Can living things be produced from non living matter by biological processes?

Question

If so , how? (simply!)

Answer 1

As other posters have remarked, life is formed from non-living matter all the time. However, I think you are asking how the first life formed. But it's important to understand that the first life wasn't formed by "biological processes" - because there was no biology at that point. The processes were purely chemical.

The answer to how life formed, though, is: we don't really know, yet. However we do have some good ideas.

One of the above posters referred to an experiment - it's actually known as the Miller-Urey experiment. Miller discovered that he could generate small amounts of amino acids - which are the basic building blocks of life - by passing an electric current through a mix of gases which represented the composition of the atmosphere billions of years ago.

Now, there's a big gap between these amino acids and the first cell, which is where creationists will try to mislead you by saying that a cell is too complex to have formed on its own. But, of course, no-one is saying cell did form straight away. There's probably a gap of millions of years between the amino acids and the first cell .This is where the most active research is going on - scientists now think that before DNA formed, life depended on a simpler structure called RNA, so they refer to this period as the RNA world. It's a very interesting area of research.

The other way creationists try to mislead you is by dishonestly claiming that scientists believe in "spontaneous generation", which was disproved hundreds of years ago. In fact, one has nothing to do with the other - spontaneous generation was the idea that fully-grown creatures like mice spontaneously formed from piles of grain. Of course this idea isn't accepted by anyone today, and is a long way from the detailed ideas about the formation of amino acids and cells that scientists are really working on.

Answer 2

Yes, that is what happens all the time. You have said the mechanism is 'by biological processes.' All living plants and organisms require non-living matter to survive and reproduce - minerals, water, oxygen, salts and the food that provides energy.
If however you meant by laboratory chemical processes then this has not yet been achieved. Some experiments have put electric discharges through primitive atmospheres containing nitrogen, methane, water vapour and the like and amino acids have been formed. This is thought to mimic how life began but the rest is still a mystery.

Answer 3

Totally depends on your understanding of Living. If we agree that an atom is alive, then all things are made from living things. Non things, dark space,dark matter, are on a different plane of living.
Once you introduce the biological you are no longer dealing with non living. When an atom, a living element, is extiguished it transforms into another element. just as alive as the original, but hardly recognizable by human science standards and its imposed limits.
Simply?
A dead dog makes a plant grow.

Answer 4

Yes - everything in the universe has been created from non-living matter. How, I have no idea.

Did you know that if I were to pick you apart, atom by atom, I would be left with a pile of atomic dust that is not alive and - strangely - never has been.

Atoms are not alive. So all of us are already made of non-living matter.

Very, very odd - and no one can explain where the spark of life comes from.

Answer 5

residing situation from a non residing situation. The pencil has carbon in it , so can we. however the pencil is a non-residing situation on an analogous time as we at the instant are not. All residing issues are made up of atoms and so are non-residing issues too! existence takes delivery interior the association of atoms. a particular association of atoms can bring about the formation of organelles that ultimately make a cellular. for this reason i might say the association of atoms is the substantial which imparts residing characteristics to us and to no longer a pencil

Answer 6

a guy with the last name of miller did some research about this... he didn't produce living things per se, but created amino acids from non living matter. do a google search and check it out.

Answer 7

Yeah, with the right mix of chemicals and a spark of electricity you can achieve anything. Be careful though, stand well back as you turn the power on.

Answer 8

The answer is NO. This is a common belief of evolutionists that lifeless matter, on its own accord, formed living things by a series of acts of blind chance.

In the 1600s, a Belgian scientist by the name of Jan Van Helmont decided to test the theory of spontaneous generation. He sprinkled wheat on a dirty shirt and waited for creatures to form on it. Three weeks later, Van Helmont saw several mice feeding on the grains. From his observations, he concluded that the combination of a dirty shirt and wheat gives birth to mice.

A German scientist, Athanasius Kircher, came to the same conclusion by another route. He poured honey over a number of dead flies and shortly afterward, observed other flies swarming over the dead ones. Whereupon Kircher believed that he had proven that dead flies and honey produce living flies!

But experiments by the Italian scientist Francesco Redi and, after him, the French scientist Louis Pasteur showed that mice did not arise from dirty shirts, and that flies are not generated from a mixture of honey and fly corpses. These living creatures did not arise from lifeless matter, but arrived from somewhere else.

For years, evolutionists have worked in their most advanced laboratories, trying to prove these unreasonable ideas by producing even a single cell from assemblages of lifeless material. They have conducted countless experiments using the best technology and under the supervision of experienced scientists, but have never been successful.

Answer 9

Certainly they can and are created all the time. A packet of raddish seeds would not be concidered alive. But ad life bringing water and presto! we have a newborn life.

Answer 10

that is believed to be how life started. under hot temperatures and pressure proteins were arranged to make amino acids. this experiment was done successfully several decades ago with electricty as well.