Most atheists do not know what science says about our origins

[joobz]

A cell is a community of things by my understanding.

Yes, when discussing a smaller unit/cluster of people typically united by a political cause (e.g., terrorist cell).

But, not by any biological definition. A cell is purely the "smallest unit of life.", visually defined/isolated by a lipid membrane.

 

[cyborg]

But, not by any biological definition. A cell is purely the "smallest unit of life.", visually defined/isolated by a lipid membrane.

But, much like a cluster of people united by political cause, the most interesting and unexpected things happen along the blurry edges. By restricting thinking about a cell in this way it can make it harder to understand that it is entirely possible for the internal mechanisms in the collective to act in quite different ways to what is 'normal', e.g. virus replication.

These sort of 'abnormal' things must have been happening quite frequently in the early history of life: it wouldn't surprise me at all if we could find a mechanism by which viruses evolve as 'degenerate' organisms off more 'complete' one's by virtue of the fact that the basic bits and pieces can come together in different ways.

I can understand why it would all rather seem fortuitous for 'one' cell to be the root of all life - it is rather less fortuitous if it's all about the interactions of lots of different machines in a soup some of which work together quite well.

 

[joobz]

But, much like a cluster of people united by political cause, the most interesting and unexpected things happen along the blurry edges. By restricting thinking about a cell in this way it can make it harder to understand that it is entirely possible for the internal mechanisms in the collective to act in quite different ways to what is 'normal', e.g. virus replication.

These sort of 'abnormal' things must have been happening quite frequently in the early history of life: it wouldn't surprise me at all if we could find a mechanism by which viruses evolve as 'degenerate' organisms off more 'complete' one's by virtue of the fact that the basic bits and pieces can come together in different ways.

I can understand why it would all rather seem fortuitous for 'one' cell to be the root of all life - it is rather less fortuitous if it's all about the interactions of lots of different machines in a soup some of which work together quite well.

Correct. But to call the collection of things "a cell" would be a stretch of the existing definition to the point of meaninglessness. Would we also call a virus a cell? it has all components of life except self-reproduction.
What about prions? Are they individually or collectively cells?

No, I would say at that transition between self-replicating chemistry in a pool to isolated membrane bound "thingys" and well into the membrane bound thingyings, to call them collective "A CELL" would be so much of a departure from exisiting definitions that it holds no meaning.

again, I think it would be interesting to know how the membrane came to be and how did initial replication work. Did membrane fission already occur or was there an intermediary process of simply membrane rupture and reformation.

 

[cyborg]

But to call the collection of things "a cell" would be a stretch of the existing definition to the point of meaninglessness. Would we also call a virus a cell? it has all components of life except self-reproduction.

You misunderstand joobz - a "cell" has a very specific biological definition that you gave, but a "cell" has no obligation to neatly fit our definitions! Especially when it comes to seeing things that behave in similar ways without having the specific structures we define cells by.

 

[joobz]

You misunderstand joobz - a "cell" has a very specific biological definition that you gave, but a "cell" has no obligation to neatly fit our definitions! Especially when it comes to seeing things that behave in similar ways without having the specific structures we define cells by.

definitely! We are in agreement there. My "being a stickler" of the definitions is because of DOC's desire to missrepresent what science claims. If DOC had the science correct, I'd have no problem. His desire to repeat the same misconceptions is completely analogous to the claim of a 747 in a tornado. As part of the science community, I refuse to let someone put words in our mouths.

 

[cyborg]

Indeed joobz - DOC starts from a position of not understanding the words beyond understanding they are 'bad' words and works from there.

Word games are all they have.

 

[articulett]

Originally Posted by DOC
And where did all the chemicals come from. Oh that's right The Big Bang turned some strange kind of energy that doesn't exist now into enough matter to make 10 billion trillion stars. And who knows where all that unusual pre-Big Bang energy came from.

The energy does so exist now... most of the energy for this planet comes from one of those stars--we call it "the sun". And who knows where your god came from and whence he came and why as the creator of all he didn't just create the properly worshipful life forms in this speck of earth and this speck of time in the universe?

 

[articulett]

Once again, joobz was the one who said he believed he thought something was laughably absurd. (in post 56) If you going to try to make someone look bad it is important to get your facts straight.

I think joobz thinks YOU are laughably absurd... you come here hoping to discredit science with your semantic silliness and non-understanding and complete incuriosity on the subject, because you think that somehow that makes your magic sky god myth which has absolutely NO evidence in its favor somehow less absurd. You mis-word things in Kirk Cameron's smarmy crocoduck way that expresses so much ignorance that it's hard to know where to start... it also expresses such profound arrogance and cluelessness that is impossible to fix. And the way your brain just skips over all facts and points and queries and attempts at clarification so you can pretend science is absurd and whatever magical creation myth you've been inculcated with is fascinating.

 

[articulett]

Then these scientists must be wrong when they say:

The "inflationary universe."

The leading idea is called the "inflationary universe" model. The key assumption of this model is that just before the Big Bang, space was filled with an unstable form of energy, whose nature is not yet known. At some instant, this energy was transformed into the fundamental particles from which arose all the matter {enough to make 10 billion trillion stars} we observe today. That instant marks what we call the Big Bang.

http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/seuforum/bb_whatpowered.htm

Doc, humans use words to describe the facts as best they can... time as humans experience did not exist before the big bang... just like your magical god existed forever and ever... and the energy was not destroyed...although entropy means that it all matter is moving away from each other over time--but these are large periods of time and you can't even grasp the small piece of time and matter and energy on planet earth, so twisting the big bang into your god making sense is really "out there". Of course, I realize I am wasting my breath. But all humans have is words until we invent new ones to describe the facts as we come to understand them. All creationists have is words to use to twist the facts to keep their delusion alive in spite of contrary facts.

 

[articulett]

It seems to me that the first and third alternatives are viable, but the second one doesn't make much sense to me. Suppose there were no horizontal gene transfer, then if you look to the origin of the "type", you would have to assert that either the same "type" arose independently at least twice, or that all individuals of that "type" had a common ancenstor, in which case we're back to the individual.

Yes, but cells...especially cells of eukaryotes are composed of individual things, some of which were individual replicators themselves. DNA is a membrane, existed outside a nuclear membrane and possibly replicated as RNA... Humans are considered individual organisms made of individual cells which came from one cell which had at least one other "incorporated" life form know as mitochondria... so it's not simple. Life is a community. The nature of the most recent common ancestor is not known as it does not exist today in any form... we just discovered that our gut is filled with trillions of microbes... we just started decoding archaea... we are still putting the pieces together and human wording is cumbersome still. "Individual" and "life" are continuums which we are understanding further as the facts accumulate.

Yes--we have a common ancestor. I see no scientist saying it was a bacterium-- I wouldn't disagree, but it's confusing... like saying we come from monkeys. It's wrong enough to confuse rather than clarify. When someone says we come from monkeys, we correct them before furthering the conversation. It's not that it's completely wrong--it's just that it confuses more than it clarifies and becomes a strawman very easily (like calling evolution random, btw).

 

[articulett]

No. If we assume a single "type" (lets say "species" instead), then we lack evidence that a single individual of this species is what gave rise to all other organisms. All we can tell is that all organisms share genetic traits with that particular species, or to be more exact, all organisms arose from that species. However, archaea may have arisen from a sub population of this hypothetical species, and prokaryotes arisen from another. There's simply no way to tell.

Yes, because at this point we don't know how common "proto life" is... we are just getting a grasp of the life forms on this planet--in the air we breathe... in every drop of water.

 

[Upchurch]

Then these scientists must be wrong when they say:

{snip}

http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/seuforum/bb_whatpowered.htm

They aren't wrong, per se. What you're reading is an article written for a non-physics savvy audience that's trying to take very complex ideas and relate them in ways that are easier to understand. As such, the author is taking artistic license with his/her word usage. Words like "there" and "before" have no meaning outside of the context of a spacetime manifold.

What the author is most likely referring to either a condition of spontaneous quantum fluctuations or colliding higher dimensional manifolds. But its hard to say since the author is speaking rather generally in simplified terms.

 

[Belz...]

What tried and tested evidence. This thing about all plants and animals coming from one bacterium is just a theory.

Well, I'm convinced. Can we praise Jehovah, now ?

No one celled organism has ever been created by man (from inorganic or even organic material) and in my opinion never will.

I wonder what you'll say when we do make one.

As far as Christianity having no evidence this famous Oxford historian had plenty of historical evidence for his belief in Christianity.

Funny. There is no evidence for a historical Jesus. It doesn't mean he didn't exist, but...

Stop derailing your thread DOC.

I was responding to a derailer.

Yes, that seems to be all you're doing.

 

[sphenisc]

I see no scientist saying it was a bacterium--

Gupta and Cavalier-Smith suggest this : quoted here...

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1450140

 

[bokonon]

If you think its absurd that you and your relatives came from a bacterium, that's your right. And if you don't think its absurd, that's your right also.

I don't think it's absurd. I think it's pretty miraculous. Not magical-miraculous, as in "evidence that it was designed by an intelligent and eternal creator," but simply miraculous, as in wonderful and unexpected. A magical-miraculous creator would have filled the universe with life, with walking plant-people on the moon nibbling lunar dust and photosynthesizing energy, or simply tapping cosmic rays to power their spindly bodies. It wouldn't have been content to swim among mindless slime cells for billions of years, play for millions more with dinosaurs only to scrap the design when playtime was over, and finally create something as flawed as mankind when it decided that a little worship was called for.

It's miraculous that life could have emerged when the conditions were right, and persisted for billions of years in a place where conditions were right for that too - a water-covered planet, big enough to hold onto an atmosphere and keep a magnet field in place, to protect it from cosmic debris and radiation which may have ripped life from its cradle on less-fortunate worlds, with a single large moon to stabilize its wobbling and keep the climate stable enough for complex life to evolve. And here we are, just beginning to look back and understand it all, just beginning to displace the ignorance and superstition which has been life's constant companion in the journey so far.

I don't know what the future holds, but looking back billions of years and seeing just how far we've come in the face of fantastic odds, it's an interesting time to be alive. If you want to spend your life preparing for an imaginary "afterlife," that's your right. And if you want to grab hold of the only life you'll ever have with both hands and spend each moment with full knowledge of just what a precious, irreplaceable gift it is, that's your right too.

 

[Cleon]

DOC, stop. Just stop. Back up your cyber-bag, and find some other thread. Or forum. Start another thread on some famous Christian. I hear the current US president has some leanings in that direction, as do all of the major candidates for his replacement. One of the Republican front-runners is one of those Mormon fellows. Surely that's something for you to start a thread on.

Not only were you completely and unambiguously wrong about the "most atheists don't know this" bit, but everybody here knows more about the subject than you do. Everybody. From the atheists like those on this thread, to Christians like kittynh, to Jews like me, to the guy who believes in "corn gods." Everybody. So if you want to salvage what little dignity you have left, just stop posting here and let this thread die. Find something else to be your "DOC Topic of the Week." This one isn't for you.

 

[Belz...]

I noticed they're are no sources for any of this.

Matthew (the tax collector) was an apostle and an eyewitness to the life of Christ. Why would an eyewitness need to base his gospel on someone (Mark) who was not an eyewitness.

Luke (The physician) was a traveling companion of Paul. Paul met with Peter and some of the other disciples for 15 days (Galations 1;18). I have a feeling Paul and Peter did not talk chariot races in those 2 weeks.

John was also an apostle and an eyewitness. Once again why would an apostle and an eyewitness need to use the gospel of a non eye witness.

And if these 2 eyewitnesses did copy anything from Mark, it was probably because it was the truth. After all Mark was a companion of Peter (essentially the main apostle). I go into Peter in greater detail in this thread:

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=85633&highlight=peter

And did these 11 apostles choose to die for what they knew to be a false story.

Apostolic Age—1st century

* Saint Stephen, Protomartyr, was stoned c. 35 A.D.
* James the Great (Son of Zebedee) was beheaded in 44 A.D.
* Philip the Apostle was crucified in 54 A.D.
* Matthew the Evangelist killed by a halberd in 60 A.D.
* James the Just, beaten to death by a club after being crucified and stoned.
* Matthias was stoned and beheaded.
* Saint Andrew, St. Peter's brother, was crucified.
* Mark was beaten to death.
* Saint Peter, crucified upside-down.
* Apostle Paul, beheaded in Rome.
* Saint Jude was crucified.
* Saint Bartholomew was crucified.
* Thomas the Apostle was killed by a spear.
* Luke the Evangelist was hanged.
* Simon the Zealot was crucified in 74 A.D.

(Note: John the Evangelist according to legend was cooked in boiling hot oil but survived. He was the only one of the original twelve Apostles who was not martyred).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_martyrs

You DO know that none of the gospels were REALLY written by any of those guys, don't you ?

 

[Belz...]

Yes, its quite simple. If that "one" single solitary organism (let's call him Mr. A) had died for some reason. All the plants and animals and humans and dinosaurs etc. would not have evolved from it. And you or I wouldn't be here. We all came from that one organism (according to the theory). What don't you understand about that. There was a "first" one celled organism and all plants and animals came from that "first" single organism.

Er.... no. If it had died, something else would've been the first. That's what people are trying to explain to you, albeit unsuccesfully.

I get the impression that some of you would believe -- Oh, if that first one cell bacteria had died there would always be another one down the line to come along. That's very unlikely.

Why ? There would have been a lot of those early organisms. Why would'nt have another one done just as good ?

That's why modern science with all its technology can't create a simple one celled organism from organic matter. Only God can create a one celled living organism .

And yet we ARE making organisms.

Yes, like Isaac Newton and the ardent Catholic Louis Pasteur.

They didn't write the Bible.

joobz (who I believe is an atheist) used the phrase "laughably absurd" to describe my contention that all life came from a single one cell bacterium. (from science).

No... that's not what was said. The problem is that you don't understand what "science" says, and that you think you do. The fact that a lot of people here have devoted time and energy to try and educate you while you dance around the issue is quite telling of your intellectual honesty.

 

[Belz...]

And where did all the chemicals come from. Oh that's right The Big Bang turned some strange kind of energy that doesn't exist now into enough matter to make 10 billion trillion stars. And who knows where all that unusual pre-Big Bang energy came from.

Then these scientists must be wrong when they say:

The "inflationary universe."

The leading idea is called the "inflationary universe" model. The key assumption of this model is that just before the Big Bang, space was filled with an unstable form of energy, whose nature is not yet known.

That was AFTER the Big Bang.

Dammit, DOC, you'd think that people who try to show off their superior knowledge would try and acquire, you know, SOME knowledge before they make complete fools of themselves in public.

Aren't some Jews taught at a very early age that Hitler was a Christian.

He was. Being a Christian doesn't make you automatically good. Look at Catholics !

 

[articulett]

Gupta and Cavalier-Smith suggest this : quoted here...

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1450140

Thanks--here's what is says in regards to Gupta and Cavalier Smith, both of whose papers were publshed over 5 years ago:

This unification of the cellular world has led to numerous attempts to draw a universal tree of life that would reflect the natural history of living organisms on our planet. Whereas the three-domains concept is now generally accepted, there is no consensus about how these domains originated and what are the evolutionary relationships among them. In the classical tree of life, two lineages diverged from LUCA, one leading to Bacteria and the other, to a common ancestor of Archaea and Eukarya (2). Alternatively, one of the two primordial lineages could have produced Eukarya, whereas the other led to a common ancestor of Archaea and Bacteria (6). In these scenarios, LUCA can be a progenote (7), a community of primitive organisms freely exchanging their genes (8), or a more sophisticated type of organism, already harboring some eukaryotic traits (6, 9). In all these cases, LUCA was a very different entity than its descendants. In contrast, Gupta and Cavalier-Smith (10, 11) have suggested that LUCA was a bacterium, and that Archaea originated from within Bacteria. Finally, several authors have proposed that Eukarya originated from the merging of an archaeal and a bacterial lineage (for review, see ref. 12).

The conclusion says:

As with most evolutionary scenarios, the three domains, three viruses theory cannot be easily falsified. However, it has great explanatory power, because it explains the formation of the canonical protein patterns characteristic of each domain of life, the formation of a discrete numbers of domains, or else the puzzling distribution of DNA informational proteins among the three cellular domains. The theory is compatible with an RNA-based LUCA and at the same time with the existence of a few homologous DNA informational proteins in the three domains. Finally, it takes into account the whole biosphere (cells, viruses, and plasmids). The unification of cellular life, a major achievement of the last century, has left aside viruses as nonliving entities. In the present theory, both viruses and plasmids find their place in the history of life as critical players in the origin of DNA genomes and modern cells.

The current state of knowledge is the last line... at what point does a cell have all it needs to be classified as a bacteria is the question... and what did LUCA look like...what features did it have-- we are narrowing it down--but science actually does not say that we came from bacteria. We definitely have common ancestry with bacteria, but it appears to be before bacteria broke off the tree of life. If that's the case, saying we come from bacteria, is like saying we came from Neanderthals--close--but not correct.

We come from microbes--we don't know the exact nature of LUCA at this point...we've just decoded our own genome...just uncovered arcahea and extremophiles and we're just starting the genome analysis.