Evolution Question. This question is not meant for Christians.?

Question

Now, I know that this topic has been done to death and I'd hate for an evolutionist to not take this seriously. But I feel there have been some questions not properly answered. If the cell is the basic unit that all evolution hinges on, why has it so far been impossible to assemble a cell even with all available parts, eg. Mitochondrion, cell membrane? It seems that if life were so predisposed to form under adverse conditions, why can it not be more easily formed under ideal conditions? Even though life is theorized to exist on many different planets. Also Darwins Black Box brings up an interesting point about a bike-motorcycle relationship.You could adjust bolt sizes and height of the seat, but not create a fuel tank or engine parts. If you read the book, you know what I am referring to, I just have read no good arguments about that certain part. I know they are mechanical not biological but it parallels genetic modification due to natural selection.SorryICouldn'tExplainBetterNoRoom

OK sir who answered first.You are why evolutionists are seen as arrogant. You nitpick one part of what I say and then irgnore a valid question. I have read the book I ran out of room to properly explain. I was referring to page 43, 44. So you can refer to your copy of the book on your nightstand. I can't type 2 pages of what he said. He can say it much better than I. but he referred to the darwinian process affecting bike sales and if improvements were made, more bikes would be sold. And his question was if you continued making subsequent improvements, would you end up with a motorcyle? He said no, that you might even end up with a chopper looking bike, but it would lack certain crucial parts. I'm sure you'll find another typo that allows you to ingore the question, but I hope this clarifies things a little bit. Pardon my irritation, but the first response was unnecessarily rude.

oh and it sounds like a simple I don't know would have sufficed for the first question.

2nd answer-er person. You described what I was referring to. The cell is more than the sum of it's parts. That's how all life is. I think this is the weakest part of evolutionISM, not evolution the process. I have only heard a bunch of "I don't knows" from people I have asked before. But apparently this is good enough to teach in schools as fact. (I'm not for creationism in schools either though) I just wish both sides would acknowledge the speculation involved in origin theory.

ok..but the third response kinda blends two seperate questions. Plus even if there were a way to engineer a cell to operate on it's own. It would have taken at least 50 years of research(according to first man) to figure out how to design a functioning cell. Taking the chance all out of it. The best theory I have heard is aminoy-acid water dripping on hot clay or space, which really only postpones the same question of how?

Very true 4th guy. I fully acknowledge machines are not the same as biological parts. In the book(in the morning some person is going to tear me a new one for even mentioning Behe) he never denied the ability that organisms have to change what they have. But you have to start somewhere. In reference of your mention of the alimentary tube, the bicycle does not have a very tiny fuel tank, it has Nothing to start with. I am fully aware that this is an analogy with limits. But what I am saying applies to biological systems as well. You can't have no part at all and then say it becomes more complex with subsequent modification. With much respect, the process you described sounds very similar to explanations of the eye developing from eye spot to eye cup which then forms a comlex eye. It shows diagrams of less to more complex eyes, and assumes parts form where none existed before. which(once again) would be analagous to a "less complex" bike incrimentally developing an engine from nothing.

Quite frankly 5th guy, Iike your answer best, but I do disagree with your point that viruses are living.It's just genetic material convered in a protein coat. It is about as alive as a prion. It can't exist without living things to pass on its genetic material.Now, I am not naive enough to claim that scientist could never reproduce life, but like I said, it would take away from the chance and it would really prove nothing. Your first point is also that it took billions of years to get from the first self replicating molecule to the first eukaryote. While some self replicating molecules have been artificially formed, all have VERY limited abilties due to their properties. And they have been formed in very artificial environments, like being synthesized in chloroform.Readers can do research on the net for more info.

Also the mechanical illustration does apply.Even biological systems are made up of nonliving things. But like I said he explains it much better than I can. I could do a fair job, but why bother. I've typed enough. I am sorry for writing too much on here. I am just trying make sure the real question gets adressed, and we don't talk past each other.

Let the Behe bashing begin. I have no reason to defend him but you made the statement that you don't agree with his slight successsive modification argument. With no real reason other than it doesn't work that way. "Just because he wrote a book or doesn’t mean any of it’s true." I'm sure that can be applied to yahoo answers as well. The 4th paragraph contains the most specific information regarding my question but contains quite a few "mays and probablys". You claimed it as speculation, and that is all I asked for. Acknwoledgement for what it is. Just because it is natural-chance theory, does not make it any more scientifically valid. It can not be falsified, nor can any oberservations be made about the origin of life. That is the definition of speculation. I'm sorry for appearing ignorant for only quoting Behe. I have done other reading. But noone directly adressed HIS argument from what I had read. I am also very familiar with talkorigins and they have a lot of good things to say.

Answer 1

I am handicapped at not having read the book you are referring to, so I can only go on what you are asking in your question.

When you say "It seems that if life were so predisposed to form under adverse conditions, why can it not be more easily formed under ideal conditions?"

Don't forget that the conditions under which life formed includes one condition that is impossible to recreate in a laboratory:
.......... *TIME* ................
An *unimaginable* amount of time. Perhaps as much as a billion years of time from the formation of the earth until the first fully formed cells. It is almost impossible to imagine that kind of time, and the types of things it can do. So laboratory conditions can never be considered "ideal conditions."

Even so, scientists *have* been able to duplicate the conditions of the early earth as well as they can ... and they are constanly learning new things about those conditions. And they are able to show under what conditions the building blocks of life may have arisen out of purely abiogenetic events. So they're getting there, and getting closer all the time. (And BTW, I am admitting here that the theories of abiogenesis are indeed speculative, but (a) they are getting less so all the time, and (b) these are distinct from evolution itself, which is no longer mere speculation.)

As for the motorcycle analogy (again, I am just reading your version of it), there is a danger in likening a living organism to a machine. Machines have hard parts that are created and designed separately, and then assembled together. Living things don't work that way, and don't develop that way (embryos *grow*, they are not assembled from fully manufactured parts). Living things are organic, which means that fundamentally there are no strong separations between parts. In life, a fuel tank or an engine part *can* emerge by small incremental steps, each of which can produce a small incremental advantage.

For example, in life, a fuel tank (which in life would be called a stomach) can begin as the holding area inside the alimentary tube in the area between the mouth and the gut. As the organism evolves more complex digestive enzymes for more complex food, those creatures able to hold food in this holding area do better than those that must digest things immediately. The result is incremental widening of this area of the alimentary canal, generation after generation, until we later find it to be a fully developed stomach, with different cellular details, different lining, different pre-digestion enzymes of its own, and musculature at both ends to control flow through the stomach, etc. It is tempting to look at a fully formed stomach and say "wow, what a complex system. If we remove the stomach, the entire digestive mechanism breaks down", but that is not proof that the stomach could not have evolved incrementally and organically over millions of years, any more than it proves that the stomach of an embryo is "assembled" rather than grows.

---- {reponse} ----

As I didn't read the book, I missed that this was an analogy of the evolution of a motorcycle from a bicycle. My apologies. But my point still stands. In life, new parts DO emerge from "no parts" as a byproduct of increasing complexity of existing cellular roles and structures. The stomach is a widening of the alimentary canal. The brain is the growth of part of the nervous system near to (and in response to) the sensory organs. The pancreas is an expansion of the cells that produce enzymes to digestion. The urinary system is the growth of those specialized cells originally involved in removing nitrogen from the system. The lungs are repurposed gills which are in turn the outgrowth of those cells in charge of deriving oxygen from the environment for glycolosis. And yes, the lens in the eye is the growth of protein membrane that was originally a mucus secretion across the opening of the eye for purposes of keeping the inner fluid of the eye separate from (and cleaner than) the surrounding water. (Sorry, that was a mouthful ... it's hard to span 400 million years in a single sentence. :-) )

In each case, early specialization happens at the *cellular* level, and slow and relentless application of natural selection cause these specialized cells to find better and better structures for doing their job. The stomach, brain, eye, pancreas, kidney, etc. all *appear* to us to be completely separate and discrete "parts", but at the cellular level, they are just cells producing proteins that benefit the organism in different ways. Any small change to the protein, or the structures that deliver or concentrate those proteins, that benefits the organism in any tiny way, will tend to be a change that propagates throughout the population of a species.

And again, if a heart or an eye-lens is a completely separate "part", in the sense of a motorcycle part, then how can a heart or eye-lens *grow* from "no parts" in a chicken embryo? The answer happens at the cellular and protein level ... and that is where evolution occurs as well.

This is precisely why "irreducible complexity" arguments fail every time. When every developing embryo demonstrates that life *by definition* grows "parts" from "non-parts" as an expression of millions of tiny effects at the cellular/protein level, then every "part" is, practically *by definition*, "reducible."

Answer 2

The motorcycle is an excellent analogy. The internal structure of a cell, even a bacterium, is complex and dynamic. We know what most of the parts are, but it more than just having all the parts inside the membrane bag. Imagine trying to build a motorcycle while not being allowed to slow down to less than 5 mph. Life doesn't get a chance to stop. Once you've got the motorcycle, built, building a second would be easier since you can use its energy to keep the second moving.

A cell must constantly expend energy to just stay alive. You have to get the cell into a state where it has the right proteins and mRNAs to run. Bacteria are simple enough that it seems possible to get the minimum starting components, in the right working state, into the right milieu, such that a membrane vesicle could contain enough machinery to start operating. I wouln't be surprised if someone can generate an artificial bacterium in the next decade or two although it has no practical purpose. Building a eukaryotic cell would be far greater a challenge as there is so much microstructure that has evolved that reproducing it without building the internal structure first seems unlikely.

ADDENDUM:
50 years is not much time on the evolutionary time scale and the volume on the lab bench is trivial compared to the oceans. On Earth, life arose once, eradicating the environment from which it arose. Once we do it once, we will be able to do it again.

Answer 3

It took evolution over 2 billion years to get from the first self-replicating molecule to the point of the first eurkaryotic cell (i.e., a cell with a nucleus). You can't expect humans to do it in a decade. But as it happens, we HAVE created a living virus from scratch, out of non-living materials. So progress is being made.

Conditions on earth today are favorable for *modern* organisms, but highly unfavorable for a re-boot of a completely new creation of life. That's because the needed components, like amino acids, would simply be swallowed up by existing bacteria and living things before they could ever form themselves into something entirely new.

Bikes and motorcycles don't manufacture themselves like living things do, so the analogy is unfair, and the parallel doesn't hold. Nothing that has ever evolved has evolved from nothing; evolution always works on some existing thing, on some existing structure. In fact, if you were to find an example of some body part magically appearing, like a fuel tank on a bicycle, that would be powerful evidence *against* evolution. Behe himself has admitted that Intelligent Design is not falsifiable, and therefore not scientific.

Answer 4

First the cell is no the basic unit all evolution hinges on; that is the gene replicators or the individual organism, or both. Population evolve, not individuals. The cell is extremely complex and has only had it's own discipline of study for 50 years. Behe is a twit and has been refuted/rebutted by many of his bio-chem. colleges. Put " Michael Behe " into you space bar and you will find more refutations there than citations. You have really presented that motorcycle analogy badly. I did not see that one in my perusal of the hacks tome, but if you had presented it better, I would have had something to refute. As is; it is incoherent. Perhaps someone who read the book will come along.

PS Improvements made to sell more bikes? That analogy could only be made by a person that does not understand evolution, Behe, for instance. It is a teleological argument that totally ignores evolution's non-directive nature. It does not even come close to paralleling genetic modification due to natural selection. Biochemists have refuted his "irreducible complexity" arguments repeatedly. Go to Richard Dawkin's web site for further education here. You may find me arrogant, but what difference to the argument does that make? I find you as intellectually feeble as a social scientist and just as ill informed evolutionarily.

Answer 5

remember the cell theory? that all living organisms are made of cells and that all cells come from existing cells?(remember that it's a theory, not a law) that's why scientists can't put togeather a cell from availiable parts. but who would want to try to construct a cell's individual parts, anyway? and how would you expect them to do that with the current technology? would you want them to take apart a cell and put it back together? imagine someone taking apart all the organs in a person and putting it all back. gross. no, i have not read the book... but hey, maybe you could put a cell back togeather. suck the organelles out and put them back in?? how the ancient prokaryotes formed is also a theory. no one could prove it yet. it's still not sure, like the mass extinctions theories (like a meteor is a reasonable explanation?) they're just random ideas.

go ahead, i think you could prove me wrong easily. i'm only 14 and a freshman in high school and don't understand a few of the words you mentioned...