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June 1st, 2012
03:46 PM ET
Survey: Nearly half of Americans subscribe to creationist view of human originsBy Dan Merica, CNN (CNN) - Forty-six percent of Americans believe that God created humans in their present form at one point within the past 10,000 years, according to a survey released by Gallup on Friday. That number has remained unchanged for the past 30 years, since 1982, when Gallup first asked the question on creationism versus evolution. Thirty years ago, 44% of the people who responded said they believed that God created humans as we know them today - only a 2-point difference from 2012. "Despite the many changes that have taken place in American society and culture over the past 30 years, including new discoveries in biological and social science, there has been virtually no sustained change in Americans' views of the origin of the human species since 1982," wrote Gallup's Frank Newport. "All in all, there is no evidence in this trend of a substantial movement toward a secular viewpoint on human origins." The second most common view is that humans evolved with God's guidance - a view held by 32% of respondents. The view that humans evolved with no guidance from God was held by 15% of respondents. Survey: U.S. Protestant pastors reject evolution, split on Earth's age Not surprisingly, more religious Americans are more likely to be creationists. Nearly 70% of respondents who attend church every week said that God created humans in their present form, compared with 25% of people who seldom or never attend church. Among the seldom church-goers, 38% believe that humans evolved with no guidance from God. The numbers also showed a tendency to follow party lines, with nearly 60% of Republicans identifying as creationists, while 41% of Democrats hold the same beliefs. Republicans also seem to be more black-and-white about their beliefs, with only 5% responding that humans evolved with some help from God. That number is much lower than the 19% of both independents and Democrats. According to Newport, a belief in creationism is bucking the majority opinion in the scientific community - that humans evolved over millions of years. "It would be hard to dispute that most scientists who study humans agree that the species evolved over millions of years, and that relatively few scientists believe that humans began in their current form only 10,000 years ago without the benefit of evolution," writes Newport. "Thus, almost half of Americans today hold a belief ... that is at odds with the preponderance of the scientific literature." The USA Today/Gallup telephone poll was conducted May 10-13 with a random sample of 1,012 American adults. The sampling error is plus or minus 4 percentage points. |
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To get a gauge of just how inane the belief in intelligent design is in the 21st Century, here are some areas they must ignore, any one of which proves beyond rational argument that, not surprisingly, the World did not start about 6,000 years ago at the behest of the Judeo-Christian god, with one man, one woman and a talking snake.
First and most obviously is the fossil record. The fossil record is much, much more than just dinosaurs. Indeed, dinosaurs only get the press because of their size, but they make up less than 1% of the entire fossil record. Life had been evolving on Earth for over 3 thousand million years before dinosaurs evolved and has gone on evolving for 65 million years after the Chicxulub meteor wiped them out.
The fossil record includes the Stromatolites, colonies of prokaryotic bacteria, that range in age going back to about 3 billion years, the Ediacara fossils from South Australia, widely regarded as among the earliest multi-celled organisms, the Cambrian species of the Burgess shale in Canada (circa – 450 million years) the giant scorpions of the Silurian Period, the giant, wingless insects of the Devonian period, the insects, amphibians, reptiles; fishes, clams, crustaceans of the Carboniferous Period, the many precursors to the dinosaurs, the dinosaurs themselves, the subsequent dominant mammals, including the saber tooth tiger, the mammoths of North America and Asia, the fossils of early man in Africa and the Neanderthals of Europe.
The fossil record shows a consistent and worldwide evolution of life on Earth dating back to about 3,500,000,000 years ago. There are literally millions of fossils that have been recovered, of thousands of different species and they are all located where they would be in the geological record if life evolved slowly over billions of years. None of them can be explained by a 6,000 year old Earth and Noah’s flood. Were they all on the ark? What happened to them when it docked?
Lions, tigers, bears, and wolves eat a lot of food – meat- which means its food would itself have to have been fed, like the food of every other carnivore on the ark. A bit of “back of the envelope” math quickly shows that “Noah’s Ark” would actually have to have been an armada of ships bigger than the D Day invasion force, manned by thousands and thousands of people – and this is without including the World’s 300,000 current species of plants, none of which could walk merrily in twos onto the Ark.
Secondly, there are those little things we call oil, natural gas and other fossil fuels. Their mere existence is another, independent and fatal blow to the creationists. Speak to any geologist who works for Exxon Mobil, Shell or any of the thousands of mining, oil or natural gas related companies that make a living finding fossil fuels. They will tell you these fossil fuels take millions of years to develop from the remains of large forests (in the case of coal) or tiny marine creatures (in the case of oil). That’s why they are called fossil fuels. Have a close look at coal, you can often see the fossilized leaves in it. The geologists know exactly what rocks to look for fossil fuels in, because they know how to date the rocks to millions of years ago. Creationists have no credible explanation for this (nor for why most of it was “given to the Muslims”).
Thirdly, most of astronomy and cosmology would be wrong if the creationists were right. In short, as Einstein showed, light travels at a set speed. Space is so large that light from distant stars takes many years to reach the Earth. In some cases, this is millions or billions of years. The fact that we can see light from such far away stars means it began its journey billions of years ago. The Universe must be billions of years old. We can currently see galaxies whose light left home 13.7 billion years ago. Indeed, on a clear night, one can see many stars more than 6,000 light years away with the naked eye, shining down like tiny silent witnesses against the nonsense of creationism.
Fourthly, we have not just carbon dating, but also all other methods used by scientists to date wood, rocks, fossils, and other artifacts. These comprehensively disprove the Bible’s claims. They include uranium-lead dating, potassium-argon dating as well as other non-radioactive methods such as pollen dating, dendrochronology and ice core dating. In order for any particular rock, fossil or other artifact to be aged, generally two or more samples are dated independently by two or more laboratories in order to ensure an accurate result. If results were random, as creationists claim, the two independent results would rarely agree. They generally do. They regularly reveal ages much older than Genesis. Indeed, the Earth is about 750,000 times older than the Bible claims.
Fifthly, the relatively new field of DNA mapping not only convicts criminals, it shows in undeniable, full detail how we differ from other life forms on the planet. For example, about 98.4% of human DNA is identical to that of chimpanzees, about 97% of human DNA is identical to that of gorillas, and slightly less again of human DNA is identical to the DNA of monkeys. This gradual divergence in DNA can only be rationally explained by the two species diverging from a common ancestor, and coincides perfectly with the fossil record. Indeed, scientists can use the percentage of DNA that two animal share (such as humans and bears, or domestic dogs and wolves) to get an idea of how long ago the last common ancestor of both species lived. It perfectly corroborates the fossil record and is completely independently developed. It acts as yet another fatal blow to the “talking snake” theory.
Sixthly, the entire field of historical linguistics would have to be rewritten to accommodate the Bible. This discipline studies how languages develop and diverge over time. For example, Spanish and Italian are very similar and have a recent common “ancestor” language, Latin, as most people know. However, Russian is quite different and therefore either did not share a common root, or branched off much earlier in time. No respected linguist anywhere in the World traces languages back to the Tower of Babel, the creationists’ explanation for different languages. Indeed, American Indians, Australian Aboriginals, “true” Indians, Chinese, Mongols, Ja.panese, Sub-Saharan Africans and the Celts and other tribes of ancient Europe were speaking thousands of different languages thousands of years before the date creationist say the Tower of Babel occurred – and even well before the date they claim for the Garden of Eden.
Seventhly, lactose intolerance is also a clear vestige of human evolution. Most mammals only consume milk as infants. After infancy, they no longer produce the enzyme “lactase” that digests the lactose in milk and so become lactose intolerant. Humans are an exception and can drink milk as adults – but not all humans – some humans remain lactose intolerant. So which humans are no longer lactose intolerant? The answer is those who evolved over the past few thousand years raising cows. They evolved slightly to keep producing lactase as adults so as to allow the consumption of milk as adults. This includes most Europeans and some Africans, notably the Tutsi of Rwanda. On the other hand, most Chinese, native Americans and Aboriginal Australians, whose ancestors did not raise cattle, remain lactose intolerant.
I could go on and elaborate on a number of other disciplines or facts that creationists have to pretend into oblivion to retain their faith, including the Ice Ages, cavemen and early hominids, much of microbiology, paleontology and archeology, continental drift and plate tectonics, even large parts of medical research (medical research on monkeys and mice only works because they share a common ancestor with us and therefore our fundamental cell biology and basic body architecture is identical to theirs).
In short, and not surprisingly, the World’s most gifted evolutionary biologists, astronomers, cosmologists, geologists, archeologists, paleontologists, historians, modern medical researchers and linguists (and about 2,000 years of accu.mulated knowledge) are right and a handful of Iron Age Middle Eastern goat herders were wrong.
Plus there's that whole other issue on Hindus, Amerindians, Buddhists, Shintoists, Voodoos, Zoroastrians, and countless other groups that have their take on how the world "really" began.
Good work, Colin. Most creationists won't try and understand what you said, though.
Well, lemme play the devil's advocate, "you can believe whatever you like, but god told us that those are all lies and fabricated" (end of story for anyone who believes in creationism).
But all of these obvious facts are there to test your faith. Just ask any of the Christian sheep. My hope is that some day everyone will realize that religions were created as a kind of Philosophy to bring order to and explain the world around them. We have a much greater understanding of the universe around us now and the world as we currently know it would be a much better place without this was of time indulgence known as religion.
Well said Colin.
@mary robinson, Sadly true. Probably related to the 5 stages of grief. These guys are just stuck in denial. God dying would be a pretty big loss for them.
I bet Fred and Chad believe in the tooth fairy and santa also.
Sorry, but none of your so-called evidence is convincing, unless you're already an evolutionist.
Genetic mutation and variation doesn't prove evolution. The people who became lactose tolerant had a gene that mutated, so what? They were still humans, there was no changing into a bird or monkey. Carbon dating is based on flawed assumptions and has been known to give contradictory results. Similarity with monkeys implies common designer, not common descent.
@guyfromVA, Myopic. How do you explain then all of the design flaws like the eye being built backward creating a cluster that gives us a blind spot or the various nerves that take unnecessary roundabout paths through the body? Planted by the devil to trick us? Why is it that way in humans AND giraffes? Research the "wandering nerve" and the path of the vas deferens.
I didn't realize 46% of Americans were simpleminded fools. How pathetic.
Well, congrats Christians, the percentage of people who buy creationism are almost comparable to the percentages of people buy creationism in countries found in the Middle East. Way to drag a nation down.
My religion says that one day Malph the leprecon was drinking a case of Guinness when all of the sudden the lights went out. It was Ralph that hit the switch. But Malph said "Let there be light." For all days after that he believe he created the world and after a time people started believing him. Which only goes to show that if you drink a lot of Guinness you will start believing that Ralph Malph is real and that drinking lots of Guinness will bring lots of Happy Days.
Thus was born the disciples of Ralph Malph: Rainbow Brite and her crew!
Well, at least a small majority of Americans are blatheringly stupid.
Majority are stupid? I think you read it wrong. It said 46% are creationists. That means a majority believe in reality.
The real question is who is sitting at home and answers their phone when the pollsters call. I know I have never answered a poll.
I wonder what the stats would be if they devised a polling technique that allowed the church fearing public to answer without fear of being caught. My personal observation is that the beliefs change radically when you make the answer something you don't need to be afraid of saying outloud. No survey answer does not come with some potential for being exposed.
My bet is that it's probably about 25% of the public that "actually" believes religion as a whole is anything more than a social club with major consequences for selecting the wrong club in the wrong part of town.
I have PhD's in PHY and EE. I do not believe in literal interpretation of Bible. I also do not believe in dogmatic evolution theory. Incremental evolution has been first observed by Darwin and proven beyond doubt. But there is no proof of evolution from one specie to another. Palentology have not found any remnants of "transitional species." Even more important is that the probability of random assembly of DNA of any living creature is so small that it would not manifest itself even in the time span 100+ orders of magnitute of lifespan of the Universe. There must have been the Architect of life. The same is true about the Universe itself – time, space and matter emerged from nothing. Physics based on conservation laws cannot explain it.
I am pretty sure yo uare lying about your qualifications. Either that or you got them at Liberty university.
Actually, there have been dozens of transitional species found. Sorry to burst your bubble. There is ample evidence of speciation (macro evolution)
Yes there is. The name eludes me, but there's a creature that's a cross between bird and lizard. The two are related and were once one species ages ago.
Colin, your argument is really strong and cannot argue with it.
Gadflie, give just one scientific evidence that has not been debated even within palentological community. Thank you.
you have a PhD in stupid
Vidas, what would you consider sufficient evidence to show that speciation (macro evolution) is indeed a fact? How about a complete record of every single step between two different species? Species defined by the most stringent scientific definition (are not cross-fertile), and evidence that you can check any way you like for yourself? Would that be sufficient? If not, why not? I want to see what kind of evidence you would accept just to make sure you won't keep changing the rules after I present it.
vidas, quit spewing your insult to intelligence you stupid little moron! You're a religious fundamentalist in the guise of the science guy, please! You are a harmful individual.
So vidas, given the difficulties you posit for the formation of life, where did your god come from, your supreme architect. He must be a very complex being so, where did he come from?
"Even more important is that the probability of random assembly of DNA of any living creature is so small that it would not manifest itself even in the time span 100+ orders of magnitute of lifespan of the Universe."
I'm beating a dead horse here but here it goes. 1) Natural selection creates a driving force towards more complex and functional organisms - the mutations are random but the overall effect is not. 2) There are many, many, many different combinations that can produce proteins/DNA/RNA with the same function. If you had a PhD is something relevant to biology, you would know this.
I would think someone with two PhD's would first question the sampling methods and stats. Plus, I would think that you would recognize that this question is pretty meaningless. Interesting to see where americans might stand in their scientific literacy, but the question itself is fundamentally silly.
Gadflie, there is no ultimate proof to any scientific theory because it is always based on limited number of facts. but this is not the point. There are no arguments among physisics about established laws of nature. Ocassional questioning of experimental facts leads to either corrboration or destruction of a hypothesis. In palentology, however, there is no way to experiment any further – you have to rely on INTERPRETATION of the evidence. However logical it has always been questioned by fellow palentologists. Theory based ONLY on interpretation of past facts is always vulnerable. I can prove that there is infinity of other equally plausible interpretations, because there is infinitely many lines crossing just one point. But I am always curious to look into some evidence. (BTW: my daughter is evolutional biologist.)
Vidas, why did your Architect create cancer? Why are 99+% of the species that have been created now extinct? If there is an Architect, he is horrible at his job.
Cubby Rain: natural selection is no force. It is random selection of survivers. In order to report success or failure you have to experiment randomly. To imply oposite is to imply God who prejudes good or bad choices. This argument of Dawson has been thourougly destroyed.
Vidas, natural selection is random? Are you really that ignorant of evolution?
Vidas, you only talked around it. You DID NOT answer my question. Here it is again for your convenience. Vidas, what would you consider sufficient evidence to show that speciation (macro evolution) is indeed a fact? How about a complete record of every single step between two different species? Species defined by the most stringent scientific definition (are not cross-fertile), and evidence that you can check any way you like for yourself? Would that be sufficient? If not, why not? I want to see what kind of evidence you would accept just to make sure you won't keep changing the rules after I present it.
Vidas, actually, if there were possible proof of a theory, it wouldn't qualify as a theory. Please tell me you do actually understand the difference between a scientific law and a theory. From your post, it seems not.
Seriously. You believe that since our limited human mind still can't explain every detail of the universe, then it must have been created by someone. Isn't it possible that we just don't have the answers yet. I am ok with the fact that we don't know it all and I can admit that. Socrates quote: "I am the wisest man in the world, for I know one thing, and that is I know Nothing."
We do not need a god to exlain it all.
The answer to some questions about the Architect is simple – I don't know. Furthermore, we cannot know anything supernatural. This cannot be described scientifically. If you are a young maximalist that anthema to you, but logically it is true. The only reason I use the Architect is because it is one possible and elegant explanation of why we are here. It is by no means a scientific question.
Vidas, actually an "architect" (god), being the most complex possible being is, per Occams razor, the LEAST likely answer to any actual question.
Science is kind of based on the natural world. If there is a supernatural being that affects the material world, that would violate Science in its entirety. Why elucidate that laws of reality if those laws can be changed by a God/Creator/Architect?
Gadflie, One cannot ever tell what the ultimate scientific evidence is, or else science will be dead, and I am no exception, but yes – the UNQUESTIONABLE evidence of transitional species who are not cross-fertile will make me think again.
Realist, it is not about what we don't know today. It is about the fundamental limits of our knowledge. Information theory proved that we cannot know anything about what was before the universe. That is fundamental. Astrophysicists claim we cannot know what happens in black holes (less fundamental).
Gadflie, the difference between fundamental law and theory is that we will never know the law. We create theories based on observations and experiments – in other word facts. We do NOT and can NOT have all the facts at hand. The result is that there may be infinitely many theories explaining the same limited set of facts. As new facts appear we modify the theory (Newton->Einstein etc). It is pure mathematical fact: if you have more variables than equations the solutions are infinite.
Vidas, here you go.
Large Blotched Ensatina — E. e. klauberi
Oregon Ensatina — E. e. oregonensis
Painted Ensatina — E. e. picta
Sierra Nevada Ensatina — E. e. platensis
Yellow Eyed Ensatina — E. e. xanthoptica
Yellow Blotched Ensatina — E. e. croceater
Monterey Ensatina — E. e. eschscholtzii
These are salamanders that all live today. They are an example of a ring species. The second one can interbreed with the first, the third with the second, etc. But, the last one, who's range at the end of a ring, overlaps the first, CANNOT interbreed with it. This can be tested however you like and meets every criteria that I set. So, it's obviously time for you to think again.
Welcome to the world of science. AKA, reality.
Vidas, no, that is NOT the difference between a scientific theory and a scientific law. Want to try again or do you need me to give you the answer?
Chubby Rain, I do NOT believe that God is interfering in our everyday life. I think he designed an engine and moved on (if verbs are applicable outside of time).
Gadflie, yes, please give me the answer what is the difference between the law of nature and the theory which describes it.
It's actually very simple. A law is an observation (repeated often) that is always shown to be correct (so far). It is never explanatory. It just states what happens. A theory is ALWAYS explanatory. It tries to explain how.
Gadflie, from the tone of your responses I know that you are a young man, a student or a young graduate. You will round your edges in time, so that is fine.
Vidas, actually I am a 50 year old with post graduate degrees in both Business and Geology. I own a half dozen businesses and am semi retired (I let others run them now). So much for your powers of deduction.
Gadflie, I am sorry to be wrong about your age (always using my benchmark), but I hope your edges will get polished. Nice talking and good night.
Vidas, I am always pretty much to the point. It's the basis of much of my success. And, well, I've debated creationists before. They NEVER want to be tied down on what they would consider sufficient evidence. They are NEVER secure enough in their beliefs. They are always afraid that the type of evidence that they say would be sufficient to persuade them will actually turn up. You are obviously no exception.
Gadflie, I see your position but it's an arogant one from my reference point. I am no slouch and successful professional and business owner, but I must say that my success is mostly due to my willingness to listen to serious arguments, treat opponents with respect, and evolve my views. I have ve done it in my life. This is my evolution.
I had to read this twice – and check the masthead. I thought I was reading a spoof from "The Onion"!
All I can say is YOU'VE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME!!!
I swear, this is one of the most disheartening things I've heard in my 64 years – frightening, actually. I truly thought this country would have finally been enlightened through the gigantic steps we've made in science and discoveries during my lifetime. I thought those discoveries were facinating (and logical).
This poll has left me numb. I've now lost all hope for this country and for the progress of mankind. I'm even too numb to cry – yet. 🙁
It is fvcking unbelievable, isn't it. I put it down to how bad public education has become. We need to pay and value teachers more.
If you want to be sicker, read about how Tennessee and Louisiana are making creationist teaching mandatory in schools.
It means that a number of us haven't, by the grace of God, been brainwashed by the dogma they teach in the gov't schools.
What dogma? That 2+2=4? Take off the tinfoil hat.
And yet those states are amongst the lowest ranked in the country....weird....must be a conspiracy or something.
Hey guyfromVA, I haven't been in a gov't run school for almost 50 years. What I DID learn from them was how to THINK, how to RESEARCH, how to REASON, and how to COMPARE, how to separate LOGIC from emotions and rumors or myths. Both my parents and my schools instilled in me an insatiable curiosity, which even now, has led to not having a day go by without learning something NEW (today was one of them, even though it kicked me in the gut).
Whether you know it or not, books, journals, (and now with the internet) VAST RESOURCES of material, from every point of view has always been available to CONTINUE ones education beyond the classroom. It's obvious to me, now that half the country must have missed that memo.
..."Tennessee and Louisiana are making creationist teaching mandatory". I'd heard that was proposed but I must have given their lawmakers too much credit, thinking they'd laugh it right out the door. Guess I was too optimistic and totally wrong. Cripes, in my day, that kind of religious stuff was taught in SUNDAY SCHOOL, not in Science Class. (I'd really be interested in reading about the scientific evidence and materials used in teaching "creationism" in a classroom).
Not at all shocking considering that a larger percentage of Americans are not at all interested in facts; thus, why the country is failing at every level.
Jesus, save me!....from your followers!
yo sup me,.... um don't think Jesus cares and i can't save you much
but hay i know me♥ we can totally save our selves,...
but heres a better spelling Louis cypher
Kafirs.
Here's a suggestion: take a quor'an, roll it nice and tight, and shove it up your a s s. Allah will be impressed. M0r0n.
Ugh, I am so ashamed to be American. I am surrounded by idiots. All the time. FML.
Well, a statistical normal distribution, aka the bell curve, of the population predicts that half of the people are clinically stupid (IQ less than 100), so it makes perfect sense that 46% believe in creationist rubbish and completely disregard the mountain of scientific data to the contrary. In the end, though, that's life, and if that belief is what makes them happy, so be it. I just ask that you don't preach to me or ask me for donations.
It's not that they disregard the mountain of scientific data. It's because they can't understand it. Because of their low intelligence, combined with sub-par education, they could never understand a shred of scientific evidence or a rational argument if their lives depended on it.
Evolution isn't real? Then say good-bye to that vast majority of modern medicine and farming which includes but not limited to;
Vaccination.
Horticulture.
Genetics.
Zoology.
Genealogy.
Paleontology.
Biology.
Basically all the -ologies in use today.
That's not the same thing as evolution of the species. All living things reproduce after their own kind.
Dogs produce dogs, cats produce cats. Regardless of the time involved, that's not going to change.
Fred, actually there is ample evidence of speciation (macro evolution) also. Even if you ignore it.
Dogs were once a species of wolf ages ago. Now, they're not even close to their original ancestor per intelligence and phenotype. Of course, you probably think that's incorrect despite genetics saying otherwise.
hey fred do you have a dog or a cat,... are the sabers or dire wolfs,... if not guess what
hay i took a timber Wolfe and a coyote and guess what i got something different
Fred, your lack of understanding of even the CONCEPT of evolution and genetics – plus all the -ologies – is evident.
Please explain how you account for mules, ligers, yattle, tygons, yakalos, etc. (hint: they're called hybrids, bred from two different species).
......I could go on and on and ON, but the Freds of this world still wouldn't catch on.
I won't waste my time trying to teach a semester of middle school level biology to a so-called adult.
A fine display of the utter failure going on in the American education system.
You're right. It should be 100% believing in creationism.
I have a good friend who works for Exxon-Mobile. He is a geologist engaged in searching for oil and other fossil fuels in Africa. They know where to look for oil based on the ages of the rocks and their location during the Carboniferous Period, which is when the vast mats of plankton and other small sea creatures were laid down, that gradually turned to oil over the tens of millions of years since.
Fortunately, I have a friend who is an American Christian. He has told me that fossil fuels are not made of fossils at all, as the world is only six thousand years old and started with the Garden of Eden and a magic talking snake! So, I will write to my friend and tell him to stop looking where they usually find oil, as that has just been a lucky coincidence. God must have buried some there to fool them.
What a playful, loving god we have, and aren't American Christians smart!
Nothingness is the void that upholds all the stars and planets in their orbital velocities within a galaxy of infinite numbers of galaxies within many immeasurable nebulas. The fingers of Nothingness reach ever inward and establishes the voids that keep the atoms ever apart and in spatialness for the benefits of all things made and established by the forces of Nothingness which was there in the beginnings of all things manifested to become celestialness and terrestrialness. Nothingness, the force that cannot ever be fought nor be held tightly, is the Holy Spirit and was all there was before Creation became made and manifested by Nothingness itself! God was Nothingness and in being Nothingness God made all things within the outer Cosmos from the inner Cosmos of atomic relativities domains.
That sort of explains what's in the minds of the creationists...nothing, coming directly from nothingness.
What? Sorry, I have had a couple of drinks but I haven't killed enough brain cells to understand this jiberish
What was the first step of evolution?
How did life on earth first get started?
Random, spontaneous generation?
Really?
Virtually all biologists now agree that bacterial cells cannot form from nonliving chemicals in one step. If life arises from nonliving chemicals, there must be intermediate forms, "precellular life." Of the various theories of precellular life, the most popular contender today is "the RNA world."
RNA has the ability to act as both genes and enzymes. This property could offer a way around the "chicken-and-egg" problem. (Genes require enzymes; enzymes require genes.) Furthermore, RNA can be transcribed into DNA, in reverse of the normal process of transcription. These facts are reasons to consider that the RNA world could be the original pathway to cells. James Watson enthusiastically praises Sir Francis Crick for having suggested this possibility (1):
The time had come to ask how the DNA→ RNA→ protein flow of information had ever got started. Here, Francis was again far ahead of his time. In 1968 he argued that RNA must have been the first genetic molecule, further suggesting that RNA, besides acting as a template, might also act as an enzyme and, in so doing, catalyze its own self-replication.
It was prescient of Crick to guess that RNA could act as an enzyme, because that was not known for sure until it was proven in the 1980s by Nobel Prize-winning researcher Thomas R. Cech (2) and others. The discovery of RNA enzymes launched a round of new theorizing that is still under way. The term "RNA world" was first used in a 1986 article by Harvard molecular biologist Walter Gilbert (3):
The first stage of evolution proceeds, then, by RNA molecules performing the catalytic activities necessary to assemble themselves from a nucleotide soup. The RNA molecules evolve in self-replicating patterns, using recombination and mutation to explore new niches. ... they then develop an entire range of enzymic activities. At the next stage, RNA molecules began to synthesize proteins, first by developing RNA adaptor molecules that can bind activated amino acids and then by arranging them according to an RNA template using other RNA molecules such as the RNA core of the ribosome. This process would make the first proteins, which would simply be better enzymes than their RNA counterparts. ... These protein enzymes are ... built up of mini-elements of structure.
Finally, DNA appeared on the scene, the ultimate holder of information copied from the genetic RNA molecules by reverse transcription. ... RNA is then relegated to the intermediate role it has today—no longer the center of the stage, displaced by DNA and the more effective protein enzymes.
Today, research in the RNA world is a medium-sized industry. Scientists in this field are able to demonstrate that random sequences of RNA sometimes exhibit useful properties. For example, in 1995, a trio at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research reported "Structurally Complex and Highly Active RNA Ligases Derived from Random RNA Sequences" (4). (Ligases are enzymes that splice together other molecules such as DNA or RNA.) The results are interesting—they suggest that randomness can produce functionality. The authors interpret the results to mean that "the number of distinct complex functional RNA structures is very large indeed."
There is a lot to learn about RNA, and research like this is how we learn it. But these and other similar findings arrived at in highly orchestrated experiments that start with biologically produced RNA are very far from proving that the RNA world is the pathway between nonlife and life. In nature, far from the sterilized laboratory, uncontaminated RNA strands of any size would be unlikely to form in the first place. "... The direct synthesis of ... nucleotides from prebiotic precursors in reasonable yield and unaccompanied by larger amounts of unrelated molecules could not be achieved by presently known chemical reactions" (5).
Francis Crick himself has become much less enthusiastic about the RNA world than Watson. In 1973, he and another eminent researcher into the origin of life, Leslie E. Orgel, published a paper advocating the theory called "Directed Panspermia" (6). In 1981, Crick published Life Itself, a whole book about that theory (7). And by 1993 he says, "It may turn out that we will eventually be able to see how this RNA world got started. At present, the gap from the primal 'soup' to the first RNA system capable of natural selection looks forbiddingly wide"
Chad, is your argument actually that the most complex possible being, (God), has to exist before the simplest possible life can?
Yes, we know that abiogenises is entirely possible. We will fill the gap between the primoridal soup and the first procaryotic cell, it is just a matter of time Then the Christian sky-fairy will have to find somewhere else to hide.
You should try some real science some time. It's way more fun than just making stuff up.
@Colin "Yes, we know that abiogenises is entirely possible. We will fill the gap between the primoridal soup and the first procaryotic cell, it is just a matter of time Then the Christian sky-fairy will have to find somewhere else to hide."
=>really? You sure about that?
While the experiments carried out by Stanley Miller and others who have built upon his work show that life may have arisen from a primordial soup, that possibility remains theoretical. There is no evidence for pre-cellular life on Earth; what's more, critics of the RNA world hypothesis point out that the experiments that support the concepts were conducted with biologically created RNA. RNA can act as both a template for self-replication and an enzyme for carrying out that process, but these findings have been carried out in controlled laboratory experiments. This doesn't necessarily prove such delicate actions could happen in the seas of the ancient Earth.
For reasons like these, the RNA world hypothesis has been largely abandoned by proponents of abiogenesis in favor of other hypotheses, like the simultaneous development of both proteins and genetic templates or the development of life around undersea vents similar to those currently inhabited by today's extremophiles. But there is one criticism that any abiogenesis hypothesis has difficulty overcoming: time. DNA-based life is thought to have developed on Earth beginning around 3.8 billion years ago, giving pre-cellular life forms about 1 billion years to carry out random processes of encoding useful proteins and assembling them into the precursors of cellular life [source 1="Discovery" 2="News" language=":"][/source].
Critics of abiogenesis say that simply isn't enough time for inorganic matter to become the theorized precellular life. One estimate suggests it would take 10^450 (10 to the 450th power) years for one useful protein to be randomly created [source 1="Klyce" language=":"][/source].
Life does not come from non-life. The idea that some "primordial soup" or "primordial ooze" spontaneously began to live
is ludicrous. Keep on dreaming. I know you hate religion. You must really hate it if you are willing to believe stories like that.
That's why it is still considered a hypothesis. What we know so far is that RNA is capable of spontaneously polymerizing in an aqueous environment at elevated temperatures (comparable to those back then), and RNAzymes are capable of mediating RNA polymerization, phosphorylation of sugar-bases, and other crucial reactions. The reason I suggested that you look this up is that molecules present in the prebiotic world are capable of replication and natural selection. It disproves your point that life processes are too complex for a single type of molecule to carry them out.
What's wrong Chad, afraid to answer my simple question. Here it is again for your convenience.
Chad, is your argument actually that the most complex possible being, (God), has to exist before the simplest possible life can?
@troy, at least this guy's reading. There's probably hope for him. He just needs to step away from the obscure pseudo-scientists that cater to his personal philosophy and widen his radar. Some of these other guys out here are lost to the race of conscious being and have devolved to their baser animal state—yet they still demand proof of transitional animals.
Chad, there may be little or no fossil evidence of pre- multicellular life, but that is to be expected. They would not fossilize. We have a lot yet to understand about the origins of life, but nothing we have found makes us think we need to resort to a magic act by a Bronze Age Palestinian sky-fairy who would not be invented until about 3,500,000,000 years after all this happened.
Fred, if life does not come from non-life, then where did god come from? A life form had to have created him, and a life form created the previous life form, etc etc etc
Nobody created God, by definition, as he is a self-existent being. He is the uncaused First Cause.
No intelligent person could believe something always existed. The universe is only about 14 billion years old. And if you are irrational enough to believe that humans have been around for less than ten thousand years, what was god doing all that time (you know, for infinity of time – wow even typing that is ridiculous).
guyfromVA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WrjwaqZfjIY
seriously if you you'd bother to study you will find that god (YHWH) was created by Asherah and Baall,.. and if you go with the gnostic you will find that GOD (Demiurge) was birthed by Sophia
It is perfectly rational to believe that something has always existed. If there was ever a time when nothing existed, then nothing could exist now, because ex nihilo nihil fit. (out of nothing, nothing comes). The universe had to be created by something self-existed and eternal, outside of time, since time is part of the universe. I hold to view of philospher William Lane Craig, which is that sans-creation, God is timeless. After creation, he exists in time just as we do.
@guyfromVA, Update your reading list. Try particle physicist Lawrence Krauss who shows that 'nothing' is an unstable state and that something WILL ALWAYS arise from nothing. But again, maybe it's easier for you to avoid lernin' and bask in the ignorance that makes you feel good about yourself.
@chubby rain "That's why it is still considered a hypothesis. What we know so far is that RNA is capable of spontaneously polymerizing in an aqueous environment at elevated temperatures (comparable to those back then), and RNAzymes are capable of mediating RNA polymerization, phosphorylation of sugar-bases, and other crucial reactions. ..."
=>hypothesis indeed..
Probability calculations could be made, but I prefer a variation on a much-used analogy. Picture a gorilla (very long arms are needed) at an immense keyboard connected to a word processor. The keyboard contains not only the symbols used in English and European languages but also a huge excess drawn from every other known language and all of the symbol sets stored in a typical computer. The chances for the spontaneous assembly of a replicator in the pool I described above can be compared to those of the gorilla composing, in English, a coherent recipe for the preparation of chili con carne. With similar considerations in mind Gerald F. Joyce of the Scripps Research Institute and Leslie Orgel of the Salk Institute concluded that the spontaneous appearance of RNA chains on the lifeless Earth "would have been a near miracle." I would extend this conclusion to all of the proposed RNA substitutes that I mentioned above.
(Robert Shapiro, "A Simpler Origin for Life," Scientific American, February 12, 2007)
@GodFreeNow "Try particle physicist Lawrence Krauss who shows that 'nothing' is an unstable state and that something WILL ALWAYS arise from nothing. But again, maybe it's easier for you to avoid lernin' and bask in the ignorance that makes you feel good about yourself."
=>Krauss acknowledges that that which he refers to as "nothing" isnt the same "nothing" that everyone else in the english speaking world means when they say "nothing" as in "the absence of everything".
Krauss' nothing has space, it has laws, it has gravity, it has a sea of virtual particles. Clearly.. it aint "nothing".
Craig nailed him on that in their debate:
Craig: Now what about the Big Bang confirmation? Dr. Krauss appeals to Stephen Hawking’s model. Hawking’s model involves an absolute beginning of the universe! It has the beginning of the universe, though it does not have a beginning point of infinite density. He says, “But it can come into being out of nothingness because nothing is unstable.” This is the grossly misleading use of “nothingness” for describing the quantum vacuum, which is empty space filled with vacuum energy. It is a rich, physical reality described by physical laws and having a physical structure. If a religious person were to so seriously misrepresent a scientific theory as this, he would be accused of deliberate distortion and abuse of science, and, I think, rightly so! What the quantum vacuum is is a roiling sea of energy. It is not nothing. As Dr. Krauss himself has said, “By ‘nothing,’ I don’t mean nothing. . . . Nothing isn’t nothing anymore in physics.”7 Empty space is not empty. “Nothing is really a bubbling, boiling brew of virtual particles.”8
Krauss answer "O.K., we don’t understand the beginning of the universe. We don’t understand if the universe had a cause. That is a fascinating possibility. By the way, [points to PowerPoint slide] there’s the picture of the vacuum that Dr. Craig so adequately described that I talked about. It’s not the nothing that I’m going to talk about in a second; it’s one version of nothing. That’s empty space [points to PowerPoint slide]; that’s what it looks like according to the laws of quantum mechanics and relativity. Empty space is indeed a boiling, bubbling brew of particles. In fact, you have mass because of it.
@Chad, Solidifying his point that nothing cannot exist for any length of time. Again, what's your point?
GodFreeNow "nothing cannot exist for any length of time"
=>ah....
can't figure out what you are trying to say...
A friend of mine (who was actually valedictorian of our high school) went into the field of paleontology. He works at the University of Melbourne in Australia, where they are doing research on the earliest Aboriginal settlements in Australia and the development of the many languages spoken by the Aboriginals in Australia.
Their latest theories suggest that man made it to Australia at least 60,000 years ago, during the penultimate Ice Age and that their languages diversified as they spread throughout the continent.
Fortunately, I have a friend who is an American Christian. He has informed me that this can’t be right, as the World is only one tenth as old (about 6,000) years and that all Australian Aboriginal languages were made by god in the Tower of Babel. Further, the Ice Ages did not even happen.
It makes me wonder where Australian Aboriginals come from if they were not on Noah’s ark and evolution is a lie, but I’m sure I’ll find the answers in the Bible.
Thanks American Christians– it’s incredible how the entire World is subject to your religious beliefs and how much smarter you are than the most gifted archeologists and paleontologists in the World!
How old does the bible say the earth is?
Fancy book-learnin' show-off!
Chad, you constantly trot out his sythesis approach where you try to dovetail your Bronze Age creation stories with reality. It doesn't work. The authors of the two genesis stories thought the World was a few thousand years old. Don't try and tell me they knew it was billions of years old before any of us, but chose not to say so. That is fvcking stupid and you know it.
It's really very simple. All you have to do is count the "begats", as in Joe and Suzy begat michael, who begat edward who begat ... and so forth. Just count the begats in the bible and multiply by the average age and you end up with an IQ of 75.
@Colin " The authors of the two genesis stories thought the World was a few thousand years old. "
=>they did?
Where does it say that?
I've read Genesis dozens of times and somehow I managed to miss that? amazing.. Looking forward to you showing me where.
@Chad, As someone pointed out, you have to add the "begats." However, be careful which one you choose because *big shocker here* they're inconsistent.
Chad, they trace the generations from Adam and Eve through to Jesus in Matthew and/or Luke. Am I wrong?
The earliest post-exilic Jewish chronicle preserved in the Hebrew language, the Seder Olam Rabbah, compiled by Jose ben Halafta in 160 AD, dates the creation of the world to 3751 BC while the later Seder Olam Zutta to 4339 BC.[61] The Hebrew Calendar has traditionally, since the 4th century AD by Hillel II, dated the creation to 3761 BC
epic fail
@Ed ". All you have to do is count the "begats", as in Joe and Suzy begat michael, who begat edward who begat ... and so forth. Just count the begats in the bible and multiply by the average age and you end up with an IQ of 75."
=>so, when you are counting up these begat's, how are you accounting for telescoped genealogies (extremely common Jewish literary practice of omitting people).
and of course when you are counting up.. you are aware that yalad (the hebrew word translated as begat) can mean child, or descendant?
@GodFreeNow." However, be careful which one you choose because *big shocker here* they're inconsistent.
@Chad "correct, see below.
============
@Colin "Chad, they trace the generations from Adam and Eve through to Jesus in Matthew and/or Luke. Am I wrong?"
@Chad "yes they do.
And, are you familiar with HOW they do that? What the actual rules are regarding compiling genealogies in ancient Jewish text? It is far different than now.
If we did take the time to study them, we would find that the genealogies presented in the Bible are not and were never intended to be complete, exhaustive lists of ancestry. Instead, they were meant to establish lineage by highlighting key figures linking one individual with another. The genealogies found in Scripture are commonly–if not invariably–telescoped, a process in which some names are included and others are omitted for brevity's sake or as unnecessary for establishing the particular claim being made (whether that claim has primarily familial, religious, or political purpose).
Key to understanding this telescoping of the genealogies is the recognition that the Hebrew words generally translated 'father,' 'son,' and 'begat' (or 'became the father of') and their Greek New Testament counterparts have much broader meaning than the precise ones the English words have. The Hebrew ab covers not only father but also grandfather or ancestor; ben means not only son but grandson or descendent; yalad does not mean precisely 'gave birth to,' but rather 'became the ancestor of' or 'gave rise to the line of.'
Interestingly, we accept (at least subconsciously) the concept of telescoping even in English, as when we read the genealogy of Jesus in Matthew 1:1,
The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.
This is a typical Hebrew genealogy. It takes the identical form as that of genealogies throughout Scripture. It is not meant to convey the number of generations between Abraham and Jesus, but merely to establish ancestry. In this case, it is so obvious even to the modern reader that we are not even tempted to apply to it our own expectations of genealogies. But when we turn to a longer Hebrew genealogy, we may be tempted to treat it as an exhaustive list.
@Sam Yaza "The earliest post-exilic Jewish chronicle preserved in the Hebrew language, the Seder Olam Rabbah, compiled by Jose ben Halafta in 160 AD, dates the creation of the world to 3751 BC while the later Seder Olam Zutta to 4339 BC.[61] The Hebrew Calendar has traditionally, since the 4th century AD by Hillel II, dated the creation to 3761 BC"
=> is that in the bible, or was that a rabbi's interpretation?
😉
Chad,
I expected better from you. In your own words, how old do you think the earth is and we'll go from there. Do you believe it's billions or thousands of years old?
seriously the bible says all the years that each person lived all of this is well covered in the book of Jubilees,...ohh thats write Christians wrote it out because history was recorded by the Greeks back further then that any ways there bits and pises covered in genesis just go from 6 days of creation to year JC birth date 0000 then add 2012 you should come to about 4300 to 3700,.....i did this in elementary school,....
or seeing how it is that I'm Samyaza you could just take my word for it
@Chad, Seriously... you speak as though WE are trying to convince YOU that the earth is less than 10k years old. If you agree that the earth is 13.74 billion years old, then what exactly IS your point?
@GodFreeNow " If you agree that the earth is 13.74 billion years old, then what exactly IS your point?"
@Chad "earth is ~4.5 billion years, universe ~14.6billion (not sure what 13.74 is.. atheists really arent that concerned with preciseness.. perhaps that is it.)
My point is that the bible is not a science book.
It does not say how old the earth is
people attempt to figure that out by adding up generations, but that is a fundamentally flawed approach as those genealogies are NOT there for that purpose.
The majority of the "it's either science or the bible" false dichotomy exists because people extrapolate where extrapolation is not appropriate.