Sciencemadness Discussion Board

man created...

ahlok2002 - 13-1-2004 at 11:24

base on the view of some religion that man created.......but in the scince we belive man and other livings things are evolving that give rise to the diversity! what do you think ?

Mumbles - 13-1-2004 at 15:14

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:D.

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.

DDTea - 13-1-2004 at 17:19

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.

chemoleo - 13-1-2004 at 18:28

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 :D - 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 (:D), 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]

DDTea - 13-1-2004 at 19:13

Oh no doubt, humans share many genes with other animals, particularly primates. From what I gathered from my High School Biology course, there were common ancestors from which new creatures emerged. I wouldn't say we derived from monkeys, however.

Still, evolution still feels like an awful stretch to my little mind-- I mean, life is much more than Nucleic Acid chains and proteins, no? To me, even little eukaryotic life seems too extremely complex to be synthesized from gases and lightning and high heat. I dare not say it's impossible, and I will be looking into this experiment you described, but it just feels like a stretch. I suppose my school system's curriculum on evolution has been so overly simplified that I could not get a clear picture of the theory as it is today.

Iv4 - 17-1-2004 at 01:19

Think of it as a self recusrive algorithm :D

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.

Blind Angel - 17-1-2004 at 02:29

Well if you give a chemical reaction an almost unlimited amount of reageant and vessel, it will mostly "runaway" and go by itself. I look man and life in general like a chemical reaction that went "bad" (that started spontanously then ranaway) and ended by sustaining itself (to the limit of the thermodynamic law)

Also, in chemistry it's pretty hard without the proper equipement to create only one molecule at the time, so once one was created, forcely many other followed, and the hardest part was to create the first (to found the good combination).

And think of that, once life began it also started to influence it's environnement and that at an exponential rhytm.

Polverone - 17-1-2004 at 12:01

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

You are so very wrong.

Hermes_Trismegistus - 17-1-2004 at 20:17

Quote:
Originally posted by Polverone
Quote:
Although,look at microproscers.An Athln 64 is a hell of a lot more complex than an ameaba after all.

You are so very wrong.


absolutely, And even if we did manage to create a microchip or machine whose complexity was several times that of the most complex living organism, It would still lack so much.

It would lack the intrinsic wonder in the simple ameoba, that subltle magic that lies only in life.

Any microchip is simply a construct, it's finest moment lies at the moment of its construction. After that.....only entropy and degradation, only failure. The humble amoeba can thrive in its simplicity and has the potential to spawn an entire race of godlike superbeings.

A chip, is just a chip.

My bad

Iv4 - 6-2-2004 at 07:24

Sorry for the delay.

Bad example, but I was just saying that it sounds like a miracle to us now. But to the first crow magion this website is a miracle.

Not to mention that it didnt hapen over a few seconds but over billions of years.

IgnorantlyIntelligent - 7-2-2004 at 14:30

I'm atheist. I was raised Christian but quikley ignored the proposterous lies that had been fead to me my entire life. At about the age of ten I became atheist and have no doubt in my mind that there is no god. As infinite and-for lack of a better word-amazing as the universe is there is an explenation for everything. I find it easier to believe that the universe and all its many inhabitants just "came to be" rather than a super powerful force known as god "just came to be."
The scary thing is that one day, all beit a hell of a long time off, there will be no life. Absolutely no life at all ever again. As the universe expands, the stars burn out, the hydrogen is burnt up, gravitational bonds between planets grow weak and planets stray from their ever so important neighbors, we are reaching the end slowly.
Another thing that is unexplainable is death. I have researched this alittle and asked my bio teacher and she agrees, there is no reason for humnas or any living thing to die. We are self-sustaining as long as we have the proper neutriants and pretection we need. in theory, living things shouldnt stop growing. We reach liek 50 years old and it's all down hill. We actually shrink slightly. Its liek we too have a half-life. Yet our bodies molecules are simply broken down, and re-absorbed in the world.

Saerynide - 7-2-2004 at 19:45

One reason organisms die is because of the enzyme telomerase, which repairs the telomeres at the the ends of our DNA. During fetal developement, it is produced and used alot, but as we get older, its not made very much and is stored away. So as we get older and older, more and more telomeres are cut off everytime mitosis occurs, until parts of genes start to get cut off, cells die or malfunction.
Some types of cancer cells in which telomerase is uncontrolled are able to divide and live forever.

Of course, telomerase is not the only reason which makes us mortal.

IgnorantlyIntelligent - 10-2-2004 at 17:54

Yes but those reasons we are mortal...what causes them. If cells slow their mitosis, why? Evolution should have worked on that instead of giving us uneeded things like the heiman skin in females.

gil - 18-1-2007 at 20:22

Some genes may be more similar betwenn a man adn a chimp that bewteenn 2 men. FACT>

Sauron - 18-1-2007 at 21:38

I see no conflict between theistic beliefs and Darwinism

Only the narrowest, most foolishly liter interpretation of scripture would demand belief that the world is only 25,000 years old, or that man was created as a finished work in present form, woman from Adam's rub and all that malarky that is clearly allegorical and written not by God but by miscellaneous nomadic desert dwelling zealots.

Why should not the most sophisticated modern mechanistic view of cosmology, biology etc. encompass the possibility that a divine creator stands behind everything from the Big BAng onward?

Unprovable, a matter of faith.

If one prefers an entirely materialistic, atheistic view of the same events there are still unanswered questions.

Most physicists and chemists these days especially as they get older and wiser tend to some sort of mysticism or religiosity. This is because nothing convinces more effectively than an appreciation of the underlying logic and order of the universe and of life, that there has to be Something or Someone in back of it all no matter what name you elect to call that.

Personally I tend toward agnosticism.

DrP - 19-1-2007 at 01:29

Quote:
Originally posted by Sauron
I see no conflict between theistic beliefs and Darwinism

Only the narrowest, most foolishly liter interpretation of scripture would demand belief that the world is only 25,000 years old, or that man was created as a finished work in present form,


I agree - 7 'DAYS' = 7 'Time periods in the old Hebrew = 7 undefined periods of time. Possibly Millions of years - which is what it would take for evolution to occur.

gil - 19-1-2007 at 03:27

Maybe all began in a single fermenting atom.
on Earth. OR in the Universe.

Big bang, Universe espantion, the 3 form of matter resemble Crystal.

And the aggregation force in a glass of Dom (perignon, millesimate V.)
are like gravitational wawes.

I never observed the same fenomenae in cheap substitute,tought.

vulture - 19-1-2007 at 15:44

A nice experiment is to write out the synthesis of adenine from merely HCN (from CH4 and NH3) and NH3. It's a beautiful and awe inspiring example of heterocyclic chemistry.

There's also a theory somewhere about the stabilization of sugars by borate salts in rock. I'm sure the more biochemical savvy members know about this.

MargaretThatcher - 19-1-2007 at 15:57

I remain perplexed by gil. Is it some perverse markov bot, a weird manifestation of primate psychosis, or a turbulent combination thereof?

Maya - 19-1-2007 at 15:58

yes, I'm sure there are a lot of ways amino acids and later peptides would form given enough time and permutations of chemical combinations/ concentrations/ temperatures.

Monkeys typing on a typewriter randomly will eventually write a novel.

Gil wrote:
<<Some genes may be more similar betwenn a man adn a chimp that bewteenn 2 men. FACT>>

Yes, but in the big scheme of things, on average there will ALWAYS be more disimillarity in all the genes between chimp and man. What you are pointing out can happen in any single gene . and that can make one person more like a goat , or yeast or a bacteria or a cancer cell.
Get it? it's a one gene aberration which is what causes specific mutations

MargaretThatcher - 19-1-2007 at 16:07

According to the title, this site concerns science and art. Now science is about making hypotheses that explain available evidence and make testable predictions; art is about painting pictures of naked ladies. Both of these are commendable pursuits, but where exactly does the wacko supernatural come in?

roamingnome - 19-1-2007 at 16:16

when you step past the concept of the big bang whether you are atheist or God fearing you are just excepting infinity in some form

in one energy and matter reciprocate

in the other the energy as arisen from a consciousness


i dont mind saying yo God why dont my distillations work....huh.... cut me some slack...

nitro-genes - 19-1-2007 at 17:17

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]

bereal511 - 19-1-2007 at 19:04

Quote:

Yes but those reasons we are mortal...what causes them. If cells slow their mitosis, why? Evolution should have worked on that instead of giving us uneeded things like the heiman skin in females. - IgnorantlyIntelligent


It probably makes more evolutionary sense that organisms developed a system where we could mortally die. Most organisms die from accidents or from being eaten, so if a population was allowed to live on for an indetermine time period, that population would end up competing with itself for food. Without death, the genes would just stagnate to the individual organism that could survive in that given population. Offspring that could have potentially survived are starved to death as the senior organisms consume all the food. In times of environmental change, these gene stagnations would probably end up killing off a majority, if not all, of those organisms, mainly because any genetically adapted offspring could not survive with so many adults just sitting around and not dying.

chemoleo - 19-1-2007 at 20:29

Ahhh..old Miller - to this day I marvel how such a simple experiment can lead to eternal fame. Deservedly so. Baffling that it took just a grad student in the 60s to try.
Anyway - almost regardless the precise content of the atmosphere, yes, even if you tried and atmosphere such as found on Europa or Titan (jupiter moons), the electrical discharge experiments still produce a vast variety of organic compounds.
We all know that iron oxides, sulfates, NaCl etc etc etc all sediment in defined layers in geological strata. It is likely that organic chemicals pooled in ancient prebiotic sterile earth in similar ways. It is hard to see that these were not the pools of life.

Re. lipid bilayers - com'on, there is no magic to it! Even soap bubbles form them. It's a simple chemico-physical process, shaped through a variety of forces! Even the step of cellularisation (molecules that are contained within lipid vesicles) makes sense, since a pool too big would cancel any sort of replicative or iterative mechanisms - simply because diffusion and dilution would outrun effective biological/chemical reactions.

The big question, that evolutiionary theory cannot answer, remains - how did these simple organic molecules coalesce to a self-replicating mechanism? Everything thereafter can be answered/explained. But the sequence of this crucial step remains elusive. Since everything else can be rationally explained, I suppose that this open question is answered through time, chance, and selection. But we'll probably never know, an experiment encompassing an entire planet and a billion years would be not fathomable for humanity.

nitro-genes - 19-1-2007 at 21:47

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...:)

guy - 20-1-2007 at 12:55

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]

unionised - 21-1-2007 at 05:27

"Only the narrowest, most foolishly liter interpretation of scripture would demand belief that the world is only 25,000 years old, or that man was created as a finished work in present form, woman from Adam's rub and all that malarky that is clearly allegorical and written not by God but by miscellaneous nomadic desert dwelling zealots.

Why should not the most sophisticated modern mechanistic view of cosmology, biology etc. encompass the possibility that a divine creator stands behind everything from the Big BAng onward?"

Quite right too! Of course the Creator concerned is the flying spaghetti monster.

More importantly, some Clerics (of any number of religions) do hold narrow, foolishly literal beliefs. Worse than this, they strive to enforce those beliefs on others in a way that sugests that their motivation is power rather than faith.

franklyn - 21-1-2007 at 16:03

Actually it's more like ten thousand years , but no matter.
Science cannot by definiton reconcile that which is supernatural.
If you are the supreme almighty and live outside of the space
time continuum , can create energy , matter , and make up
physical rules to your fancy , you can without any problem
create a universe which is already 15 billion years old because
that is the way you want to make it.

Creationists are cranks because they argue that the above
must be consistent with scientific observation.

.

unionised - 23-1-2007 at 11:22

Does the supernatural actually exist?