The Idea of Existence

[ArtDrake]

Oh, don't worry about that. Very frequently, small populations of organisms, especially those which reproduce rapidly, engage in interbreeding with blood-related members of the population; while this sort of breeding can produce deadly combinations of recessive traits, it also encourages genetic variation overall. Even if large numbers of offspring are unfit to survive, those that are may have changed in highly useful ways.

And I wouldn't expect anyone to find "planet" or "earth" inside the Bible except when referring to the earth beneath someone's feet; the Indo-European world believed that the earth was flat until after the Dark Ages (a good 4500 years or so, even by the Bible's reckoning).

Dog breeding is based on selecting traits of dogs that one wishes to replicate until reaching a living paradigm of that trait. Any dog breeder can tell you that. However, there are only seven actual species of the genus Canis: lupus, audustus, aureus, latrans, mesomelas, rufus, and simensis. The dog is only a subspecies of lupus. The different breeds of dog as we know them are subvariations of the supspecies Canis lupus familiaris.

[Deagonx]

Snip

Am I the only one that thinks the sudden arise of prokaryotes seems just stupid?


First. How, how would a cell form? And how likely is it that SOMEHOW DNA also formed. Ribosomes, flagellum, pili, cytoplasm all came with it in a neat little bundle called life. Out of nowhere?

Second, how did it survive? You may or may not realize it. But there are very very few foods that weren't once living. Meat, Cereal (grains), apple and orange juice.

Life comes from life. If there was one prokaryote cell how could it have survived as the only cell on the planet? No trees, no grass. Those didn't come til about 2 billion. BILLION years later.

The entire thing is a theory. Why is it even taught in schools? It's stupid. I can understand teaching proven science, but not mere theories. Clearly, cells exist. Water exists. Trees exist. But you can't teach a theory made up by a bunch of scientists on what happened billions upon billions of years ago!

[cyso]

I know I've been gone a while, and I know no one has posted here a while, but I just have to interject.

And I wouldn't expect anyone to find "planet" or "earth" inside the Bible except when referring to the earth beneath someone's feet; the Indo-European world believed that the earth was flat until after the Dark Ages (a good 4500 years or so, even by the Bible's reckoning).

Job 26:7 He spreads out the northern skies over empty space; he suspends the earth over nothing.

[ArtDrake]

My bad. The flat earth is over nothing.

[Gath]

Am I the only one that thinks the sudden arise of prokaryotes seems just stupid?

First. How, how would a cell form? And how likely is it that SOMEHOW DNA also formed. Ribosomes, flagellum, pili, cytoplasm all came with it in a neat little bundle called life. Out of nowhere?

Well, through many, many years of evolution. And yes, pretty much out of nowhere.

Second, how did it survive? You may or may not realize it. But there are very very few foods that weren't once living. Meat, Cereal (grains), apple and orange juice.

That one's easier-autotrophs. Organisms that make their own food. IIRC, chloroplasts are thought to have originally been prokaryotes that were absorbed by eukaryotes later on. So it's possible that chloroplasts were formed from the original prokaryotes, and those prokaryotes used photosynthesis (or a similar process) in order to survive. Everything built up from there. There are very few foods that weren't once living-but you can make sugar from inorganic materials.

Life comes from life. If there was one prokaryote cell how could it have survived as the only cell on the planet? No trees, no grass. Those didn't come til about 2 billion. BILLION years later.

That's true, life does come from life. According to experiments, however, life can come from inorganic material. The question I would pose is this: How many times did this happen? If life can appear once on the atmosphere of early earth, why can't it happen multiple times?
It survived, as stated above, by making its own food. There weren't any predators at that point.

The entire thing is a theory. Why is it even taught in schools? It's stupid. I can understand teaching proven science, but not mere theories. Clearly, cells exist. Water exists. Trees exist. But you can't teach a theory made up by a bunch of scientists on what happened billions upon billions of years ago!

True, it is a theory. However, gravity is called a 'theory' by the scientific community, and I doubt anyone would dispute that gravity is real. It certainly isn't infallible at this point, but it is the most intelligent guess we can make at this point in time, which is why it is taught.

[ArtDrake]

I wasn't going to respond to deagonx originally, but since you bring it up, yes; there is no such thing as proven science.

[Steelfist]

And, as the aternative is if anything a more preposterous theory (Creationism), what precisely should be taught?

People recieve a religious educaton. People also recieve a scientific education. I fully support that the current most prominent scientific theory being taught in schools as part of the scientific education, and people being taught various religious theories in their religious education.

2 billion. BILLION years later

Hang on. You accept that the world is over 2 billion years old?

[Shadoroq]

I'm terribly sorry to pop out of the blue, but please clarify for me. Where did any opposition of the theory that Earth is approximately 4.5 billion years old come from?

[Steelfist]

There was never any actual argument, I believe, but I was under the impression that the bible indicated the world to be somewhat . . . younger.

[Shadoroq]

Come to think of it, I think I recall some extreme bible literalists stating that, according to the bible, the world is about 6,000 years old.

[ArtDrake]

Yeah. Deagonx, haven't you pointed us to some links to young earth websites as backing up your arguments? Or am I mistaken?