They can’t. The only position can be taken is based on the evidence we have which is that the raw material present in meteors bombarding a nearly formed earth were such that life (defined as self replicating molecules) happened as it did. Because of randomness and natural selection all sort of life outcomes could have occurred (including no intelligent lifeforms) but only the recorded one actually did occur. Evolution via natural selection starting with self-replicating molecules.
@Patrick
@beaglelady
@Sy_Garte
@Eddie
I believe that the current thinking is that the asteroid did not by itself cause the extinction of the dinosaurs, climate change did. The asteroid did quicken the climate change and hasten the extinction, but if climate change had not been in the works the dinosaurs would still be around in some form and maybe beagle lady would be dinosaur lady.
Patrick. I cannot understand this paragraph. Some organic raw materials were indeed present on the early earth. That much I got, but the rest I didnt. How in fact did natural selection operate on chemicals to form self replicators which cannot in any way affect a heritable phenotype. In other words RNA can replicate all it wants (Actually it cant, ribozyme activity isnt that good) but even if it could, natural selection requires the replicators to have a positive effect on the cells they are part of, otherwise selection ignores them. There are just a lot of RNA molecules around. To get the required genotype phenotype connection you need the DNA protein system complete with a pretty robust genetic code. And to get any kind of generational selective advantage you need to have both the replication system and the translational system with very low error rates, otherwise there is nothing to select.
So, while it is clear that life exists on Earth, there is actually no theory or even an educated hypothesis about how that happened, or could have happened. RNA world doesnt cut it, and it doesnt lead to DNA world. Clays and minerals, and energetic hypercycles all sound great, but they dont explain actual living cells.
If the first life arrived by accident, I think the more correct term would be miracle.
Roger
’
Yes, I believe that is a current theory. The dinosaurs would not have survived in the current glacial period, except in isolated regions. And some people have held that the enormous volcanic eruptions were already cooling the planet before the asteroid hit. BUT, there is no doubt that the sudden catastrophe and resulting empty niches on Earth allowed for the rapid speciation of mammals. So we might have come around a lot later. In other words, Beaglelady might have been an actual beagle.
Well the current evidence shows that the asteroid hit was a big catastrophe killing a lot of life throughout the world in the next 50,000 years. Also the asteroid caused a large amount of volcanism on the Earth. It was a one-two punch that had major impact on life in the world for about 100,000 years after the asteroid. From the day the asteroid hit, living on Earth was much harder for all life forms. But after millions of years, it was mammals and birds who succeeded as well as certain types of plants. The asteroid hit 66 million years ago was a seminal event in the history of life on Earth. Clearly without that asteroid hit that day, humans wouldn’t be here today.
Sorry for not being clear.
I don’t think DNA nor RNA were part of the first self-replicating molecules (life). Given the large amount of complex molecules on meteors and in interstitial space, the early earth had all the raw materials for life to evolution through natural selection. Given these materials and time, the first self-replicating molecules formed and evolved through natural selection. I am defining life very simply as just self-replicating molecules which could evolve via natural selection. Once that got started it move forward to RNA and to DNA millions of years later.
Avian dinosaurs are still around.
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Can’t one believe that God does act but doesn’t necessarily have to wipe out the dinosaurs? Why doesn’t he have other options? Because you can’t think of any?
Subject to exact data (and my memory) I recall a report that suggested more species have been extinct during our industrial era than at any time in the known history of this planet. Should cause us to stop and think about real causes instead of speculation.
Aleo
Offensive - no. Dangerous - yes. If we form our core ideas of God’s nature by speculation (and picturing him as someone in need of entertainment and surprises goes to the core of what he is) than we’re creating God in our image, aren’t we?
Did not God reveal himself in history and, finally, in Jesus to replace falsehoods about deity with truths?
@Patrick
@Sy_Garte
@beaglelady
Whether it was caused by the asteroid hit, volcanism, or other kind of climate/ecological change, the extinction of the dinosaurs (with the exception of the birds) indicates the guiding power of ecological natural selection.
Please checkout the Dinosaurs to Birds post on this site if you have not already done so.
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That’s correct, none found yet to be self-replicating. However, the list of molecules from on meteoroids continues to grow including sugars like D-ribose and glycolaldehyde. So the raw materials for life were abundant on Earth since Earth’s formation 4.54 billion years ago. Given hundreds of millions of years, energy from the sun and earth, liquid water, turning these raw materials into self-replicating molecules is a highly plausible model for how life began on Earth 4.1 billion years ago.
Jon, it is obvious that our minds have followed different pathways in our efforts to relate to our Creator. I am sorry that you find the path I took leads to dangerous ideas. I was taught that even the finest of human minds could not truly comprehend our Creator. One reason God sent his Son into this world was to ‘put a human face’ on our Creator–so we could understand, as much as our feeble brains allow, how He made us in His image. How can you see that this as humans creating God in our image? I was told that Jesus laughed and enjoyed the company of his friends and disciples–that He enjoyed a good meal and a glass of wine with them.
If someone told the uneducated fisherman, Peter, that God was transcendent and immutable, would he have loved God as much as he did Jesus, whom he did acknowledged as the Son of God? If God is not changed by my love–if He is truly immutable–then I cannot believe He loves me. But He demonstrated that He does truly love me in a way I can understand–He sent His Son to be our Savior.
I have trained my mind to ‘get me by’ in a scientific career, but I guess in the area of theology I remain a simpleton. But I cannot conceive of my beliefs being dangerous to the Faith of the readers of these Biologos posts. In every waking moment, I feel that God is truly my friend. Can any academically-correct theology improve on that?
Al Leo
Actually, no that isnt quite right. In fact its quite wrong. It sounds good, lots of organic compounds from meteors, water, energy, everything we need, so life must have “evolved”. The problem is the details, some of which are chemical, but many more biological. The chemist Robert Shapiro, and the paleontologist Simon Conway Morris have gone into great detail on some of these details. The bottom line is that for evolution to get started it isnt enough to have all the ingredients. It isnt even enough to have a nice catalytic surface, and hot springs and so on. Many of the required compounds, (ribose, adenine, cytosine) are either hard to make abiotically or very unstable. Very few molecules can self replicate, in fact none other than DNA and RNA, and even for them self replication is a misnomer. And then there are all the biological issues I mentioned in my last comment about getting an error free code and a translation system. All of which are required for evolution, so its hard to see how they could have evolved.
I am not saying that spontaneous abiosynthesis is impossible, but it is very hard. Richard Dawkins fully agrees with this, as do the majority of biologists and everyone who has studied the problem.
I am aware of the work of many physicists (like Jeremy England) some engineers, and others who try to show that life is highly likely. That is very nice, but none of these folks actually address the biology of abiogenesis. What we need is a cogent, rational biological theory, and that does not yet exist. .
I dont want to drerail this thread, but I would like to make a comment about the so called 6th extinction. Beaglelady and I have clashed on this before elsewhere, so I know she will not agree with me. Most of the hype about a new extinction is not based on current data but on extrapolation to the future. Most of the millions of species to be wiped out (in the future) are microbes, fungi and insects. There have been many extinctions caused by man, but it started long before the industrial age, and most of them occurred when humans first arrived in new territories (the Americas, Australia). The actual number of plants and animals that have gone extinct in the US in the past 4 decades is far less than the number that have been rescued from the endangered species list. This fact is never mentioned, but if you think about it, bald eagles, wolves, and many other species (I have published lists, elsewhere) are doing well.
Perhaps each one of us comes into this world with a mind that is pretty much a blank slate. But there must be, for some of us, some areas of our brains that resist being ‘written on’ more so than others. Math came reasonably quickly for me, but I bomb out when it comes to higher forms necessary to deal with quantum mechanics. Same way for philosophical theology and the concepts of foreknowledge, predestination and free human choice. I just cannot comprehend the ancient Greek arguments for the attributes of God, nor can I get my head around how they are modified to fit Christian beliefs. Somehow I got the idea that St. Paul, who was a pretty smart cookie, had some problems along these lines when he first went to Athens to preach. Can you fill me in on the history of these times?
Al Leo
Why limit it to the US, and just the past 4 decades? if bald eagles and wolves are recovering it is because of our intervention.
Also, we shouldn’t downplay the importance of insects. Many are pollinators, and if they go it will be a disaster.