Evolution in the VERY beginning

Zero and nothing are not the same thing. Ever hear of negative numbers? Nope. I start with building materials. Before they were building materials they were trees and iron ore, etc. Nope. I was a sperm and an egg. Before they were a sperm and and egg they were the food that my parents ate. Before that, they were....Before you can start to discuss "the VERY beginning", you're going to have to have a clearer idea of what you are starting with. "Nothing" ain't it.What building materials do you want to start with?

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People who think they have all the answers usually don't understand the questions.

i hate to point this one out, thats been said, I'm not sure how many times, but this is not how evolution works. Evolution never claims to know how everything got here, it isn't about that, please look up what evolution is, rather than some creation/ID definition do you really think this is nessisary? does this really further the
debate?edit:typos!This message has been edited by demongoat, 09-29-2005 01:05 AM

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"Our intelligent designer has never created an animal that we couldn't improve by strapping a bomb to it."

Hey David,
I'm gonna take a stab at explaining this sort of layman style since I don't have a degree in chemistry or anything.(For Everyone Else - I'm not debating BB theory, or particle physics or any of that stuff, let's keep the thread simple) Let's start with nothing.-Nothing.
-Big Bang creates Universe.
-Universe consists of atoms and empty space.
-Some atoms cluster together forming huge clouds.
-Atoms become dense in these clouds forming stars.
-Stars, powered by fusion, create more variety of atoms.
-Some atoms are more stable when in combination with other atoms - and they form molecules.
-Some stars burn out / explode / whatever.
-Eventually our Sun is born and Earth along with it.
-The are many different molecules on the young Earth.
-When one set of molecules is exposed to energy, it break free the atoms and cause new molecules to form.
-Of all the possible combinations of molecules, an amino acid formed.
-The amino acids are the building blocks of DNA
-The right combination of particular amino acids and an energy source and they start to replicate, and whamo -
-Life!Remember that the combinations that produced life is rare, but we're working with a large area of resources (the entire Earth) and a huge amount of time (billions of years) and it only has to happen once to get it all started.If you want to insert God into the process, you're perfectly welcome to. "God caused the Big Bang" "God sent the lightning that helped create the molecules" "God had this all planned from the get-go".None of those statements conflicts with the above list, with this theory of abiogenisis or with the theory of evolution.ToE only starts to have a problem with statements like "God literally made Adam out of Clay and Eve outta spare ribs".

Your original topic appeared to be about abiogenesis. You agreed to have it placed in the abiogenesis forum. NOW you suddenly want to talk about cosmology.The obvious conclusion is that you are intentionally shifting the goalposts. How else to explain such a dramatic shift of topic ?

There's one little snag here: This is not true. Amino acids are the building blocks of proteins. The building blocks of DNA are certain organic bases and sugars.

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We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further. - Richard Dawkins

I'm assuming, from the theory, that evolution starts the moment a replicating set of chemicals comes around...probably when those chemicals are made up of protiens and the method of replication is the transmission of a set of instructions which occasionally does not copy accurately. The answer to this question is currently 'please fund my project and maybe I'll tell you'. There is some exciting research into this. There is some interesting reading on the subject, here

quote:

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Microsphere
Organic molecules surrounded by a double membrane
Can be formed from Proteinoids, when placed in boiling water & cooled.
Shrink & swell depending on the osmolarity of the water.
Can absorb material from the environment & grow & form buds.
Internal streaming similar to cells
Have been shown to form nucleic acids & polypeptides (ATP present)

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Microspheres = Protocells!!

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It doesn't matter, this is cosmology. I think you are probably right, what was this creation event? What was behind it? Nobody knows for sure, and scientists are intellectually honest enough to say "I don't know", but curious enough to struggle throughout their lives to get slightly closer to an answer for the rest of us. So far we have a good description of the early universe which is backed up by confirmed and tested mathematics. I believe it takes us back to something close to 0.0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001 seconds after this creation event. The maths then predicts a singularity, but many scientists believe this might be a quirk of mathematics (like how there is a 2d singularity at the North pole where the direction 'north' ceases to exist).This is of course, beyond the scope of this thread. Perhaps you can read this excellent post by cavediver, which was nominated for post of the month. Indeed, there is much discussion of it in the Big Bang/Cosmology forumI'd go further. I don't think it is possible for something to come out of nothing; a creator would imply there was something, not nothing. But physics goes bananas at the subatomic scale so only quark knows what is really possible.

Hi, Nuggin. I hope you don't mind a slight correction.

quote:

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Big Bang creates Universe.

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Actually, Big Bang is not a creator. Big Bang is a description of the very early universe and the processes that gave rise to the contemporary universe. It is possible that one day Big Bang will also describe the beginning of the universe as well, but right now we do not have any well developed scientific theories that work at the very, very beginning.

Hello, david.Evolution applies to replicators that do not replicate perfectly. For evolution to occur, you need a population of things that reproduce themselves. How this initial population comes about is not in the scope of the theory of evolution, so "evolutionists" do not study this question themselves.Abiogenesis is currently being studied by chemists and biochemists. Probably others -- it is a cross-disciplinary subject. The science is in its infancy, so there are very few hard answers as yet. However, the field is progressing quite nicely, and there are some interesting ideas that are being explored.Edited to add:
Maybe we are not making our point clear. Whether we understand or not how life originally arose, or whether we ever understand or not how life originally arose is not a problem for the theory of evolution. The evidence is indisputable that once life did arise, evolution has produced all the diversity we see around us. If you are starting this thread to try to point out that the lack of definite answers for the origin of life is somehow a "problem" for evolution, then you are wasting your time. Life does exist, that is obvious, and it is equally obvious that life has evolved from a much smaller number of previous species.On the other hand, if you are truly interested in the current work on trying to understand the origins of life, then this could be a very good thread. I would be very interested in reading the posts of people who are knowledgeable about this subject.This message has been edited by Chiroptera, 29-Sep-2005 12:48 PM

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"Intellectually, scientifically, even artistically, fundamentalism -- biblical literalism -- is a road to nowhere, because it insists on fidelity to revealed truths that are not true." -- Katha Pollitt

Hi, david12.It seems we are getting a bit far afield in this topic and are drifting away from abiogenesis towards cosmology. I think we can all agree that the Earth existed before life came to exist - why don't we set aside the origins of the planet and elements themselves for now, and focus on how the primordial Earth could have given rise to life from non-life?First, let's make one thing very clear - no one in their right mind claims that a bunch of raw elements spontaneously formed into a bacteria. That has nothing at all to do with the predictions of abiogenesis. The tired old Creationist analogy of a tornado assembling a 747 from its constituent parts purely by chance also has no ties to the actual predictions of abiogenesis - chemical reactions are not random, and you cannot simply combine any random selection of elements all willy-nilly and form a molecule. If you light a match in a cloud of hydrogen and oxygen, you will form H2O. Not H5O, not HO3, but H2O. Chemical reactions follow certain rules based on the properties of the atoms themselves.Now, as I said, the origin of life according to abiogenesis was not some randomly assembled single-celled organism. The Creationist claims that such spontaneous formation is competely impossible and rediculous are absolutely true. Fortunately, that's not what abiogenesis predicts.The early Earth was made up of a certain mix of...well, stuff. We know what this general mixture was composed of based on rocks surviving from that early era, as well as observing other planets in our solar system that never developed beyond this point. The surface and atmosphere of the Earth contained lots of hydrogen, water vapour, ammonia and methane. Several years ago, an experiment was conducted using a mix of those componds, combined with electrical discharges (which would have existed naturally as lightning and other static electricity), and ultraviolet radiation (provided readily by the Sun). The resulting reaction produces amino acids - the building blocks of proteins, necessary for all modern life.Since the experiment closely duplicated the actual conditions of the early Earth, it has conclusively shown that certain chemicals necessary for the formation of life can form spontaneously under the conditions present on Earth millions of years ago.Unfortunately, this only proves that abiogenesis is worth persuing. Further evidence is scarce, because very little work beyond this experiment has been done thus far. Various universities, including Harvard, are currently setting up entire divisions devoted solely to abiogenesis research, to see if the prevailing hypothesis accurately describes a mechanism by which life could arise from non-life.Let's delve a little deeper into abiogenesis, and see where we would have to go from simple amino acids. As I said earler, we aren't looking for the spontaneous formation of a cell. What we are realy looking for is something far more simple - a self-replicating molecule.We know from evolution that life changes because the self-replication of our cells is imperfect - they don't duplicate themselves 100% identically, alowing genetics to change over many generations. So what we are looking for is an imperfectly self-replicating molecule - that's all. Not a cell with a nucleus and a cell wall or membrane, no organelles - just a single molecule that replicates itself using materials in its immediate surroundings, and can form in slightly different patterns based on its environment and flaws in the copying process.RNA is a good modern analogy to what we're looking for. RNA is actually a decent candidate for the actual first self-replicating molecule - if we can show that RNA can spontaneously form given the conditions present in the early Earth, abiogenesis will be proven to be an entirely plausible and possible mechanism for the origin of life. Check out this Wikipedia entry regarding the hypothesis proposing RNA as the earliest form of life. RNA is simply a chain of nucleotides, which are releatively simple molecules. The hypothesis states that, in the early primordial soup, these simple organic molecules would form covalent chemical bonds with each other, forming longer and longer chains. Some of the bonds would be weak, and the chains would break. Others would be stronger. Certain randomly combined chains would form with the catalytic properties we see in RNA today, causing the molecule chains to self-replicate. Now that we have a self-replicating molecule, natural selection takes over, and evolution begins, using small changes in the RNA structure guided by natural selection to form more and more efficient forms of early life.Now, as the Wiki article states, RNA has a few problems as a candidate for the first self-replicator. We have yet to produce its constituent nucleotides in experiments of the type I mentioned earler (which isn't evidence against it - remember, not nearly enough research has been done yet), and one of them readily reacts with hydrogen (meaning it's unlikely to have simply existed in this environment). But RNA does serve as a great example of a very primitive self-replicating molecule. Early life may not have consisted of RNA, but if abiogenesis is accurate, some similar self-replicating molecule was the starting point of life.So, to tie this all back to your original question:The first life form was not a bacteria, as you seem to believe. The first life form, as predicted by abiogenesis, was a very simple self-replicating molecule (not a cell, or even remotely that complex), something akin to RNA, that formed due to normal chemical reactions given the conditions of the early Earth. Abiogenesis reasearch today is attempting to create a self-replicating molecule, or at least the building blocks of one, using the primordial soup of componds and elements we know were present millions of years ago.As to your other implied question, "How did the elements themselves form if they werent made," that's a question for the Cosmology forum. I suggest you propose a new topic there, and we can talk about the origins of matter and energy.

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Every time a fundy breaks the laws of thermodynamics, Schroedinger probably kills his cat.

HI, David12:It's no use. Evolutionists conveniently divorce themselves from explanations of abiogenesis because they have absolutely no explanation of how it is possible. To simply state that it's not part of evolutionary theory is a cop-out.
The simplest concievable form of life as we know it would require at least one strand of DNA or RNA. Simply put, the probability of such a complex molecule randomly coming together is nill. Even if by some freakish event such a spontaneous arrangement were accomplished, it would require the intricate protein/lipid structure of a cell to survive and reproduce.
To base an entire theory on such an enormously improbable event is ludicrous. Science follows laws of probability.

hello Springer:you say in this how is it a cop-out, when the ToE has nothing to do with abiogenesis?
does The GR have to explain how BB works? they are related but they explain what they explain which is why it is still at the, as someone said the "fund me, so i can find out" stage hmm the only thing that is ludicrous is this distortion of ToE to fit some sort of strawman, yes science follows probability, and it points to the ToEThis message has been edited by demongoat, 09-29-2005 09:49 PM

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"Our intelligent designer has never created an animal that we couldn't improve by strapping a bomb to it."

I see that you've apparently divorced yourself from addressing any of the replies to the OP, especially the ones that preemptively rebut your position.

Since some intial explanations of how this is possible has been posted in the last 24 hours and references to sites with experiments this statement is not true. The simplest concievable form of imperfect replicator is not as complex as RNA -- that has also been posted here in the last 24 hours. And, as has been noted in the last day, life "as we know it" is not what is expected at the origin of life -- far from it.It appears you have a reading problem. If this continues you will have a 24 hour break where all you can do is read for the practice.This message has been edited by AdminNosy, 09-29-2005 10:45 PM

How do you calculate that? Given the nearly instant rate at which chemical change can happen and the billions of years within which it could happen, how do you calculate there is 0 chance?

Now Ned,Abiogenesis is by definition the hypothetical starting point of life and will ever remain so if a process is not forthcoming. Given the reality of the improbability of the event, it will remain unanswered to the mind that is bounded by the 'Evolution' paradigm.David12 has asked the obvious question of an origin for the first protein. If you want to call it proto, 'Life not as we know it', whatever then fine but what is needed is a process to provide that first protein.If you want to subsrcibe to the panspermia you just have to answer the first same question in another location and answer more questions regarding the seeding process.I believe the Bible's account that God made the Earth with all life forms and the Heavens in six days.