First of all the theory of evolution and the Bible are diametrically opposed to one another. If one is true the other must be false. The bible says that every animal brings forth after its own kind, while evolution says the opposite. The bible says there is one kind of flesh of beasts and another kind of flesh of man. To put it another way...man is NOT just another animal in the evolutionary chain.
On the contrary, evolution demands that offspring are practically identical to their parents. Large change can occur down hundreds of generations, but rapid one-generation change is not how evolution works. Moreover, to boil the Bible down to a literal reading of Genesis 1 is to do a disservice to the rest. One doesn't need to believe Genesis 1 is literally true to be a Christian.
Scientists are no more able to speak to the veracity of evolution and the first cause than those they accuse of not knowing either. It is a belief born of faith...no proof. Where are the scientific answers to these questions.
I will endeavour to answer them. If you are genuinely interested in discussing these things, I'll gladly join you in another thread (one of your own making, or my "Ask a Physicist Anything" thread linked in my sig).
Science is a search for causes (based on observation).....so what was the very first cause? What did they observe?
First, a clarification: science is the search for truth through empiricism and logical deduction. Scientists acquire facts, then posit hypotheses to explain those facts, then make predictions from those hypotheses, then test those predictions with experiments. If the hypotheses are right, they eventurally become theories. If the predictions fail, then the hypotheses are discredited. This is the Scientific Method.
Second, what was the very first cause? We don't know. A more immediate question is,
was there a very first case? Again, we don't know. And that's OK - science wouldn't exist if we knew everything.
What created the matter and energy necessary to create the universe?
Again, we don't know. There are tentative ideas, but none with any real evidence. Some suggest that the 'positive' energy of matter counteracts the 'negative' energy of gravitational potential, thus there is zero net energy in the universe. Initially, there was zero energy, then quantum fluctuations caused this change - instead of 0+0=0, we had 1-1=0. The equation is the same, but the terms are not. But like I said, we simply don't know where the energy content of the universe came from, or indeed if it even needs a First Cause to explain it.
For every cause there is an effect. If the effect is evolution what caused it? And why?
This sounds like a confusing mix of different terms. First, "For every cause there is an effect", is an adage referring to the law of causality, which more specifically states that any event in the universe must be preceded by another event that caused it. A particle doesn't spontaneously change direction, it must be affected by something else - cause, and effect.
Second, the law of causality is an empirical law, which means it's only a 'law' insofar as we haven't really seen it violated. It
seems to be a universally binding law, but for all we know it might not be. Indeed, the wacky world of quantum mechanics seems to be replete with uncaused events - particles spontaneously popping into existence,
ex nihilo, without any prior cause, creating such effects as the Casimir effect and Hawking radiation. In other words, at the fundamental level of the universe, the law of causality may well be false.
Third, evolution is not an 'effect' in the sense used by the law of causality; you seem to be equivocating two different meanings of the same word. But if you question is, "What caused evolution?", well, evolution is something that inevitably happens when you have inheritable traits and imperfect reproduction and so on.
If you believe that people are nothing but evolved animals then why don't we still live like animals?
We do: we live like humans. Remember, science is descriptive, not prescriptive. Some animals eat their own young, some animals die for them. Some animals live in isolation, some live in incredibly complex societies. It's always baffled me when Creationists suggest that evolution implies that we must pick a species of animal and adopt its behaviour - why on Earth should we do that? We humans are animals, inasmuch as we fit that biological taxon. That doesn't mean we have to act like animals - and besides,
which animal 'should' we act like? The gazelle? The ant?
Isn't the rise in violence just survival of the fittest?
No. The cause of violence is a complex issue, but it generally boils down to competition for resources like food, water, shelter, territory, etc. More abstract concepts and resources (like social acclaim, religion, politics, etc) can also lead humans to violence. But whatever the causes of violence, survival of the fittest is a different concept altogether.
I'm aware this post is getting long, so I'll try to be brief. 'Survival of the fittest' is an inaccurate colloquialism for a specific concept in evolution, the concept whereby those with more advantageous traits are more likely to reproduce and pass on those traits than those with disadvantageous traits. Slightly longer fur in cold climes helps you, so you breed more and more offspring have longer fur, until such time that the whole population has this new, longer fur. Shorter fur is disadvantageous, so is quickly bred out by natural selection. "Survival of the fittest" is an often misunderstood term because of the word 'fittest' - it isn't an advocation for tyranny and suchlike, but rather it's just an inaccurate description of a general biological phenomenon.
If we are animals and survival is the evolutionary answer...then why is killing or stealing food for our families wrong? Animals do it don't they?
Whoever said stealing food to feed a starving family is wrong? Animals kill to feed or protect their young, and when satiated, predators will often let prey roam near them - they don't
need to kill, so they don't. Humans, on the other hand, kill for reasons other than necessity.
But, again, science is descriptive, not prescriptive. Why should we model human behaviour on what this species or that species does? Why are giraffes such a role-model to base your actions on? Or flying squirrels? Or sheep?
Aren't the STD diseases including AIDS the logical result of man just living as an animal with no basis for morals?
No. STDs, like all diseases, are the result of sharing the world with bacteria and viruses which have a vested interest in breeding in your body - you are, to them, a walking food factory. Only a small fraction of bacteria and viruses cause illness - after all, what's the point in irritating or even killing the host you live in and feed off? - but they're the ones that we hear about the most, since they're the ones that detrimentally affect us. And a small number of
those are sexually transmitted - a disease reproduces best by infecting others, and sex is a fantastic way for all sorts of grubs to cross over to other people, since a whole host of juices and mucous membranes come into contact. Thus, STDs are particularly virulent.
And are morals scientific?
Depends. There are certainly strong theories that explain the origin of such moral urges like selflessness, love for one's kin, the urge to raise a family, etc. Even more complex urges, like altruism, which seem to go directly against evolution, have quite cunning evolutionary purposes (for instance, endangering yourself to save your children or nieces or nephews may remove you from the gene pool, but you end up saving your children or nieces or nephews - and since
they carry your genes (or your genes once removed), the altruism gene itself gets passed on).
So, are morals scientific? Yes and no. There are moral urges (like don't kill, don't steal, don't rape, protect children, etc) that have well-understood origins - they're instincts that have evolved to ensure the better survival of human society.
How did life arise from nonliving matter?
A very good question indeed. There are a number of similar explanations for this, collected under the umbrella term 'abiogenesis', and they go something like this: the warm oceans of pre-biotic Earth were awash with all sorts of simple chemicals (hydrogen, oxygen, ammonia, methane, etc), and these are known to spontaneously form more complex organic molecules.
Some of these were the lipids, fatty molecules with one end that doesn't like water. So, they stuck together in these double-layered sheets, their hydrophobic tails in the middle, and their hydrophilic heads on the outside. Those which formed closed bubbles had no exposed hydrophobic ends, so these were by far the most popular structure for lipids to form in.
Another sort of molecule to form were amino acids, monomers that can spontaneously come together (simply by crashing into each other) to form longer chains, called polymers. The lipid bubbles could let the small monomers inside, but large polymers couldn't get back out. Thus, you had a bubble with monomers pouring in and out, but any polymer that formed was stuck there.
Some polymers are self-replicating. It was only a matter of time before one such molecule began to self-replicate, however poorly. As monomers poured in and the polymers replicated, the lipid bubble itself grew as more lipids hit it. Lipid bubbles grow in odd shapes, with long 'arms' branching off. Mechanical action (like waves or other large structures hitting them) can break these arms off, and the 'gap' is quickly closed by the water-hating lipids. Thus, you had a large bubble full of self-replicating polymers that gets split into two smaller bubbles. This is how replication began.
Once you have replication (lipid bubbles growing and splitting, and polymers replicating) with inheritance (the polymers in the bubble would be in both daughter bubbles, sharing whatever traits they may have) and variation (an accident during polymer replication or an inaccurate copying would mean the new polymer would spread its new variation (or
mutation) to all its descendents. If the mutation was beneficial, it would quickly dominate the bubble and future bubbles) - you have evolution.
And that, in a rather large nutshell, is the origin of life.
So millions of years ago.....there was this soup that consisted of all sorts of stuff.....ammonia, nitrogen etc...just bubblin away and all of a sudden out of this soup came the first cell. Aren't there cells in soup? How did that soup form? Or was it a bang.......then where did the energy come from to create a bang? Wasn't spontaneous generation... I think Pasteur proved that wrong.
You're close. The origin of the first cell is described above - the lipid bubble filled with polymers. These are naturally extremely simple cells, but why should we expect anything less? Modern cells are quite complex, but they've had billions of years to refine themselves. The 'Spontaneous Generation' Louis Pasteur disproved in 1859 refers specifically to an ancient Greek idea (one that persisted until the early 19th century), and is unrelated to evolution and abiogenesis.
I think it is a scientific fact that life only arises from life.
It's not, but nevermind.
How when no life existed did substances come into being which are absolutely essential for life but which only can be produced by life?
Life is extraordinarily varied. Perhaps one form of life could come about from simple molecules, and produces the more complex molecules for other forms of life to arise. The original form of life died out, so all we have is this cycle of life creating life - but there's no reason there wasn't a much simpler form of life that kick-started the cycle.
In any case, refer to my explanation on the origin of life above.
DNA is essential for life to exist......so when no life existed how did DNA come into existence?
DNA would be one of those polymers I described above - or, at least, a distant descendants. Most scientists believe the first self-replicating molecules were more akin to RNA, and then
were RNA, and
then became DNA.
There is something scientific that clearly demonstrates that life from nonliving matter is impossible.....I think its called the law of probability.
There are many laws of probability, the most universal being: "No matter the odds, as the number of trials tends to infinity, the odds of a success tends to one". In other words, no matter how unlikely it is for life to form, if it tries to happen enough times (each time a polymer forms counts as a single 'trial'), then, eventurally, it
will happen.
That said, I'm not aware of any law of probability that clearly demonstrates that life from non-living matter is impossible. What law are you referring to?
Do animals have morals? If we came from animals then...do lions feel remorse when they kill their prey? Do animals have a moral code? If we came from these animals......how did we get a moral code?
How indeed. As I alluded above, morals have an evolutionary origin. Various urges like "Don't kill" and "Don't rape" stem from a rather simple principle: if an individual doesn't want X done to it, and everyone has the urge to not do X, then the individual is unlikely to have X done to it. More simple: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. From an evolutionary point of view, this inexoriably leads to the evolution of instincts to eschew murder and rape and things.