first life and spontaneous generation?

Question

according to science's own laws, spontaneous generation is impossible (see Louis Pasteur), so my question is, if life HAS to come from pre-existing life, and all cells HAVE to come from pre-existing cells (one of the three rules in the cell theory), where did the first life and the first cells come from? it makes no sense to me how life just seemed to pop up out of nowhere. that's why i believe that religion has a small bit of truth to it. but for the love of all things human please DO NOT give me an answer that basically says "god said let there be life and 'poof' there was life." i am not a religious person, i am actually very scientific, which is why i am asking SCIENTIFIC people for a SCIENTIFIC answer.

i got a few really good answers, it was hard to pick just one as best.

i got a few really good answers, it was hard to pick just one as best.

Answer 1

Even the most primitive life on the planet today took millions if not tens of millions of years to form. It is possible it took longer but the very early fossils would suggest that it is something in that range. The early lifeforms were not like current lifeforms. They didn't likely use DNA and proteins for instance. They likely used other compounds until one lineage started using RNA for enzymes. Eventually they were modified by using amino acids to make more complex enzymes. Eventually a system was used that coded RNA to make specific amino-acid proteins and evolution found a dramatically more efficient mechanism and our line of life exploded and took over. I tried to make it brief to give you an idea of how it started. The most primitive life on this planet today is still very complex and could not spontaneously generate. It took millions of years to evolve from what were originally much simpler forms that apparently could. Even they had an ocean and millions of years of comets, lighting, UV light, comic rays,... so it wasn't exactly spontaneous.

Answer 2

Organic molecules came from inorganic molecules; which is a very big leap. Take in mind that this happened slowly; cells just didnt form. The life forms were very primitive and actually the components of a cell were likely made first. Under the right conditions and in a sterilized environment, scientist have created organic molecules for inorganic ones. This stew that was created was not a cell-containing one, but it did have many of the components nescary for life. Such as different amino acids. With the presence of these molecules and others, and in a stable environment, the first life may have appeared.

Many people wonder at the complexities of life and the evolution of it, but the more complex question is how did it arise from nonliving particles. And you are right, assuming that all life comes from former life, there has to be a first life form, and that one must not have come from another living thing because it was the first. Which to me is a mystery and a thing that I have a hard time dealing with religion because imagine before the creation of the universe. what was there? well nothing because it wasnt created yet right? well how can there be nothing? like nothing at all not even emptyness. Well if we assume that there was always a universe we ultimately come to think that there has to be a beginning. Also the boundaries of the universe. It seems unthinkable that it could go on for eternity and be absolutely endless. But how could it stop? and if it did what whould it be a wall? and then what? there has to be another side to that wall right? but then again there cant be but at the same time you cant have an end but you cant have it be endless right?
This is so confusing huh

Answer 3

According to scientific experiments, organic molecules can form from inorganic elements. It is only the arrangement of the atoms within the molecules that defines whether it is organic or inorganic. A mixture of inorganic molecules and minerals, given enough time, and energy such as lightning strikes, can form simple organic molecules which attract each other, such as happens with mineral salts to form crystals. The website below has good descriptions of abiogenesis, life origins and the Pasteur experiments and what they really mean, scientifically.
Religion and divine intervention was not necessary for life to begin. Consider that there is much debate as to what life is. There are forms of life such as viruses and even simpler forms, such as Prions, which cause disease and replicate, albeit requiring host organisms to do so. They are made of the same elements and molecules as you and I.
.

Answer 4

Science offers two theories (model) on the origin of life.
1. Life (organic molecules) evolving from inorganic molecules that eventually build up to more complex molecules. E.g. Random proteins come together over time to become a flagellum that happens to propel a bacteria forward.
2. Life was created by an Intelligent Designer, as molecules were designed for a specific purpose. E.g. Flagellum was designed with the proteins for the purpose of movement.

Both are scientifically testable models, as demonstrated when Michael Behe and Ken Miller disputed over the evolution of two different flagellum types: a more complex one containing a pump and one itself that is a pump independently working. Miller hypothesized the independent pump to be older (since it is simpler and more complex flagella evolved from it) and Behe hypothesized the more complex flagellum containing the pump to be older (the independent pump was a result of loss of genes or "devolution"). Both models made a scientifically testable prediction and it turns out Behe's model was correct in that the more complex flagellum is older. This is one of many examples that Intelligent Design is a scientifically testable model, not what some people dismiss as "belief."

Also, consider these points:
a. Second Law of Thermodynamics (entropy of universe is always increasing) puts a definite beginning to the universe.
b. The Big Bang Theory put a time limit on the beginning of the universe at 15 billion years.
c. Biophysicist Dr. Harold Morowitz wondered how long it would take for a bacterium to reassemble itself if you broke all the chemical bonds and put the atoms under ideal chemical conditions, and he came up with a conserative figure of 10^100,000,000,000 years. But keep in mind that the universe's age limit is at 15 billion years...
To claim that evolution of life from nothingness to such complexity in that amount of time is just the way it happened is no different from saying that a supernatural designer created the universe.

What I just listed is just three of a vast amount of evidence that backs up the theory of Intelligent Design. Chirality, the Genetic Code, universal constants, etc. favor the model of Intelligent Design. It is not a matter of "blind faith" but just looking at the evidence and deciding for yourself which model: Darwinian evolution or Intelligent Design best accounts for the evidence.

My area of study is biochemistry and molecular biology, and as I learn more about it I am just even more fascinated at how complexly designed even the most simple of organisms are. I exhort you to look at the scientific evidence and make your own decision, and not let other people tell you what to believe, whether it is evolution or design.

Answer 5

Mr. Pasteur's showing that spontaneous generation doesn't happen has no relation to organic molecules aligning themselves to eventually form a simple cell...he was disproving that life simply "poof" exists. Up until this time, people believed that a cool dew on wet grass produced lambs (sheep often give birth on spring mornings) or that leaves in a cool river turned into fish. People also believed that bad things suddenly grew in your body, as opposed to them not washing their hands being the cause of illness. His experiments do not encompass a sphere of organic molecules forming into a rudimentary cell wall, or organnelle--and really nothing to do with evolution, either. Just that lambs come from sheep, and that if you kill all the bacteria in a test tube, and seal it, then it stays bacteria free...

Answer 6

Pasteur proved that the bacteria that spoil milk don't appear spontaneously.

Modern experiments to simulate the conditions then were able to produce various kinds of biological molecules, amino acids, sugars, ect. This of course is far short of actual life, but it does show that the building blocks can be created from their base components. There are many hypotheses about the origin such as the RNA world.

We will of course never know exactly how life began. We weren't there, we don't know the conditions or even where it began. Even if we knew everything to recreate it, we would still probably fail. Life had about 500 million years to appear, we cannot even fathom that length of time.

Answer 7

I don't know where the initial nucleic acids came from, but in a book that I have been reading there is mention of RNA creatures called lucas that basically had to produce the necessary amino acids to sustain life. RNA can generate itself from loose nucleic acids and other materials necessary for RNA synthesis, but do not last very long. DNA evolved to produce RNA, since DNA has a more stable structure.

Answer 8

Evolutionarily speaking, atoms build amino acids, amino acids build proteins, proteins can form other proteins, self replicating molecules fit in here somewhere, similar proteins can form tissue, and so forth. It wasn't as if "poof" something started swimming in the ocean. Lots of trial and error, lots of dead ends.
BTW, if spontaneous generation happened, we would have lots of dissimilar organisms, and DNA shows that all organisms are related. (except maybe the sulfur based ones on underground volcanic vents...) Get a 4 yr. degree in Evolutionary Biology and you will start to understand.....

Answer 9

Hi. Spontaneous generation looked at unexplained life. (Flies lay eggs but were not considered a source of life in the first experiments.) If you give enough time to let molecules arrange themselves in all the possible ways allowed by physics then eventually some molecules replicate. But consider that almost every time this occurred the form became extinct. Time is the essential factor. And I mean billions of years.

Answer 10

Prokaryotes & Eukaryotes