How did life begin?

[vhawk01]

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"Which of these great cosmic questions does a belief in the Christian God answer? Why we are here? Of course not, it merely pushes the question back a step."

Of course not? If you say, "God created man but only he knows why" I think that offers a good answer to people looking for the truth. Can something arrive from nothing? Not according to any science I've ever heard. Saying there is a God explains why things exist.

I'm not saying we shouldn't question it. I'm saying that comparing it to something we know is just a myth or made up like the Easter Bunny or Santa is ridiculous. As for proofs I'm not going to post them, you can google them easily. Accounts of verdical NDE's (where the dead patient sees/hears things later verified to be true) or out of body experiences raise eyebrows, as well as a bunch of other things that I can't remember a whole lot about. The common "science" explanation for a lot of supernatural phenomena is severely lacking - however, they don't need to be considered as nothing supernatural holds up as scientific evidence, so believing it or not is your choice.

As for life being meaningless, well...if we KNEW that we'd die and go to heaven, wouldn't life be so much different? If you were ever a Christian you wondered why people didn't look forward to death more or try to basically live out there lives as fast as possible. I mean, eternal paradise is a hell of a lot better than what we have here isn't it? If there is a God I can logically assume two things - BECAUSE of this he probably wouldn't (or even couldn't) make his existance 100% known, and also that he wouldn't make a universe that's not scientifically explainable. Science is just a collection of assumptions made from repeated observations and testing. How could a universe NOT be scientifically explainable? Which is why I doubt science, even evolutionary science is going to disprove God at all.

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Can something come from nothing? You say no. Ok...where did God come from?

[vhawk01]

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I said that God would make a universe that is scientifically explainable, and as such the fact that we can explain things with science doesn't disprove God. Unicorns have nothing to do with this...they don't create the universe!

It's true that you could never disprove the *existance* of unicorns somewhere, but I think it's fundimentally different than the argument we're having here. Of course I know I'm gonna get a lot of disagreement on this but I cannot logically compare the two.

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You mean you can't EMOTIONALLY compare the two. A logical comparison is extremely simple, and I've shown you exactly how its done in this very thread.

[Justin A]

Wow this thread got really derailed. It's too bad because I think the OP could have lent to an interesting discussion rather than the debate between vhawk and sitnhit.

[John21]

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The only theory I've ever heard is panspermia which frankly seems slightly off the wall and in any case just shifts the problem to somewhere else in the universe. If you could give me any further insight as to current theories and any evidence for them that would be greatly appreciated.

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I think one of the problems is thinking about the whole process from a strictly materialistic standpoint, rather than patterns or structure of energy.

When we look at how the human species is currently evolving, it has very little to do with the physical composition of our brains or bodies. What seems to be more influential to our development is the intangible, non-material aspect of our being. Going back to when language first began, then through abstract concept formation and things like logic, mathematics, philosophy, and scientific theory, we're really just looking at the evolution of thought patterns.

I guess it had to start with us thinking, but in a fairly short period of time, it became how we thought, or the structure of thought. If we put a group of babies on an island without teaching them language or anything else, their lifestyle probably wouldn't differentiate much from a tribe of monkeys. Even though they have the physical capacity for language and higher thought, it would probably take hundreds if not thousands of years to even come close to what we call civilization. Or to evolve to a point where their behavior was distinguishable from primates.

Aside from those intangible non-materialistic patterns of thought, which we call knowledge, there's nothing else that separates us from a tribe of feral-monkey people. Those patterns of thought or knowledge - what to think and how to think - is the thing being replicated, and it's really a non-thing. Even though we pass along and communicate knowledge and thought patterns through physical means, what we're communicating is not physical - it's just a structure. And ultimately a structure or pattern of energy.

[Phil153]

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I think one of the problems is thinking about the whole process from a strictly materialistic standpoint, rather than patterns or structure of energy.

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Let's not confuse the issue. The OP is 100% a materialistic question. The question is:

How did we get from lava to the first functioning cells?

[MidGe]

Let stay to the point, the question is how did life start.


In the universe the size it is, and chaotic as it is, life is highly probable. I am sure as technological means improve, and we are just at the very beginning of these discoveries, we will find life in many places. I think it is more amazing that we haven't find more of it yet, although considering that we are not even scratching the surface when it comes to other planets it is understandable.

I mean really the only thing needed is a replicating molecule to occur anywhere amongst the billions and billions of collisions, between molecules and atoms, following the laws of chemistry, that would occur anywhere, billions and billions of places, billions and billions of such collisions in the period of time considered, even on earth alone. The first replicator thus accidentally formed is most likely to win and is by all definitions alive.


My bet is that there are many such replicators existing throughout the universe. The overall winner is not yet likely to be known today. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[NotReady]

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it seems that the chance of life occuring spontaneously is all but zero.


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A fairly old book you might be interested in can be found in part at Coppedge

[MidGe]

Sorry, you mean the James F Coppedge, founder of the Rangers and Christian Commandos and the Valley Cathedral Youth Center (Northridge, CA)?


LOL

[Phil153]

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I mean really the only thing needed is a replicating molecule to occur anywhere amongst the billions and billions of collisions, between molecules and atoms, following the laws of chemistry, that would occur anywhere, billions and billions of places, billions and billions of such collisions in the period of time considered, even on earth alone. The first replicator thus accidentally formed is most likely to win and is by all definitions alive.

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Midge,

I think you're trivializing the enormity of the problem. Abiogenesis is far from a solved problem, and you require a lot more steps than just a replicator. The are huge number of intermediate steps needed, and the best experts in the world currently have no clue how they occured and no credible pathway through that maze. A simple molecule soup of trillions to the nth power, in the absence of other factors, is not enough to generate life.

Obviously, people who believe God started it are pitiful clowns, but you're making an error here too. To state that abiogenesis is almost certain requires placing faith in materialism and the current model of natural history. It is not science.

Who knows what weird result we will find (maybe something as unlikely as Panspermia?). Curious minds have certainly been surprised in the past.

[vhawk01]

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Wow this thread got really derailed. It's too bad because I think the OP could have lent to an interesting discussion rather than the debate between vhawk and sitnhit.

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I did my best to answer the question in the OP, and I think there were several useful posts on the matter. But I apologize for my part in the thread hijack.