Evolution: The Deal Breaker

by Hadriel 150 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  Hadriel

  @cofty go to bed we'll pick this up tom. :) If fact I'm not going to post again cause you'll just stay up all night ha ha :)

  Right those nucleotides are just four chems sugars and others (lol I only remember sugars forget the other three) however the ordering is the kicker so that is the code or the makeup can't get away from that.

  I'm not going to use the word "intelligence" as I honestly believe from a pure chemical standpoint it would be unfair to say so however this ordering is the genetic code without it we'd all be the same. So it does matter.

  I would definitely agree from this perspective though, DNA is not the code itself. It is more of the container if you will.
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  Crazyguy

  I think it's possible that something could of created life but the overwhelming evidence is that if true all life today on earth evolved from that simple creation.
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  OnTheWayOut

  I am not going to try to pick through things like DNA and experts vs. laymen understandings and all that stuff.

  I will just say that anyone who chooses to say that the deal breaker is somewhere along the lines of refusing to believe something complicated came into existence from something less complicated, yet that same someone will accept that a "creator" did the exact same thing or was just always there, well that person needs to start over in their thinking.

  Not in our lifetime, but somewhere in the distant future, man will see other life in the universe in various points along it's own evolution. They will see that the seemingly ridiculous odds of life succeeding are overcome in the laboratory of many planets. And it might even happen in a smaller laboratory on earth among scientists.

  But even then, it will make some closed-minded people insist that life can come from lifelessness because of something God put there.
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  AmIright

  I agree with crazyguy too. Do you really think humans could exist today if we lived along side dinosaurs XD
  

  evidence that life (very simple cells) were first brought to earth on a asteroid commet etc....just looks at how bacteria and very microscopic creatures can survive being brought into space. my favourite creature is by far the "water bear" and as I typed it into google I found some Chinese creep on jw.org saying the creature praises Jehovah.... evolution exists without it, life would perish. think of it in this sense why would a creator allow change to the earth but deny its creatures the chance to evolve to this stimulus. in the sense of a perfect creator evolution should stand on its own or else you could deny that the creator wasn't perfect in the beginning ;) if you research more you will find that there is possible evidence for multiple universes. this in turn would destroy all current religion as the animals were not created by Jehovah but just happened because it was in the right universe. but then you have to think about how did multiple universes come about? maybe then one religion will dominate....
• 

  Jehalapeno

  The ignorance. It hurts.

  Fact 1: DNA proves all life came from a common ancestor.

  Fact 2: Evolution explains the origin of the species, not the origin of life.

  Fact 3: if you acknowledge "adaptation" or "microevolution" are actual things, then imagine the diversity of species if given enough time. Take that thing you call microevolution and multiply it by millions of years. That's evolution.

  Fact 4: it's perfectly acceptable to believe in a God and believe in evolution at the same time. The two are not mutually exclusive. Many people accept the fact of evolution and still believe in a God.

  Fact 5: people that haven't read the books or examined the evidence for evolution will likely not accept it as fact.

  Fact 6: if someone objectively and thoroughly examines the evidence for evolution and rejects it outright because it conflicts with their world view, they are beyond hope and are not worth engaging with.
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  Hadriel

  @OnTheWayOut

  yet that same someone will accept that a "creator" did the exact same thing or was just always there, well that person needs to start over in their thinking

  I never mentioned God in my post not even inferred it. Granted there may be some implication but only because it is the Yang to Evolution's Ying. It's the opposite hence it's assumed.

  Anyway you're making an assumption there as it has nothing to do with that for me. It has to do with the viability of early life theories. It's about whether I can even consider it as a viable theory.

  As I indicated earlier it is a far stretch for me that RNA magically offloaded its enzymatic functions. I must admit it is possible that RNA and DNA developed in tandem but I personally can't support the above as the model is quite complex as to the science of the matter.

  I don't buy the argument that evidence of life evolving or kickstarting as it did from the time of the primordial soup won't be "in our lifetime". Why not? The components are still here since they are needed for life in the first place.

  Where I have trouble is that we can't see it because it is slow and happened long ago. Well am I to believe that all the evolutionary chains all started at the same time so they are in a phase that isn't visible today? You mean none started 1 billion years ago, 100 million ago, 1 million ago. Stands to reason since it is happenstance there would be different events as such that they'd be staggered so some would be evident. Some half man half hominid or half amphibian half something else.
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  Hadriel

  Again let me be clear this isn't an Evolution vs. Creator thing for me.

  in my mind it can't even be a viable option to contemplate without making sense of the early composition of life and how it came to be ordered.

  More specifically, if Evolution is the only solution, I'm not sure at least in my lifetime, if we'll ever know the catalyst the driver, whatever it was that kicked it off and caused proteins to chain ultimately forming life.
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  WhatshallIcallmyself

  Well am I to believe that all the evolutionary chains all started at the same time so they are in a phase that isn't visible today? - Hadriel

  There is only 1 chain and all life has evolved from that 1 starting point (there is some evidence that suggests we might have found something that is not related to everything else - a bacteria like organism - but that is not settled yet as far as I know), there are not many that just happen to have converged on life at the same time. That is not to say life didn't start many number of times and become extinct before really getting going but we may never know that. The genetic evidence is as conclusive as it needs to get on that issue; not to say there isn't more to learn but once you know the Earth isn't flat all other following geological understandings do not change that fact.
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  hooberus

  bakhbnerqbnetrqjhb0e9hg0i4g389gh4qbtn q0b=q3jmb0=m mnnrebt8hqgsbjnbhae0=ghvq

  Did that take intelligence?

  The first part might not have.

  But what about the following sentence which said "Did that take intelligence?"

  Did that combination of letters take intelligence?

  
  

  
  

  
  
• 

  shepherdless

  I am certainly no expert on this, but I will throw my 2 cents worth into this discussion. (Besides, when has a lack of expertise been grounds for not commenting, here).

  Hadriel seems to be focused on the step from an RNA world to a DNA world, and how could that have occurred.

  We know RNA based lifeforms could have existed in the past, because they still exist in the present. For example, picornaviruses (such as Polio, various forms of Hepatitis, common cold, etc) are just self-replicating RNA, in a protein shell. They have no DNA. The reason that they mutate so fast is that RNA is less stable than DNA. You might think that they need a protein shell to survive, but I recall reading that even an RNA strand on its own has proven to be "contagious" and dangerous.

  
  Even simpler than picornaviruses are "viroids". They are basically RNA lifeforms that do not even have a protein shell or even produce any protein. You could argue that they are not living things; just a complex chemical molecule that has a certain shape that tends to duplicate itself over and over, if in the right environment.
  More complex than viroids and picornaviruses are double-stranded RNA viruses (eg gastroenterisis), which (my guess - I am no expert) could have evolved to the first DNA viruses. Or the intermediate step in the evolution to DNA viruses could have been through something similar to a retrovirus (which is self replicating RNA but uses DNA as part of the process).
  So there you have it. Simple RNA lifeforms that dont rely on or make any protein, slightly more complicated RNA lifeforms that DO make protein, still slightly more complicated lifeforms that are essentially RNA but use DNA as part of the process, other RNA lifeforms where the RNA is arranged in a very similar way to DNA. All these lifeforms living on earth today. They are not science fiction.
  
  The point I am making is that, although the exact route from an RNA world to a DNA world is unknown, the mystery is NOT that it couldn't have happened, it is which of the many possible ways it could have happened, did it happen.
  Oh, and in relation to abiogenisis, coding, and the monkey typing out Shakespeare analogy, I recall reading somewhere that in a lab they have been able to create a self replicating RNA with a chain of only 120 or so "characters". you might think that even getting 120 characters in the correct order is unlikely. However, it only has to happen once, there are multiple orders that will self replicate, and that keyboard only has 4 keys on it.