So I’m a firm “believer” in science, the ancient age of the earth, evolution, and the Big Bang Theory but one thing I don’t quite understand is how “all life” on earth, particularly animals and plant life, all descend from the same single organism. I’m no expert, so there’s probably some explanation, I just never came across it before.

So, fish, reptiles, birds, dinosaurs, mammals, plants, worms, fungal, jellyfish and all other living organisms are all theoretically related and if you go back far enough in time, we all will share a common ancestor. And, theoretically, if conditions are right on other planets, they, too, could develop life INDEPENDENTLY from Earth, even advanced organisms, like those found on earth.

What I don’t quite understand is why ALL biological life on this planet is related (or assumed to be related) and why there couldn’t be flora or fauna that also originated on earth but not all be related. If all life originated from some tiny organic molecule, why couldn’t life arise independently from the other millions or billions of life-producing molecules that arose 3-4 billion years ago?

My understanding is that billions of years ago, Earth’s environment developed the right kind of conditions for this planet to create and sustain life and it started via sone kind of complex molecules, I’ll just call them “bio-molecules,” that were self replicating and eventually ONE of these bio-molecules is the Adam & Eve of all life on this planet? Is that correct? If all life on Earth is related, then all life forms on earth must have evolved from the same, single original common ancestor, correct?

So are they saying there was ONLY ONE original bio-molecule that earth created and no others? If there WERE other “bio-molecules,” then wouldn’t it seem likely that those also reproduced and evolved life forms that we aren’t actually related to?

It seems that me that if the earth had the right conditions for life, that there could potentially be billions or trillions of microscopic molecules all over the planet that had the potential to start life too and to have their own lineages of organisms independently from OUR own family tree that we are not related to. It just seems like if earth had the right conditions to produce one, tiny molecule that evolved to produce life on earth, couldn’t there have been many other molecules that life sprang up as well? Statistically speaking, it seems more likely that there’d be other organisms that evolved from other bio molecules.

There could have been. Life could have come about multiple times. We just don't know.

The earth is thought to have undergone a period known as the Late Heavy Bombardment which pretty much remelted the surface of the earth sterilizing it. One line of thinking is that life was ejected into space and later fell back to earth refertilizing the planet. If other life had developed, the life falling back to the surface would have likely had an advantage in being more specialized and developed and so out completed the other form(s).

The fossil record of this time is pretty scant. And I don't think any pre LHB are known.

There were likely many different biomolecules created. If one of them turned out to be significantly more efficient at reproducing, then it would outcompete the others, and eventually become the dominant one. It could then eliminate the competition so to speak, and subsequent life would evolve from it.

It is possible that some form of life currently on earth arose from another primordial molecule. The idea that all life came from a single precursor is based on the similarities of biochemistry across the spectrum of organisms, but that is not absolute proof that there were no other possible original sources.

https://evolution.berkeley.edu/from-soup-to-cells-the-origin-of-life/how-did-life-originate/

https://www.newscientist.com/question/how-did-life-begin/

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsob.120190

https://www.americanscientist.org/article/the-origin-of-life

https://www.science.org/content/article/researchers-may-have-solved-origin-life-conundrum

I think it's just a matter of odds. It was so improbable to happen once. Twice is just too unlikely. It could happen, and probably there were several promising molecular combinations that formed but went nowhere. And once a successful system developed, all others may have become subsumed into the dominant type.

Did mitochondria have a separate genesis? I don't know.

Mitochondria were independent organisms, cells, that were at some point absorbed into the cell/s that went on to become most organic life.

I would not be surprised, however, if some of those earlier molecules, strands of molecules, or even successive rudimentary life forms are still around in some form.

It was so monumental that President Clinton was given a private briefing before the discovery was made public. Well, They've backed away from that--the meteorite was not so special after all.

All you need for life to begin is organized DNA (the hardware) and the RNA (software) to get it up and running. Also, a permeable membrane to enclose it all, which will allow in oxygen and the requisite nutrients, but not impurities and toxins, while excreting CO2 and wastes, while retaining the necessary cytoplasm and other essential substances.

Of course, you need all of these simultaneously.

No, you don't need them simultaneously.

Can I get one of these "Life starter kits" on Amazon?

It might be well to remember the words of biologist Stuart Kauffman in his seminal book, *At Home in the Universe." In Chapter 2, "The Origin of Life" he noted:

"Anyone who tells you that he or she knows how life started on the sere earth some 3.45 billion years ago is a fool or knave." (p. 31)

That was in 1995, some 25+ years ago. The quote still applies with equal validity today. After studying Kauffman's books, including *The Origins of Order* (1993); *At Home in the Universe* (1995); *Investigations* (2000), and finally *Reinventing the Sacred* (2008), as well as numerous other works on this issue, I am inclined to make a much stronger statement:

"Anyone who tells you that he or she has a scientifically plausible account of how life started on the sere earth some 3.45 billion years ago is a fool or knave."

By 'scientifically plausible' I mean an account that is (1) scientifically based; (2) within the bounds of reasonable probability; and (3) avoids "mystical" language, or one or more leaps of faith or magic. Kauffman's own account, invoking "self-organization" and "emergent" complexity rely upon the magical, unknown laws of complex systems that somehow not only create life in all its complexity, but have mysterious creative powers as well, including free will (agency) and values--all divorced from fundamental physics and chemistry. Thus, in his final book, he notes:

"I shall show that biology and its evolution cannot be reduced to physics alone but stand in their own right. Life, and with it agency, came naturally to exist in the universe. With agency came values, meaning, and doing, all of which are as real in the universe as particles in motion. "Real" here has a particular meaning: while life, agency, value, and doing presumably have physical explanations in any specific organism, *the evolutionary emergence of these cannot be derived from or reduced to physics alone.* Thus, life, agency, value, and doing are real in the universe. This is called emergence."

"Emergence is therefore a major part of the new scientific worldview. Emergence says that, while no laws of physics are violated, life in the biosphere, the evolution of the biosphere, the fullness of our human historicity, and our practical everyday worlds are also real, are not reducible to physics nor explicable from it, and are central to our lives."

(Kauffman, *Reinventing the Sacred: A New View of Science, Reason, and Religion* (2008), p. x)

Wow! Admittedly, such language is refreshingly candid, and welcome to a committed humanist (like myself). But scientifically, it does not seem any more compelling than *vitalism.* When it comes to the nature and origin of life, choose your favorite magic.

It may help to look at the evidence for an answer rather than philosophies by intellectuals. Darwin Dillema written by Steven Meyers explains all the inconsistencies with darwinism. One of those being that we don't have any evidence of complex organisms mutating into more complex organisms. I fact the evidence shows just the opposite, genetic code tends to be lost in a mutation, we have no evidence of a drop of water writing complex code to create an ecolli or a fungus, a drop of water or matter just kind of sits there and is acted upon not imaginative in creating things by itself,

I would say look at the 'evidence' and interpret it rationally, there's lots of philosiphers writing books that are based on imagination. And sadly people believe it...

>Darwin Dillema written by Steven Meyers explains all the inconsistencies with darwinism.

Before reading that, read these (and then don't bother with Meyer):

http://pandasthumb.org/archives/2013/06/meyers-hopeless-2.html

https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/doubting-darwins-doubt

https://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/13-08-07/

Maca Wrote:
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> . . . we have no
> evidence of a drop of water writing complex code
> to create an ecolli or a fungus. . .

Well then, there we have it.

Evolution could not have happened because drops of water do not write code.

If you are going to make an argument based upon a book and an author, I suggest you at least get the name of the book and the name of the author correct. The book you are apparently referring to is *Darwin's Doubt* by Stephen C. Meyer.

I have not read this book, but have read Meyer's prior book, *Signature of the Cell*, which is also a book promoting Intelligent Design (ID) by way of criticism of Darwinism. That said, I doubt very much you have accurately characterized his views in Darwin's Doubt. Perhaps you should provide a salient quote or two that you think states the point you are trying to raise.

Although I am not a believer in ID, or God, I *do* think that much of the ID literature addressing Darwinism is relevant, interesting, and even contributes to an understanding of the mechanisms of evolution, including Meyer's prior book cited above. In short, I tend to agree for the most part with the sentiments of philosopher, Thomas Nagel, who said:

"In thinking about these questions, I have been stimulated by criticisms of the prevailing scientific world picture from a very different direction: the attack on Darwinism mounted in recent years from a religious perspective by the defenders of intelligent design. Even though writers like Michael Behe and Stephen Meyer are motivated at least in part by their religious beliefs, the empirical arguments they offer against the likelihood that the origin of life and its evolutionary history can be fully explained by physics and chemistry are of great interest in themselves. . . . Even if one is not drawn to the alternative of an explanation by the actions of a designer, the problems that these iconoclasts pose for the orthodox scientific consensus should be taken seriously. They do not deserve the scorn with which they are commonly met. It is manifestly unfair."

Notwithstanding, when religious enthusiasts, like yourself, jump on the ID bandwagon, without understanding the issues generally, or even the arguments made by the ID theorists themselves, you do a disservice to whatever arguments that might be reasonably presented by ID. I assure you that ID theorists, like Behe, Meyer, and Demski, are far more articulate and knowledgeable in these matters than you, and most others, give them credit.

Like I said, I have no issue with evolution. If you want to create an evolution vs humans and animals magically appeared on earth 6,000 years ago from Sky Daddy Jehovah discussion, you should create a new post.

We don’t know how life started, but the answer is probably right under our noses and it was so obvious and ubiquitous, nobody even noticed.

What biological agent outnumbers all the other life forms on Earth combined, including bacteria, hunts down and kills 40% of the bacteria in the ocean every day, even though it is not technically alive?

“Phages are so numerous on the planet that if they were the size of ladybugs, they would completely cover the earth and be several miles deep. They kill up to 40% of all the bacteria in the world’s oceans every day, influencing marine oxygen production and perhaps even influence the earth’s climate. There are an estimated 50 million phages per milliliter of seawater. To put that into perspective, that would be 1.5 billion phages per fluid ounce of seawater. From a planetary perspective as well as within the human body, the population seems to be that there are roughly ten phages for every one bacterium. Phages are found in the soil, water, air, plants, and animals, maintaining healthy microbial communities.“

https://biologixcenter.com/inpt-phage-therapy/bacteriophages-naturally-occurring-bacterial-assassins/

10 Phages for every bacteria cell inside of you.
And there are ten times more bacteria cells inside you than there are human cells. Meaning there are 100phages in you for every human cell.

https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/nih-human-microbiome-project-defines-normal-bacterial-makeup-body#:~:text=The%20human%20body%20contains%20trillions,vital%20role%20in%20human%20health.

Phages are not alive, but carry all the RNA (software) and DNA (hardware) required to create life.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacteriophage#:~:text=Bacteriophages%20are%20composed%20of%20proteins,many%20as%20hundreds%20of%20genes.

“Bacteriophages are among the most common and diverse entities in the biosphere. Bacteriophages are ubiquitous viruses, found wherever bacteria exist. It is estimated there are more than 10^31 bacteriophages on the planet, more than every other organism on Earth, including bacteria, combined.
Viruses are the most abundant biological entity in the water column of the world's oceans, and the second largest component of biomass after prokaryotes, where up to 9x10^8 virions per millilitre have been found in microbial mats at the surface, and up to 70% of marine bacteria may be infected by phages.”

Even though they are so tiny 100 assemble inside of a single ecoli cell before it explodes, if you stacked them one on top of the other, the stack would extend past Andromeda Galaxy and the nearest 21 other Galaxies, according to Carl Zimmer, NYT Science Writer and Author of “Life's Edge: The Search for What It Means to Be Alive”

Life's Edge: The Search for What It Means to Be Alive https://www.amazon.com/dp/0593182715/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_5HJ0Q163QES6RNJ2RQAR?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1

According to Zimmer, viruses are not alive according to NASAs definition, since they’re not self sufficient structures capable of Darwinian Evolution of through independent reproduction, but they are the champions of reproduction and Darwinian evolution, being the most ancient source of DNA and RNA, all the information required to start life.

Zimmer thinks they occupy the red line in between life and non-life. In fact they reproduce by creating something he calls a ‘virocell’ by infecting bacteria with their genetic code. Not only do they inject their DNA and RNA into host cells, they also inject the motor proteins required to surgically modify the DNA of their host cell. Once that happens, the bacteria’s life as a bacteria is over. Where it’s one purpose in life was to divide, it’s entire protein machinery is reprogrammed for one purpose and one purpose only, to reproduce 100 exact copies of a phage, upon which point it explodes, sending 100 deadly assassins out into your body to go kill other bacteria like it.
The ‘virocell’ (Prophage) may have been what preceded both viruses and bacteria.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prophage

A creature just over that bright red line separating life from non-life, occupied by our best friends, the Phages.

One hundred copies? Phages operate in decimal? Do they have ten phage-fingers?

Brother Of Jerry Wrote:
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> One hundred copies? Phages operate in decimal? Do
> they have ten phage-fingers?


They are all different, designed to specifically target a particular species of bacteria. The ones I’m studying are T-even series, so T2, T4 and Lambda Phage.
They all have 6 tail fibers that act as legs and bacteria receptor detectors, and they have an amazing geodesic structure protecting their genetic payload, made up of icosohedral capsid head made up of 20 faces, 30 vertices joined at 12 pentagonal joints.
They resemble a lunar lander, for a good reason.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacteriophage

I find it fascinating that Nature spontaneously creates the most complex Platonic solids, a truncated icosohedron, out of stardust.

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2019/soccer-balls-in-space/#:~:text=Buckyballs%2C%20which%20consist%20of%2060,found%20in%20the%20interstellar%20medium.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/16/2022 08:29PM by schrodingerscat.

The T4 bacteriophage has the most complex molecular architecture of any virus we’ve ever studied.

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.0400444101

Without them and LambdaPhages, we’d all be dead from ecoli.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lambda_phage