and your description of organic chemistry is a little off. it's not the chemistry of carbon chains, it's the chemistry of carbon containing compounds.

Nearly all biological processes are mediated by organic chemistry and organometallic chemistry.

np.

single cells, as we know them today, are incredibly complex because of the four billion years of evolution they underwent. two and half billion years of that evolution was when there was just single celled life.

so the protocell is a theoretical idea of the simplest possible self replicating cell. All it needs is a membrane (which is non covalently bound monomers forming a macromolecule) and self replicating contents (no matter how simple).
Once something is bound by a membrane it's called a vesicle.

that's perhaps the most basic form of life.

have these been made in labs from monomers? Almost. There are bottom up and top approaches.

For the bottom up.

The membranes spontaneously form from their monomers, forming vesicles and they can grow by incorporated more monomers, and when they grow big enough and are agitated, they break. They can also incorporate other vesicles (think of two bubbles joining to make one - important - see below).

Protonucleotides can form single stranded chains which can be captured inside these membranes and again this has been done.

These chains can pair up and grow to a certain degree if they're in a monomer rich environment. But this is sort of the limit.

Conceivably once paired up, they could split, pair up again and then you'd have two pairs. And then if the membrane split and you got one copy in each, you've done it.

Getting that bit to happen quickly however, is an evolutionary thing. There is evidence that the chains themselves can be catalysts in their own right.  But you'd need to get the right sort chain by chance.

This is the limit of the bottom up approach.

And then for the top down, they've created very simple protocells, chucked in some simple DNA,  a few catalytic agents and they can get them to reproduce if they muck around with the heat and pH. (possibly the sort of conditions at a thermal vent).

So it's not complete, there is this gap, but there are lots of theories and lots of research being done in this area.

What you probably want to find are candidate nucleotide molecules which self catalyze their own replication (or replication of simple nucleotide chains - don't forget these ones could merge with another vesicle) which are simple enough to have formed by chance in the timescales.

Do they indeed? Spontaneously form from their monomers? I was under the impression that nothing in the universe happens spontaneously (in scientific terms, of course).


Then you're under the wrong impression. If it's thermodynamically or entropically favourable, of course it happens spontaneously.

Spontaneous: not caused or influenced from outside.

I did say I was speaking in scientific terms. We're not talking of the spontaneous combustion of a pile of oily rags here. We're discussing the formation of a membrane.

Conceivably once paired up, they could split, pair up again and then you'd have two pairs. And then if the membrane split and you got one copy in each, you've done it.

I think we should put the "conceivably", "could" and "if" stuff in the same bin as we put "they chucked in some ready-made DNA", don't you?

Is this where you bring in your timescale argument? Or are you saving that for later? (I really must stop that!)

i'm not convinced... there's life on earth.

after reading the posts.

All the conditions of the cosmos need to be right so life could exist?
very unlikely but pass. ignore it.
A primordial soup could cause life... pass. ignore it.
missing intermediate stages in the fossil record.... pass ignore it.
faking of fossil records by early Darwinists. pass. ignore it.
DNA information - information that requires a sender. pass ignore it.

all this so you can pass up eternity and ignore God. Very smart.

How do ‘living fossils’ remain unchanged over supposed hundreds of millions of years?

the horse shoe crab is the same as it was 200 million years ago. Why didn't it evolve? grow extra legs?

the spider is possibly the oldest creature on the planet? was around with the dinosaurs. before the dinosaurs... still the same creature.

crocodiles still the same, lots of creatures.

they discovered a fish they thought died out millions of years ago - a fisherman found it on a fishing trip. same as it ever was.

we evolved from fish, so shouldn't it have evolved a bit?

when I was a kid watching Horizon in the seventies they had a program about lizards evolving and becoming spacemen lizards... two legged, two arms and astronaut suits. This was horizon telling us that lizards went into space. then a cataclysmic event came and wiped out all trace of the lizard civilization. Science is wonderful. So intelligent.

I've figured it out - Science - true science can give an answer.

build a quantum computer - add a program to analyze all scientific data that currently exists on biology. with reference to inorganic material beginnings. 

have both sides analyze the program for bias in the programming.

use a team of 42 brilliant academics, 21 from each side (this is a joke).

run program enter

I hope the flying spaghetti monster is considered for inclusion within the thought process of the quantum computer (and perhaps a tin of meatballs)

*shouldn't try and explain

so some animals reach a dead end? that's convenient. Yet spiders adapted to the lack of heat and the change of oxygen levels by becoming smaller?

inconsistent methodology. comes to mind.

what percentage of creatures don't evolve? with the missing gaps in the fossil record can they tally it? BS alert.

it's a shame that the 1850 theories of Darwin and his Grandfather cannot stand up anymore to the DNA evidence emerging from the Gnome Projects. It was a nice "theory" - shame the evidence is flaky.

Read any book he might learn something

I refer Zorro to an earlier post

Just Checking  • September 9, 2016 4:45 PM BST 


Evolution is a no brainer, it's obviously such a valid solid fact not theory, anyone denying that .. ffs.
As to how life originated, that's a different argument. But Evolution IS FACT.

You do not even understand evolution yourself Zorro

There is plenty we don't know about life, the Universe, Everything...that is for sure
I really don't think going back to Adam and Eve is the answer

How do you think new forms of life are created? You think GODS just creates them at will and they suddenly appear
it is complete rubbish

it wasn't diversionary. i was explaining something to you which you didn't understand. namely what spontaneous mean "in scientific terms". you alluded to know, when you clearly did not.

there have been a few other examples in our exchanges.

this feels like i'm speaking a different language and you pretend to understand it but you don't.

perhaps if you admitted where your understanding of biological science ends (i'm afraid to it feels like GCSE level), you'd be a bit more receptive.

you asked a question, i answered it, you didn't really understand my answers and you've stuck with what you've already thought.

i'm wasting my time.

For Zorro:

The word mutation may be confusing you, a better word or words would [be i]errors in reproduction[/i]

If you were to copy a complicated pattern by eye, then copy the copy, no referring back, you may find you will end up
with something different than you started with after many copies.

Life relies on reproduction, usually from two parents, this may not happen perfectly every time, there are occasionally
errors in reproduction...
If those errors offer any kind of advantage in the struggle for survival they may be retained and in fact prosper
From this all the variety of life we see has developed, in fact it has evolved.

We don't know how life started, we don't know where DNA has come from, one reason may be there is no fossil evidence left
for us to find?

There may well be some seeming contradictions in evolution. That may be because evolution is trickier than
you think and does not always go in straight lines. Something may evolve for one reason then end up being used for something else.
ie Feathers, originally used for insulation.

Evolution occurs most frequently when there is the change in an environment this causes species to adapt or die, although it takes many
generations. Some where wet may become dry, land that was together may split up, it may get hotter ,it may get colder, etc
a change in our environment
What started us humans on our way is when giants forests started to die out, some monkeys had to come down out of the trees,

If a species can survive change without adaption, it will stay the same.

DStyle, I asked because I didn't know. It appears that you don't know either. We're two little lambs that have lost our way.    It's nothing to be ashamed of.

If we're finished with the origin of life, perhaps we could discuss consciousness and what it is. Any (ahem) thoughts on the subject?

You may think i don't know, but I do have an understanding of where the current research is at in the area. i can read and understand papers in this field because of my education and i do. I find it interesting. In fact, i find it more than interesting. I find it troubling and awesome. It leads back to the anthropic principle, which is far more uncomfortable territory.

I consider that as an improvement on not knowing.

I'm afraid i really don't know enough about models of consciousness and research in this area to have a meaningful discussion.

so to recap

some animals don't ever evolve.
some animals evolve at such a rapid rate that they leave no
trace of this rapid rate change in the fossil record. ?

the DNA scientists that point out BS are all loonies and
Charles Darwin is always right.

Einstein is not always right though - his theories CAN be updated.

i don't believe in the christian faith because of that bit in the bible that says Jesus had a horse's tail and mushrooms for hands.

see if you can work out what's wrong with that statement and then see how it might apply to some of your reasoning zorro.

If you think I am going back to Genesis, no can do

define a day, if the speed of light is not a constant as we used to see it. Many physicists believe it's been slowing. At the start of the universe the stretching out.. or what looks like a big bang - an explosion... matter and everything must have been moving rather faster from the source point than it is now. Or was it just drifting?