we should be debating? This place is filled with debates regarding evolution. Yet, we never discuss how life first began.
Atheists/agnostics: In your view, how did the first organelles pull together to form the first unicellular creature? Is it scientifically sound to conclude this could happen without assistance? If it is, why haven't we ever documented any new life forms on earth (I'm not referring to new species; I'm talking about a completely new form of creature)?
Please, respectful, thoughtful answers only.
Peace.
2006-09-20 05:15:52 · 16 answers · asked by Suzanne: YPA 7 in Society & Culture ➔ Religion & Spirituality
Elliott -- I mean a new life form, unlike any other type of life ever observed on this planet. If life can be spontaneously created, we should be seeing this happen. Why isn't it?
2006-09-20 05:28:34 · update #1
Paul -- you almost answered the question, but didn't. So you admit you don't know for sure how life could have begun, given the HUGE complexity of even a unicellular organism? Hmmmmmm.......
2006-09-20 05:30:33 · update #2
Toronto: it's terribly closed minded to state "I believe in evolution" but discount any argument about how the first unicellular organism came into being. After all, you ARE trying to argue this unicellular organism evolved into a muti-cellular organism, which eventually evolved into human beings, ducks, worms, etc. Can you not defend your position?
2006-09-20 05:32:45 · update #3
Staci and others: I reiterate, this is NOT a question regarding evolution.
2006-09-20 05:33:43 · update #4
I believe that this (abiogenesis) could have happened in the natural way that scientists believe it must have.
[Later: Of COURSE I don't know for sure. This is science. We never know anything for sure. Certainty is the product of ignorance. If you really want to know how this happened, you should be asking biologists and biochemists, of course. ]
There aren't any good competing theories, anyway. Christians will tell you the standard creation story, but that's not by any stretch of the imagination an explanation (since there's no explanation of how an intelligent designer could have done that, or where that intelligent designer came from in the first place). It's just a story.
Remember that we've only been working on this question for a very short time - no more than maybe 150 years, tops. I don't expect us to have a good complete answer even when I die, but I don't see any reason to doubt that we'll have one someday. It's certainly wrong - and terribly arrogant - to claim to know right now that the question can have no natural answer.
The eventual answer is very likely to involve evolution, though currently biological evolution is the explanation for the variety of species in existence, not for the origin of life itself. Evolution is a fact, and in fact, if you think about it as a statistical phenomenon rather than strictly a biological one, you can see that it's indisputable. We did evolve from earlier species, and we do share common ancestors with other species still in existence. The "micro/macroevolution" thing is a red herring: they're the same process, so once you've admitted to microevolution, you've admitted to macroevolution as well, even if your misunderstanding of "species" leads you to deny it.
So evolution does produce this current variety of species from earlier collections with less/different varieties. Can it produce life from non-life? I doubt that many of us here know enough biology and biochemistry to have sufficiently well-informed opinions about that. But again, I haven't seen any alternative explanation, so it has to be the front-runner.
2006-09-20 05:19:15 · answer #1 · answered by Anonymous · 2⤊ 1⤋
Yes, it is reasonable. For example, drip naturally occuring fatty acids into water and churn it and you will get capsules. The first basic cellular membranes were like this. As small individual things were absorbed by others, some became indistinct and became generic organelles. Mitochondria, for example, still retain their original DNA -- and interestingly enough, it's passed *ONLY* from the mother. But not ALL mitochondria contain DNA. Only the absorbsion (sp) theory can address this. Basically, the majority of a cell's organelles started off as separate, simpler species of cells that were absorbed.
Case in point, during my AP biology course, I had an ameoba I was working with (yes, just one). I started feeding it freshly harvested plant cells. Why I don't recall, but the discovery I made was intriguing. Whereas you'd expect it to have just digested things and that been the end of it, a few chloroplasts survived and were incorporated into the ameoba. The thing never bothered hunting again -- it was making its own food!
As for why new life is not being created, that much is simple. Life is best created in an anaerobic environment, and most of the carbon available to life has already been biologically locked. In short, you don't have the free raw resources, and the right environment, to generate new life.
However, various stages of this process CAN be done in a laboratory environment, and have in fact been done. It would be highly unethical to do ALL the stages (ie: create new life) because this would in essence plant a new evolutionary tree, and no matter how good your quarantine is, creating new life is a risk to the current evolutionary tree, and no quarantine is perfect.
2006-09-20 05:26:46 · answer #2 · answered by Anonymous · 2⤊ 0⤋
I was not around when abiogenesis happened so I don't know. But my ignorance in the matter is not an argument for anything.
Theists have a long history of making arguments from ignorance, and time after time our expanding knowledge shows that they were wrong. I don't see why abiogenesis will be any different.
If you don't know what an argument from ignorance is here is one:
If the Easter Bunny doesn't exist how did the candy get here. Then when you tell the Easter Bunion that you don't know how the candy got here because you wasn't there when it happened. The Easter Bunion says your not knowing is proof the Easter Bunny Exists. That the odds of Candy forming from nothing are infinitesimal. And that it would take more faith to believe in candy forming from nothing than it would to believe in the Easter Bunny. Later when we grow out of childhood, we discover there was another explaination for how the candy got there that wasn't considered in the naive calculation of the odds of the candy origin.
The universe is incredibly vast and perhaps infinite. The odds do not need to be large for something to happen if you have an infinite reality for it to happen in. If so why would you expect it to happen twice on earth anyway. I suspect life is extremely rare in the universe. But I could of course easily be wrong.
Even if life did form a second time it wouldn't be able to compete against the highly evolved forms which had been around already. It would quickly get eaten.
2006-09-20 05:35:42 · answer #3 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 0⤋
Big jump evolution - the appearance of a completely new life form - has several requirements.
1. A way for the life form to appear - generally radioactivity can provide the necessary mutation. But as we know the most common mutation - cancer - is not benign, not a survival trait. So you have to have a mutated form that is stable.
2. A new life form needs an environmental niche. Right now the planet has all of its "easy" niches filled, by the lifeform best able to exploit that niche (which is what humans are doing too).
Global warming is a force that may create new environmental niches - but at such a rate that no lifeform can evolve incrementally to fill it. It would take the random event of major mutation to a totaly new life form at exactly the right time. But global warming describes change - it doesn't describe a new stable set of environments, it describes changes to environments.
It took billions of years of random mutations - trial & error, to find the right set of stable life-forms to efficiently exploit their stable environmental niche.
Right now, we don't have sufficient have high levels of radiation to cause the stable mutations and we don't have vacant stable environmental niches - therefore no new lifeforms.
BTW - one of the interesting ideas about HIV/AIDS is - a problem is that it mutates frequently, so that treatment has a reduced efficacy in a very short time. But an idea is to ACCELERATE the mutation, so that it can not stablise in a new form & becomes watered down to "background levels".
Also - there are one or two mutations we do know about - In the closed Amish communities there is a known occurrence of dwarfism and 6-fingers (see link).
There may also be genetic anomolies in Indian tribes such as the Hopi, leading to increased obestiy rates - that can not be fully explained by other causes such as diet & exercise habits.
2006-09-20 05:41:02 · answer #4 · answered by dryheatdave 6 · 1⤊ 0⤋
There are plenty of life forms that are different to all others. However, just because life could be spontaneously created at one point doesn't mean it still can. The atmospheric conditions on earth now are entirely different to what they were when life was first formed.
As for how the first single-celled organisms were formed, it is thought it was a long complicated process aided by a specific combination of different chemicals, light and heat.
2006-09-20 05:18:26 · answer #5 · answered by Anonymous · 2⤊ 0⤋
You're talking about Abiogenisis, a field of physical chemestry. There are a number of hypotheses floating around about the exact mechanism. Simply put, somewhere along the line a molocule developed that was able to self-replicate when other chemecals around it interacted with it. It probably was nowhere near as elaborate as modern DNA, but it worked. The whole thing is well outside of my own field of knowledge...it's still in the process of being developed and researched.
What do you mean "new form of creature"? The condintions that were perfect for the development of self-replicating molocules no longer exist. That period ended when the Earth cooled and the atmosphere settled.
2006-09-20 05:29:33 · answer #6 · answered by Scott M 7 · 1⤊ 0⤋
The very first organisms were probably similar to moderen extremophiles, arising in volcanic vents and polar ice sheets. It is likely that there were many completely different forms of life at this stage and only a few (the ancestors of modern organisms) survived. The reason we have never observed new life-forms appearing is:
(a)the presence of existing life-forms in many environments prevents the correct conditions from arising.
(b)the only places where the correct conditions could exist are well out of our reach, underground.
2006-09-20 05:37:46 · answer #7 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 0⤋
Life arises from conflict: The surface of this planet is the meeting point of water, earth, air and heat. Those elements fight, intermingle, and fight some more. Because of that the surface of this planet is where you'll find the widest variety of chemical formations. From that we've got the most exotic minerals, gases and even life. How this came to be, or why, is truly unknowable. Better to just appreciate it and get on with it.
2006-09-20 05:24:21 · answer #8 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 1⤋
Should I care? What good would it do me to know this? I'm an Atheist and believe in the fact of evolution. Knowing this wouldn't change the minds of any Christians, they're far too close-minded.
It's funny how you decided to leave out any question concerning how that stupid alleged invisible man with super powers was created.
I'd really like to know the answer to that. Oh, wait. There isn't an answer, he doesn't exist.
2006-09-20 05:20:01 · answer #9 · answered by Toronto 3 · 2⤊ 3⤋
actual. even although the homestead grew to become into way smaller and older than this one, a minimum of the community grew to become into exciting!! I moved right here while i grew to become into 6 or 7. yet I nevertheless visit my old community very often :p
2016-10-15 05:22:12 · answer #10 · answered by ? 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋