man created...

Even though I am in fact Christian, I do believe in the theory of evolution. The start of the universe I'm not sure one, like most others. The whole Adam and Eve thing makes a nice story, but evolution is more practical and realistic. Following the religious version you do get the pleasure of blaming everything that goes wrong on women though.

All I really know of the story of creation is from the christian bible. I don't know if it's any different in say Hinduism or Islam.

As a lover of all sciences, I do not have a bias against any theories solely on the basis of religion; I accept what makes most sense to me. However, I don't accept some things about the theory of evolution. While adaptation and survival of the fittest make sense, I simply can't believe that all life started from some single-celled organisms floating about in the sea. This idea makes about as much sense as Adam and Eve, if you think about it.

Maybe I'm not understanding something... but long nucleic acid chains (whether RNA or DNA), the basis for life don't randomly synthesize themselves out in the ocean; or if they do, probably not in lengths that can create life. And if, somehow, such a creature did come into existence, how would it sustain itself? What would it eat? How would it adapt to its environment? How would it reproduce?

And what about what Charles Darwin describes simply as "instinct"? Or these small details about animals that most of us overlook...for example, the chemical reaction that lights up a firefly-- it produces 98% light and 2% heat, while our light bulbs produce 2% light and 98% heat. Look at a beaver-- they build complex dens, with entrances underwater, fit to a size to allow only themselves to enter. They build dams, complete with the efficient arc-structure seen in man-made dams so that they can make for themselves a hunting area.

Those are just a few examples, but do you think that such complex behavior can simply be "instinct"? I would categorize instinct as the need to eat, to drink, to visit the w.c. (that what you European buddies call it? ) and to reproduce. Maybe animals have their own ways of communicating and teaching... but this is ubiquitous across the world, as most animal behavior is.

I know it seems superstitious to simply explain all unexplained behavior as the work of God... but, the theory of evolution does not adequately explain many natural phenomena.

Well I was going to make a thread about evolution at some point ... but here it is.

Samosa, no offense, but I disagree.
Evolution *did* produce all the species we find today.
In the old days, how was evolution judged? By paleontolic evidence, by looking at morphological similarities between different species. For instance, think about this: Embryonic organisms (that is, an organism after conception) all have VERY similar morphologies to each other, within the vertebrate species. A fish embroyo does not look much different to a chicken embroyo, and a chicken embryo does not look much different from a human embryo. What does that suggest? It all derives from the same origin, that is the body/limp mapping of the organism. I agree though, with this much evidence, more questions arise than questions that are answered.
Anyway, so much on a morphological basis.

Now, for the past 30 years or so things have gone a tad molecular. There was a very famous experiment done in 1963 that provided the basis for molecular evolution, by Miller. In the experiment, this guy did something very simple but yet unknown to this point: He refluxed a gaseous mixture of CH4, NH3, H2O, N2 and CO2. This was done in a circular apparatus, where at one point things were brought to the boil, and where the resultant gases were subjected to a continuous electric spark. This was then, on the other side of the apparatus, allowed to condense, and was moved back to the spot where things were brought to boil. You can see where I am getting at I hope. These gases are currently thought to be the contents of the prebiotic atmosphere (a similar atmosphere is found on the moon Europa for instance, orbiting jupiter), i.e. the atmosphere before life arose (hence oxygen deficient). The electric spark... now, in the prebiotic era, volcanoes were a lot more active, and thus atmospheric turbulences. Hence more ligthening, hence electric sparks.
Basically, this experiment sought to mimic prebiotic conditions AS CLOSE AS POSSIBLE.

Anyway, guess what the result was?
After a few days of reacting time, 12 of all 20 amino acids contained in living organisms today were found. This is, more than half of all amino acids that we have in our bodies were naturally produced at times before life existed! In addition... sugars were produced. Plus, many derivatives of cyanide, and cyanate, which are precursors to the bases contained in DNA and RNA.

Other workers carried this further. They found that nearly all amino acids (all but lysine IIRC) were produced if certain clay materials were present, which seemed to catalyse the reaction. In addition, ALL of the four bases (adenine, guanidine, cytosine and thymidine) of DNA/ RNA were synthesised too.

Isn't that amazing? The chemical constituents of prebiotic earth NATURALLY produced all the reagents necessary for life to form. Thats coincidence number 1.

Coincidence number two is this (I tried to tell this my dad, an ardous religious person, but no evidence ever is going to convince him... he thinks that man is differnent from other animals by a godly intervention):

Molecular Genetics. Monkeys are 99.9 % identical to us humans, that means, 3-40000 genes, and 3.2 billion basepairs (!!!! (that is, combinations of A, G, C, Ts ! )) hardly differ from our own. How can anyone claim then that we dont derive from the monkey??
Of course we do. We are similar in morphology, but in terms of genes we are virtually *identical*.
Now I dont know whether you heard of the 3 different classes of life, eukarya, bacteria and archeae. In english, that is single cell organisms such as yeast, plants and animals (eukarya), bacteria (prokarya) and archeae (ancient bacteria, with differnt types of cell walls etc - those are the ones you find at hot springs etc).
Anyway, molecular genetics found (by comparing certain housekeeping genes such as the ribosomal ones, which are essential for the survival of the organism) that INSECTS are similiar to us, in that that at least 50 % of the DNA sequence is shared. Simple bacteria, such as E. coli (living in your gut) share 40 % identity to our own genes!
Of course, bacteria have many genes we dont have, but 40% of their sequence is IDENTICAL to us! Now, this cant be a coincidence, can it?

Ok, now one may question how a collection of amino acids, sugars, DNA/RNA bases led to the formation of a very simple prebiotic organism. This type of organism probably wasnt an organsim as we see it today.
Just a little experiment: If you heat up all of the amino acids in a test tube (yes, all 20 or 19 of them), you get random polymerisation.
Then you dissolve it, and test for random enzymatic activities. Guess what they found? Virtually all compounds that were tested (and testable, i.e. you look for cleavage of a compound by means of absorbance) were degraded by some miniscule random enzymatic activities, which were generated by the polymerisation of the amino acids! In other words, RANDOM led already to some very specific chemical reactions!
Now, you have 2 billion years of time, and several square billion kilometers of surface, and all their corresponding chemical reactions. Don't you think that just may be enough time to randomly yield a very simple RNA-based replicating machinery? Lipid micelles readily form, so do random enzymatic activities... dont you think in one case, over those two billion years, it happens that such a simple molecular machinery is self-sustaining? It doesnt have to be a complex machinery at all, all that is needed is a simple enzymatic activity that randomly polymerises amino acids. Given enough time, this activity may become more specific.. and at that point, obviously, the ball is rolling, and selection/evolution starts to gain importance. But evolution is limited by the environment, i.e. there was a need for continious influx of amino acids, RNA bases, lipids. Eventually, enzymatic activities developed that internally produced energy, i.e. by electron coupling. Then evolution took it's course, based on the fittest molecular machinery. I guess you can figure the rest...

Anyway, this is just a very rough draft of what happened, and I left out many things. I dont claim (nor does anyone) that molecular evolution is fully and 100% explained, but will we ever? Besides, not even 50 years ago, people didnt even get close to explaining ANYTHING (This to my opinion, this ignornace, is in part responsible for people being overly religious).
At least, now, we can explain a lot already, which makes total and utter sense. Who is to say, in 200 years from now, we are not able to explain most aspects of evolution?

I think the evidence is pointing towards that most of these things can be explained rationally. Most religious people (without scientific background) claim that man was made by god, and thats why we differ from monkeys. At least we now know that monkeys are in fact very very similar to us, and even simple friggin bacteria have many similarities. If there was a godly invention at any point during evolution, it would have been a comparably small one.
To me, science can explain most of evolution. Someday it will explain 99.9 %. Hence I dont think god (if he exists) interfered there (with respect to directing evolution). If anything (and that's the only explanation acceptable to me), god set the rules, the constants of the universe, and everythign was allowed to progress on its own thereafter.

PS Since you mention all sorts of creatures doing this or that, I have to refute that one - they do it because that is what enabled their survival. Without it the species would have gone extinct. You dont know of the species that HAVE gone extinct, for they are gone, but those that have survived (including us) found themselves a nice biological niche, such as beavers, kangarooes, plants, fish etc etc.It's all an equilibrium, one species lives off the other. If there are more species, additional species will evolve BECAUSE they couldnt evolve without the other species being present. Such as Vultures (), Rats, wolves, etc which all evolved because they could feed on dead animals etc - hence a niche that needs to be filled.

PS2 I did a half year course on molecular evolution, and this was one of the most fascinating ones i ever did. I can, if you are interested, send you one of the essays i wrote on chemical evolution, i.e. Millers experiment and what followed after that.

PS3 bloody hell, that is an essay by its own right! At least make an effort to read this, you lazy gits!

[Edited on 14-1-2004 by chemoleo]

Think of it as a self recusrive algorithm

Lets say you have 2 diferent 'starting materials' yo have at first only 2 possible combinations.But if you consider those two to be a 'block' you have more and so on.Thats a simplification too but just alittle perspective

Although,look at microproscers.An Athln 64 is a hell of a lot more complex than an ameaba after all.

My bad

Miller's experiment seems pretty conclusive, and I can understand the formation of peptides, DNA, nucleic aids etc. (Although Miller's theory has been under fire lately, supposedly the ancient earths atmosphere was much different from what he used in his experiment)

But have you ever thought about how the most important condition for life could have evolved? The lipidbilayer. Even microbial life would be impossible without this barrier from the environment with all the transporter proteins necessary to facilitate life. No phosphorous was present in the early earths atmosphere, but even if it was composed of other molecules, the formation of any stable bilayer structure with all transporter proteins and pores is just very unlikely...

[Edited on 20-1-2007 by nitro-genes]

Bilayered micelles can be reproduced artificially, though it requires complex molecules like lipids, of an exact length, high concentrations and the result is extremely fragile. shaking, stirring or simply not beeing carefull enough with a tube containing micelles will destroy them completely. En even when the bilayer has engulfed some self replicating molecules, it still needs pores to be able to interact with it's environment, a machinery to replicate new micelles to be able to multiply, and a cell wall to protect it. It would imply the evolution of all these traits at the same time so to say, which is puzzling...

I though the most promising theory explaining self replicating molecules was the dual role found for certain strands of RNA. IIRC, certain strands were able to "remember" their own configuration and form into ribozymes to catalyse their own replication at the same time. All this molecule would need to "live" would be more ribonucleic acid's...

Evolution violates the second law of thermodynamics....dur!

Hahaha JK!! But that is a very common and still persistant argument. Sad!





[Edited on 1/20/2007 by guy]


nullCreation Science Quiz

[Edited on 1/20/2007 by guy]