Evolution - how did the origin of life occur?

Question

Okay, I'd like to understand the opposite viewpoint of my own. For those who believe in evolution, how did life begin? I'm talking about the very first organism, what was it created from and how did that substance or being come about?

Answer 1

God spoke

Answer 2

What you are talking about is abiogenesis, not evolution. Many people think they are one and the same, and they are not.

It has been demonstrated that complex building blocks of life such as proteins can be created spontaneously from inorganic matter in a laboratory under conditions similar to the primitive earth years, without oxygen, through sunlight and/or lightning as an energy source. It was also demonstrated that amino acids can spontaneously form from these proteins under the right conditions. Although so far, no one has actually produced life from inorganic matter in a lab, the oceans were most likely filled with this organic mixture of chemicals created over millions of years, creating massive opportunies for spontaneous organic compounds of ever increasing complexity to form. Therefore, the main hurdle to understanding how life could come from inorganic material was overcome. Forming amino acids from inorganic compounds is a huge breaktrhough, because amino acids are some of the most complex organic molecules, which can be combined with other compounds at random before finally forming the first primitive single cell organism.

It's at this point, where abiogenesis ends and evolution takes over.

Answer 3

It a nutshell, molecules that could catalyze the formation of similar molecules are the start. Once one forms, there process of prelife has begun. When did prelife become life? what constitutes an organism? It comes down to definitions. It is quite possible that a group of molecules attached to clay produced more of their kind before one complete group wrapped in a membrane that we would consider a cell. Were those molecules alive before the cell? Did the first cell look like anything now on Earth? Probably not. Any life from more than 3 billion years ago has been consumed by the far more efficient life that now exists. No "fossil" sequestum of the transition from prelife to life has ever been identified, so this is all speculation. The world is a big place and anything could have happened in the vast amounts of time involved.

Answer 4

Well, theory #1. There is a supreme being who created it.

Theory #2. There is a mindless, souless, automated Casino that throws out Atomic Mass and one day it threw a Lucky 7 by accident.

The right amount of this, the right amount of that and a little serendipity and poof some ribonuclaic acids formed from basically inorganic matter in a primordial soup kitchen.

What it was, exactly, no one can say for sure. Microbe. Bactrium. Amoemba.

But it's like Shake and Bake. The Universe has all this matter and it shakes it up by Comic forces of Gravity and Inertia and Density and Mass and out, Magically, comes fried chicken! Except there are NO HANDS shaking this bag of stuff. It's automatic. It's sympathetic vibrations caused by eddies and currents and gravity wells and alpha particals and beta particles and free electrons and naturally occuring hydrogen that HAS ALWAYS been in the Universe.

One day it all coagulated, exploded with a BIG BANG the the Shake and Bake factory went into perpetual motion.

We were the results.

Dr. Heisenberg says the chances of that happening a second time are slim if any at all.

It was TOTAL serendipity, according to the Heisenberg theory.

Anyway, that little one celled microbe divided, congregated, became a colony, which became a complex animal creature like a little jelly fish.

Somewhere along the line some of these found they couldn't reproduce by Hermophrodite processes any more and had to "mate" with a similar jelly fish to make little jelly fishes.

Then somewhere along the lines distinct male and female architypes evolved.

Soon there were all sorts of varied creatures in the waters and one day it stuck it's head out and found a new world that it couldn't breath in.

Well it kept sticking it's head out until it's lungs evolved into a positioin where it could stay outside for a little while and it found it could live in both water and on land.

But it had to go back to water, but this became less and less.

Some mated in water and some crawled out on land and mated and yes, sometimes brothers mated sisters.

I mean, there weren't a lot of of these "land creatures."

The ones that mated on land got stronger out of the water and soon found they couldn't live under the water at all.

Now these became land creatures.

And they eentually developed things to crawl isntead of swim.

Some developed things to fly with.

Some started walking, first on 4 legs then on 2 legs.

ANd one day, MAgically, YOUR grandfather appeared.

Of course there wasn't a lot of them, so maybe a few brothers and sisters mated to develope a population base.

And that is, basically, the story Atheists, Scientists and Agnostics say doesn't sound nearly as foolish as some Sky Daddy who made you and everything else with intellegent design.

Like we make a car or telelphone or TV set.

You know, you can't just put parts into a bag and shake them up to make an XBOX.

So, UNLIKE the SEEDLESS watermellon that was INTELLEGENTLY DESIGNED by a superior creature, man was not. MAn was a lucky accident.

Answer 5

Evolution is a theory that simply does not address that question. Darwin's book was called "Origin of Species" not "Origin of Life." Evolution addresses the cause of all the different species that exists.

Gravity also does not address the origin of life, but that does not make it false, just like not addressing the origin of life does not make evolution false.

And science has not yet answered the question of the origin of life, but that does not mean it cannot (of course, that does not mean it can either).

There is a famous experiment where a scientist called Miller put into a glass bowl the molecules (oxygen, water, etc) that would have existed on the early Earth, ran through it an electrical current simulating a lightning bolt, and found that amino acids (the basic molecules that make up all living creatures) just spontaneously formed! Its pretty amazing. It's also proven that while DNA needs the more simple RNA to reproduce, simple RNA can reproduce itself without help.

So right now the only "missing link" is how the amino acids could accidentally clump together to make an RNA strand.

~ Lib

Answer 6

I've got an interesting question for you.

Religion - how did the origin of god occur?

That question is just as valid as yours. So where do gods come from? Or do you just believe in one? Are you an atheist to buddhist and hindu teachings? I bet you are. You are a nonbeliever like me, you disbelieve many religions. If you don't believe those when why should anyone else believe yours? Why is yours the one to be believed?

You don't have any answers to those questions.

"I'm talking about the very first organism, what was it created from and how did that substance or being come about?"
Let me tell you that life has been around for a very, VERY long time, and nobody was there to document life's beginnings, so forgive me if I can't give you exact details.

1. Miller-Urey experiment showed that organic molecules are VERY readily produced from non-organic precursors (water, methane, ammonia, hydrogen). For -one week-, a small setup containing these ingredients was put through a cycle of heating, evaporation, exposure to simulated lightning shocks.

- 10%-15% of the carbon turned into organic compounds
- 2% of the carbon turned into amino acids

This experiment reproduced an environment very common on the earth. The earth has mind-bogglingly enormous amounts of these precursor compounds (water, hydrogen etc.) on it.

Now we know that it is very reasonable to say that organic compounds and amino acids formed on the early earth. How much of these substances formed? let's just get a little taste of how many molecules of one of the precursors of life are around.

On the earth there is about 1.35 quintillion (1.35 × 10^18) metric tons of water in the oceans.

In 18 grams of water there are 6 x 10^23 molecules of water.
That means there are about 4.5 x 10^46 molecules of water in the earth's oceans. That is roughly
4,500,000,000,000,000,000,
000,000,000,000,000,000,
000,000,000
molecules of water. Not all of this water would have been available but, so what, divide it by 1000 if you want, it is still a huge number. Add a whoooolllleeee lot of the common precursor chemical compounds similar to in Miller-Urey and give it as many weeks as you want. 1,000? 1,000,000 weeks? no problem. My point is that you can easily see how you would end up with astoundingly large numbers of organic compounds and amino acids on the early earth. Why does this matter? because it is very, very, very unlikely that a little volume of organic compounds and amino acids in water would just turn into some life. That is why it is important to consider the enormous amount of opportunity given to these precursor compounds to form life. Endless billions of billions of precursor molecules dancing around near each other forming compounds for untold millions of hours. There is even more help yet for the case of life appearing! VERY big help!
-It has been shown that phospholipids (organic precursor) spontaneously form basic cell wall structures.
-randomly produced rna molecules produce ribozyomes which can just spontaneously make more of themselves (no this is not little bugs or microorganisms, it is just organic chemical compounds, the kind that could form randomly, given the opportunity)

There has been far, far more research done into it and this is just skimming the surface.

So, just from a quick look at the situation, you can see that there really is a lot of evidence showing why it is believable that life originated on the early earth, spontaneously.

Answer 7

Life began during the cooling period of the earth about, say, 2 billion years ago. Logic would denote that THAT is a long time. Organisms began to merge as single-cell organisms which grew to adapt to surroundings as multi-cell organisms started coming around. The first humans to walk on two legs occurred as early as 10 million years ago. Again, a supremely long time. A big gap between 2 billion and 10 million!
Gives room for changes, yes?

Now, the bible was only written 2,000 years ago... whoops, there's still a big gap in time....

no one will know the true meaning. It's all theory. Even my answer is thoery, but there's more evidence in science than a new book. I'll stick with science. It will never cease to amaze me, and will never judge me.

Answer 8

Evolution explains how life became so specialised and diverse. - thats all. It doesn't have to explain anything else. Its not evolutions fault that some people evolved without a brain to understand it. If people are not interested in evolution and dont want to learn about it - thats fine by me, just dont bag others who do!

Answer 9

That has absolutely nothing to do with evolution.

But, since you mentioned it, the Miller-Urey experiments showed that, under the right conditions, amino acids (the building blocks of life) can arise from non-living elements.

Answer 10

By its unity and structure creation tells us that it comes from a Being of supreme wisdom and love. - Romans 1, 19-21

Answer 11

In the bible it says God created man, and it was good. It was good so he didn't have to evovle it into a million different things. Evolution has many flaws and scientist are starting to discover those flaws rapidly. Turn to God, you don't have to be a stiff. Party Hardy and just know that God is there for you at the end of the morning.