Matthew777 said:
You've missed the point. Theists believe that God created the first life or at least had some role in its creation whereas atheists believe that life arose spontaneously, on its own. This is your opportunity to show that life arose in such a non-thesitic way.
Let's start simply....
1. Life on Earth exists. Of couse you could resort to
the solipsist POV and claim that we can't really "know" that life truly exists, but as far as I am concerned that's just a cop-out. Now how did it get here?
2. Life is simply an emergent property of what was non-living chemistry. What is meant by an "emergent property":
Emergence harkens back to the old adage "that a whole is more than the sum of its parts". An emergent property is one which arises from the interaction of "lower-level" entities, none of which show it. That is, complex systems demonstrate properties that: 1) are not demonstrated by the parts, and 2) cannot be predicted apriori even with full understanding of the parts.
Here's a simple example....
Let's take the case of water. In this case "wetness" is a emergent property that arises from the union of two hydrogens with one oxygen, i.e., a molecule of water. Both hydrogen and oxygen are flammable gases (under ordinary conditions of moderate temperature, pressure). Water has a number of properties that don't in any way resemble the properties of it's lower level components, oxygen and hydrogen. The same thing is most probably true of living chemisty, i.e., it is simply an emergent property of non-living chemistry and there is data to back that assertion which is why the science of abiogenesis is alive and well. Here's my summary of it:
As a matter of fact, a patent for an artificially created "life-form", the protocell, (no DNA, but a self-replicator) has been applied.
A.
In this paper Pappellis and Fox petitioned to have protocells (as organisms) be designated as a new domain of life. "The paper also briefly discusses that certain types of proteinoid microsphere protocells -- called metaprotocells -- have been demonstrated to convert light into ATP, to use that ATP to make polynucleotides, and then to use those polynucleotides as templates to make polypeptides."
Pappelis A, Fox SW. Domain Protolife. Journal of Biological Physics 20: 129-132, 1994.
B.
Protocell chemistry and how they function(explained simply by lucaspa)
C.
Lucaspa answers criticisms about protocells. He explains just why protocells should be considered alive.
D.
HERE is a post by lucaspa on the subject of both protocells and TNA. The most actual scenario would be have a "housing" for genetic material develop first:
Life out of magma: a new theory for the origin of life, by Lucido, G.Nuovo Cimento Della Societa Italiana di Fisica D - Condensed matter, Atomic, Molecular and Chemical Physics, Fluids, Plasmas, Biophysics 20(12): 2575-2591; December, 1998
ABSTRACT
On the basis of colloid physical chemistry and taking into account the foundations of the thermodynamics of the unsteady state, a new theory of the origin of life is proposed. The temperature prevailing on the early Earth was too high for any form of life to be formed. The basic elements were distributed chaotically in space and constituted the hot primordial magma ocean. On cooling, however, a certain order slowly but surely began to establish itself. In particular a surficial colloidal soup originated in this magma ocean, once phase separation phenomena started. Subsequently in the long run, at or near the Earth's surface, amphiphilic molecules contained in this colloidal soup began to distribute themselves in vesicular aggregates. Every vesicle structure was surrounded by a barrier that kept it separate from other vesicle structures and from the environment. From a thermodynamic stand point there was a three-phase system: interior, barrier and exterior. The formation of these structures was the crucial event for the origin of cellular life. As to the origin of the earliest cell, the following sequence of events is proposed: primitive hot magma --> spinodal decomposition --> nucleation and growth --> colloidal soup --> amphiphilic molecules --> spontaneous vesicles --> functioning protocells --> prokaryotic cell.
DNA and the cell as we know it today would not have been the original model, but the "final" outcome of early chemical events. The appearance of DNA would not have had to have happened at once for there to be viable life-forms that replicated without it. These older life-forms, e.g., protocells, would have served as intermediate steps as life adapted to the changing earth enviroment , to the life as we know it today.
E. To get a self-assembling "cell" (protocell) from non-living chemicals, go to the following sites, especially the second one:
USA scientist credited with discovering life's origins
My Scientific Discussions of Evolution for the Pope and His Scientists
There is empirical evidence for abiogenesis.
F. Abiogenesis--Part 1
G. Abiogenesis--Part 2
H. Abiogenesis--Part 3
I. Where "The God-of-Gaps" is Currently "Hidding"
3. We have found organic compounds like the ones found in living organisms and produced by them in extraterrestrial objects such as carbonaceous chondrites (CC), iron meteors and comets. This suggest that carbon-based chemistry is COMMON throughout the Universe and arises spontaneously from the conditions and materials that commonplaces in this Universe. Now this which makes the notion of life arising from similar chemistry here on earth is something one can expect to find on other planets in the Universe.
A.
Sweet Meteors
Scientists have discovered sugars in a meteorite, adding to the list of complex organic molecules that have been found inside space rocks.
Carbonaceous chondrites are not the only type of meteorites said by some to bear evidence of life. In the 1880's, O. Hahn and D.F. Weinland claimed to have found fossil sponges and other multi-celled organisms in ordinary chondritic meteorites. They claimed, in addition, that Widdstätten patterns were evidence of algal growth. No one took these ideas seriously, and they survive as scientific curiosities. Many scientists have, however, found organic compounds in ordinary chondrites and in iron meteorites, but this work has generated only a small literature compared to the study of carbonaceous chondrites.
B. What may or many not interest you is that onc can actually get bacteria to grow on an extract of the Murchison CC. REFERENCE: M.N. Mautner, et al., 1995 Planetary and Space Science 43:139.
C.
More on CCs
D.
More on CCs
4. We are discovering new planets and solar systems now: (Examples)
A.
Hubble Discovers 100 New Planets
B.
Potentially Water-Bearing Planets Discovered
C.
List of Planets Discovered 2001-2005
5. We know a about how many stars form in the Galaxy every year from this and other estimates, we can estimate the number of intelligent civilizations in the Galaxy:
- N = number of civilizations (what we are looking for)
- Rs = Rate of Sun-like stars forming in the Galaxy
- fp = fraction of these stars that have planets
- ne = average number of Earth like planets in these systems
- fl = fraction of Earth like planets on which life actually arises
- fi = fraction of these life forms that that develop into intelligent beings
- fc = fraction of life forms that develop civilization
- L = lifetime of civilization
Now the above is simply an estimate and isn't presented as empirical evidence. However, what it can do it show that, even though we don't have all the parameters exactly right, the odds of there being life other than ours in the universe is PROBABLY possible.
More on the Drake Equation
6.
We are mapping the universe and the number of celestial objects is simply staggering.
In the following map, which covers only 6% of the sky there are 200,000 galaxies alone, many of which are far larger (contain more stars which may also have planets) than our own.
A.
More on Mapping the Universe (the Sloan Digital Sky Survey)
Now the question to you is WHERE is your evidence "a" god(s?) exist? WHERE is your evidence that IF a god(s?) exists, it's the Christian one (of course Christians have YET to give us a concise definition of their god nor can they agree on what makes one a TRUE Chrisitain).
IF you say something like "creation is evidence for my God", then realize that ANY theist could make that claim for his/her god(s?). The problem is how would you "connect the dots"? ==> IOW produce evidence that it was YOUR god, out of all the thousands of god-beliefs out there, that actually was the Creator (if you could come up with some evidence that the supernatural even exists as a viable explanation for anything, let alone prove that "a " god(s?) exist(s) to begin with). The very description of reality as "creation" means that you have already assumed that your God exists to create it. This simply begs the question of your God's existence in the first place (assuming what you are trying to prove).
B. So what's the point of bringing up ET? I just so happen think that there's more rational warrant for thinking that extra-terrestrial life exists than for your God, Matthew. After all, the compounds that form life as we know abound in this universe. Life simply arose on this planet as just an emergent property of NON-LIVING chemistry. There's evidence for that being the case. Again, what have you got in the way of evidence for the existence of the supernatural that can come close to matching it?
