How accurate is it? What are the arguements for and against it? I know the basic idea of it but I’ve heard so many arguements both ways without any scientific backing it’s just kind of confusing.
All you need to understand is that organic life evolves from a hierarchy of ordered elements and substances.
The important phase(above the subatomic level) in this process is the formation of molecules from the combination of amino acid based proteins. There are twenty known different amino acids that make up protein, which determine what kind of molecule is created. They can be arranged in any order, and every different order produces a molecule with its own characteristic properties.
Now check this out. If you start with only one of each of the twenty, these will suffice to form roughly two billion billion different orders and therefore different molecules.
Now, CHECK THIS OUT. The hemoglobin molecule contains 539 amino acids, including many of the twenty variety which make up the protein. The number of different arrangements in which you can place those hundreds of amino acids is equivalent to a 1 followed by 620 zereos. The number of all subatomic particles in the entire known universe is virtually zero when compared to this number. Yet for hemoglobin to work properly only one arrangement is needed. A mistake in a single amino acid in hemoglobin can produce a molecule that works with dangerous imperfection.
The result. Life evolves no further than the single celled organism or the virus.
The religious people love this fact because they can say that the chances for the hemoglobin molecule to work are so inconceivably slim, it is just as likely that God made it happen. The truth is that it is no less contingent than the units of hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and sulfur required to form an amino acid, and so on down the line.
Alright that helps. Still leads to more questions but that’ll do thanks.
cba,
Okay, maybe that was a little short, eh? I was in a hurry and posted only what I consider to be the key points in the theory for the origins of life. Obviously there is more to it, but you can limit your inquiries to chemistry and start with the study of polymeric molecules. Anything before that is getting into base physics. And for physics, me and that rock over there are pretty much the same thing. When we add the attribute of “life” to an object, we are within the domain of chemistry.
What questions do you have? What theories have you heard?
I would hope that if my post “wouldn’t do,” you would tell me. There is, by the way, a google search option, if you merely want some information about the issue. If you are wishing to literally discuss it, start with some propositions and/or questions, something more than “how accurate is it.”
For that I would ask “what is the alternative?” What is “accurate?” Do you mean in the sense of being self consistent or do you mean the likelihood of the possibility of the model of evolution to be “true” when compared to an alternative, which is, of course, my question. “What” is the other theory?
Reminds me of sickle cell haemoglobin.