LHC didn't kill us yet

I don't nkow anything about chirality, but:
The idea that I think is strongest for the origins of life is the idea of there being a whole bunch of molecules being formed and dying randomly on Earth for billions of years. Then, purely by chance, one came about that had the special ability to replicate (this one of course being DNA). The rest is a matter of spreading and random mutations (i.e., evolution).
I don't know enough biology to be specific, but I don't see how there are too many complications here. A DNA mutates with certain features that pose an advantage, and so on and so on until the DNA has created a shell for protection, and suddenly you have a cell. (this of course is very simplified).
I recommend reading books by Dawkins, particularly The Blind Watchmaker, and Climbing Mount Improbable.

And no, Lofty, I do not like physical contact.
 
Lofty said:
Can someone explain how life originally came from non-life? With regards to things like chirality and such. And then how we got from a few organic molecules all the way to the first cell? A link will suffice. But I have thought about the subject. I read Francis Collins book the Language of God and Lee Strobel's Case for a Creator.
I'm a Christian but don't care too much about evolution or creation as finding a final answer on the subject won't affect my faith at all.
Lol @ Dene. Do you not like Physical contact? Free hugs to everyone.
Click to expand...

I'll take a crack at this one because this is a field I am really interested in, so I researched stuff about it already. There are a couple of things you must understand here:

1. This question is so incredibly hard, that it actually has a complete field dedicated to it. It is called Abiogenesis. It is concerned with how life began. It is NOT evolution. It has nothing to do with evolution. People often make the mistake of connecting the two somehow.

2. It is believed that life in its simplest forms was created somewhere 3-4 billion years ago. I stress again: 3-4 BILLION years ago. This is such a GIANT number, and such a GIANT span of time, that it is hard to imagine even how much of time that is. But all chemicals were in place, and Earth was stable enough at that time to start supporting trivial forms of life.

3. We currently have not proved any conjecture about how life began, and there is no scientific consensus on which conjecture is right or not. NOTE my use of 'conjecture'. These are not theories. Theories are actually MUCH bigger deal than this, in Science lingo: Such as the Theory of Gravity, Theory of Relativity, or the Theory of Evolution. That being said, there are a couple of mechanism that were put forward that could work. This is a very hard area to study, because all of this happened over such incredibly long time, and sooo long ago.

4. This is incredibly cutting edge stuff, and requires a lot of laws of Quantum Mechanics, and knowledge from different areas of physics/chemistry/molecular kinetics, etc. Therefore it is very hard to explain to layman such as yourself (no offense of course is implied). To present you with an analogy you may understand a little is... Imagine trying to explain the M2R2 method to a COMPLETE Rubik's Cube beginner. And you have to do this in 5 minutes or he will loose interest. Where would you even start?!

Finally,
Here is a YouTube channel of one postdoc with a PhD in Molecular Neuroscience. He is quite popular on YouTube for his quality and accuracy of material.
http://www.youtube.com/user/cdk007
Check out one of his videos on Abiogenesis for a small idea of what it is about:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6QYDdgP9eg




EDIT:
Dene said:
I don't nkow anything about chirality, but:
The idea that I think is strongest for the origins of life is the idea of there being a whole bunch of molecules being formed and dying randomly on Earth for billions of years. Then, purely by chance, one came about that had the special ability to replicate (this one of course being DNA). The rest is a matter of spreading and random mutations (i.e., evolution).
I don't know enough biology to be specific, but I don't see how there are too many complications here. A DNA mutates with certain features that pose an advantage, and so on and so on until the DNA has created a shell for protection, and suddenly you have a cell. (this of course is very simplified).
I recommend reading books by Dawkins, particularly The Blind Watchmaker, and Climbing Mount Improbable.
And no, Lofty, I do not like physical contact.
Click to expand...
And of course that is wrong. We are almost absolutely certain that DNA did not spontaneously appear as the first carrier of information. It is way too complex. And your use of random is of little concern. Remember this is all not only random, but also GUIDED. That is important. But you do have the right idea.
 
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Well chirality is the fact that these random molecules will be both right and left handed meaning just mirror images of each other. One would expect chains of said molecules forming to be a random mix of both handedness but in life we find that they are all the same handedness...
So not only did molecules form that could reproduce, which I don't know how it happened and pretty much everyone agrees the Stanley-Miller experiment is false in that it used the wrong gases for the early atmosphere and from what I've heard the only thing they can get from trying to use more accurate mixtures is things like formaldehyde...
yes that is far too simplified and much too good to be true. How would the DNA get the shell? It would have to have some means to manufacture the shell and where would that come from.
Evolution, survival of the fittest, and all that, sounds good in theory but I don't know how well it actually fleshes out especially in the very early stages like this.
And I think you should get used to it Dene. Other people can be quite nice.
Edit in response to badmephisto:
Well you can't have evolution from the simplest life form up to the ones we have now if the first life form can't have come into existence so I see how they are very easily and necessarily linked. And I understand its a long time but in that time we have to get from absolutely nothing to everything we see today. And doesn't the fossil record give us some more limitations on that time? Like by the time of the Precambrian explosion there already had to be incredible advances by out early life forms.
As for point 4 shoot and see if I get bored. I am a college student studying physics and math who has looked into this stuff some im not a complete noob. I'll check out the links provided in the next few days tho. If anything from our discussion I'd like to at least show not all Christian laypeople are blindly shutting down evolution without serious thought in it.
 
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badmephisto: Naturally; I just gave my own simplified version (because of the simple knowledge I have in the area). But in effect that is what had to happen. Something random happened that led to DNA, and from there evolution did its thing.
 
Lofty said:
As for point 4 shoot and see if I get bored. I am a college student studying physics and math who has looked into this stuff some im not a complete noob. I'll check out the links provided in the next few days tho. If anything from our discussion I'd like to at least show not all Christian laypeople are blindly shutting down evolution without serious thought in it.
Click to expand...

I know, you get respect points from me just for asking about it, and letting me try and explain, at least briefly :)

and btw, we went from almost nothing to all this in just few thousand years, and they are all documented and undisputed :) Imagine that only 2-3000 years ago we all lived in huts around one big fire. Compare that with the 4 BILLION of years :) And yes they are linked, but you see people all the time claiming that "we cant explain origins of life, so evolution is clearly false". Evolution already assumes life, and looks at how it changes. You can see how wrong the argument is. You study math. Think base case as AbioGenesis, and induction step as evolution :) Often base case is the easy one, but ironically it turns out that in real life and cutting edge science, we struggle more (at least for now) with the former.

edit: funny tidbit: I was actually Christian up until about 14 years of age, simply because my entire family is Christian. In fact, chances are that all of you that have some faith, simply have the same faith as your parents. It just shows how arbitrary it is. In any case, I am now often referred to as the family abomination :p
 
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Yea but I think that the human brain actively creating things is completely different then some atoms and molecules randomly interacting... unless you are advocating divine intervention (symmetric to us humans using our brains) :-P
I would just hate to be the evolutionist if ever the day comes that the abiogenesist goes "crap, we can't figure this out" and his life work was based upon a false assumption...
And you don't just have to give me a brief history of time you can go into as much detail as you want and I'll read it/research it.
And I'd like to transfer my respect gained from me to Christianity in general.
Even if you do convince me on abiogenesis you'e just pushed the creator back a step farther onto the cosmologists plate not eliminated him.
 
How would it be problematic for the evolutionist? Evolution has been proven in fruit flies, it is all real. We have seen it in real time. It is just as real as your hands in front of you. (as is a classic reference in epistomology).
 
Lofty said:
Yea but I think that the human brain actively creating things is completely different then some atoms and molecules randomly interacting... unless you are advocating divine intervention (symmetric to us humans using our brains) :-P
I would just hate to be the evolutionist if ever the day comes that the abiogenesist goes "crap, we can't figure this out" and his life work was based upon a false assumption...
And you don't just have to give me a brief history of time you can go into as much detail as you want and I'll read it/research it.
And I'd like to transfer my respect gained from me to Christianity in general.
Even if you do convince me on abiogenesis you'e just pushed the creator back a step farther onto the cosmologists plate not eliminated him.
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Be careful :) If I were that evolutionary scientist, and someone tells me abiogenesis is actually a bunch of crap and can never work, I would be perfectly fine with that :) Look around you. There is life everywhere. I dont care how it got here, but I know that its here :) Since my assumption is satisfied, my conclusions are valid :p I think my analogy with induction has mislead you slightly. It doesn't indeed quite work.
 
Evolution is a very vague word.

You can think of atoms/molecules assembling to each other to form an other molecule. The resulting molecule might not be stable and will split (not surviving). The same principle can be applied to even smaller particles. That could be considered some kind of evolution.

I am conscious that I am simplifying a lot, but I guess, you guys get my point.
 
Lofty said:
Oh yea don't mistake me for saying that I don't believe in any kind of evolution at all... My main beef is with the early stages and change of species. Of course the minor stuff I have no problem with at all.
Click to expand...

Changing species can occur in many different ways, known as speciation.

Going on the idea that evolution by natural selection consists of three factors:
1) Random mutation of a gene.
2) Gene-environment interaction.
3) Selection.

First, take the definition of a species to be "a group of organisms capable of sexual intercourse and producing viable offpsring", where "viable" means the offspring can then produce further offspring. By this definition a mule does not count, as it cannot itself breed. Second, take a species, and separate it into two separate environments. Third, wait several million years. Fourth, bring the species back together, and see if they can produce viable offspring. If they can't then speciation has occurred. You now have 2 separate species.
There are of course different modes of speciation (check the link. I didn't read it myself, but I assume it is all the same since I learnt this stuff).
 
ST said:
Of course, it does not matter that mutations always result in a neutral or downhill change in genetic information and specified complexity, and that natural selection has no creative power, and only really works to cull the more damaging mutations out of the gene pool (the majority are not subject to it, so the mutational load builds up; we're experiencing devolution, not evolution).
Click to expand...

Are you really that ignorant? Or are you blatantly lying? If what you wrote were true, it'd be possible (and relatively easy) to get rid of a lot of diseases that cause quite a bit of trouble. From Kenneth Miller's Finding Darwin's God, regarding this very issue:

In 1996, a new class of drugs, were specifically engineered to block HIV-protease, one of the key enzymes used by the virus that causes AIDS. Compounds unlike any found in nature were engineered to fit precisely into a crevice in this protein enzyme, to block its activity. HIV-infected people treated with these new protease inhibitors showed dramatic improvements. The drugs blocked viral respiration and delayed the onset of symptoms so effectively that AIDS-related hospitalizations dropped dramatically. A new age of therapy seemed to be dawning.

However, evolution enabled HIV to strike back. The virus has a very high mutation rate, owing to the sloppy work done by the reverse transcriptase enzyme it uses to copy its genetic material. During the course of long months and years of treatment, mutations of the HIV-protease gene appeared in the very bodies of people using the drugs. Gradually the effectiveness of the drugs waned, owing to the emergence of the new, drug-ressistant varieties of the virus. Why were these viruses drug-resistant? Because they had undergone mutations that remodeled their proteases, enabling them to do their work without allowing the protease inhibitors to block them.

In short, that random, undirected process of mutation had produced the "right" kind of variation for natural selection to act upon, even within the body of one individual.

I could give you many more examples of situations were it's been proven that mutations can be beneficial. Actually, the Ames test (the primary test used to check the mutagenic potential of a chemical) relies on this very fact:
 
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