Is it creation or evolution!

Written in 1998
Updated August 28, 2013

Is it creation or evolution!

Our universe is governed by set of unchangeable laws, called law of nature. Whenever one proton and one neutron of like components meet, they will be attracted to each other, and immediately electron will join and an atom will be born. When several different atoms meet, a molecule will be formed.

For example when two atoms of hydrogen meet one atom of oxygen at the right temperature and atmospheric pressure, water is formed. If above circumstance occurs billions of times, water will be formed billions of times. It is the law of nature which no one is able to change, stop, or delay it, and do not need a creator. It is a "set" law of “matter”, it is an order set within matter.

The same law holds true in organic chemistry; when an “amine” (NH2), meets any carboxylic acid group such as (COOH), together, they will create “amino acid”, the essential component of the protein molecule that is the basic material for creating primitive microorganisms. The interaction of these primitive microorganisms will, in turn, create a new class of microorganisms that will be in a higher class with more capabilities. And eventually, after several stages of these kinds of interactions, which could take millions of years, a higher level of living organism will be born with a nucleus and capability of reproducing itself.

The above process is constantly occurring on this planet in our backyards, in the air, in the ocean, on the trees, in the sewers, in the river and in the sky. We witness this every single day throughout our lives.  

Every living organism that exists on Earth, from amoebas to humans, started from that very first stage and took billions of years to become what we see today.

Problem with creationists is their simplistic thinking that all living things were here the way we see them today.  

Maziar Aptin

Please read this related article:

http://maziaraptin.blogspot.com/2012/07/evolution-of-eye-few-weeks-ago-i-wrote.html

This portion has been added on July, 14, 2013:
Updated on August 28,2013

Below is a page from the website of "History of the Universe":

Origin of life

We start with some of the commonest atoms in the Universe: hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen andcarbon. These were assembled into smaller molecules, amino acids and bases, which were eventually built into large molecules such as proteins and nucleic acids.

These molecules were certainly present in the atmosphere released by the volcanoes of the young Earth.

This atmosphere probably contained molecules such as methane, ammonia, carbon dioxide andwater, but not oxygen molecules. Experiments show that energy such as lightning can create amino acids and bases out of these simpler molecules. They were washed down to Earth in the rain. There they were joined together to make nucleic acids and proteins, perhaps by being heated on the slopes of volcanoes, or on the ocean floor where hot rock rises from the Earth’s mantle.

Adsorption of biomolecules onto clay

Life as we know it is a chemical system which needs both proteins and nucleic acids working closely together. But perhaps, before life began, there was some simpler system which just used one type of molecule. One idea is that nucleic acids stuck to clay. This was an adsorption process similar to the one we saw when atoms stuck to stardust.

A chemical system might have begun which could grow and reproduce without the use of proteins. This type of theory is popular because nucleic acid sometimes acts like an enzyme in life today.

Perhaps later life began to use proteins as the workers, and these gradually took over all the jobs of life, leaving the nucleic acids as mainly the information carriers. Clay stopped being used, and modern life began.

We do not know whether this theory is correct. It raises many questions. How did those first nucleic acids form? How did they begin to use proteins? Was there a stage of life before nucleic acids, and what chemicals did it use? Is life common on other planets in the Universe, or did it only begin on Earth?

It is not clear when life began. We guess that it was soon after the meteorite era ended, about 4billion years ago. All traces of early life on Earth have long since been wiped out. One reason for exploring other planets is the hope that they will show us life at an early stage of formation.

Could life exist on other planets? Our Milky Way Galaxy contains 200 billion stars. If even a small percentage of them have Earth-like planets, then our galaxy could contain many Earth-like planets. Some of them, perhaps, are at just the right distance from their star to be warmed to lukewarm temperatures where the water could be in liquid form and perhaps life could flourish once it had begun. Of these, some must have circular orbits (like the Earth) rather than the more common oval (elliptical) orbit.

But since we do not know how life began, we cannot say how probable it is that it could begin on these other planets.

How life began is another of the great unanswered questions in this whole story.

Creation of life on Earth

Some scientists are trying to create artificial or synthetic life on Earth. In 2010 the J Craig Venter Institute created synthetic DNA which they inserted into a bacterium. However this is still a long way from creating a complete cell from simple chemicals.

And even if they managed to create life in a laboratory, scientists would still be a long way off explaining how life began, when only nature’s laboratory existed.
Finally; it is worthwhile to listen to the video below; "The genius of Darwin"
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unl3mxQNmD8
  

Recently I found a scientific site that explains the origin of life as follows:

Three Domains

Current understanding of early evolution is that life (based on an analysis of the RNA in their ribosomes) split into two domains one of which later split into two. Hence there are now three domains, called Bacteria, Archaea andEukaryotes, related as follows:

                                       Above: Possible relationships between three main domains of life

Note that the Bacteria and Archaea appear very similar to each other and very different from more advanced Eukaryotes, so Bacteria and Archaea are often grouped together under the heading prokaryotes. Biologists think that the Archaea are perhaps older than the Bacteria.

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Archaea 3.9  Bya?(Billion years ago)

Based on their structure and biochemistry we believe the earliest cells were similar to the living Archaea (which used to be called the Archaebacteria). Archaea are probably living fossils, similar to the earliest cells.

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Bacteria 3.5  Bya? 

In some of their chemistry, Archaea resemble more advanced cells which we will meet later (eukaryotes). But there is another domain of simple, single-celled organisms which resemble them in size and shape, the Bacteria.

It seems that early cells divided into these two domains, and while the Archaea remain fairly specialized, the Bacteria, have diversified and now form the largest domain of prokaryotes.

The oldest fossil Bacteria found so far are in rocks from western Australia dating from the Archaean 3.5 billion years old.

These are the simplest cells we find on Earth today, called bacteria (sometimes called germs). Note that one of these is called a bacterium.

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Photosynthesis 3.5 Bya

Bacteria began to trap sunlight and use that energy to make food, such as sugar. This process is called photosynthesis, meaning “constructing with light”. This was a great leap forward. Sunlight-using bacteria appeared soon after the first cells did, about 3.5 billion years ago, and sunlight has been the main source of energy for all life ever since. These bacteria are called blue-green bacteriaor cyanobacteria (and sometimes wrongly called blue-green algae).

Many blue-green bacteria can also “fix“ atmospheric nitrogen. In Southeast Asia, nitrogen-fixing blue-greens often are grown in rice paddies, removing the need for nitrogen fertilizers.

Blue-greens are important in our story for several reasons:

►    they were probably the first bacteria which could perform photosynthesis, so leading to the great oxygen poisoning of 3 billion years ago

►    they formed a symbiosis with fungi to create lichen, which was probably the first living thing to live on land

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How photosynthesis works

                                                                     A cell uses sunlight to create sugar

As they captured sunlight energy to make sugar so carbon dioxide and water were taken in, andoxygen was given out. This oxygen had a huge effect upon the whole world.

Today we obtain almost all of our food from plants, or from animals which have eaten plants, and so it might be interesting to know a bit about how photosynthesis works. It is a fascinating story of molecular changes.

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Paleoproterozoic Era 2.5 to 1.6 Bya

The Paleoproterozoic (“old first life”) was a time when the continents finally stabilized, with modern land forms becoming recognizable.

This was the time of the most dramatic change ever in the nature of the Earth’s atmosphere.Bacteria able to make use of sunlight for energy continued to grow, resulting in the great oxygen poisoning.

This might also have been the time when larger and more advanced cells (eukaryotes) first appeared.

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Great Oxygen Poisoning 2.4 Bya

During the next 1.7 billion years the Earth’s environment changed dramatically. Up to this point, the atmosphere has been rich in hydrogen compounds such as ammonia and methane gas. Any ironwhich happened to reach the Earth’s surface remained shiny and bright. But everything changed when blue-green bacteria began to release oxygen.

Once photosynthesis by blue-greens began to release oxygen, iron minerals in the rocks and oceans of the Earth began to combine with the oxygen and turn brown -- the world began to rust. Gradually the whole chemistry of the Earth was changed.

By 1.8 billion years ago all the minerals in the rocks and oceans had rusted. Now the oxygen made by blue-green bacteria began to collect in the atmosphere, which began to change into the air we know today. Never since has the world seen such a drastic change.

This had a terrible effect upon most bacteria. Oxygen attacked many of life’s molecules, combining with them, changing their structure and giving out carbon dioxide and heat. It is the process we call burning. Burning can happen quickly, as in a fire, or slowly, as when a cut apple goes brown.

The new oxygen slowly burnt the proteins and chromosomes inside the bacteria and most of themdied in the Great Oxygen Poisoning (also called the Great Oxygenation Event or the Oxygen Catastrophe) of about 2.4 bya, most but not all. Some anaerobes hid away in places where there was no oxygen, such as in the mud at the bottom of swamps. They managed to survive in any place without oxygen, and we still find them living there. These are the anaerobic bacteria which make dead matter putrefy, giving off bad smells.

The Ribosome

The ribosome is central to the process of life. In life today, ribosomes occur both as free particles within cells and as particles attached to membranes inside cells. A ribosome is made of about 40%protein and 60 % nucleic acid. It is composed of four nucleic acid molecules and about 70 different proteins.

Ribosomes are very numerous in a cell and account for a large proportion of its total nucleic acid. 

Viruses

A virus has no ribosomes, water molecules or cell membrane. It cannot build any proteins itself, so it is not a living thing, but it does contain genetic material, either DNA or RNA, which it can inject into a living cell.

Some viruses inject DNA into a cell which is taken into the cell’s chromosome. Others injectRNA which is either used by the cell’s ribosomes to create new protein or converted first into DNA. Viruses which cause the latter process are called retroviruses.

Once inside the chromosome, the new DNA begins to give out messages for making new viruses. The host cell is thereby turned into a factory for making new copies of the virus.

When it is full of viruses the cell bursts open, sending out millions of viruses to infect more cells.

A virus seems like a totally destructive thing, killing cells without doing any good. Usually this is true, but viruses can carry useful genes from one cell to another. Genetic engineers use viruses for this reason.

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Origin of Viruses

Nobody is sure how viruses began. The existence of very large viruses (megaviruses) which contains enough genes to encode about one thousand proteins, more than most bacteria, suggests that they were originally cells which lost the ability to reproduce on their own, adopting instead a parasitic way of life.

However the existence of bacterial spores suggests that perhaps they evolved into viruses.

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