Science question for college about carbon based life

Hi, I am taking a required class on envirnmental science. It teaches the world was formed like 4.6 billion years ago and evolution. I don't believe this. I believe in creationism. Anyways our instructor posed a question and allowed us to use our opinion. I want to answer based on the creation point of view. The question is:"Why does carbon have a priviledge to be the most common and basic
element of all living things on Earth?"So far the has been on answer posted and that was "because the good Lord decided to." That got me to think to post an answer more specific on maybe why God decided to use carbon. I appricate any help with this. Thanks ~ Erik

Thread moved here from the Proposed New Topics forum.

Carbon has that position because it has the near-unique ability to form largish molecules with lots of carbons joined each to each, as well as being able to bond through oxygen or nitrogen atoms. It can serve as the scaffold, in other words, for proteins, sugars, fats, and the other complex molecules that make up life."Why God decided to use carbon" is a little ways off my ability to answer - maybe the Big Guy didn't have the foresight to set silicon or germanium up with the ability to catenate like carbon does. I think that it might be that their d-orbitals get in the way, but what do I know?And welcome to EvC, kallcium!!!!

The reason that life is built on carbon is really pretty simple. Carbon reacts with lots of materials, has an unfilled shell, and easily builds long chains and rings.But it's also one of the strongest evidences that the universe is not 4.6 billion years old, but many times older than that.For carbon to even exist, stars must have lived, and died.You, the grass you walk on, the air you breathe, the clothes you wear, the keyboard you typed on were all made by dying stars. Fourteen billion years or so ago, there wasn't any carbon. No carbon, no life.There are other possibilities, silicon based life as one. It too has the unfilled shell needed, but doesn't form long chains and rings as readily as carbon. But silicon was made long after carbon.So the Creationist answer (and I happen to be a Christian Creationist) is that life is based on carbon because the rules that GOD put in place many tens of billions of years ago, the rules of physics and chemistry, made carbon the most likely base for life.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Thanks. I appricate that. I didnt think about the sugars and fats it combines with. I just answered it pretty much the same way you just said, its ability to for with other atoms to make amino acids nesessary to life and that they and DNA break down in oxygen and UV radiation so that decompisition is possible to continue the cycles on Earth without of which the life on Earth would slowly die off. So God just decided to make Carbon to have that property and used it to form life. I also added a link to drdino. com . Now I just will have to wait to see how the instructor takes this since our book is mostly about evolution. I will probably add to my answer on our student builiten board about the sugars and fats and anything else you guys post for me to use to add to it. so keep em coming

Actually it says the earth formed 4.6 billion years ago why the universe formed 15 billion years ago. I do believe the world is not that old but more like 6000 years old. I know that is contrivertial to many. I may not have all the answers like how carbon could exist if the world is that young but it doesn't mean that carbon couldn't have just been created by God to begin with while stars do create carbon and the 90 other elements (H and He were already in the nebulas when the formed) today. Plus since I believe time is a created thing, it can be altered ie as you get close to the speed of light time slows down as was proven with atomic clocks for astronaughts in space stations for long periods of time. and some stars at the far reaches of the universe are moving at a speed that is a considerable fraction of the speed of light slowing down time for them.

Adding a link to Dr. Dino will only get you snickers and giggles.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Oh, no!

oh well let em. This is an online class and it seems that people dont reply to others posts all that often.

Actually out of the 3 people including me, and this is amazing, we all mentioned the Lord. I actually just got a reply about dr dino and the comment was "sweet site" so not giggles and snickering yet.

Well, almost all of your post is OT, but it's so wrong that I have to respond. Again, please get some very very basic info before you print something like that on a term paper. It will just get you a great big zero as a grade. We have some great threads here on time and relativity as well as several members that actually work in the field.Get a little basic knowledge before venturing down that path. That's fine. You are free to believe anything. No one here will tell you to believe differently. What we will tell you is that is simply wrong and impossible. For an easy example (and it is only one of the many, many things that falsifies the Young Earth idea) check out Message 1.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

kallcium, That's because the "sweet site" guy/gal is unfamiliar with science. If he were he would realise the laughable nature of Dr Dino's claims. If I didn't know better, I'd have said Kent Hovind was a spoof of creationists to make them look silly.This is OT for this thread, but if you want, start a new thread & bring your best Hovind argument with you. Just to show you how absurd he is, not to have a pop at your good self.Mark

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There are 10 kinds of people in this world; those that understand binary, & those that don't

Two questions that I would ask kallcium are who hosts this internet class and who makes up the student body taking this course.If the students/instructor are from a Christian education/homeschool background, they may give an entirely different reaction to Hovind's site then a public school group may.The fact that we know that Hovind is a fraud doesn't mean that the people reading Kallcium's answers do.

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not wanting to send the thread down a Hovind path, I have some advice.Dr Dino, Hovind, is one of those people that rely on fancy rhetoric and strawmen to attack evolution. May I recommend you change it to a link to AiG or ICR? They are much stronger sites that set about Young Earth Creationism in a way superior to Hovind. They are more intellectually honest than Hovind, and generally present stronger arguments because of it.

Actually, "the good Lord decided to" isn't as frivolous as it may sound.In fact, the atoms of the periodic table make up every possible combination - hydrogen has one proton, helium has two protons... carbon has six protons, etc.Similarly, every possible combination of electrons is used.So it isn't that God pulled Carbon's name out of a hat. Carbon just happens to be the one combination that is best suited to forming life.

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