The Origin of Life

[JoeMoma]

It is deniable. It may have started more than once, or it may have come from an outside source.

Life is considered to be continuous.

An assumption to be questioned.

I did and it's right.

Okay...have fun with your unverifiable facts.

Do you know of anyone besides yourself who believes life has been interrupted? As in not continuous?

That was not the “fact” that you started with. You started with that life only started once. How do you know biogenesis didn’t occur such that life only lasted on earth for a few days. This could have happen several times before life was “continuous”. You and I have no way of knowing for sure because it would have happen millions or billions of years ago with no record.

 

[Vastator]

since 98% of all creatures went extinct.

Where did all the new creatures come from?


I find it incredibly imposable that all mammals came from saber toothed moles.

Maybe only variations of the same creature became extinct. Maybe all life from earths biogenesis, is the same "life" only in different form? Maybe life itself doesn't care what form it takes... As long as it continues on.. Maybe for life itself; to "be" is the paramount directive. "How" it ends up being, is of little consequence.

 

[Bob Blaylock]

It is undeniable that life started once on Earth. Only once. A one time event never repeated.
What are the implications of that fact?

Obviously, life started on Earth, at least once. That's undeniable.

Only once? I very much doubt it.

I know there have been theories that archaea may have arisen completely separately from bacteria.

 

[ding]

Life is considered to be continuous.

An assumption to be questioned.

I did and it's right.

Okay...have fun with your unverifiable facts.

Do you know of anyone besides yourself who believes life has been interrupted? As in not continuous?

That was not the “fact” that you started with. You started with that life only started once. How do you know biogenesis didn’t occur such that life only lasted on earth for a few days. This could have happen several times before life was “continuous”. You and I have no way of knowing for sure because it would have happen millions or billions of years ago with no record.

No, I wrote, Life is considered to be continuous.

 

[ding]

"When it comes to the origin of life, we have only two possibilities as to how life arose. One is spontaneous generation arising to evolution; the other is a supernatural creative act of God. There is no third possibility...Spontaneous generation was scientifically disproved one hundred years ago by Louis Pasteur, Spellanzani, Reddy and others. That leads us scientifically to only one possible conclusion -- that life arose as a supernatural creative act of God...I will not accept that philosophically because I do not want to believe in God. Therefore, I choose to believe in that which I know is scientifically impossible, spontaneous generation arising to evolution." George Wald - Scientific American, August, 1954.

 

[ding]

“In my life as scientist I have come upon two major problems which, though rooted in science, though they would occur in this form only to a scientist, project beyond science, and are I think ultimately insoluble as science. That is hardly to be wondered at, since one involves consciousness and the other, cosmology.

The consciousness problem was hardly avoidable by one who has spent most of his life studying mechanisms of vision. We have learned a lot, we hope to learn much more; but none of it touches or even points, however tentatively, in the direction of what it means to see. Our observations in human eyes and nervous systems and in those of frogs are basically much alike. I know that I see; but does a frog see? It reacts to light; so do cameras, garage doors, any number of photoelectric devices. But does it see? Is it aware that it is reacting? There is nothing I can do as a scientist to answer that question, no way that I can identify either the presence or absence of consciousness. I believe consciousness to be a permanent condition that involves all sensation and perception. Consciousness seems to me to be wholly impervious to science.

The second problem involves the special properties of our universe. Life seems increasingly to be part of the order of nature. We have good reason to believe that we find ourselves in a universe permeated with life, in which life arises inevitably, given enough time, wherever the conditions exist that make it possible. Yet were any one of a number of the physical properties of our universe otherwise - some of them basic, others seemingly trivial, almost accidental - that life, which seems now to be so prevalent, would become impossible, here or anywhere. It takes no great imagination to conceive of other possible universes, each stable and workable in itself, yet lifeless. How is it that, with so many other apparent options, we are in a universe that possesses just that peculiar nexus of properties that breeds life?

It has occurred to me lately - I must confess with some shock at first to my scientific sensibilities - that both questions might be brought into some degree of congruence. This is with the assumption that Mind, rather than emerging as a late outgrowth in the evolution of life, has existed always as the matrix, the source and condition of physical reality - that the stuff of which physical reality is composed is mind-stuff. It is Mind that has composed a physical universe that breeds life, and so eventually evolves creatures that know and create.”

George Wald, 1984, “Life and Mind in the Universe”, International Journal of Quantum Chemistry: Quantum Biology Symposium 11, 1984: 1-15.

 

[ding]

At the molecular machine level there is no such thing as natural selection. The information required for the molecular machine to function is an all or nothing proposition.

 

[ding]

 

[JoeMoma]

An assumption to be questioned.

I did and it's right.

Okay...have fun with your unverifiable facts.

Do you know of anyone besides yourself who believes life has been interrupted? As in not continuous?

That was not the “fact” that you started with. You started with that life only started once. How do you know biogenesis didn’t occur such that life only lasted on earth for a few days. This could have happen several times before life was “continuous”. You and I have no way of knowing for sure because it would have happen millions or billions of years ago with no record.

No, I wrote, Life is considered to be continuous.

Oops... sorry, I got you confused with the OP.

 

[fncceo]

Where did all the new creatures come from?

A factory in China.

 

[DOTR]

It is undeniable that life started once on Earth. Only once. A one time event never repeated.
What are the implications of that fact?

All life today can be traced back to a common ancestor but there is no reason to believe it was the only life. There may have been many successful beginnings even though only one line survived. It is also possible that more than one line became incorporated as pieces of the cell that we know today.

Probably not relevant to the OP since either evolution or God could be the source of what we see today.

I agree that other lines *could* have arisen and died off. But the chances are vanishingly small. There has been a concerted search for other lines but so far nothing. All life, from extremophiles to pandas, show the same characteristic signature.
And it is relevant so thank you. I’m not after evolution debate and should have known that was going to pop up. But wish it wouldn’t. I’m a Christian with a fascination with evolution.
It simply that I find this particular question the most intriguing one in science. At least the most intriguing one I can understand

 

[DOTR]

It is undeniable that life started once on Earth. Only once. A one time event never repeated.
What are the implications of that fact?

Beings that know and create.

Haha maybe. I think there is something odd here at any rate.

 

[ding]

It is undeniable that life started once on Earth. Only once. A one time event never repeated.
What are the implications of that fact?

Beings that know and create.

Haha maybe. I think there is something odd here at any rate.

Everything points to it. You can't know what something is by how it starts, only by how it turns out.

 

[Taz]

It is undeniable that life started once on Earth. Only once. A one time event never repeated.
What are the implications of that fact?

Beings that know and create.

Haha maybe. I think there is something odd here at any rate.

Everything points to it. You can't know what something is by how it starts, only by how it turns out.

More and more, science is pointing towards there being life all throughout our solar system, with implications that there is life all over the universe.

 

[BreezeWood]

.

More and more, science is pointing towards there being life all throughout our solar system ...

really, where might that be ...

 

[Fort Fun Indiana]

I find it incredibly imposable that all mammals came from saber toothed moles

Why would you think that? It's a mathematical certainty (and supported by all the evidence) that all mammals share a common ancestor. And I don't mean "one species", I mean one individual of one species.

 

[Fort Fun Indiana]

And we know it happened once and only once on Earth. Never before and never since.

If even true, it's not hard to explain. The available organic material is finite. It would make sense that the first successful model would flourish at the expense of all other models, which would explain both why one model came to dominate and why it still dominates.

 

[Taz]

.

More and more, science is pointing towards there being life all throughout our solar system ...

really, where might that be ...

Mars, Io, even asteroids zooming through contain the building blocks of life...

 

[harmonica]

It is undeniable that life started once on Earth. Only once. A one time event never repeated.
What are the implications of that fact?

excellent question-
as stated by others, it could have started many times ---up to a certain point.....
as others I think have stated, wasn't the Earth evolving into a equilibrium state where life did not need or was able to start after a certain point?

 

[Darkwind]

since 98% of all creatures went extinct.

Where did all the new creatures come from?


I find it incredibly imposable that all mammals came from saber toothed moles.

Funny image

Well, saber-toothed moles were real ..survivors.... until they went extinct of course.