Human Evolution?

Question

Sorry, have just had a few bevvies at my work Christmas do and was wondering where humans came from. I personally believe in God, but I dont diss anyone who believes otherwise. If the earth was created by the Big Bang, can someone please explain how life began? Thanks!

Sorry, I dont want to know all the details. Just to explain how life started, where the first creatures came from etc. I cant get my head round how something exploded and created a planet (which is fair enough, plausible explanation) but how did the first creature arrived and how did its heart start beating etc

I am not questioning anyones belief, I would just like to get my head round the simple fact of how the first creature was created and where did it come from according to the big bang theory.

Answer 1

If you take a mixture of chemicals, like sulphur, carbon, nitrogen and oxygen, then put them in a warm liquid, hit it with lightning for a few million years, eventually you are going to get large molecules forming which, like mineral crystals, attract each other. If these happen to form in the shape of organic molecules, like simple RNA, or its components, then there is a chance that these molecules can attract other carbon, nitrogen, sulphur molecules to itself to replicate. This only had to happen once, about 3-4 billion years ago, for life to start. That is what simple life was, replicating RNA molecules, but it was the start of more complex molecules, such as DNA, then viruses, which can be just a few RNA and DNA molecules combined. From here there were very simple bacteria-like cells, which may have combined to form multicelled organisms, and so on, right up the line to humans.
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Incidentally, the Catholic Church has accepted that both the Big Bang and Evolution occurred, so there should be no conflict there.

Answer 2

We do not know how life began. We certainly have evidence of life that started very soon after the earth formed, and before the conditions that we see today existed. We also know that we can create the building blocks of life - simple proteins and amino acids - by duplicating those conditions in a lab. In addition, we do know how evolution works. It is as simple as survival of the fittest. At some point, populations will grow or conditions will change such that not all of the offspring of each species will survive. Not all offspring are identical. At that point, only the ones that are best suited to the conditions will survive to pass along their DNA and chromosomes. Over time, this will result in changes to the species so that the recent species are better adapted to their environment than the old ones. It does not work like a ladder, with a series of steps from plankton to human. It is more like a tree or bush, with 99% of the branches (species) dropping off into extinction while 1% lives to adapt in the current environment. We are among the 1%. What you do not see are the 99% who perished along the way.

Answer 3

1) The Earth was not created in the big bang. The Earth is only 4.5 billion years old - the big bang was 13.7 billion years ago. There were billions of years of cosmic chemical evolution inbetween.

2) The big bang was not an explosion - it was an expansion. Like the difference between blowing up a balloon and popping it.

3) The big bang has nothing more to do with evolution than they are both scientific theories.

4) Evolution does not describe how life began, only how it changes. How life began is abiogenesis, and we're still working on that.

Answer 4

I've been on both sides. Initially as an evolutionist throughout college, and then later now as a Creationist. Honestly speaking, there are intellectuals on both sides, don't listen to all the personal attacks and name calling, but you can honestly and truthfully look at the evidence.

The big problem that I see in universities is that they do not teach you "how" to think, but instead "what" to think ... sad but true.

The important thing is being able to distinguish facts from supposition. You have to understand the difference between facts, and theory and/or interpretation of those facts ... very important and most often neglected. For instance, when you dig up a bone. What is the fact? You have a structure there that is made of calcium, has x elements, and x amount of C14, etc. From those facts, certain assumptions, and interpretation occurs.

The origin and age of it, etc... assumes certain things, and by those assumptions, there is an interpretation of the facts to say that this is a bone from a pig, that is x years old, etc.

Answer 5

1. The Big Bang is a theory of cosmology. It has nothing to say about the Sun, the Earth, or the lifeforms thereon.

2. I don't know how life first came about. No one does. But it's a scientist's job to fess up and say "I don't know" rather than "god did it" if he really is curious about how something happened. Then he can investigate the matter starting with an open mind and arrive at useful, meaningful results. "God did it" is not useful or meaningful. You can't use it to predict the outcomes of future experiments, or to understand the way nature works. It's a non-answer that does nothing but cut off further questioning. Scientists love to question, to investigate, to figure things out. All of our scientific knowledge was once "I don't know," and the "I don't knows" get smaller every day. A suggestion: make sure your God doesn't inhabit merely the gaps in our knowledge if you want to keep him around.

3. You probably would not have recognized the first "creature." It was most likely merely a protein that was able to induce copies of itself out of its environment.

Answer 6

You are mixing several scientific theories. Before we can straighten them out, you need to understand what science is and what a theory is. The term "theory" as used by scientists has a special meaning different from how it is commonly used. A theory in science is the best available model that explains a natural phenomenon. For example, Einstein's Theory of General Relativity explains how gravity works. Germ theory explains how diseases are contracted and spread. The Big Bang theory explains how the universe began. The Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection explains why gene frequency changes in a population. Theories do more than simply explain. They make predictions that can be tested by experiment. All of them (Big Bang, Relativity, Natural Selection) have been tested and are still being tested. Scientists have been testing these theories for decades (150 years in the case of Natural Selection) and they have survived.

Scientific theories only deal with natural phenomena. Science can only be used to study natural processes. It is powerless to explain magic, fairy dust and deities. Gods are by definition beyond natural powers. They are supernatural and can not be studies by science. That doesn't mean that gods don't exist; they just can't be proven or disproven by science.

Each theory explains only a specific natural phenomenon. The Big Bang is great for explaining how the universe began but it doesn't tell you anything about biology. Relativity tells you a lot about gravity but it is useless in explaining how life evolves. Natural Selection explains how species evolve but it doesn't tell you much about how life began.

Earth was not created in the Big Bang. EVERYTHING was created in the Big Bang. The sun and solar system formed billions of years after the Big Bang. It would be best to take a course or two in astronomy to better understand the universe we live in.

The problem of how life started is called abiogenesis. This is not answered by the Big Bang or Natural Selection. Evolution deals with how genes in a population of already existing organisms changes with time. It has nothing to say about how complex macromolecules assembled into the first cell. Again, several courses in biology are needed to understand how life works.

In addition to the first Big Bang, another type of explosion (supernova) is necessary for life because all of the heavy elements in our bodies were synthesized in supernovae. The earth was formed from the explosive remnants of a dead star.

We don't know how the first cells were formed but we do know that the basic starting materials for life are easy to make. There are molecular gas clouds in interstellar space that contain all sorts of organic compounds including the nitrogenous bases of DNA. All it takes is for cyanide to sit around in the cold and it will spontaneously form adenine, guanine and amino acids. I won't go into the RNA world but that is what is thought to have been the first step to life.

Answer 7

Evolution is an extremely long process. It took millions of years for life to evolve to this point. We are only this year's model of humanity. We are each a mutation, combinations of our parents. Changes from one generation to the next are very small. They must be small to insure the survival of the species.
There's a great deal of material on the subject, hit the library.
Believing in evolution is not discarding belief in god, and vice versa. It's related but not specifically the same thing.
The big bang is more about the formation of the universe. Evolution of life on Earth is after the big bang.

Answer 8

BEFORE the big bang...science, physics etc. cannot explain...and never will.

AT the big bang...science CAN explain, or even guess at the development of the universe. Red shift...doppler effect...the list goes forever.

IF you are an intelligent, curious person and believe in GOD; this is the only idea that makes sense. You cannot read the mind of God....We were not born with that capability.
Dinosaurs roamed this Earth 10 MILLION times longer than humans. (prolly more than that) So...perhaps we are the screw ups? God is a dino? Who knows?

The Bible is a "PARABLE" of collected storys and laws passed on verbally then eventually in writing in an attempt to make common sense laws. "Like gee...I shouldn't screw and murder my neighbors wife, steal his stuff, then run off screaming "Jesus!" Common sense.

LITERAL interpretation of the bible and "blind faith" are .....contrary to the facts and evidence.

I believe in God...I don't believe in any religion...and I believe in science....God started it all with the Big Bang.







THAT was the act of God.

Answer 9

Well, several of the answerers picked up on the fact that understanding and accepting biological evolution does not preclude belief in God (whichever God you choose). I disagree with the statement from RC that there is more than one species (currently) of humans on Earth, however, but he/she could be right, using certain criteria.

As to how life began, there is no certain way to answer that, at least scientifically. Certainly we know that life processes are mostly chemical processes, so that is a clue that life began as a conglomeration of increasingly complex chemical reactions. Remember, that the Creation of Man, as reported in the Bible, was written by men who had no means of analyzing chemical processes and, possibly didn't even connect the sex act with the production of a baby nine months later.

So, my idea (I'm a christian) is that God is merely a director, setting things in motion, and allowing things to proceed naturally, under "rules" set forth by Him/Her. I cannot see any conflict between belief in God and evolution. The only conflict stems from money-grubbing pseudo-religious "scum" wanting to make names for themselves and to undermine educational processes. That's why the educational system in the United States is so terrible. It really is terrible, too.

Answer 10

A Big Bang? (let there be light and there was light).
If you look at the arguments at how the earth was formed in Genesis, you will see that it happened just as modern scientists say it did (but God told us 4,000 years ago).
First there were seas, then dry land appeared.
In Genesis, it says there was life in the waters (seas) first.
Then there were flying creatures and land creatures--just as Genesis says.
Finally came man--again just as Genesis says.
Man thinks he is so smart, but believers knew what modern scientists did long ago and they wrote it down in the Bible.
If evolution is so great, why aren't monkeys still turning into men. They have our example, they can learn, why aren't they still changing slowly into men?
Personally, I believe in de-evolution (if there is such a word). Man seems to be evolving downhill--that is to say, it's more likely that monkey evolved from men instead of the other way around.
You probably know some people in your life that seem to be doing that just now.
Men used to live hundreds of years. Now we stretch it to get to 80 or so. Is that a good form of evolution or de-evolution?
There is no scientific knowledge that points to the evolution of higher animals. Evolution is like religion--it must be accepted by faith since the science isn't there.
One final point.
How did all the different plants come about? Did they all evolve from one seed? No one seems to think about that and plants are easier to change than animals.
Where did all the different plants come from? That should be answered before we even think about the animals.