Scientific Evidence for Universal Common Descent

ImmortalFlame said:

Because if it wasn't a single common ancestor, there wouldn't be shared genetic lineage.


Nothing. But there is a lot to suggest that only one of these actually survived, since there is only a singular genetic lineage. You are equating HGT between various populations that arose from a universal common ancestor with the existence of multiple common ancestors - but if those earlier forms of life died out out and were only survived by a single organism, by definition they are NOT the common ancestor - because they died.

All of the evidence indicates a single common ancestor to all extant life. If other early forms of life arose and subsequently died without (or before) passing on their inheritance, then they are not an ancestor.

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Jim said:

How is “supported by the facts” different from “explains what we see”?

Evolution theories don’t explain everything.

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1. either show high probability that model work when the evidence do support the model,
2. or show that the model that are highly improbable if the evidence don’t support the model.

We Never Know said:

Here's the thing. I'm not an expert in that field, they are. I cannot prove them wrong, however I don't accept all they put forth as fact or truth either.

IMO we assume near as much as we think we know. If it goes along, we add it In. In later years it will all become more clear as our knowledge grows.

Do I believe life has been around for billions of years, that answer is yes because of the evidence we have, and how we read that evidence suggest so.
The first living matter? We aren't even quite sure on what we call life so that question is hard to answer. Was first life a goo, a cell, maybe even a virus, who really knows.

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Dan From Smithville said:

At least he has not rolled in the origin of the universe. Yet.

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Debates over the status of the tree of life (TOL) often proceed without agreement as to what it is supposed to be: a hierarchical classification scheme, a tracing of genomic and organismal history or a hypothesis about evolutionary processes and the patterns they can generate. I will argue that for Darwin it was a hypothesis, which lateral gene transfer in prokaryotes now shows to be false.

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There is a natural impulse for evolutionists to circle their wagons in making common cause against the creationists.

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Jim said:

This looks like what I’ve been thinking.


The practice of classification and the theory of evolution, and what the demise of Charles Darwin's tree of life hypothesis means for both of them

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Jim said:

This looks like what I’ve been thinking.
Debates over the status of the tree of life (TOL) often proceed without agreement as to what it is supposed to be: a hierarchical classification scheme, a tracing of genomic and organismal history or a hypothesis about evolutionary processes and the patterns they can generate. I will argue that for Darwin it was a hypothesis, which lateral gene transfer in prokaryotes now shows to be false.
There is a natural impulse for evolutionists to circle their wagons in making common cause against the creationists

The practice of classification and the theory of evolution, and what the demise of Charles Darwin's tree of life hypothesis means for both of them

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YoursTrue said:

Sounds reasonable. To me.
On top of that (and thanks for that quote which sounds realistic to me), and this is related to the exploring of what evolutionists do, scientists are claiming (and I believe them, I hope nobody will ask me why, otherwise I"ll have to go into that) that the earth will reach a no-return point as far as ecological disaster is concerned within the next few years. So on one hand, scientists declare evolution is how 'life' came about and the various structures of life, on the other hand, they declare that we don't have much time left to save the earth. Here is where faith in God and His word the Bible, comes in. God says He will not let the earth come to ruin. 2 Peter 3:13. It is also written that He created the earth and living forms, including plants and animals and humans. How He did it is not explained.

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Jim said:

It looks to me like the universal common ancestor hypothesis died ten years ago or more, but some people are still circling their anti-creation wagons around its dead body. That doesn’t mean that I’m endorsing any creation or intelligent design theory. Everything that I’ve seen of those looks wrong to me. It also doesn’t mean that I’m against teaching evolution theories in public schools. I think that it should all be taught in public schools, and intelligent design should not.

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YoursTrue said:

And that is a good question. Yet scientists say with pretty much certainty that life did begin somehow maybe a few billion years ago. And then they go on. You say you believe life has been around for billions of years...and then say you don't know what life is. ("We aren't even quite sure on what we call life," yet then you say you believe life has been around for billions of years.)
By the way, what is the evidence that you have that life has been around for billions of years?

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YoursTrue said:

Let me put it to you this way, Jim. When I was in school, my parents, hard working and basically honest people (paid their taxes, didn't steal from others), did not give me a sense of right from wrong. They did not really care what I was learning in school. They cared only that I did 'well.' Because they trusted the school system. And I did pretty well, learning what I was told to learn. They took me to religious services, but again -- no real morality was taught there. No discussion of what the Bible said except to cite a few phrases and sing a few songs. So until I studied the Bible in earnest years later, I had no real sense of these things. That is in reply to teaching evolution. What public schools do and allow is not necessarily what parents should be teaching their children. And the responsibility rests with parents. So a student who wants good grades can and should learn what the schools teach. But if a parent believes in God rather than evolution (as described in brief in the first chapters of Genesis), the responsibility for teaching what is not in the school's purview is up to the parent, if he wants to teach his child these things. If not, then it's kind of up in the air for the child.

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YoursTrue said:

Why not? After all, isn't it suggested that the first living item came from a chemical substance somehow becoming biological matter, and isn't it the "biological" matter that is supposed to contain "life'? Somehow emerging, jumping, combining from non-living matter (dead, perhaps?) to a one-celled organism which then morphed to apes and humans.

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So are you speaking of biological evolution, rather than chemical strata, as if, perhaps, the mountains, lakes, minerals, did not come about in stages gradually, but these are not living, only the first biological matter that turned up from chemical substance (a unicell) first has life. Isn't that right? I appreciate reading your responses, and now that you mention the origin of the universe, apparently many are still pondering over the emergence of the first live unicell. While others wonder if "life" may have dropped wittingly or unwittingly from outer space (i.e., the universe beyond the earth).

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YoursTrue said:

Let me put it to you this way, Jim. When I was in school, my parents, hard working and basically honest people (paid their taxes, didn't steal from others), did not give me a sense of right from wrong. They did not really care what I was learning in school. They cared only that I did 'well.' Because they trusted the school system. And I did pretty well, learning what I was told to learn. They took me to religious services, but again -- no real morality was taught there. No discussion of what the Bible said except to cite a few phrases and sing a few songs. So until I studied the Bible in earnest years later, I had no real sense of these things. That is in reply to teaching evolution. What public schools do and allow is not necessarily what parents should be teaching their children. And the responsibility rests with parents. So a student who wants good grades can and should learn what the schools teach. But if a parent believes in God rather than evolution (as described in brief in the first chapters of Genesis), the responsibility for teaching what is not in the school's purview is up to the parent, if he wants to teach his child these things. If not, then it's kind of up in the air for the child.

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YoursTrue said:

Let me put it to you this way, Jim. When I was in school, my parents, hard working and basically honest people (paid their taxes, didn't steal from others), did not give me a sense of right from wrong. They did not really care what I was learning in school. They cared only that I did 'well.' Because they trusted the school system. And I did pretty well, learning what I was told to learn. They took me to religious services, but again -- no real morality was taught there. No discussion of what the Bible said except to cite a few phrases and sing a few songs. So until I studied the Bible in earnest years later, I had no real sense of these things. That is in reply to teaching evolution. What public schools do and allow is not necessarily what parents should be teaching their children. And the responsibility rests with parents. So a student who wants good grades can and should learn what the schools teach. But if a parent believes in God rather than evolution (as described in brief in the first chapters of Genesis), the responsibility for teaching what is not in the school's purview is up to the parent, if he wants to teach his child these things. If not, then it's kind of up in the air for the child.

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Polymath257 said:

Well, exactly how we define life determines the exact timing, but the Earth itself didn't have the conditions early on (liquid water, for example) to allow for life. It is *possible* that life originated elsewhere in the universe, but since we don't know of any life elsewhere, this isn't a strong candidate.

But we know that life exited 3.8 billion years ago because we see fossil stromatolites, which are only produce by living things (bacteria).

So, sometime between the formation of the Earth 4.5 billion years ago and the stromatolites of 3.8 billion years ago, life on Earth got started.

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Subduction Zone said:

It is a false dichotomy to claim that one cannot believe in God and accept evolution. In fact the strong in faith have no problem doing that. But some Christians have a strange belief that their God lies, so they insist the myths of Genesis are true.

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Polymath257 said:

Well, let's take this step by step.

First, the universe as we know it started about 13.7 billion years ago, but the Earth and sun weren't formed until about 4.5 billion years ago. So the universe is about three times as old as the sun and Earth.

Next, one of the big things we have found out over the last 200 years or so is that life is a chemical process. So the distinction between 'chemical' and 'biological' is one of degree of complexity and not in something 'extra' that is added in to get life.

So, no, it isn't 'biological matter that contains life', but life *is* a complex collection of mutually interacting chemical reactions.

Next, the early one-celled living things were very simple bacteria. It took about 2 billion years before *complex* single-celled organisms formed (complex, in this context, means having things like nuclei and organelles inside of the cells).

After the development of complex cells, it was yet another billion years or so before *multi-cellular* life arose. Once *that* happened, it was a fairly short time period of 7-800 million years for apes to develop. Humans have only been around a couple hundred thousand years.

So, saying that those single celled organisms 'morphed' into apes and humans is rather a distortion.



Well, that is a possibility, but there are some constraints on this. First of all, we don't know of any life elsewhere, so that alone makes this hypothesis questionable (but still possible).

Second, the very early universe was deficient in several of the basic atoms required to make the chemicals of life: carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, sulphur, iron, etc. These were not produced in the initial heat of the 'Big Bang' (which only produced the lighter elements--through processes we understand). Instead, these heavier elements had to be formed in the cores of stars and then distributed by explosions of those stars. But the process of stars going through this cycle takes billions of years.

So, *at least* a few billion years are required for the first generation of stars to form and build up the basic elements required for life. In fact, the sun is a *third* generation star. Now, is it *possible* that some second generation stars had planets that allowed life to form? Maybe. We don't fully understand the requirements for life to form, so it is *possible*.

The other big problem with this is that the distances between stars is *huge* and life would be relatively scarce no matter what. So the likelihood of life forming somewhere else and 'dropping' into the gravitational field of the sun, then of the Earth, and actually surviving the process seems less likely than that life formed here.

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YoursTrue said:

Hmm, like it's known. Water, huge bodies, I suppose, also just appeared. Not just plain unlive water, but water suitable for bringing about life, is that it?
Genesis chapter 1, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
2Now the earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters."
It was after the waters were that vegetation appeared. Necessary for life. And then, the Bible says after vegetation appeared, the waters teemed with living creatures, with flying creatures. How did these ancients know?
At least Darwin and others figure that life came about in stages, not all at once, just like the Bible says.
From what I am reading, it seems that scientists liken rocky, barren planets in other galaxies unseen by human eyes, as possibilities for life now if unseen or perhaps eventually.

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