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vincentML -> RE: agnostic or atheist? (5/13/2010 10:30:53 AM)
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ORIGINAL: juliaoceania
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ORIGINAL: vincentML
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As someone who does not believe that evolution is incongruous with an omnipotent creator I have to say that evolution is a theory. It is a good theory. It has much substantiation, but there are still some unknowns to how life truly started, where the spark of life comes from. There is plenty enough room on this message board to address what he said, because we truly do not know the mechanisms that caused life. If it were as scientists suggest, a change reaction of amino acids, well we have never recreated it in the lab, and that to me is telling, if that was how it happened then science should be able to recreate life from amino acids and they can't
I believe you might productively examine the science of Abiogenesis to seek answers to your spark of life question.
The formation of life from amino acids, or more properly DNA has taken at least 3 Billion years. Your assertion that scientists should be able to replicate the process in the lab is a wee bit of a stretch imo.
Actually, Stanley Miller and Harold Urey did find amino acids were formed when in 1953 they passed a 50,000 volt spark through a mixture of gases they hypothesized could represent the earth's early environment. They were piggybacking on the work of a Russian scientist Alexander Oparin from 1924.
Naturally, as in all scientific work, controversy abounds. Nevertheless the task was done and research continues.
Here is a link if you are interested.
Once the right conditions are in place it does not take three billion years for life to be sparked, it only takes an instant... setting up those conditions is what took millions and millions of years.
I am familiar with the experiments you list, but they did not create life. They did not create an organism that consumes, grows, and reproduces. This is something scientists have been trying to do for a very long time (the origin of Frankenstein). I am not saying that they will never do it, but for human beings to believe there was some larger consciousness that sparked the life in the first place is not a "far out" or "ignorant" idea. I mean, scientists, if they spark life, well they will be the "creators" of it... they will become the gods they wish to disprove... quite ironic
My point is you are conflating two different concepts: the spark of life and the evolution of a full blown living organism.
Our oldest micro fossils date back to 3 billion years. At this point that is the best we have for the beginning of the process of evolution. So, from the first encapsulated DNA to the first full blown organism (however you wish to define it) took quite awhile to develop considering that about 2 billion years of earth's existence rumbled along before the first primative cells. I think I have the numbers right. I may not. My point is there was a whole lotta time for the chemicals to mix before the first cells were formed.
I did not say anything about "far out" or "ignorant" ideas. Those are your words not mine.
I will object to the sweeping assertion you make without support that scientists have been trying to create life for a very long time. I doubt you can supply the name of a real scientist who conducted such experiments. I think you have an obligation to support generalities..
Frankenstein??? Good grief. Mary Shelley was hardly writing about scientists who were trying to create life. This wiki article speculates she was fretting in 1818 about the beginning of the industrial revolution.
I look forward to your lists of life-creating scientists and the experiments they have done.
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