itt: evolution and trolling

[Squeezer]

In response:

When, where, why, and how did life learn to reproduce itself?
Instinct and thousands of years of practice
(So the first single cell organism was able to survive for thousands and thousands of years? No wait, this is more in the order of millions or billions of years. And how can it have beneficial mutations if it has no offspring?)
There are still single-celled organisms in existence today. They're asexual. That could explain how life first began to reproduce and evolve.


With what did the first cell capable of sexual reproduction reproduce?
Sperm and Egg most likely
(This makes some level of sense. I hope you can expound some. I don't mean to ask you to expound on fact but distinctly on fiction. I wish not to know what happened as such knowledge is impossible to obtain; I wish to know what could have been.)
I'm not sure on how reproduction has evolved through time, but my guess would be it's stayed somewhat the same for as long as homosapiens have become dominant.

Why would any plant or animal want to reproduce more of its kind since this would only make more mouths to feed and decrease the chances of survival? (Does the individual have a drive to survive, or the species? How do you explain this?)
Plants and animals aren't that smart and are really good at survival.
(I don't understand this response.)
Plants and animals don't understand the concept of population control, or boom, or even population at all. The idea of survival of the fittest keeps animals in check. They eat each other and continue the process of life, while simultaneously keeping control on the overall amount of certain species. Look up how insects would be out of control without spiders. Nature balances itself out.

How did photosynthesis evolve?
Millions of years of training
(Where did food come from? If the cells lived off of thermal vents why did they change to photosynthesis?)
That's a question better suited for a botanist, but I would imagine that the plants discovered that how great of an energy source the sun was and decided to adapt. I'm being sort of nonchalant about it, I'm sure the process was gradual.

Why are there 2 sexes anyhow?
So that life can continue.
(Can life not continue asexually?)

I wish I could tell you why there are two sexes, but the only thing I can offer is that for some reason it became something worth adapting to.

If the first generation of mating species didn't have parents, how did the mating pair get to that point anyhow? Isn't evolution supposed to progress when an offspring of a mating pair has a beneficial mutation?
Not all humans evolved overnight. There were lots of Neanderthals around.
(This is not addressing humans, but the first generation of mating species.)
I'm telling you that not all humans became humans at the same time. We're not sure that there even was a "first generation of humans." It could have been random pockets of people evolving and mating for all we know. We just don't know but that's still not evidence for the existence of God.

Alright man, I'll discuss this with you. You aren't being rude and seem genuinely curious :turned:

[milosh]

In response:

When, where, why, and how did life learn to reproduce itself?
Instinct and thousands of years of practice
(So the first single cell organism was able to survive for thousands and thousands of years? No wait, this is more in the order of millions or billions of years. And how can it have beneficial mutations if it has no offspring?)
There are still single-celled organisms in existence today. They're asexual. That could explain how life first began to reproduce and evolve.
My initial question is how did the first unicellular organism learn to reproduce itself. I was referring to asexual reproduction to begin with.


With what did the first cell capable of sexual reproduction reproduce?
Sperm and Egg most likely
(This makes some level of sense. I hope you can expound some. I don't mean to ask you to expound on fact but distinctly on fiction. I wish not to know what happened as such knowledge is impossible to obtain; I wish to know what could have been.)
I'm not sure on how reproduction has evolved through time, but my guess would be it's stayed somewhat the same for as long as homosapiens have become dominant.
I'm speaking on the cellular level, but reproduction on the organism level is equally intriguing. Why do these organisms have a drive to preserve their species instead of just themselves?

Why would any plant or animal want to reproduce more of its kind since this would only make more mouths to feed and decrease the chances of survival? (Does the individual have a drive to survive, or the species? How do you explain this?)
Plants and animals aren't that smart and are really good at survival.
(I don't understand this response.)
Plants and animals don't understand the concept of population control, or boom, or even population at all. The idea of survival of the fittest keeps animals in check. They eat each other and continue the process of life, while simultaneously keeping control on the overall amount of certain species. Look up how insects would be out of control without spiders. Nature balances itself out.
The idea of survival of the fittest is exactly what I'm addressing. I don't understand why organisms bent on survival would preserve their species over themselves.

How did photosynthesis evolve?
Millions of years of training
(Where did food come from? If the cells lived off of thermal vents why did they change to photosynthesis?)
That's a question better suited for a botanist, but I would imagine that the plants discovered that how great of an energy source the sun was and decided to adapt. I'm being sort of nonchalant about it, I'm sure the process was gradual.
Reasonable response. Can be accounted for by the Theory of Evolution.

Why are there 2 sexes anyhow?
So that life can continue.
(Can life not continue asexually?)
I wish I could tell you why there are two sexes, but the only thing I can offer is that for some reason it became something worth adapting to.
I suppose this is a reasonable response, but I would like to know what that adaptation is. I'll tell you what it's not, beneficial mutation.

If the first generation of mating species didn't have parents, how did the mating pair get to that point anyhow? Isn't evolution supposed to progress when an offspring of a mating pair has a beneficial mutation?
Not all humans evolved overnight. There were lots of Neanderthals around.
(This is not addressing humans, but the first generation of mating species.)
I'm telling you that not all humans became humans at the same time. We're not sure that there even was a "first generation of humans." It could have been random pockets of people evolving and mating for all we know. We just don't know but that's still not evidence for the existence of God.
I'm not speaking of humans or the first generation of humans or the first generation of apes or the first generation of mammals. I'm speaking of the first generation of mating species. How and why did the shift from asexual to sexual occur? This depends on two working sexual organs produced by similar asexual species.

Thank you for treating me with some respect. I apologize if I have offended or shown disrespect to you or anyone else.

[DoTheFandango]

I just don't see how there are any answers for any of those questions. If anyone on this forum knew the answers, they certainly wouldn't be sitting here playing this game and talking to these people, they'd be scientists and professors, or theologians and priests.

Ask a plant why it reproduces. It won't respond. Now ask us why it reproduces. Somehow we have an answer for that, even though no one can honestly say they know why? That seems unlikely. Now ask a Human why it has sex. It's a primal feeling, you don't know why you want to have sex with that attractive lady, but you know that you do. Could it be for unconscious betterment of a species? or could it be genetic information that innately tells us that it would be enjoyable? Both? I don't know, but I would fuck Olivia Munn until there's no tomorrow. Before wedlock!

No one has the answers, we just all pretend like the cards in our hands are the ones you guys originally had in the first place when we said "pick a card".

[Kolar]

That's just it DTF. We can explain the how fairly easily but the why, why is something better. The human body isn't perfect. We have several organs which have no functional use at all. But to explain why they weren't utilized is extremely complicated if even explainable.

[Squeezer]

That's just it DTF. We can explain the how fairly easily but the why, why is something better. The human body isn't perfect. We have several organs which have no functional use at all. But to explain why they weren't utilized is extremely complicated if even explainable.

Funny thing is, the best explanation I've ever heard for why life continues on is from Jurassic Park.

"No matter what, life will find a way."

It is almost immaculate that a series of coincidences and inexplicable mysteries are likely the reason why everything we know exists and will continue to move forward.

edit: I like to call it my Invisible Will. Makes it sound like a cute pet ^-^

[milosh]

That's just it DTF. We can explain the how fairly easily but the why, why is something better. The human body isn't perfect. We have several organs which have no functional use at all. But to explain why they weren't utilized is extremely complicated if even explainable.

An idea: http://drdino.com/articles.php?spec=9

Again, I am not referencing these articles as absolutely verifiable but as possibilities of explanation. By the way I do understand how poor my journalism is to continue to quote the same source, and I admit to not doing enough research on this topic. It is more than a lifetime pursuit.

[milosh]

Funny thing is, the best explanation I've ever heard for why life continues on is from Jurassic Park.

"No matter what, life will find a way."

It is almost immaculate that a series of coincidences and inexplicable mysteries are likely the reason why everything we know exists and will continue to move forward.

edit: I like to call it my Invisible Will. Makes it sound like a cute pet ^-^

No disrespect, but this is very bad science.

[Squeezer]

No disrespect, but this is very bad science.

None taken and I was kidding. But the fact remains that life finds a way to continue on this planet, even through ice ages, meteors and other such huge rapings. It is unexplainable in that way. You may explain that with the presence of God, but I can't.

[milosh]

I really appreciate all of your interesting responses, but for now I have to go to bed. Good night.

[Epinephrine]

1. Where did the space for the universe come from?
   No one knows. As far as we can assertain, the universe is currently expanding. We can see this thanks to the doppler effect, as we see that the light from distant stars are all redshifted, meaning in the most elementary sense that they are getting further and further away and their light waves are stretched out. What the universe is expanding into no one knows, only that it is expanding.
   
2. Where did matter come from?
   All we need is to look at Einstein's theory of relatively to see that E=mc^2. Matter and energy can be considered two different forms of the same thing. We know the universe is expanding, so at some point it was probably smaller than it is now. If it has been continuously expanding (and astronomical observations point towards a universe which is expanding at increasing rates in fact), then at one point it must have been one single point, the big bang. What was before that, no one knows.
   
3. How did matter get so perfectly organized?
   The laws of the universe are the laws of the universe. It works a certain way because... it does. No one knows why. Nobody has the answer to this.
   
4. Where did the energy come from to do all the organizing?
   Energy = matter, question answered above. Energy does not do organizing.
   
5. How did life develop from non-life?
   Life at the molecular level is basically just a continuously progressing chemical reaction. Like all chemical reactions, it started at some point in the past and this particular chemical reaction hasn't stopped yet. There are various theories as to how this has happened, the most prominent being that various organic compounds (biology speak for molecules of carbon, oxygen and hydrogen), were randomly mixed together at some point in time 1-4 billion years ago on Earth. Whenever you mix chemicals together, there's a chance you may get a reaction, and these chemicals reacted. By some random sequence of chances, the reaction eventually managed to get to a point where it could produce new substrates to react against before the original pool of organic compounds were all used up.
   
   Where did the organic compounds come from? Not sure, but a good chance is that they came from space. Analysis of comets shows that organic compounds are actually quite abundant in our solar system, made from floating debris and cosmic rays which randomly created these very stable molecules out in the reaches of space.
   
6. When, where, why, and how did life learn to reproduce itself?
   It did not 'learn' anything. Evolution is based on the idea that stuff just happens because it happens, not because there is any end goal to it all. Life didn't 'learn' to reproduce. Life as we define it is really just a continously operating chemical reaction. Therefore, of all the other possible chemical reactions that occured from the random organic compounds spread from comets in the early Earth, what we know as life is the one reaction that seems to have made it. Random events allowed the generation of a self sustaining chemical reaction which likely used the energy from either the sun or a cooling Earth (geothermal) to power an endless stream of chemical reactions which is what we call life today.
   
7. With what did the first cell capable of sexual reproduction reproduce?
   From that same chemical reaction that never stopped reacting. It's silly to think that entire cell just materialized one day. From looking at biochemistry and molecular biology, we can see that individual systems within cells are at the molecular level self sustaining reactions. If given the random assortment of the 4 basic amino acids, RNA will eventually assemble. Proteins make it faster, but it would probably happen eventually. DNA is just a more complex form of RNA. Proteins are just complex amino acids made from RNA/DNA which did not become a long string, but formed into a clump instead. It is not a big stretch of imagination to see how random free floating strings of DNA if given enough would of course assemble into proteins which take advantage of the strong atomic bonds formed by their arrangements.
   
   A similar analogy would be that if you threw a million cottonballs into a bunch of velcro, it would not be silly to assume that a lot of cottonballs would attach to the velcro. Same thing with amino acids and RNA->DNA->Proteins and so on.
   
8. Why would any plant or animal want to reproduce more of its kind since this would only make more mouths to feed and decrease the chances of survival? (Does the individual have a drive to survive, or the species? How do you explain this?)
   
   They don't WANT to do anything. They just do. It's a chemical reaction which continues to run at the simplest. At a more macro level, organisms reproduce as much as they possibly can. Unfortunately reproduction takes a lot of energy and resources. Once you reach the carrying capacity of a certain ecosystem, the 'newest generation' will not be able to create more. If they are still running full speed at reproduction, they will use up too much energy to produce offspring that cannot survive and thus will die off. Fortunately because there are many different types of species, there will be SOME which won't reproduce so much, and those will end up conserving enough energy so that their offspring survive to the next generation.
   
   So to answer your question, it happens because it happens.
   
9. What would you have said fifty years ago if I told you I had a living coelacanth in my aquarium?
   
   Eh?
   
10. How did photosynthesis evolve?
    
    Randomly. And since it created an advantage for the organism that evolved it, that organism managed to create more offspring, and thus spread and became dominant.
    
11. How did thought evolve?
    
    At it's simplest level, the central nervous system is connected via individual cells which send electrical signals to other cells via action potentials mediated by ion cascades. Some time in the past the first cell which randomly created an action potential probably uselessly, managed to connect a few of these together and then form something useful. More and more of these linked up and created increasingly more complex neural networks.
    
    At it's core, the brain is a very complex neural network. If you have ever worked with neural networks in the computer world, you would see that in very few generations, given some very simple 'base conditions' as would be seen by a few interlinking cells, very complex processes can be carried out. Thought is just a manifestation of a more complex version of this.
    
    No one knows why each of us has 'consciousness' exactly, but there is no doubt how it works on a cellular level.
    
    As an aside, you only need to work with people who have gone through the effects of aging, accidents or congenital malformations to see how very easily our superior level of 'thought' as humans can be completely messed up in predictable ways.
    
12. Where did the human emotions, such as love, hate, jealously, and moral justice come from?
    
    Part of the effects of having such a complex neural network likely. No one really knows. Some of the things such as 'moral justice' are merely human constructs learned over time. Some things can be explained on a more hormonal level. For instance, love may be an important emotion which randomly evolved but stayed because it allowed parents to take better care of their children, and it was these organisms which had 'love' which were able to create more successful children for the next generation. As for 'moral justice', ideals such as altruism can be seen even in bee colonies. The closer one is related to another genetically, the better it is to adapt strategies where one is altruistic because even if you do things at the cost of your own life, as long as you are genetically related enough to your peers and what you did ensured their survival, then you are ensuring that your genes are passed on.
    
    There have been many studies on this matter, you can look up the papers on your own.
    
13. What are the odds that the evolutionary process, proceeding by random changes, would produce human beings, plus millions of species of animals, birds, fish, and insects, all with symmetrical features, i.e., one side being a mirror image of the other? We take symmetry in all these creatures for granted, but is that a reasonable outcome for a random process?
    
    Well we aren't all perfectly symmetrical. You would have to look at the molecular level to see why we are somewhat symmetrical. For instance, DNA is symmetrical because if it weren't it would be RNA. RNA is very unstable and easy to break apart, meanwhile the much more stable DNA (which is really just 2 opposing strands of RNA put together) doesn't break apart easily. I would assume something like this taken to the macro level would explain things, but I am not an expert.

[Epinephrine]

• Why are there 2 sexes anyhow?
  
  That's just for humans. There are asexual creatures out there, and there are even some plant species with three sexes. I assume that the '2 sexes' thing is dominant for the more complex species is that having 2 partners create offspring is the easiest way to ensure adequate diversity in reproduction. Asexual reproduction is almost always just cloning, which means that if there is some reason for you to die out, all your offspring die out too (i.e. if there is a disease to kill you). If you had 3 sexes, it becomes increasingly harder to get everything correct and have the correct conditions for reproduction, so having 2 sexes is just easier.
  
  For an explanation of how 2 sexes adds to diversity, please read any high school biology textbook.
  
• If the first generation of mating species didn't have parents, how did the mating pair get to that point anyhow? Isn't evolution supposed to progress when an offspring of a mating pair has a beneficial mutation?
  
  As clonal reproduction is the simplest, it is reasonable to assume this is what began. Then at some point by pure chance, some clone was different enough via random mutation that it interacted with one of the other clones to create offspring and from then on, sexual reproduction existed. Remember that this does not mean it suddenly had a penis for the other's vagina. It just means that it interacted in the molecular level to mix DNA with the other organism however it did it.
  
  It is also a fallacy to suggest that evolution is 'supposed to progress'. Evolution really doesn't place ANY judgments on what is and is not progress. Only that, stuff survives because under the current situation it had the correct capabilities to survive, thus it's offspring are the ones that continue on to the next generation. As such there is also no such thing as 'beneficial mutations', only mutations.
  
• How did the heart, lungs, brain, stomach, veins, blood, kidneys, etc. develop in the first animal by slow, minute steps and the animal survive while these changes were occurring?
  
  If you studied anatomy, you'd see really that a lot of these things are connected. The heart, lungs, veins, kidneys, etc are all part of the circulatory system. The stomech, etc are part of another system, and the brain is part of the neurological system. How did they develop?
  
  It's not like you had a horse with no heart that slowly over generations developed a heart. You had a microscopic organism that was made of more than one cell which started to specialize each cell. This helped it survive better than other organisms. As it got more and more specialized one randomly developed a very very very simple way to transport nutrients to another part of the organism, whether it be just a hole in the middle or whatever. This developed into a circulatory system. Similarly other systems developed and they had uses. As more and more time went by, some organisms got more complex which HAPPENED to confer to these organisms an advantage in reproduction and thus they survived and so on.
  
• Where are the trillions of fossils of such true transitional forms?
  They are there. Fossils are everywhere.
  
  Also if you think about how hard it is for a fossil to actually develop, you'd realize that obviously not everything would be perfectly preserved. For instance, why isn't every single human city that existed 2000 years ago preserved, it wasn't that long ago? Well they were destroyed for various reasons, and we cannot piece together the past perfectly. This is common sense.
  

[milosh]

Okay, one last thing:

By 'beneficial mutation' I simply mean a mutation that helped the organism to survive. If all of life's organization is to be concluded by mutations whether beneficial or not, then every single factor of order within the biosphere occurred because of chance at one time or another. The chance of that mutation occurring and being beneficial to the organisms ability to survive coupled the the probability that no freak accidents like a predator, volcano, meteor, ice age, or the bottom of an animal's foot killed that particular special offspring occuring over huge amounts of times multiplied by billions of levels of order, not mentioning that the initial spontaneous existence of the first organism is highly improbable, seems completely improbable and insane. How can we explain probabilities lower than 1 to the mol or greater even with infinite time? It simply does not make sense to me. The "probability problem" is really a problem for me. It's not the idea of one shot in a million that bothers me; it's the idea of one shot in a million a trillion times.

[Saturn V]

ITT armchair warriors try to trump 150 years of scientific scrutiny

hahahaHHAhahhHAhaHAHAHAHAHA ahahAAHAHHAHA
ASHUIASDUIAHSUHAHAHAHAHA

[gran guerrero]

Did you get anything good (read: funny) out of him?

Does he have nice hair? Is it pampered?

Yes (if you mean humor), yes, and trimmed (think futurama fry, less curls, but black).

I would love to tell you more, but I'm saving it for my book in the current works (Unfortunately, the idea for writing a book you gave me in the last thread was null cause I already wrote a book, and I was already in the process of this second one; not like it's going to get published anyways or if anyone will read it)

[Kolar]

None taken and I was kidding. But the fact remains that life finds a way to continue on this planet, even through ice ages, meteors and other such huge rapings. It is unexplainable in that way. You may explain that with the presence of God, but I can't.

Extremophiles (microscopic organisms that can live in harsh environments here on Earth) were not known when the Viking landers went to Mars in the 70s. Life exists almost everywhere on our planet. Organisms at the bottom of the ocean feed off the sulfur from subterranean volcanoes and some types of them live in hot springs. And we may even find it in the ocean below Europa if the ice is warm enough to remain in liquid form and beneath the surface of Mars where it can be protected from solar radiation. Life is amazingly resilient, created or not it tends to survive as far as we know without divine intervention and can adapt and change to meet new challenges. God apparently didn't protect the Earth from dozens of near life ending extinction events.