I'm starting this in reply to Leo's question on the Macro Evolution debate.


While I do accept in general the theory of evolution there are quite a few things that I think don't add up.

I'm not interested in debating them because its obvious to me that others think they are correct and that everyone else who doesn't is either a Creationist or stupid. We got it! Thanks for the memo.


Now just for the sake of argument lets say some of the things that don't make sense don't make sense because the theory has been taken wrong.

It is my observation that Evolutions greatest flaw is in trying to reduce life on earth down to the most simple form. I think this is so because its being done in "answer" to Creationists and so they are trying to make life as simple as possible in its origins to somehow explain how life could have come into existence on its own. Like abiogenesis.


To me what's the difference between a complex cell with potential coming into existence on its own and just a simple cell? Its where its going to go that matters.

Scientific facts I consider. I'm not a scientist so I'm just saying them in regular speak. I'm going to just use Wiki because most people are anyway. I know Leo says I have to have papers and scientific backing but I don't. I'm just thinking out loud so cut me some slack.

1. Things GROW. We see this all the time with trees and cells. You leave them alone and they grow. On other planets things do not grow.

2. We can't back up explanations of transition with really credible evidence. We basically have a handful of scattered bones (Some more complete than others) about each species we say is transitional and try to presume to base our answers about the entire species on it.

3. During the Cambrian Explosion there were life forms in fauna:




http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambrian_explosion


Now there's a highly complicated Gaia hypothesis that is out there that is kind of similar to what I'm saying but I don't agree with the whole hospitality aspect.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaia_hypothesis


What I'm curious about is in general thinking. Like what if life on earth is earths cancer? What if life on earth began fully formed?

What if animals didn't creep forth from lesser organisms but rather the earth evolved in its ability to create life.

In other words the codes became more complicated. NOT INTELLIGENT DESIGN. But just more complex.

The shared genetic coding in life would suggest to me that there is something similar about the way life exists. Some say its because we are all related by evolution, I might suggest we are all made from the same stuff and that stuff is the stuff of earth.

Just as most plants are considered connected to the earth and the rocks and land and minerals etc. What if life is connected and part of the planet and it is simply that our mobility makes it seem as though we are separate.

Just an idea.

I'm not sure what you mean by this, please clarify?



It is true that fossils are hard to come by, but that doesn't deminish the meaning of the ones we have found. We also have more of a handful of scattered bones. We don't rely on transition alone. We use quantitative anaylsis and description of phylogenies and cladistics as well as genetics and environmental analysis.



Your understanding about the Cambrian Explosion is that life abruptly appeared out of nowhere. On a geological timescale this is correct, but life never has appeared 'out of nowhere' as it were. It took millions of years for life to evolve during the Cambrian Explosion. Multi-celled life was already around before it as well.

The problem with the Gaia Hypothesis is that it is purely speculative and metaphorical in its description of processes. We are not made from stuff of Earth, rather we are made from the subatomic particles of the universe itself. It just so happens that the environmental factors of Earth allow us to come into being. In this sense, you are correct, but the hypothesis that Earth is a single organism is to far fetched. The Earth is just like any other planet, except it has the suitable conditions to allow life to exist on it. Nothing more.

I wouldn't call the Gaia hypothesis that far out actually(if I understand it correctly). After all, we're all made up of living cells, it's not that hard to imagine the earth as a living being where every living thing is a "cell".

I don't quite get the point...

Do you expect debate about the valitidy of your idea, or are you just thinking out loud, so to speak?

I'm just thinking out loud. I guess what I'd be interested in hearing is in ways this COULD be proven to be true before ripping it to shreds.


You know what I mean?

You cannot just interpret data to your liking any way you want, or else you would be committing fraud, which is easily picked out once people reproduce experiments. All the answers are not merely compared to modern creatures, it is based on what we know of the past environment and genetics. There is no leap of faith required when there is evidence to show one way or the other.



I will address it at some point

I think everyone knows I'm a creationist *GASP* but I would like to explore this idea. I can't think of anything from a Biblical standpoint that prevents the belief that the planet itself is some sort of living organism.

And I think it does provide some answers to the evidence on which evolution is founded. Maybe as the planet has aged, it has required different types of organisms to provide the gases and fertilizing agents it needs to maintain it's health.

Well you would need mountains of evolutionary evidence to be false, and evidence supporting your ideas.

Wow..

The Gaia thing isn't that crazy, we can imagine a tree or a plant as a living creature, why not a planet (although of course it would be much more complex, something we dont understand yet)..

Because a planet doesn't live.
The Earth is far from a living organism
Can it replicate?
Does it have DNA?

Like what for example?

I don't agree with this. I spoke with a woman recently who made a very interesting point about how the White Male European way of dealing with medicine is the one that dominates the medical field.

She pointed out for example that Native Americans were basically wiped out by the European immigrants that came over with small pox 90 percent of them were. Yet the Europeans were not similarly wiped out by the Native Americans. And among their culture they didn't really pass along diseases the way Europeans did.

When they established this country instead of trying to learn from the Native American ways the Europeans imposed their culture. You would think coming out of the Black Plague they might be interested in the life style of a culture that didn't experience disease. But instead they simply disregarded it. Modern medicine is based on fighting disease not prevention, although in recent years things have changed slightly.

But you seem to operate from the perspective that the answers coming out of the field are the only possible way to interpret the data.

And I don't agree with that based on the fact that quite often science reverses itself in this field or finds that it has taken the information the wrong way.

Dinos birds lizards for example and the subsequent debate about cold or warm bloodedness.

If you want to understand the skepticism people have you need to stop regulating people who don't agree with what you are saying as "not understanding" the science. Its not so much about that as not agreeing with the spring board used in the first place.

Its so interesting to me that people who are stuck on evolution as the answer can't understand looking at the same data from different perspectives.

Quite strange.


Recently at the group where I met this woman I had stepped in to a Philosophy club meeting a library and there were two guest visitors and as soon as the idea of big bang came up the men got very angry and hostile and super pissed off because a woman (not me) suggested that there seemed to be an order to things. She was an agnostic but was almost nearly physically attacked by one of the men who told her she was "ridiculous and stupid" the men got so mad that for the first time in 2 years of this group they walked out. These two men did.

So what I am seeing is a real resistance to looking at the data in any other way than evolution.

That has always puzzled me.

Define replicate? That it must make baby "earths" in order for it to be considered alive?


If you don't replicate are you not alive?


Just because we haven't seen the earth replicate doesn't mean it can not. Does it have DNA? means what?

That the way we define life is the only way life can BE?

If you show evidence for explanations other than that of evolution, then please do so. If this is a reference to your other topic, then I have already addressed it.

This strikes of anthropomorphism doesn't it? since it does not live the way we do, then it cannot be alive. Is this how science really works? Are we missing out on finding out new forms of life because we have somehow already decided what can and what can't be alive?

Are you serious? Replication and DNA are the prime keys of life. Without DNA or replication, life is not possible. All life must have DNA and all life must replicate. Earth does none of these. In addition, Earth doesn't exhibit metabolic processess. This is how life is defined, and this is what life is. Do you want to debate the definition of life now?

True,

Thanks for starting this in a new thread. I think discussion about your idea can be more productive if it's taken away from the context of a thread about evolution.

I must admit, I am intrigued by the idea of the Gaia Hypothesis, although I suspect it is unlikely to be true. However I have a few questions..as usual!!!!

Why should the Gaia Hypothesis supplant evolution. I can accept the planet being a living organism (at a stretch, I admit), by why should that negate evolution from being the driving force behind all the organisms on the planet?

To use an analogy, imagine your body as the Gaia organism, now imagine all the bacteria that inhabit your body (I know!!!! But we all have them!) as life on Earth/Gaia. That you are alive does not make the bacteria spontaneously appear, and that you are sentient doesn't mean you have that control either.

Perhaps it could be the same with the Earth/Gaia? The planet might be alive, but it needn't follow that life upon it is intrinsically connected. Otherwise what you are suggesting is that the planet is some form of Urge...a deity-like being if you will.

The planet might be a very different sort of life to that which inhabits it... like, say, a silicon-based lifeform.

So, why do you assume that, if the planet is alive, all other life must be linked to it?

Bacteria are not anthropomorhpic. Showing metabolism, replication, and DNA isn't human. It is life. Bacteria replicate through binary fission, not sex. Yet they both replicate.

This part of your statement is what I refer to as your blind spot.

Do we want to debate the definition of life now.


YES WE DO! Why is that so shocking to you?

For many people, the idea that science has sorted out all the answers is ridiculous. We've just tried to sort stuff out and we've made strides.

But to suggest that OUR definition of life is THE definition of life is really very strange to me.


At some point you must recognize that we are treating the application of science to our needs as an absolute truth.

I do not agree with this at all.

Then explain what life is, without using metabolism/DNA/replication.

Inorganic substances do not do this
Organisms do

What if the Earth hasn't replicated yet? Or what if planetary life forms replicate by force, they require cataclysmic processes in order to replicate. Maybe the moon is proof of Earth's replication.

We have never encountered life other than the DNA based life we have here on earth, we know what it needs to survive, we cant just assume there is other kinds of life out there, because we've never found any, and we dont know how it could work.

It's like the search for life outer space, we look for worlds with liquid water, because life as we know it requires it.

There are plenty of lifeforms that dont live as "we" live, infact the majority of species on this planet we might not consider to be alive at first glance.

Thank you for the example!!! That's exactly what I mean. Not linked to it but rather caused by it. For example there are different bacteria on a living body than on a dead one are there not? So that we are just "bacteria" on earth in a sense. That's what I mean. Not that earth cares for us any more than we care for the bacteria on our body. That's why I disagree with the hospitable argument. That's just one step away from God theory. I don't think the earth cares or directs us at all. I think we just exist.

Oh wait!!!!


Maybe the earth is dead, it just died and we represent the decay. Decay can be pretty beautiful if you stand back far enough. LOL

Maybe that's what we're seeing in the other planets the dead planets after being eaten up by the bacteria it produces.


But to your original question its not evolution per se I have a problem with. Its the idea of macro evolution and tracing back.

So if a bacteria is formed on a living organism then it will evolve of course. But it didn't start or rather WE didn't start from a single celled organism and work itself up to human.

I think we came into existence as pretty much HUMAN right from the get go. I think most animals came into existence pretty much the way they are.

The thing is how do you for example "suddenly" get a whale in the ocean. To me its perfectly possible.

Cimber,

With all due respect to your knowledge of biology, I see this thread as more of a thought experiment (although I don't know if True sees it that way) about the possibility of a very different sort of life not based on carbon chemistry.

If such life is possible then it might be that we do not recognise the methods of metabolism/replication etc as such.

Great post!!!! It reminds me of the way Star Trek always had man people as aliens with just goofy faces and whatnot.

There was never the OOZE of Genius or anything like that.

Yes it is totally a thought experiment. Just an idea I've been batting around. So far the contributions have been awesome.

Oh I understand that. But you have to understand that a living organism is a carbon based one. Its like saying gold or silver is living. You and me both know its not because it doesn't exhibit living qualities ie carbon, metabolism, replication, dna. Just like carbon itself isn't living, or else all carbon would be living. It is determined by its ability to metabolize etc.

Is it possible that Mars infected Earth and killed it? What if Mars was infected by the bacteria we call life, and when an asteroid struck Mars and dislodged infected matter off it's surface which then landed on Earth it then infected and killed Earth, and Mars is what Earth will look like once the "infection" runs it's course?

But even carbon itself is not "living" The life forms we recognize are based on carbon, but a lump of coal is not alive. So why would we expect a lump of gold or silver to be alive, and why would we take the fact that the lump is not alive as proof that there are no gold or silver based life forms? We don't even take the fact that there are dead carbon-based creatures as proof that there is no carbon-based life.

Let me ask you a question. If some new metal was found and you found out that this new metal always had a life form on it like a bacteria.

Would you wonder if the metal was alive?

I know, thats why I said in my post that carbon itself isn't living. Carbon is required for life because of its chemical structure, it can bond with up to four other atoms, which allows for the chemicals that allow life to work...to work. Silver and gold can't do this. That is why there are no silver or gold lifeforms. It is highly speculative that other elements will be similar to carbon and can produce life. I will not rule it out, but it is not probable.

Okay, so Earth/Gaia does not direct how life is formed...got that.



Macroevolution is evolution, macro or micro, it's the same process you are just talking of a different level of changes to an organisms (populations) genome. Anyway, taking into account the number of changes an organism would have to go through to spontaneously change form I think it unlikely it could happen without transitional stages over an extended period of time.

The other issue I have with spontaneous generation is, what did the organisms spontaneously generate from? In abiogenesis we do theorise the spontaneous formation of living organisms, but these are extremely simple organisms and, even then there are many stages the non-living matter goes through before true organic life appears. The 'spontaneous generation' in abiogenesis isn't really spontaneous at all.

Now, the analogy I used with the body/bacteria wasn't completely accurate because the bacteria already exist in our population to inhabit a body. This would not necessarily be the case in your Earth/Gaia idea.

Funny you should mention Star Trek, btw, in referring to non-carbon based life forms...

Horta

The metal wouldn't be alive because it is merely a place that the organism lives on. It just like saying would you consider the carpet alive because humans always walk on it.

All new elements being found anyways are human made and only exist in time intervals less than a single second, so this would be impossible.

This is something I could get behind completely. What if this is the case and it explains why life arose. Science has shown that there were many meteors crashing onto the earth. What if this life form was brought from another planet and what if the life form just begins to form when the conditions are ready.


I guess what I am trying to suggest is that the physical evolution of the creatures doesn't represent the simplicity of the code. The code was always complex but the ability to develop was not there. So therefor instead of having a whale crawl into the sea from land we see instead the sea becoming more complex and so the whale reflects this in the complexity of its evolution in itself.

indeed this is 3 grade science class earth is a living "system" (Not a bieng)...even objects that look static/still are held together by molecules and atoms vibrating at different rates...etc etc.....

You guys are talking a lot, but nothing you say is based on reality. Whenever Cimber or someone says something reasonable, you just say "well what if?". Worthless...


I don't know, anything to indicate that the gaia idea is true.

I don't think anyone is suggesting it's true... it's a concept, or something to think about and explore as a concept.

Yes, you can think of it like a fantasy novel or something but you can't explain it as if it was real, as these guys are doing.

the gaia theory as well as truethat's theory are plausable. Just as plausable as any other theory. insisting that all life has to be carbon based and have dna and replicate in order to be alive is very narrow minded. the life we are aware of may require these things, but I wonder how many other life forms we may have over looked just because we assume they are not alive because they do not fit into what we-humans- have decided is the formula for life.

an entity only replicates if it has need to, replicating or not is not a sign of life, alot of people and animals have not and will not replicate, since they have all the other characteristics of life, but for whatever reason do not replicate, they cannot by that definition be alive. by that definition, only creatures that have or will produce offspring are alive. those who do not are not alive and so can be destroyed with no consequence, because they do not meet all the criteria to be alive.

onto the theory, what if it is only man that is the bad bacteria. what if it is not all life, just us that are the earths cancer.

The ability to replicate is a sign of life, not the act of replicating. Saying the hypothesis is just as plausible as any other is also false. It is called the Gaia Hypothesis for a reason. It is not a theory.

Show me how a living organism that does NOT have the following criteria.
-Carbon based (Possibly the easiest to do)
-Replication (Without any form of replication, then an organism couldn't pass its genetic code)
-DNA (Without DNA, there are NO instructions to create the organism istelf)
-No metabolic processes
Its that simple

What do we get if we take these away? An inorganic substance. How many times do I have to repeat myself before anyone realizes that what you are describing is inorganic. Its either living or not. The closest in-between we have here are viruses. This is a more interesting debate or discussion than the Gaia Hypothesis.

It is far from narrow minded. All this thread is doing is describing something inorganic.

Rather than anthropomorphize the character of Earth I can think of life as a function of the chemistry of planets and thereby a function of star formation. Long lived mainstream stars are not rare nor is, I think, the presence of small planets in the 'life zone' of a star.

The importance of the moon is in its size and position relative to the Earth and the regular tides/intertidal zone it creates which though not important in the early stages of life must surely aid the movement of more complex forms of life from the sea to the land.

However the warm blooded part of me sees this earth as Mother Earth and thats not so bad is it?


But in reply to the question in the thread title at the moment I sometimes feel we must be as agent smith describes us.

So, just because planetary replication takes billions of years and none of the planets in our vicinity are currently in the process of replicating, this means it doesn't happen and this idea is not true?

There is no evidence for planetary 'replication' and there is strong evidence that planetary formation takes place from a disk of material coalescing into proto-planetary bodies which, through collision and accumulation, assume enough mass to become planets.

An idea isn't 'true' simply because we have no evidence it is not. It remains an idea, unproven and hypothetical only.

slightly off topic but... The ancient Egyptians used the scarab as a symbol of life because they saw baby beetles emerging from sh** and mud. They didn't realize that the mother beetle had laid eggs in the mud and believed that they were seeing life emerge from an inanimate object.


It seems like part of the problem in this discussion is that we're working with two definitions of alive. One is the one I learned in school: living things grow, reproduce, absorb energy and utilize it, etc. The other definition is that living things are discrete entities that try to maintain themselves (health) and relate to other beings.

If living things have to be carbon based and reproduce then the Earth obviously isn't a living entity. If "living" has a broader definition, then the Earth could be a living entity.

Are some folks actually postulating that new species suddenly "pop" into existance out of thin air? Or that the earth spits them out of the ground? Wow. Just putting aside for a second that it's physically impossible, that the energy required for the arrangment of such complex molecular structure instantly would be akin to thousands of nuclear explosions, where is there even a stitch of evidence for such a hypothesis?

Yes, I would agree. Something coming from nothing, or out of nowhere, by natural processes is impossible.

I have had similar thoughts about what your talking about true. I dont believe every thing I think of but I'm a firm believer in letting your mind roam and seeing what you find. A lot of people get upset when you try to branch out from the norm belief system, is it bad thing to think outside of the box?? Especially when nothing is set in stone.


oh btw

lol

It wouldn't be "coming from nothing". It would be energy being organized according to the nature of the living thing that was utilizing it.

Don't twist his words WalkingwithFire, he said "A whole new species" in other words, a complete organism cannot come from nothing.
Primitive life precursors on the other hand, can originate.

Saying something cannot come from nothing is conforming to the same creationist rhetoric that has been spewed time and time again, yet has been disproven.