| darthdevidem01 said: Its a hard question and loads of people will have different opinions. I personally don't believe in a concious God anymore......but I do wonder where did the first spec of life, the first living organism, WHATEVER IT WAS come from? The hypothetical answer my biology book gave me just wasn't good enough for that question. There must have been some catalyst that led to life being formed. Some books claim, "by chance" a bunch of minerals combined to form mitochondria which were the first type of living things, well again "a bunch" of mineral just randomly combining just isn't good enough as an answer. But still I don't believe in God, and if there was a God he's left us now and long gone somewhere else. |
It's not completely random. Scientists have recreated early Earth conditions and found that certain bio-polymers form quite rapidly (using lightning as a catalyst). There is a gap in our knowledge between biopolymers and the formation of nucleic acids as we know them (RNA), although the observed polymers are similar to RNA/DNA in structure.
We do know however, that RNA can form catalytic structures and that "life" (I use this term rather broadly in this sense) likely started as a pool of catalytic nucleic acid molecules and other organic compunds which eventually enveloped the simple biocatalysts to form cell like structures (not mitochondria, early life would be much simpler).
The problem with this is that even if a membrane did form the nucleic acid catalysts would need to be self-replicating to truly give rise to full blown life.
DNA and protein catalysis would have arisen later (my lectures didn't cover that part of early life).
