Free Republic
Browse · Search
Smoky Backroom
Topics · Post Article

To: Right Wing Professor
Now you're just making stuff up. Evolution says species evolve from other species, not by spontaneous generation.

I believe the term spontaneous generation concerns the very first organism from which every other organism supposedly evolved. Where did the first organism come from? It spontaneously generated!
48 posted on 03/11/2003 4:44:19 PM PST by fr_freak
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 22 | View Replies ]


To: fr_freak
Where did the first organism come from? It spontaneously generated!

The first "organizim" only needed to be a self-reproducing molecule. Whether it "spontaneously generated" itself, or whether God did it, it still doesn't mean that evolution isn't the method God used to create all subsequent life.

51 posted on 03/11/2003 4:47:44 PM PST by narby (Going to war without France is like going deer hunting without an accordian)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 48 | View Replies ]

To: fr_freak
I believe the term spontaneous generation concerns the very first organism from which every other organism supposedly evolved

Sure. Look at the last word in the sentence. It is no part of the theory of evolution to postulate how living cells came about. Evolution simply describes how living cells evolved after they arose. There are theories which postulate how cells arose, but they're at the moment highly speculative, with no substantial experimental or observational data.

67 posted on 03/11/2003 5:15:32 PM PST by Right Wing Professor
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 48 | View Replies ]

To: fr_freak
[Now you're just making stuff up. Evolution says species evolve from other species, not by spontaneous generation.]

I believe the term spontaneous generation concerns the very first organism from which every other organism supposedly evolved. Where did the first organism come from? It spontaneously generated! Sure, but that's outside of the field of study of evolution (although there is certainly interest in it from the evolutionary research community). Evolution deals with how things change generation-to-generation while reproducing themselves. By definition, abiogenesis (literally, "life's origin") itself is a different field of study, which worked by different "rules" than those which govern evolution.

It's a fundamental shift in processes that occurs once replication manages to occur for the first time (however it occurs). Evolution would remain a valid explanation for how modern life came to be no matter how the first *seed* was planted (e.g. by God, by chance, by aliens starting a science project, by a meteorite bringing simple life from another planet, etc.)

Additionally, you have a misconception in your wording. You write of the first "organism", but most likely (i.e. according to the best research as it now stands) the first successful replicator would likely have more resembled an autocatalytic collection of chemicals than anything we would call an "organism". But evolution works on replicators of any kind to improve and refine them, not just those that are undeniably "living", and thus the first replicator would eventually be honed by evolution into complex enough systems that they would later be rightful subjects of the title "organism". Creationists grossly distort the picture when they try to imply that scientist believe that life took a sudden leap from a soup of random chemicals to something resembling a modern cell, *poof*. There are many stages in between.

317 posted on 03/12/2003 4:46:43 PM PST by Ichneumon
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 48 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
Smoky Backroom
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson