true?

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Evolution? How?

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