evolved from single cell

[Athena]

Quote by: The_Genius ...and I'll be waiting for them to create a living organism. :)

The question to Genius is why do you care so much that evolution is not true?

Do you realize that the spark of life you insist we create, could have come on a astroid from another place in the universe? We do not know all the anwers, only that all the evidence is life evolved. There is no scientific evidence at all to believe a God made one single human being from mud, and then made a woman from his rib. There is however cureiform writing passing down Sumerian stories of many gods and goddesses that Hebrews translated and changed in the translation, changing Niniti, a goddess who heals ribs, into Eve the woman made from a rib. The story of creation for all God of Abraham religions, comes from Sumerian stories of may gods, and there is even geological information placing the Garden of Eden in Iran.

A search for truth means considering all information. I don't think you are doing that.

[Athena]

Quote by: Isherwood Anyone with a microscope can discover that our bodies are host to "alien" creatures, mitochondria, that are not a part of us. They are what power our cells, and we'd die without them. Yet nothing in theology can account for this.

Did you read the opening post? Would you like more information explaining the process more completely?

[Epistemologist]

Perhaps the "rib" is an X chromosome. Just an inkling of a thought.

[Jack]

Would you like more information explaining the process more completely?

No thanks. I read the OP and have read about this before. I was answering a direct question from a few posts ago in a rather simplistic manner.

[Athena]

Quote by: Isherwood No thanks. I read the OP and have read about this before. I was answering a direct question from a few posts ago in a rather simplistic manner.

Too late I already went looking. I hope others might enjoy more information. This is a good site:

The First Living Cells The first beings were probably much like coacervates. As a group, these bacteria are called heterotrophic anaerobes (ann-air-robes). Because there was virtually no oxygen in the atmosphere at this time, these bacteria were necessarily anaerobic, meaning they did not breathe oxygen. Heterotrophs, meaning "other feeders", are simply organisms that cannot make their own food. So "heterotrophic anaerobes" means they were creatures which ate some naturally occurring food and did not breathe oxygen. The fossils of some these oldest known forms of life have been found in Australian rocks dating back 3.5 billion years. To create energy, these early bacteria probably consumed naturally occurring amino acids. Amino acids, sugars, and other organic compounds formed spontaneously in the atmosphere then dissolved in liquid water. Upon digesting these molecules, early bacteria produced methane and carbon dioxide as waste products. Fermenting bacteria would be an example from today of what these early creatures might have been like. To make beer you combine barley or wheat and water. The broken down barley and wheat turns into sugar. Bacteria eat the sugars and produce alcohol and carbon dioxide gas as waste products. In the early Earth, the alcohol and carbon dioxide became part of the natural environment. Over time, new life forms evolved which were able to get their energy from a different source -- the Sun!

[Jack]

Well, I'm glad I caused you to post that, as it is rather informative.

[Athena]

This is from the same site. Can we at least agree that this step of evolution had to occur before humans could be created? Or is it necessary to hold that God just spoke and reality as we know it popped into being ignoring all the science that explains life on earth?

Over a very long time, gradual changes in the earliest cells gave rise to new life forms. These new cells were very different from the earlier heterotrophs because they were able to get their energy from a new source -- the Sun. Organisms that are able to make their own food (in the form of sugars) by using the energy of the Sun are called autotrophs, meaning "self-feeders". Photosynthesis is the name of the process by which these autotrophs use energy from the sun and eat. Because the autotrophic bacteria were able to feed themselves by using the energy of the Sun, they were no longer dependent on the same limited food supply as their ancestors and were able to flourish. Over millions of years of evolution, photosynthetic bacteria eventually gave rise to modern day plants. The appearance of organisms capable of performing photosynthesis was very significant -- if it weren't for the photosynthetic activity of these early bacteria, Earth's atmosphere would still be without oxygen and the appearance of oxygen-dependent animals, including humans, would never have occurred!

[Athena]

Quote by: Epistemologist Perhaps the "rib" is an X chromosome. Just an inkling of a thought.

Ah, today we know cloning humans might be possible, but the clone is identical to the creature being cloned, and there would not be a sex change if a rib were used to clone another being. This is very important, because the reason for sex is to combine many genes and get variety, verses an ameba splitting, resulting in all that follows to be exactly the same as the first ameba.


Actually, stems cells might be cloneable, but I don't think we are even close to getting a full body with rib cells. Come to think of it, how long did Adam have to wait for his mate? How long did it take God to make Adam from mud? Wouldn't it have been easy to make Eve from mud than from Adam's rib? Given what we know today, how this bible story be told in a believable way? Eve was made from Adam's rib, because the story comes from the Sumerian story of many goddess and gods. Not because this is the way God did things.

[Epistemologist]

It's not necessarily because it's from the Sumerian story. But I was just alluding to the possibility that perhaps "rib" doesn't necessarily apply to a "somatic" entity.

Anyway, concerning the point of human cloning, a possible problem (besides the more obvious ones) is that there's not enough telomerase, the enzyme that reattaches the lost part of DNA during replication, so in a sense the clone has just as much "ticker tape" as the parent, while a newly born baby has more. The loss of these DNA parts during replication is the cause of aging. Remember that Dolly died the same year as her mom. Anyway, sorry for going off on a tangent.

[loser]

I'm sure this is the wrong way, but I'm going to work backwards on this thread.

Atheism and Evolution have nothing to do with each other.

I disagree. Evolution is contrary to creationism (God) and God is contrary to atheism. Both evolution and atheism reject God as the creator...they have this in common.

Many theists are comfortable with evolution and science in general.

That sounds like an unqualified statement which I won't debate. However, speaking for myself only, I am both a well-versed Christian and a well-read Scientist and my understanding reached from both of these refutes the commom teaching of evolution.

Just bad mouthing a theory is easy. To come up with a better theory isn't.

Actually, coming up with a better theory than the TOE is about the easiest thing I know. Saying Santa made us in his workshop at the North Pole is a better theory than the TOE...and a LOT less ridiculous, too!

What you might be referring to is that some of us object when someone attempts to refute evolution (which is only our best explanation to date, not an absolute answer) without offering a better, falsifiable explanation.

That reminded me of how my niece objected (got mad) when my daughters told her daughter (they were all around six and seven) there was no such thing as Santa Clause. People shouldn't get so upset when their fantasy beliefs are popped. Reality really is the best medicine.

I think evolution is invalid on scientific and logical grounds and I am bothered by how sacrosanct it has become to many (I don't think science should be unassailable, but everyone acts as if your disagreement in general terms with the theory means you're a caveman).

100% agreement, here!

I will admit that I know of no exact mechanism, as far as chemically and physically, to explain the first formation of life.

Mankind, with his EXTREMELY limited intelligence, has been able to accomplish mind-boggling feats in chemistry and physics. Yet, we have barely scratched the surface of the capabilities that are present, locked up in this magical world we call life.

It's not hard to imagine a super-intelligent race (as is often done in science-fiction) with greater abilities than the human race. However, if one puts God's face here, making Him the Creator of all things as we know it, suddenly a wall goes up, total rejection.

Why do you think this is?

I think it merely has to do with subservience or subjection. The words SERVANT or SLAVE or SUBJECT are not well received by most individuals...not many people want to be told how they should live their lives. FREEDOM is their anthem, and who can blame them. Is there any of us who don't appreciate freedom?

To me, it is REBELLION against a MASTER that keeps most people from believing in God...it has NOTHING to do with logic or science or reason.

Theists that disagree with evolution have a immature understanding of the scripture, interpreting it literalistically when, at least as far as the bible, it often was not intended to be read as such.

Not really, it is my maturation in the sciences that force me to reject evolution. My religion just confirms my scientific understanding.

Yet nothing in theology can account for this.

Why does it need to? Does Einstein's Theory of Relativity account for these things? The Bible is an instruction manual that tells mankind how he should live his life. Its not a graduate level microbiology textbook. You expect more from it than was intended. God gave mankind room to grow. He gave us a brain and He would like to see us use it.

I have been arguing about evolution with theists for awhile now. I don't think I ever once learned why theists have a problem with the theory of evolution besides the fact that it has holes in it.

I know that there are a lot of superstitious 'Christians' out there (blame it on the Catholic church) but I still find your statement hard to believe. I am a scientist, first and foremost. I also believe in God and ID (intelligent design). The Bible is FULL of ADVANCED SCIENTIFIC DEVELOPMENT! It describes flying apparatus powered by gyroscopic means (still under development by scientists as a means of interstellar travel) in Ezekiel. It describes a city-ship (spaceship) measuring over 1400 miles cubed (in Revelation)! Even the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil are surely not literally trees but are, more than likely, advanced scientific technology, still way beyond mankind's scope and ability. The Bible is full of Science but when it is UNDISCOVERED science, it appears to be MYTH and MAGIC!

That our bodies are host to many unique creatures is both falsifiable and impossible to explain in a theological context.

That's totally ridiculous. In fact, there are MANY verses which mention those (often parasitic) organisms living within the human body. The inclusion of parasitic and/or symbiotic organisms within or upon other living organisms has no bearing on the reality of creation.

Refute science all you want, I will just keep posting links that discuss successful experiments and tests that show how evolution is currently a great explanation for predicting how life works.

I don't refute science, I refute science fiction! There is good science (truth) and there is bad science (fiction). The TOE is an example of the latter. I don't care how many experiments and tests show that aliens are a good explanation for crop circles, it will still be science fiction...and only the most gullible will believe.

The theory of evolution does not stand alone. It is supported by increasing understanding of the earth and our bodies.

Untrue. As our understanding increases, evolution will be phased out. In a real world, fantasy won't hold up.

Are you arguing that is more believable that a God walked on the earth and made a human being from mud? Our bodies are like other animals; they are not like mud. How is it believable that our bodies were made out of mud?

Most living things are organic, composed of Carbon, Hydrogen, and Oxygen, among many other trace elements. Most non-living things are inorganic, composed primarily of Silicate and Oxygen and trace metals. Water is the key ingredient in organic life and is useful for making mud.

There's little difference between the notion of evolution and the notion of creation. In creation, a Supreme Intellect, called God, synthesized (like a chemist) the various kinds of life from inorganic building blocks (your mud). In evolution, these inorganic building blocks (your mud again), by chance, came together and formed the simplest life, a single cell, which by random mutation through billions of years, evolved into more and more complex life forms.

Forget God for a moment. Look around the world we live in. Look at all the things that you see: houses, park benches, automobiles, cities, roads, bridges, airplanes, shoes, toothpicks, Suzanne Somers' Thigh Master. Now, you've just landed on this planet and you are wondering about the origins of these items. Are you going to deduce that these items evolved from some less complex configuration or do you think that you might come to the conclusion that someone created them?

If the intelligent design of very simple objects like toothpicks and park benches are immediately surmised, how can we think any differently when we look at a computer or a tree or a human or a planet or a galaxy?

No, it is the incredibly intricate and diverse design of life that makes God so believable and evolution so ridiculous.

I don't know any other reason why you have a problem with the theory of evolution.

Its simply illogical and irrational and bad science.

You really have to leave your brain at the door to believe in evolution.

This subject is science. It is presented here, because a religious person is arguing against the theory of evolution. I will quote for Lewis Thomas's book "The Lives of a Cell".

Why didn't you just quote from Lewis Carroll's "Alice in Wonderland"? Just because some man says something, all of a sudden that's law?

IMO, this guy doesn't have all of his lights shining. He says some really dumb things like:

"We are not made up, as we had always supposed, of successively enriched packets of our own parts. (that is, we were not created the way the bible says we were created)."

What great erudition! He must have read that on a box of Quaker Grits.

At the interior of our cells, driving them, providing the oxidative energy that sends us out for the improvement of each shining day, are the mitochondria, and in a strict sense they are not ours, They turn out to be little separate creatures, the colonial posterity of migrant prokaryocytes, probably primitive bacteria that swam into ancetral precursors of our eukaryotic cell and stayed there.

Don't forget those killer lymphocytic T-cells that make up a part of our immune system. They definitely seem to have a mind of their own.

Life evolved from single cell creatures as a result of symbiotic relationships. That is, one cell helping another live and visa versa.

Actually, life was DESIGNED that way, full of symbiotic relationships. That is, one big family helping one another, teaching us all that we cannot go through life without helping and being helped.

[Jack]

Why do you think this is? I think it merely has to do with subservience or subjection. The words SERVANT or SLAVE or SUBJECT are not well received by most individuals...not many people want to be told how they should live their lives. FREEDOM is their anthem, and who can blame them. Is there any of us who don't appreciate freedom? To me, it is REBELLION against a MASTER that keeps most people from believing in God...it has NOTHING to do with logic or science or reason.

What an egotistical and misguided opinion. You claim evolution lacks support in the face of years of experimentation that indicates otherwise, then propose a god that lacks any evidence at all. Why do I reject your notion of gods? Because believers have failed to offer any reason to think they could exist at all beyond faith that they do. Don't forget, the god you have in mind is far from the only god people believe in. None have been proven to exist, all are baseless suppositions. I reject them all as fantasies whether or not their followers claim they'll subjugate me or reward me with eternal life, 42 virgins or anything else.

Forget God for a moment. Look around the world we live in. Look at all the things that you see: houses, park benches, automobiles, cities, roads, bridges, airplanes, shoes, toothpicks, Suzanne Somers' Thigh Master. Now, you've just landed on this planet and you are wondering about the origins of these items. Are you going to deduce that these items evolved from some less complex configuration or do you think that you might come to the conclusion that someone created them?

Even theistic scientists reject the watchmaker analogy as weak and incomplete, except for a few like Michael Behe. He couldn't even convince the Kansas school board of his position.

The watchmaker argument is not a proof, it is an analogy. As most other analogies it is quite lame. It is contradictive, misses many important features, does not aid us in knowing who the watchmaker is, and most important does not stand alone as evidence of god, but must rely on external evidence. Therefore the argument does not the least prove that the world was designed by a superhuman being.

The Watchmaker argument

Its simply illogical and irrational and bad science.

So you say. Can you elaborate, provide some examples?

[Gods_Mercenary]

May I also say that evolution doesn't explain the origin of life, but the origin of species.

[Athena]

Loser, do you know of Deism? Deist, and others, believe their is a God, but do not interpret the bible literally. When we interpret the bible abstractly, the story of creation is like a fable or parable, not to be taken literally. This abstract interpretation of the bible, makes it a valuable holy book to those who find the bible stories other than factual. Past president Jefferson was a deist, and he attempted to edit the bible so it conforms with science. It is possible to buy a copy of his edited version today. Some argue he wasn't a Christian and others would argue that he was a Christian.

Check out Tielard de Chardin. He was a Catholic priest who explained evolution as God's plan.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Teilhard's primary book, The Phenomenon of Man, set forth a sweeping account of the unfolding of the cosmos. He abandoned a literal interpretation of creation in the Book of Genesis in favor of a metaphorical interpretation. This displeased certain officials in the Catholic Curia, who thought that it undermined the doctrine of original sin developed by Saint Augustine. Teilhard's position was opposed by his church superiors, and his work was denied publication during his lifetime by the Roman Holy Office.

[Gods_Mercenary]

That's not just deism, catholics and many protestants interpret them as myths as well.

[phoenix_fire]

Loser, I think most disbelief is far more insidious than that. You assume that atheists outright reject God. This has not been my experience. You guys catch me if I'm wrong: but from my observation, atheism is not about rejecting God, but about living in a manner that assumes His nonexistence. That may seem obvious and identical, but it is a very fine distinction. Someone once said (and I forget the cite) that the Devil's best trick was convincing the world that he didn't exist.

[Jack]

atheism is not about rejecting God, but about living in a manner that assumes His nonexistence.

Hey, give the little lady a rose...she gets it. Yes, except I tend to say presumes. Only because half the time when you use assumes some jerkbreath comes along and has to use the old, "You know that makes an ass of you and me" post, and I hate people who do that.

the Devil's best trick was convincing the world that he didn't exist.

Eh, every point of view carries its attendent risks.

[Athena]

My big issue with the creationist story is the Christian understanding of it, and therefore, the Christian understanding of human nature, which really sucks, and is not the same as the Jewish understanding.

Jewish Perspectives the acceptance of the Augustinian doctrine in Roman Catholic and much of (western) Protestant Christianities, the strict prohibition against abortion is perfectly consistent: It must accordingly be said that when Catholics reputedly decide to "let the mother die" rather than allow an abortion, they are not at all being cruel, merely consistent with a logical concern. The mother has been presumably baptized as an infant; let her die and "go to her reward." But let the child be brought to term and baptized and saved from perdition. So sincere is this concern that theologians at the Sorbonne in the nineteenth century invented a baptismal syringe, wherewith to baptize a fetus in utero in the event of a spontaneous abortion, a miscarriage. [ftn. 10: St. Fulgentius, De Fide 27, cited by E. Westermarck, The Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas (1908), vol. I, pp. 416-17. On the use of the Syringe in baptism, see H. W. Haggard, Devils, Drugs and Doctors (New York, 1929), p. 4.] (84) [John T. Noonan, representing the Catholic perspective in these materials, insists that Christian opposition to abortion has nothing to do with ensoulment or concerns regarding infant baptism.] As with the debate over ensoulment, the debate over original sin remains a debate within Christian communities. Judaism preserves the earlier Jewish and pre-Augustinian understanding of the Garden story as a story about individual sinfulness - sinfulness which can be atoned for and overcome by individuals. Judaism thereby squarely rejects the Augustinian teaching - that the soul emplaced in the fetus is already diseased with a sinful nature inherited by all human beings. Accordingly, the especially Catholic sense of urgency regarding the baptism of the fetus otherwise condemned is ...a concern that the Jewish community cannot share. Having no such concept of original sin, we recite daily in our prayers something that comes directly from the Talmud: "My God, the soul with which thou hast endowed me is pure." We inherit a pure soul, which becomes contaminated only by our own misdeeds. By that token, early abortion would send a fetus to heaven in a state of pristine purity! (84)

[Gods_Mercenary]

Quote by: phoenix_fire Loser, I think most disbelief is far more insidious than that. You assume that atheists outright reject God. This has not been my experience. You guys catch me if I'm wrong: but from my observation, atheism is not about rejecting God, but about living in a manner that assumes His nonexistence. That may seem obvious and identical, but it is a very fine distinction. Someone once said (and I forget the cite) that the Devil's best trick was convincing the world that he didn't exist.

Well, then again, so do many people who call themselves theists

[shunyadragon]

Quote by: The_Genius ...and I'll be waiting for them to create a living organism. :)

What if they succeeded? What would you say than?

The serious research into abiogenesis is less than ten or fifteen years old, because prior to this time we lacked the basic knowledge of the biochemistry of genetics. The first major research projects in Japan and the USA are only recently recieved significant funds. We know have the basics and it is possible that science may succeed in the near future.

[Fonceai]

Catching up so far...

I want to mention something about the Rib = X Chromosome

We're created in God's image... but not fully gods ourselves.

That might mean the Y is God and the X is Human.

Though I'm now suggesting that men are closer to God than women...

The funny thing is that science has yet to discover how life began. Even the mingling proteins idea just can't be recreated with any certainty or longevity. It's one of the many things that baffles science; where did the cell come from.

That, and the speed of evolution, considering how fast things went from single-celled to multi-celled and then to complex multi-celled.