Date Posted:1/1/00 12:00amSubject:
Evolution questions (part 2)
Bear with me on this.
Ok, so it seems the common consensus among the evolution theorists that somehow a bacteria or some other thing managed to come to life on the ball of lava. They cite the critters that can live and reproduce near underwater volcanoes.
Ok, let's say that there IS a bug that started it all, living in the hot conditions or maybe it came along afterwords when water formed.
It was a tiny bug...just a single celled organism. Uh, WHAT did it eat? I mean, there were no OTHER things for it to munch on. Maybe it ate water or dirt or chemicals. HOW did it get a digestive system? I mean, it was first, right? It's not like it "adapted" to the environment.
Now, let's zoom forward 8 gajillion years to when this thing suddenly turned into something else. WHAT did it eat? I mean, eventually this thing is going to be a fish, right? There had to be a first fish. WHAT did that thing eat? How did it reproduce? I mean, being the first fish and all is probably a cool thing, but it's not like there's a lot of action in the romance area when you're the ONLY one.
Hey, how did this fish (which had nothing to mate with or eat...although the first fish probably had a digestive system which it didn't need before...you get the idea) turn into OTHER kinds of fish? I'd also like to know, how did the first carp, shark, bluegill, tuna and etc EAT? I mean, they must have been pretty hungry and all. Since they "evolved", there had to be a "first one" of them, too. HOW did they fertilize their eggs?
Now, at some point the first fish becomes a frog or something and it has to eat too. Now, as we know, fish and animals can live on plants. Uh oh, another question. HOW did the thing that was "evolving into" all these fish, amphibians, reptiles, insects, other single celled organisms, mammals and birds.....wait for it....
HOW DID THEY TURN INTO PLANTS?! Did they "know" that they would need to feed the progeny of evolution that would eventually come along and crawl around on the ground (you know, that place where they weren't AT)? How did they "know to evolve" so that they could support the wide range of things such as omnivores, carnivores and herbivores? How did they manage to "evolve" into such tight nit, inter-being bio-systems? You know, like the lamprey or the flower and the bee...
I'd sure like all you guys that know so much answer all this stuff. Especially how the first "whatever" didn't starve to death. Or how a fish turned into a plant.
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Date Posted:1/1/00 12:00amSubject:
Evolution questions (part 2)
Friarspam posted: Bear with me on this.
Ok, so it seems the common consensus among the evolution theorists that somehow a bacteria or some other thing managed to come to life on the ball of lava. They cite the critters that can live and reproduce near underwater volcanoes.
Ok, let's say that there IS a bug that started it all, living in the hot conditions or maybe it came along afterwords when water formed.
It was a tiny bug...just a single celled organism. Uh, WHAT did it eat? I mean, there were no OTHER things for it to munch on. Maybe it ate water or dirt or chemicals. HOW did it get a digestive system? I mean, it was first, right? It's not like it "adapted" to the environment.
I think the early Earth was too hot for anything to live since the excess heat/radiation would've kept the various proteins/chemicals floating around from combining and sticking together long enough. But once it cooled down enough that liquid water could form and stick around, then those proteins, combined with other elements around that time (lightning, particles/chemicals in the air) formed.
As for what they ate, I think that there was a lot of chemicals around the first organisms that they simply absorbed into their cell and utilized. My guess is that some organisms gradually began to mutate so as to absorb those chemicals better than their neighbors, and some others evolved in a way to absorb chemicals by "eating" the other ones, via releasing chemicals/enzymes to break down said neighboring cells. Over hundreds of thousands or millions of years, said organisms began to adapt to changes being made on the early Earth.
In the process, those organisms released oxygen as a byproduct, which was pretty lethal to those lifeforms, until other forms changed in a way that could utilize oxygen to release energy. Anaerobic bacteria usually die if they're exposed to oxygen since it's pretty caustic (look at how water, H2O, causes iron to rust for an example).
Some organisms can thrive in the harshest (by human standards) places on Earth, such as the geothermal vents deep in the ocean. Since sunlight can't penetrate down there, the "plants" down there use chemicals released by the Earth to make their energy. And the animals down there eat whatever they can, whether its other creatures that live down there, or stuff that falls down from above them. They adapt to the environment as best as they can, or they die off.
I remember watching a documentary once where they were filming two baby birds (I think eagles). One of them started to attack the other one in an attempt to kill it, and the narrator mentioned that either one of them will have to die, or both will due to lack of food available to them. So yes, it looks cruel to us humans, but if both of them die, they won't be around to make more birds. If food were plentiful, they'd be able to thrive, but survival of the fittest in this case. It was pretty heartbreaking to watch, but it made sense to me.
Friarspam posted: Now, let's zoom forward 8 gajillion years to when this thing suddenly turned into something else. WHAT did it eat? I mean, eventually this thing is going to be a fish, right? There had to be a first fish. WHAT did that thing eat? How did it reproduce? I mean, being the first fish and all is probably a cool thing, but it's not like there's a lot of action in the romance area when you're the ONLY one.
Hey, how did this fish (which had nothing to mate with or eat...although the first fish probably had a digestive system which it didn't need before...you get the idea) turn into OTHER kinds of fish? I'd also like to know, how did the first carp, shark, bluegill, tuna and etc EAT? I mean, they must have been pretty hungry and all. Since they "evolved", there had to be a "first one" of them, too. HOW did they fertilize their eggs?
Now, at some point the first fish becomes a frog or something and it has to eat too. Now, as we know, fish and animals can live on plants. Uh oh, another question. HOW did the thing that was "evolving into" all these fish, amphibians, reptiles, insects, other single celled organisms, mammals and birds.....wait for it....
Plants likely evolved from simple organisms that were able to absorb sunlight and use water/various chemicals in the water in order to produce energy, aka photosynthesis. And like the example I gave above, some organisms evolved to eat those plant cells/organisms.
Reproduction was likely asexual at first, but over time, some organisms began to randomly recombine their genes, some of which helped their offspring to better survive (such as fins to help swim around), some which was neither good nor bad (think earlobes on humans, some are attached, some aren't, but it doesn't necesssarily affect a person's survival), and some which were bad (think cancer or a terminal disease which kills a person while they're young).
This stuff probably went on for millions of years as well, and each organism had ways of defending itself from others (since if you're dead via getting eaten, you can't pass off your genes to the next generation). They just ate whatever was around at the time, so sharks ate whatever fish was around at the time, and as said fish began to change into other types of fish, the later generation of sharks continued eating them. A plant which is poisonous to one animal may be vulnerable to another animal which has an adaptation that allows it to breakdown the plant's poison and nullify it. For instance, if you ate poison ivy, you'd be in the hospital and in a world of hurt. But deer can eat them okay due to enzymes available in their stomachs. Humans can't break down cellulouse easily, but multi-stomach animals such as cows can. Birds often swallow stones to help them break plant matter down as well.
Humans lucked out because our ancestors learned how to create and control fire, which allowed for cooking to help break complex proteins up to make it easier to digest (in addition to killing harmful parasites that might be living in it). That's why it's much easier to eat a steak that's been thoroughly cooked as opposed to a completely raw one. Most meat eaters lack the ability to get to the bone marrow from the animals they kill, but human's ancestral apes learned to do that (not like they had much choice anyway, since they couldn't exactly take down a zebra like a lion can).
Again, those changes were gradual. A giraffe didn't just appear out of nowhere, it had an ancestor that likely had a short neck, and some were born with slightly longer necks, which enabled them to reach food higher up on trees that their short-necked brethren couldn't reach. And as those things survived to pass on their genes, gradually the short-necked giraffes died out. I think I may have used this as an example in the other post, but its happening even now. Poachers are killing elephants with long tusks, while leaving the short tusked elephants alone because it's not worth killing them to get the tusk. Therefore the short tusked ones survive to reproduce, while the long tusked elephants get killed off. Given a few more decades/hundreds of years, long tusked elephants will likely be extinct.
Friarspam posted: HOW DID THEY TURN INTO PLANTS?! Did they "know" that they would need to feed the progeny of evolution that would eventually come along and crawl around on the ground (you know, that place where they weren't AT)? How did they "know to evolve" so that they could support the wide range of things such as omnivores, carnivores and herbivores? How did they manage to "evolve" into such tight nit, inter-being bio-systems? You know, like the lamprey or the flower and the bee...
Again, plant ancestors probably evolved alongside "animal" ancestors, and because they both had different ways of obtaining food (plants make food from sunlight/water, animals eat the plants, some other animals eat those first ones, then they die and get broken down by microbes to provide nutrients for new plants), they were able to coexist. All living things compete with each other for resources, even plants (if you ever cut one tree down when there's 2 growing really close to each other, you'll see that the trees sort of grow away from each other because they're both trying to get as much sunlight/water/minerals as possible)
The answers to these would require semester-long classes to fully answer, but that's sort of the cliff-notes version of how life gradually evolved and changed.
IMHO Title: Official Outpost Greeter Posts: 2,287 Registered: 2001-11-1 03:55:02
Date Posted:1/1/00 12:00amSubject:
Evolution questions (part 2)
Urk_VN posted:
Friarspam posted: Bear with me on this.
Ok, so it seems the common consensus among the evolution theorists that somehow a bacteria or some other thing managed to come to life on the ball of lava. They cite the critters that can live and reproduce near underwater volcanoes.
Ok, let's say that there IS a bug that started it all, living in the hot conditions or maybe it came along afterwords when water formed.
It was a tiny bug...just a single celled organism. Uh, WHAT did it eat? I mean, there were no OTHER things for it to munch on. Maybe it ate water or dirt or chemicals. HOW did it get a digestive system? I mean, it was first, right? It's not like it "adapted" to the environment.
I think the early Earth was too hot for anything to live since the excess heat/radiation would've kept the various proteins/chemicals floating around from combining and sticking together long enough. But once it cooled down enough that liquid water could form and stick around, then those proteins, combined with other elements around that time (lightning, particles/chemicals in the air) formed.
As for what they ate, I think that there was a lot of chemicals around the first organisms that they simply absorbed into their cell and utilized. My guess is that some organisms gradually began to mutate so as to absorb those chemicals better than their neighbors, and some others evolved in a way to absorb chemicals by "eating" the other ones, via releasing chemicals/enzymes to break down said neighboring cells. Over hundreds of thousands or millions of years, said organisms began to adapt to changes being made on the early Earth.
In the process, those organisms released oxygen as a byproduct, which was pretty lethal to those lifeforms, until other forms changed in a way that could utilize oxygen to release energy. Anaerobic bacteria usually die if they're exposed to oxygen since it's pretty caustic (look at how water, H2O, causes iron to rust for an example).
Some organisms can thrive in the harshest (by human standards) places on Earth, such as the geothermal vents deep in the ocean. Since sunlight can't penetrate down there, the "plants" down there use chemicals released by the Earth to make their energy. And the animals down there eat whatever they can, whether its other creatures that live down there, or stuff that falls down from above them. They adapt to the environment as best as they can, or they die off.
I remember watching a documentary once where they were filming two baby birds (I think eagles). One of them started to attack the other one in an attempt to kill it, and the narrator mentioned that either one of them will have to die, or both will due to lack of food available to them. So yes, it looks cruel to us humans, but if both of them die, they won't be around to make more birds. If food were plentiful, they'd be able to thrive, but survival of the fittest in this case. It was pretty heartbreaking to watch, but it made sense to me.
Friarspam posted: Now, let's zoom forward 8 gajillion years to when this thing suddenly turned into something else. WHAT did it eat? I mean, eventually this thing is going to be a fish, right? There had to be a first fish. WHAT did that thing eat? How did it reproduce? I mean, being the first fish and all is probably a cool thing, but it's not like there's a lot of action in the romance area when you're the ONLY one.
Hey, how did this fish (which had nothing to mate with or eat...although the first fish probably had a digestive system which it didn't need before...you get the idea) turn into OTHER kinds of fish? I'd also like to know, how did the first carp, shark, bluegill, tuna and etc EAT? I mean, they must have been pretty hungry and all. Since they "evolved", there had to be a "first one" of them, too. HOW did they fertilize their eggs?
Now, at some point the first fish becomes a frog or something and it has to eat too. Now, as we know, fish and animals can live on plants. Uh oh, another question. HOW did the thing that was "evolving into" all these fish, amphibians, reptiles, insects, other single celled organisms, mammals and birds.....wait for it....
Plants likely evolved from simple organisms that were able to absorb sunlight and use water/various chemicals in the water in order to produce energy, aka photosynthesis. And like the example I gave above, some organisms evolved to eat those plant cells/organisms.
Reproduction was likely asexual at first, but over time, some organisms began to randomly recombine their genes, some of which helped their offspring to better survive (such as fins to help swim around), some which was neither good nor bad (think earlobes on humans, some are attached, some aren't, but it doesn't necesssarily affect a person's survival), and some which were bad (think cancer or a terminal disease which kills a person while they're young).
This stuff probably went on for millions of years as well, and each organism had ways of defending itself from others (since if you're dead via getting eaten, you can't pass off your genes to the next generation). They just ate whatever was around at the time, so sharks ate whatever fish was around at the time, and as said fish began to change into other types of fish, the later generation of sharks continued eating them. A plant which is poisonous to one animal may be vulnerable to another animal which has an adaptation that allows it to breakdown the plant's poison and nullify it. For instance, if you ate poison ivy, you'd be in the hospital and in a world of hurt. But deer can eat them okay due to enzymes available in their stomachs. Humans can't break down cellulouse easily, but multi-stomach animals such as cows can. Birds often swallow stones to help them break plant matter down as well.
Humans lucked out because our ancestors learned how to create and control fire, which allowed for cooking to help break complex proteins up to make it easier to digest (in addition to killing harmful parasites that might be living in it). That's why it's much easier to eat a steak that's been thoroughly cooked as opposed to a completely raw one. Most meat eaters lack the ability to get to the bone marrow from the animals they kill, but human's ancestral apes learned to do that (not like they had much choice anyway, since they couldn't exactly take down a zebra like a lion can).
Again, those changes were gradual. A giraffe didn't just appear out of nowhere, it had an ancestor that likely had a short neck, and some were born with slightly longer necks, which enabled them to reach food higher up on trees that their short-necked brethren couldn't reach. And as those things survived to pass on their genes, gradually the short-necked giraffes died out. I think I may have used this as an example in the other post, but its happening even now. Poachers are killing elephants with long tusks, while leaving the short tusked elephants alone because it's not worth killing them to get the tusk. Therefore the short tusked ones survive to reproduce, while the long tusked elephants get killed off. Given a few more decades/hundreds of years, long tusked elephants will likely be extinct.
Friarspam posted: HOW DID THEY TURN INTO PLANTS?! Did they "know" that they would need to feed the progeny of evolution that would eventually come along and crawl around on the ground (you know, that place where they weren't AT)? How did they "know to evolve" so that they could support the wide range of things such as omnivores, carnivores and herbivores? How did they manage to "evolve" into such tight nit, inter-being bio-systems? You know, like the lamprey or the flower and the bee...
Again, plant ancestors probably evolved alongside "animal" ancestors, and because they both had different ways of obtaining food (plants make food from sunlight/water, animals eat the plants, some other animals eat those first ones, then they die and get broken down by microbes to provide nutrients for new plants), they were able to coexist. All living things compete with each other for resources, even plants (if you ever cut one tree down when there's 2 growing really close to each other, you'll see that the trees sort of grow away from each other because they're both trying to get as much sunlight/water/minerals as possible)
The answers to these would require semester-long classes to fully answer, but that's sort of the cliff-notes version of how life gradually evolved and changed.
Friarspam posted:
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You're Right ~ Koneg
He's [Manegarm] like the Fred Phelps of atheism. ~Bubbledude
many of you are in the Republican boat, aka the ship of fools. ~Modeeb
We are here on Earth to fart around. Don't let anybody tell you any different. ~Kurt Vonnegut
Manegarm Title: European Imperialist Good Guy Posts: 1,964 Registered: 2003-8-11 10:01:52
Date Posted:1/1/00 12:00amSubject:
Evolution questions (part 2)
I'M OUTRAGED AT THE EARLIER POSTERS BLATANT TRIES TO EXPLAIN OUR REALITY USING SUCH A PETTY THINGS AS LOGIC, INFORMATION AND REASONING! WE ALL KNOW A WIZARD DID IT, IT SEZ SO IN THE GOOD BOOK!
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Europa Eternita!
"Damn, Manegarm; you are HAWT!! " - Taolynn
"To the everlasting glory of the infantry, Shines the name Shines the name of Rodger Young"
ALWAYS ANGRY, ALL THE TIME!
Nein mann ich will noch nicht gehen
Date Posted:1/1/00 12:00amSubject:
Evolution questions (part 2)
Friarspam posted: Well if THAT'S the case it should be EASY for some liberal with their superior brain to come along and explain it all very nicely!
Hey bro! Not a liberal but I have the other requirement locked so here goes.
What did the first thing eat?
Nothing.
How could that be possible?
It's birth was a byproduct of chemical reactions which higher evolutionary forms internalized.
A quote I'll make up to help explain my answers. "Give a stone someplace to fall and it will fall. The reasons why govern all the heavenly bodies in the Universe."
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Hold up your opinions and I'll tell you which one is my favorit.
This thread is more proof.
