Quote:
Originally Posted by boxcar
Of course, germs [secondarily] cause disease for example, but what caused the germs? And when you come up with a cause for germs, what caused that?
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History of the universe from about 14 billion years ago up to the present.
In the beginning (the aforesaid 14 billion years ago) there were four primary forces and thirteen primary particles (assuming you include the Higgs boson). The four forces caused the particles to collect into hydrogen atoms.
Now hydrogen is the most plentiful substance in the universe. Over half the matter in the universe is hydrogen. For a long time (more than a million years but less than a billion years) that was what the universe was: hydrogen. Inevitably enough hydrogen collects in a small enough space that gravity pulls it together and it ignites, forming a star. If two hydrogen atoms collide with enough force helium forms. What is the second most plentiful substance in the universe: helium. The process repeats and we get heavier and heavier elements. Most importantly we get
carbon. Carbon is important because all living things have carbon. What are having for breakfast tomorrow? Hydrocarbons!
I'll get back to carbon shortly.
Let's skip forward a bit. From stars we get solar systems, i.e., planets. Some of these planets have oceans. I.e., they have water. And some, the earth in particular, have oceans of primordial soup. And what is the primordial soup made of. It's water and hydrocarbons. And where did the water and hydrocarbons come from. 4.5 billion years ago they were floating around in outer space. Try to keep up.
So now we have a planet with oceans of primordial soup. The stage is set for
abiogenesis. (There's that word.
)
Consider the Miller-Urey experiment. Apologists love to put this one down, claiming it proves nothing. But Miller and Urey did not let their apparatus run for a half billiion years. Then there's the peanut butter guy who claims that a jar of peanut butter has never produced life. What if he had an ocean full of peanut butter and let it sit for a half billion years? How did he test his results? How does he know he didn't eat the evidence?
What does all life have in common besides carbon? It reproduces. Maybe something that reproduces might not be alive, but if it is alive then it reproduces.
The double helix (a.k.a. DNA/RNA) reproduces. All the ingredients for life are in the primordial soup. All it takes is the right assembly.
Could the assembly happen by chance? Yes, it could. All assemblies or disassemblies are caused by collisions. Two things collide and become one. Or two things collide and one knocks the other in two. Given a large enough volume and enough time and a great enough collision rate and you get one hell of a lot of collisions. Eventually you could get anything. But we are not looking for just anything. We are specifically looking for a double helix. The double helix reproduces on its own. And to reproduce, that double helix might be very short, possibly as short as two rungs.
Now we have reproducing molecules. Natural selection (i.e., evolution) gets to work. The reproducing molecules get more complex. Eventually cellular life develops. Then multicellular life forms. The more primitive cells become toxic to the higher life forms. That's where germs came from.
Any questions?
