Atheists - How do you explain the beginning of life?

Question

The complexity of the very first fossilized life is impossible to have begun by chance, and there is absolutely no fossilized record of anything simpler existing previously, i.e. "Self-replicating RNA polymers"
Also, Millers experiment and subsequent experiments have only produced amino acids. Proteins are not produced and the fossil record again bears no evidence of large amounts of amino acids, proteins or any thing that could be construed as a building block of life. There would have to be huge amounts of these for the cell to have even a remote chance of coming to be without divine intervention.

Weird Darryl - I have been studying this for over 20 years.

Varsity Calculus - RNA polymers in the amount needed would have left evidence in the layers of rock by chemical compostition even if not fossilized

Tom A - Who said the universe was 6000 years old, over 15 bil. would be more accurate to the facts.

NH Baritone - talkorigins is talking in circles on this topic. They should just say they don't know.

Answer 1

My leaning is towards abiogenesis. Whether it was RNA, or or some weird hybrid is beyond me. No experiments have determined long-term behaviors in years. Amino acids, purine and pyramidine bases, and other compounds were formed in other experiments. No experiment to date is as complex as as the early Earth was.
The concentrations that might produce a chemical signature in rock from the era assume uniform distribution. Once life evolved, and residual chemicals would be completely consumed if accessed by life.

Answer 2

I believe the beginning of life happened by mere chance.

Have you considered that there may never be proof found in the fossil record? Also, have you considered that humanity has not yet developed the technology needed to even begin to discover this type of evidence. Bear in mind that we just mapped the human genome. That's a project that could never occurred at any point in the past. How old are computers, electron microscopes, particle colliders, etc... ?

You're talking about questions that may not be solved for the next 500 years. Do you actually believe that humanity has reached the point where it can answer all questions.

Man is searching for these answers, and currently everything is theoretical. Knowledge takes time. It can't be read out of a book that places the origin of the universe at 6000 years ago (you do understand that I was being sarcastic?). Carbon 14 testing disproves that.

Answer 3

the fact its not easily explain does not mean its false.

The existing scientific theories of life's beginning to the extent they are there are only really understood by a small amount of people.

In terms of number of amino acids, what is the probability, assuming that millers basic mechanism is correct of the fossil records showing the amount of amino acid concentration at a given time?

What created the divine entity you want to introduce?

For matter where did matter come from anyway. If there was a big bang, what happened before.

Many questions have no answer.

Does that imply divinity? No. Does not discount it either tho.

Answer 4

People usually demand a beginning, so in the beginning there was a sea of spirit and it filled all of space. The spirit was static, content, and aware of itself. It was a giant resting on the bosom of its thought and contemplating what it is.

Then the spirit moved into action. It withdrew into itself until all of space was empty. In the center, the restless mind of the spirit shone. This was the beginning of the individuality of the spirit. This was what the spirit discovered itself to be when it awakened. This spirit was God. God desired self-expression and desired companionship; therefore, God projected the cosmos and souls. The cosmos was built with music, arithmetic, geometry, harmony, system, and balance. The building blocks were all of the same material - the life essence. It was the power of God that changed the length of its wave and the rate of its vibration which created the patterns for multitudes of forms. This action resulted in the law of diversity which supplied endless patterns. God played on this law of diversity as a pianist plays on a piano - producing melodies and arranging them in a symphony.

Each design carried within it the plan for its evolution. This plan corresponds to the sound of a note struck on a piano. The sounds of several notes unite to make a chord; chords in turn become phrases; phrases become melodies; melodies intermingle and move back and forth, across and between and around each other, to make a symphony. Then in the end, the music will stop and the physical universe will be no more; but between the beginning and the finish of the music there was glorious beauty and a glorious experience. The spiritual universe will continue. Everything assumed its design in various forms and their activity resulted in the law of attraction and repulsion. All forms would attract and repel each other in their evolutionary dance.
All things are a part of God and an expression of God's thought. The Mind of God was the force which propelled and perpetuated these thoughts. All minds, as thoughts of God, do everything God imagined. Everything that came into being is an aspect of the One Mind.

Answer 5

I don't feel a need to explain the beginning of life for 2 reasons:

1. Since we have no witnesses or eye witness accounts of the beginning of life, their is no way to know how life began. (some religious types say they know through faith, but that is just assumption.)

2. No matter how life came to be, it doesn't change the way we live now. No matter how we came to be, we are. We ought to focus on the future, which we can actually change and experience for ourselves.

If I had to give a theory, I would say that something did have to inject energy into the universe and set it in motion. It is a basic law of physics that objects remain at inertia until acted upon by an outside force. But I can't assume anything beyond that.

Answer 6

150 years ago, we didn't know about bacteria. No clue. It wasn't understood until Louis Pasteur determined that germs caused disease.

You are asking the same questions that scientists ask. You have, however, asked this in the Religion & Spirituality section, where we are mostly humanities majors, not biologists or physicists. Would you come to R&S to find out what opus number was Mozart's 40th Symphony? I think not. You're asking us to play to our weakness. Quite frankly, you're being unfair.

So let me suggest two things:

1. If you are serious about wanting to know the current evidence-based understanding on the origins of the universe and on evolutionary theory, there are excellent descriptions found at http://www.talkorigins.org .

2. Consider that you are proposing (not so subtly) that anything that is not explained is a place for God to be discovered. This is commonly referred to in ontology as "the god of the gaps" theory. It typically assigns God to any blank space that science has not yet reached useful conclusions. Remember what I said about disease? Before bacteria were discovered, it was assumed God was punishing the ill, or that they were demon possessed, or some other supernatural phenomenon caused sickness. This is the same god of the gaps.

Science never assumes, and should never assume, anything is supernatural. The purpose of science is to discover through measured observation, testing, and repetition what natural causes lead to our natural world. If you impose a statement "God caused it," then this stops the search for knowledge, because God is ultimately unknowable. This is the reason that the "god of the gaps" theory is discounted among learned ontological academicians, and is ignored by science.

Answer 7

well
what if life never began and always was
the religious accept that deities dont need a creator, why should life?
or if that explanation doesnt turn you on...
what if it just arose from very simple organic molecules?
what makes you think things as small as r.n.a. polymers would leave fossils anyway?
i think that on a planet as big as earth, teeming with the chemical building blocks of life, and given the amount of time (billions of years) life could have started here on earth

Answer 8

The paintings being carried out on abiogenesis now's exhibiting that that's surprisingly basic to get the uncomplicated development blocks of existence to style. opposite on your assumption, i think of that many believers will close their eyes and ears and declare that existence could no longer have began and not utilising a god.

Answer 9

You wrote, "The complexity of the very first fossilized life is impossible to have begun by chance". How do you know that??? Have you even bothered to take a college biology class or would that be too much of a challenge to your beliefs??
.

Answer 10

Abiogenesis seems plausible.

Other than that, I haven't a clue.

It's ok for me to admit that I haven't the foggiest (or at least that I'm not absolutely certain of any well supported hypotheses). I'd rather be HONEST than cram a deity into the gap in my knowledge.