Where did life come from? Is evolution the best scientific answer?

[The Good]

Quoted from: This

The earth is filled with life forms of enormous complexity. Where did the first life come from? How did it form?
Is evolutionism correct? Could time, chance and natural chemical processes have created life in the beginning?
Many modern scientists are materialists. That is, they believe physical matter is the only ultimate reality. They suppose that everything in the cosmos, including life, can be explained in terms of interacting matter. Materialists do not accept the existence of spiritual or supernatural forces.
Biologists who believe in materialism are particularly concerned with: (a) proving a purely materialistic origin of life, and (b) proving that life can be created in the laboratory.



Most scientists are not strict materialists. Biochemist Dr. Arthur Wilder-Smith:

"Life rides upon matter, and matter has to be highly organized to carry life. The materialists say that life, since it's made up of atoms, molecules, and chemical reactions, is just simply chemistry and nothing else and that life originated by chance chemical reactions. Now, if life consists merely of chemistry, and nothing but chemistry, the best way to understand its real potentialities is to look at some of the chemical substances of life. And we shall see that it is NOT merely a matter of chemistry." [115]

It was the famous French scientist and Creationist, Pasteur, who provided the first scientific evidence that living things are not produced from non-living matter. [116] During the Middle Ages, some people thought non-living matter often gave birth to living things (spontaneous generation). Worms, insects, mice, and other creatures were thought to be created by materials in their environment.

spontaneous generation: the idea that living creatures can be produced naturally from non-living substances. [117] It is important to note that science has never observed such an occurrence. [118]

All living things come into existence from parents.



All creatures have a parent of some kind. All the instructions are in the parent(s)'s DNA code. At the moment of conception, the DNA code goes to work, using nutrients to build an entire human body, brain, and personality from a single fertilized egg cell.

No one has ever found an organism that never had a parent of some sort. Today, this is one of the most accepted facts in biology. All living things are produced from one or more parents. Surprisingly, however, many modern people still faithfully believe in a form of "spontaneous generation."
Materialists assume life arose spontaneously somewhere in ancient Earth's water supply water which contained absolutely no life, just minerals and chemical substances used by living things. [119]
Because oxygen in the atmosphere would destroy all possibility of life arising by natural processes, materialists wrongly assumed the atmosphere had no oxygen. [120] They also assumed it contained certain necessary ingredients, including ammonia, nitrogen, hydrogen, water vapor and methane. [121] However, it is well known that mixing these ingredients does not create life. Therefore, materialists theorized something else must be needed perhaps a bolt of energy. [122]
Scientists Try to Create Life

Dr. Miller with his famous apparatus. Scientists have utterly failed at producing life in a test tube. To date, all attempts to prove that life could have evolved on Earth by any natural means have also failed. (Photo from ORIGINS video series.)
Dr. Stanley Miller and Dr. Sidney Fox were two of the first scientists to attempt laboratory experiments aimed at trying to prove that life could arise spontaneously. They designed a Pyrex apparatus containing methane, ammonia, and water vapor, but no oxygen. Through this mixture they passed electric sparks to simulate lightning strikes. [123] What was the result? No life was produced, of course, but the electricity did combine some atoms to form amino acids.

amino acids: compounds that are the simplest units out of which proteins can be assembled. [124]

Did the Miller/Fox experiment prove that life could eventually have arisen in some ancient sea struck by lightning? No, their results actually weakened the case. The mixture of amino acids and other simple chemicals produced is not correct for producing life. All known life uses amino acids which are exclusively of the "left-handed" form. [125]

left-handed molecules: a term used to refer to the "stereochemistry" of a molecule's construction; An amino acid can be chemically "left-handed" or "right-handed" in its orientation. These two forms are identical in their atoms, but opposite in their 3-dimensional arrangement. They are mirror images of each other. [126]

No known life can use any combination of both "right-handed" and "left-handed" amino acids. Adding even one "right-handed" amino acid to a chain of "left-handed" amino acids can destroy the entire chain! [127] When amino acids are synthesized in the laboratory, there is always a 50% mixture of the two forms. Only through highly advanced, intelligently controlled processes can these two forms be separated.




Even if this overwhelming obstacle did not exist, far greater problems remain for the production of life. There are numerous reasons why the amino acids would disintegrate or never form in the first place. [128] Furthermore, life requires much more than amino acids. One necessity is proteins; another is a DNA code.

proteins: extremely complex chemicals (molecules) constructed of amino acids; found in all animals and plants.

Chemicals + Energy: Could They Have Given Birth to the First Life?

One chemist has calculated the immense odds against amino acids ever combining to form the necessary proteins by undirected means. He estimated the probability to be more than 10 to the 67th to 1 (1067:1) against even a small protein forming by time and chance, in an ideal mixture of chemicals, in an ideal atmosphere, and given up to 100 billion years (an age 10 to 20 times greater than the supposed age of the Earth). [129] Mathematicians generally agree that, statistically, any odds beyond 1 in 10 to the 50th (1:1050) have a zero probability of ever happening ("and even that gives it the benefit of the doubt!"). [130]
Various highly qualified researchers feel they have scientifically proved, beyond question, that the proteins needed for life could never have come into existence by chance or any natural processes. [131]

molecule: a chemical combination of atoms.

What did chemist Dr. Wilder-Smith conclude is the bottom line on this issue?

"It is emphatically the case that life could NOT arise spontaneously in a primeval soup of this kind." [132]

At that moment, when the RNA/DNA system became understood, the debate between Evolutionists and Creationists should have come to a screeching halt.
(I.L. Cohen)



DNA Molecules and the Overwhelming Odds Against Spontaneous Generation Within each cell there is an area called the nucleus which contains the all-important chromosomes. [133] Chromosomes are microscopically small, rod-shaped structures which carry the genes. Within the chromosomes is an even smaller structure called DNA. [134] This is one of the most important chemical substances in the human body or in any other living thing. Increasing scientific understanding of DNA molecules has revealed enormous problems for materialism.

What are the chances of evolving the DNA molecule crucial to all life by natural processes? Without an outside controlling designer of some kind, it is virtually impossible. DNA is a super-molecule which stores coded hereditary information. It consists of two long "chains" of chemical "building blocks" paired together. In humans, the strands of DNA are almost 2 yards long [approx. 1.82 meters], yet less than a trillionth of an inch thick [approx. 0.0000254 microns]. [135] In function, DNA is somewhat like a computer program on a floppy disk. It stores and transfers encoded information and instructions. It is said that the DNA of a human stores enough information code to fill 1,000 books each with 500 pages of very small, closely-printed type. [136] The DNA code produces a product far more sophisticated than that of any computer.
Amazingly, this enormous set of instructions fits with ease within a single cell and routinely directs the formation of entire adult humans, starting with just a single fertilized egg. Even the DNA of a bacterium is highly complex, containing at least 3 million units [137], all aligned in a very precise, meaningful sequence.
DNA and the molecules that surround it form a truly superb mechanism a miniaturized marvel. The information is so compactly stored that the amount of DNA necessary to code all the people living on our planet might fit into a space no larger than an aspirin tablet! [138]
Many scientists are convinced that cells containing such a complex code and such intricate chemistry could never have come into being by pure, undirected chemistry. [139] No matter how chemicals are mixed, they do not create DNA spirals or any intelligent code whatsoever. Only DNA reproduces DNA.
Two well known scientists calculated the odds of life forming by natural processes. They estimated that there is less than 1 chance in 1040,000 that life could have originated by random trials. 10 to the 40,000th is a 1 with 40,000 zeros after it! [140]
How can one gain some conception of the size of such a huge number? According to most Evolutionists, the universe is less than 30 billion years old [141], and there are fewer than 10 to the 18th (1018) seconds in 30 billion years. So, even if nature could somehow have produced trillions of genetic code combinations every second for 30 billion years, the probabilities against producing the simplest one-celled animal by trial and error would still be inconceivably immense! [142]
In other words, probabilities enormously favor the idea that an intelligent designer was responsible for even the simplest DNA molecules.
Chemist Dr. Grebe:

"That organic evolution could account for the complex forms of life in the past and the present has long since been abandoned by men who grasp the importance of the DNA genetic code." [143]

Researcher and mathematician I.L. Cohen:

"At that moment, when the the DNA/RNA system became understood, the debate between Evolutionists and Creationists should have come to a screeching halt. …the implications of the DNA/RNA were obvious and clear. Mathematically speaking, based on probability concepts, there is no possibility that Evolution was the mechanism that created the approximately 6,000,000 species of plants and animals we recognize today." [144]

Evolutionist Michael Denton:

"The complexity of the simplest known type of cell is so great that it is impossible to accept that such an object could have been thrown together suddenly by some kind of freakish, vastly improbable, event. Such an occurrence would be indistinguishable from a miracle." [145]

Famed researcher Sir Fred Hoyle is in agreement with Creationists on this point. [146] He has reportedly said that supposing the first cell originated by chance is like believing "a tornado sweeping through a junk-yard might assemble a Boeing 747 from the materials therein." [147]



The notion that… the operating programme of a living cell could be arrived at by chance in a primordial soup here on the Earth is evidently nonsense of a high order. [140](Evolutionist Sir Fred Hoyle)



Many, if not most, origin-of-life researchers now agree with Hoyle: Life could not have originated by chance or by any known natural processes. [148] Many Evolutionists are now searching for some theoretical force within matter which might push matter toward the assembly of greater complexity. Most Creationists believe this is doomed to failure, since it contradicts the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. It is important to note that the information written on DNA molecules is not produced by any known natural interaction of matter. Matter and molecules have no innate intelligence, allowing self organization into codes. There are no known physical laws which give molecules a natural tendency to arrange themselves into such coded structures. [149]
Like a computer disk, DNA has no intelligence. The complex, purposeful codes of this "master program" could only have originated outside itself. In the case of a computer program, the original codes were put there by an intelligent being, a programmer. Likewise, for DNA, it seems clear that intelligence must have come first, before the existence of DNA. Statistically, the odds are enormously in favor of that theory. DNA bears the marks of intelligent manufacture.
Dr. Wilder-Smith was an honored scientist with three earned doctorate degrees. He was well-informed on modern biology and biochemistry. What, in his considered opinion, was the source of the DNA codes found in each wondrous plant and animal?

"… an attempt to explain the formation of the genetic code from the chemical components of DNA… is comparable to the assumption that the text of a book originates from the paper molecules on which the sentences appear, and not from any external source of information." [150] "As a scientist, I am convinced that the pure chemistry of a cell is not enough to explain the workings of a cell, although the workings are chemical. The chemical workings of the cell are controlled by information which does not reside in the atoms and molecules of that cell.

There is an author which transcends the material and the matter of which these strands are made. The author first of all conceived the information necessary to make a cell, then wrote it down, and then fixed in it a mechanism of reading it and realizing it in practice so that the cell builds itself from the information…" [151]

THE BOTTOM LINE
on the origin of life

• During all recorded human history, there has never been a substantiated case of a living thing being produced from anything other than another living thing.
• As yet, Evolutionism has not produced a scientifically credible explanation for the origin of such immense complexities as DNA, the human brain, and many other complex elements of the cosmos.
• It is highly premature for materialists to claim that all living things evolved into existence, when science has yet to discover how even one protein molecule could actually have come into existence by natural processes.
• There is no scientific proof that life did (or ever could) evolve into existence from non-living matter. Further, there is substantial evidence that spontaneous generation is impossible. Only DNA is known to produce DNA. No chemical interaction of molecules has even come close to producing this ultra-complex code which is so essential to all known life.

[Dayman]

Where did life come from? Is evolution the best scientific answer?

Evolution does not propose where life began.

I'll await for the more educated to shred this to bits.

I am humble enough not to suggest I know things that in reality I have no clue about.

[MaximiIian]

The theory of evolution does not propose as to how life began. It shows how life got to where it is now.
There are a whole slew of other theories as to how it began, the most current and well-accepted being the RNA world hypothesis, a subset of the theory of biological abiogenesis.

[Simetrical]

We don't know where life came from, at least not yet. Its origins are too distant and obscure. Evolution is not directly related to the question of where life came from. However, a single-origin hypothesis of some kind is dramatically favored by all available evidence.

To address some specific points:

Many modern scientists are materialists. That is, they believe physical matter is the only ultimate reality. They suppose that everything in the cosmos, including life, can be explained in terms of interacting matter. Materialists do not accept the existence of spiritual or supernatural forces.*.*.*.

Most scientists are not strict materialists.

This is almost certainly false. (I notice there's no citation for this.) The modern scientific viewpoint is to classify every known phenomenon that can be systematically analyzed as physical, and not to separate out particular phenomena as "supernatural" or "spiritual". Everything presumably follows some set of rules, and all indications to date suggest that the rules of everything we can observe are more or less unified. There doesn't seem to be anything that follows completely separate rules from everything else, so what's there to call "supernatural"? Phenomena that are called supernatural usually are not real phenomena at all; when they are, they are simply not yet well understood.

It was the famous French scientist and Creationist, Pasteur, who provided the first scientific evidence that living things are not produced from non-living matter.

And indeed no living thing today could possibly be produced from non-living matter. Nobody suggests they could be. It's conceivable that much earlier, much more primitive ancestors of modern life might have been simple enough to be spontaneously generated. Nobody has any good idea, because we don't know anything at all about what the earliest life on Earth was like. We suppose it didn't involve anything as complex as DNA, perhaps nothing as complex as RNA. The details are a mystery to us.

Because oxygen in the atmosphere would destroy all possibility of life arising by natural processes, materialists wrongly assumed the atmosphere had no oxygen. [120] They also assumed it contained certain necessary ingredients, including ammonia, nitrogen, hydrogen, water vapor and methane. [121] However, it is well known that mixing these ingredients does not create life. Therefore, materialists theorized something else must be needed perhaps a bolt of energy. [122]

This focuses very narrowly on very specific theories people have had. This kind of narrowness is common in anti-scientific tracts: focus on very specific theories that have failed, and then claim that as evidence against much broader and less detailed theories whose truth does not depend on the details that were rebutted. It's unreasonable, but it can be persuasive.

The single-origin theory, and theories of abiogenesis, do not rest on any suppositions about how life may have arisen. They merely state that it did; the mechanism remains a mystery. I will give a basic summary of the theories, and the evidence behind each.

The single-origin hypothesis states, simply, that all (or almost all) life on Earth today descended from one or a very small number of organisms. The evidence in favor of this is primarily genetic: all known living creatures use the same (or almost the same) basically arbitrary mapping of DNA to proteins, for instance. There's no real reason why a particular sequence of base pairs should map to one sequence of amino acids and not some other. But in every living organism, for instance, UUU maps to phenylalanine, and so on for the 63 other possible three-letter codons (with a very few exceptions).

Now, if organisms arose independently, since there seems to be no reason for them to favor any one particular code, you would expect them to develop mutually incompatible codes. On the other hand, mutations in the genetic code should be almost impossible (and this was predicted before genes for other organisms began to be decoded), because any creature whose genetic code mutated would have randomly scrambled DNA, which would almost ensure death. Evidence for a single origin is quite convincing, although maybe not impregnable. There is at any rate no real evidence to the contrary.

Now, as for living things arising from non-living things, well, everyone agrees that occurred. Creationists would say that it happened by the hand of God, and scientists would say it happened by some yet-unknown chemical process. The logic is simple: if life has not existed in the universe eternally, then there needs to be some point at which life did not exist. In that case, at some point life must have arisen (since it exists now), and logically then it must have come from non-living things, since those were the only things that existed before life did. The only alternative is an eternal universe, which neither scientists nor creationists currently believe in. That abiogenesis occurred is a simple matter of logic, and it can't really be disputed.

The point of attacks on abiogenesis (life arising from non-life), then, is to cast doubt on whether there can be any scientific explanation for it. If, the idea goes, there is no scientific explanation for something, it must be God, or at least God becomes more likely. As always, this is dubious reasoning. That no scientific theory explains abiogenesis yet does not mean that no scientific theory ever can. Our understanding of any number of things may be flawed, preventing us from figuring out how things happened in the past. It's also unreasonable to expect scientists to be able to get very detailed direct evidence about anything that happened on Earth billions of years ago. Abiogenesis might remain unexplained indefinitely, but that would just show that there are some things we don't have enough evidence to ever figure out. It doesn't negate the truth of science where we do have enough evidence.

Scientists have utterly failed at producing life in a test tube. To date, all attempts to prove that life could have evolved on Earth by any natural means have also failed.

Sure. We just don't have the knowledge. But the creationist alternative gives us no more. It just trades an open admission of ignorance for an answer along the lines of "God did it", which is not particularly more elucidating. It should be pointed out that all attempts to prove that life could not have begun on Earth by natural means have also completely failed.

No known life can use any combination of both "right-handed" and "left-handed" amino acids. Adding even one "right-handed" amino acid to a chain of "left-handed" amino acids can destroy the entire chain! [127] When amino acids are synthesized in the laboratory, there is always a 50% mixture of the two forms. Only through highly advanced, intelligently controlled processes can these two forms be separated.

Not a good argument. The same thing applies to matter: whenever matter is created, it's created equally as a particle and its antiparticle, with overwhelming probability, and therefore it immediately annihilates. But there ended up being enough of a bias to make the universe mainly matter, not antimatter. Such things are perfectly possible. If life happened to start with right-handed molecules, it would end up creating and using only right-handed molecules. Due to the single-origin hypothesis, it's expected that only one type of life would exist, right-handed or left-handed, depending on which the first lifeform was. It was presumably right-handed.

One chemist has calculated the immense odds against amino acids ever combining to form the necessary proteins by undirected means.

All such calculations are irrelevant. Their truth depends solely on the initial conditions you select. If you find that for a given set of initial conditions, some event that we know occurred is impossible, it's your initial conditions that are wrong. As they say, there are three types of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.

What are the chances of evolving the DNA molecule crucial to all life by natural processes? Without an outside controlling designer of some kind, it is virtually impossible. DNA is a super-molecule which stores coded hereditary information. It consists of two long "chains" of chemical "building blocks" paired together. In humans, the strands of DNA are almost 2 yards long [approx. 1.82 meters], yet less than a trillionth of an inch thick [approx. 0.0000254 microns]. [135] In function, DNA is somewhat like a computer program on a floppy disk. It stores and transfers encoded information and instructions. It is said that the DNA of a human stores enough information code to fill 1,000 books each with 500 pages of very small, closely-printed type. [136] The DNA code produces a product far more sophisticated than that of any computer. [etc., etc.]

This entire passage consists of nothing more than an appeal to emotions. It gives no actual reason for why DNA could not have evolved; it just describes its complexity. We know that very complex things can evolve from very simple ones. That's the power of natural selection.

Many scientists are convinced that cells containing such a complex code and such intricate chemistry could never have come into being by pure, undirected chemistry.

This, and other statements like it, try to paint a false lack of consensus. Scientists in the relevant fields (biology, chemistry) overwhelmingly believe that life arose on Earth by purely physical means without outside direction. Only a tiny minority think otherwise. People like Fred Hoyle (an astronomer, by the way, not a biologist or chemist) are not remotely representative of scientific opinion as a whole.

During all recorded human history, there has never been a substantiated case of a living thing being produced from anything other than another living thing.

Because life today is too complicated for that. That does not imply that it was always so.

As yet, Evolutionism has not produced a scientifically credible explanation for the origin of such immense complexities as DNA, the human brain, and many other complex elements of the cosmos.

Wrong. Natural selection is a completely adequate explanation for the human brain. We do not, however, know much about the antecedents of DNA, and can only speculate on how it might have evolved from earlier, unknown substances. This is lack of evidence, not a flawed theory.

It is highly premature for materialists to claim that all living things evolved into existence, when science has yet to discover how even one protein molecule could actually have come into existence by natural processes.

Logic can dictate that a certain conclusion holds, even if we don't know the details. We only understand the broad conclusion, not the exact manner in which it came about.

There is no scientific proof that life did (or ever could) evolve into existence from non-living matter. Further, there is substantial evidence that spontaneous generation is impossible. Only DNA is known to produce DNA. No chemical interaction of molecules has even come close to producing this ultra-complex code which is so essential to all known life.

It is self-evident, as I mentioned, that life arose from non-life. There is no evidence that spontaneous generation of the distant ancestors of modern life is impossible or even implausible.

[Medicus]

GET THIS **** OUT OF THE ATHENAEUM.

This is a place for science, not religion.

I like you Lucius (well, excluding the ConvertOrDie!Christian you've become), but this thread needs to GTFO.

[CtrlAltDe1337]

GET THIS **** OUT OF THE ATHENAEUM.

This is a place for science, not religion.

I like you Lucius (well, excluding the ConvertOrDie!Christian you've become), but this thread needs to GTFO.

Just because he is discussing evolution and other ideas automatically means he can't debate here? He didn't even mention the name "God" a single time. But I guess its the mod's place to decide, not mine.

[Il Duce]

Just because he is discussing evolution and other ideas automatically means he can't debate here? He didn't even mention the name "God" a single time. But I guess its the mod's place to decide, not mine.

Well, he might as well be carrying a giant Crucifix on his back

[Tajir]

Evolution is absolutely retarded.

We already know, for the most part, that chaos doesn't create organization.

Lets spend some time finding out who is really behind this thing called Life.

[Syron]

Well considering this thread is trying to paint evolution as an attempted answer to the origins of life i give this argument a big fat F for lack of understanding.

We already know, for the most part, that chaos doesn't create organization.

Really? I'd like you to define chaos and organisation first and more specifically what chaos you think existed when life began (hint: the Earth is not an isolated system).

Lets spend some time finding out who is really behind this thing called Life.

I think it was my neighbour Bob, the sneaky devil!

[Ludicus]

We already know, for the most part, that chaos doesn't create organization.

Well, for the Theistic evolutionists, creationism can be compatible with the theory of evolution.

[Redem]

Evolution is absolutely retarded.

We already know, for the most part, that chaos doesn't create organization.

On the contrary, we know for a fact that chaotic systems can do just that.

[Wild Bill Kelso]

We have another floater thread on our hands...

[chris_uk_83]

Again?

[Simetrical]

GET THIS **** OUT OF THE ATHENAEUM.

This is a place for science, not religion.

I like you Lucius (well, excluding the ConvertOrDie!Christian you've become), but this thread needs to GTFO.

No. Evolution is a suitable topic for scientific discussion. If some of the participants in the discussion do not understand the theory, this is the right place to teach them.

We already know, for the most part, that chaos doesn't create organization.

This is not correct. There is no such conclusion that has been drawn from scientific evidence. Chaotic systems can become orderly, and conversely, by any definition of "chaotic" and "orderly", given proper conditions. Could you give specific examples of established physical laws that you believe evolution violates?

Really? I'd like you to define chaos and organisation first and more specifically what chaos you think existed when life began (hint: the Earth is not an isolated system).

This is a tangent, but assuming you're referring to the Second Law of Thermodynamics here, the fact that the Earth is not isolated is commonly cited but largely irrelevant. The reduction in entropy caused by the formation of life is greatly offset by the increase in entropy caused by the work that occurs during that formation, which releases heat and so on. If I lock you in a room with an shuffled deck of cards, and you sort it, entropy has still increased, even though to a casual observer order has only increased. This is because the common-sense notion of "order" does not match up well at all with the scientific notion of "low entropy". The amount of entropy lost by sorting the cards is trivial compared to the entropy generated by your metabolism in the process. A totally uniform, very hot gas would seem intuitively (at least to me) much more orderly than a cold, messy clump of mixed solids, but it has much higher entropy.

[Medicus]

No. Evolution is a suitable topic for scientific discussion. If some of the participants in the discussion do not understand the theory, this is the right place to teach them.

There are 50+ page discussions in the EMM that try to explain evolution to other members.

Evolution is an accepted scientific theory, why the hell are we even talking about *snigger* alternatives here?

[Syron]

This is a tangent, but assuming you're referring to the Second Law of Thermodynamics here, the fact that the Earth is not isolated is commonly cited but largely irrelevant. The reduction in entropy caused by the formation of life is greatly offset by the increase in entropy caused by the work that occurs during that formation, which releases heat and so on. If I lock you in a room with an shuffled deck of cards, and you sort it, entropy has still increased, even though to a casual observer order has only increased. This is because the common-sense notion of "order" does not match up well at all with the scientific notion of "low entropy". The amount of entropy lost by sorting the cards is trivial compared to the entropy generated by your metabolism in the process. A totally uniform, very hot gas would seem intuitively (at least to me) much more orderly than a cold, messy clump of mixed solids, but it has much higher entropy.

hmm, yeh actually i agree. I did know about that but i had forgotten it. Shows you how much i pay attention to my Thermal and Statistical Physics lectures. Still, either way what he was saying is nonsense!

[Simetrical]

Because people are ignorant of the correct science and it needs to be explained to them. There is no point in disparaging them. Educate them. Do your best to address their questions and concerns. If some still don't believe you, at least you did your best. And at least they aren't going to get the picture that defenders of science are self-righteous zealots who are so convinced of their correctness that they're not willing to deign to do more than mock those who don't believe them. Which too many are.

If you aren't interested in participating in the discussion, you can feel free not to participate, but this thread is not being closed or moved. Further discussion on whether it should be closed is off-topic here, and should be brought up in 1) reports, 2) PMs, or 3) a thread in Q&S.

[Simetrical]

Don't confuse a chaotic system (in the mechanical sense, sensitive dependence on initial conditions) with a system that's subjectively disorderly (which isn't a scientific question), or one that has high entropy. All three of those are, confusingly, totally different concepts. A system that's subjectively disorderly can spontaneously change to a system that's subjectively orderly, to be sure. Consider the chaos of a liquid, particles bouncing every which way, freezing into the rigid order of a crystal.

[Marie Louise von Preussen]

Yet another attempt at inserting God in the middle.

[sephodwyrm]

Evolution is absolutely retarded.

We already know, for the most part, that chaos doesn't create organization.

Evolution =/= Chaos

Evolution, in terms of genetics, is the changes of allelic frequencies and genetic makeup of a population over time and generations. Now even if we're to talk about the chances of life emerging from primordial soup, just be aware that it had 2 billion years at least, and another 2 billion to reach our stage.

Granted, the earliest steps of self-replicating would take a great deal of time and selection until a good model comes into being, itself being a slight modification from an earlier mode and so on.

What most people think about evolution is this:
Typhoon blitzes a junkyard and a jetliner pops out.
This is a fiction that should be smashed apart.
Evolution is a constant reward system. Naturally, even jetliners didn't just pop out with a snap of a finger. A practical jet engine, correct machining, material science, aerospace engineering and many many other technologies would be required. And just like in evolution, all these numerous materials and techniques were already present and in use to make a not so practical jetliner (fighter jet planes).