How did evolution ever begin without the help of a sentient being creating it or atleast helping it out. Given all our technology we can't recreate it
Creationists commonly doctor the Second Law of Thermodynamics to claim that biological evolution, an increase in order over time, is physically impossible. The part of the law they omit is “in a closed system.” Organisms are open systems: they capture energy from the sun, food, or ocean vents to carve out temporary pockets of order in their bodies and nests while they dump heat and waste into the environment, increasing disorder in the world as a whole. Organisms’ use of energy to maintain their integrity against the press of entropy is a modern explanation of the principle of conatus (effort or striving), which Spinoza defined as “the endeavor to persist and flourish in one’s own being,” and which was a foundation of several Enlightenment-era theories of life and mind.7
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@Tastyfrzz Sorry my friend if I say it. Both the "anthropic principle" and the "fine tunning" are failed "Thought Experiments" with some not necessary assumptions and a non scientific agenda.
I would think one would need to account for physics as guiding boundary conditions. Perhaps using a meshing algorithm like in FEM along with nonlinear statistics at each node would be a better way to model evolution. Start at point and then let it branch while monitoring the interactions and predicting the most likely solution at each one.
@Lostpoet At what point in time did non biological mater become living entities? If that is the question (even if do not seem to be), the datation of first evidences points to about 3800 - 3500 millions of years ago. If the question was not that one, what means "at what point"? In what kind of "point" are you thinking on? The abiogenesis detail? We STILL don´t know. But, of course, our lack of enough knowledge about Gravity previous to Newton was never an obstacle for apples to fall before him. What we DO know? That each time people postulated a derived "property" (as "Life" or "Colour") to be the a priori inmaterial reason for things to be, was later proved wrong. No exception. The Plato-like archetypes may have other merits, but not the one of exists. So, for Science, the yet unknown best candidates to be the "point" are material causal factors, which do not exclude (it never does) some also materially restricted randomness.
@Tastyfrzz You mean that panspermia theory? Could be but I don't see why more would receive microbes before earth and then transport them here. But I don't know it is interesting.
@Lostpoet Panspermia only situates the same questions outside Earth. Would make it even more hard to research. But the problems seem to remain almost the same.
@Lostpoet As I´vee said, 3800-3500 millions years is the dating of what seem to be older evidences. Not necessarily the birthday of life, but probably near to.
Please, take in account that those firts organisms and their enviroments were not exactly similar to most today. They were mostly or all anaerobic. Their probable actual nearest cousins are what we call Archea. Organisms that live in sulfuric waters and other hostile enviroments. And / or some also anaerobic organisms, like the related to some (for us) infectious bacteria.
@CharlieZ I did read a few years back in the discovery magazine where they think life started near puddles around volcanic material that would go through billions of cycles of drying up and getting wet. But I have read any farther in that.
@Lostpoet BTW is interesting that we have found a whole variety of organisms that actually live in conditions similar to the ones that prevailed in Earth 3800 millions of years ago. And by then, they were the only and first ones.
@Lostpoet There are Archea arround submarine sulfurous volcanic surgent waters. Also in salt saturated soils and waters. And almost wherever chemical / temperature conditions makes difficult the competence of more "modern" forms of life. There is a lot of ongoing research about.
@CharlieZ I've heard about the silicate how it's more abundant in the universe so it's more likely than our carbon life forms to have evolved around the universe.
@Lostpoet Not really more probable, abundance is not the only nor the main factor. Life (the closed / open stuff about systems) deppends on the interaction of two opposite forces (yes, you gessed it, the ones I´ve mentioned before): Stability and Reactivity. Both, silicates and carbon provide long stable self ensambled molecular chains. And both some reactivity / posible bonds with other chemicals. But silicates, at least in known conditions, is too stable, at expenses of external chemical / energetic interactions. So, carbon seems to be, at least as we know, the "choosen" one.
Silicate based crystals, even so, use to form "colonies" with a very slow growing and some behaviours that, as a very very very very slow motion movie, may have features in common with living colonial organisms, when present inside "enviroments" like argillaceous soils. That do not say that there may be silicate based life. But may have provided a structural "skeleton" / shelter / predecesor conditions for a begining not still developed carbón organisms.
