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There's no trap here, just looking for answers to help me understand things a little better. I want to hear those who know a good bit about evolution and common descent on this forum.
I strongly suggest that you read something like "The Blind Watchmaker" by Richard Dawkins. It is very readable, even for the layperson, and totally explains how the wide diversity of life that we observe on this earth is possible with CUMULATIVE natural selection. The book will also answer your question.
Let me share a little about what I understand from the Bible. Evolution is definitely real, it's happening all the time. From a Scriptural standpoint, you can see it taking place since the fall of creation. Yet, there is no grounds for common descent in the Genesis account. I take those two subjects, evolution and common descent, as two different things.
So I believe in evolution, but not common descent. Again, I'm not laying any kind of trap, I just want clarification.
I strongly suggest that you read something like "The Blind Watchmaker" by Richard Dawkins. It is very readable, even for the layperson, and totally explains how the wide diversity of life that we observe on this earth is possible with CUMULATIVE natural selection. The book will also answer your question.
I will look to read it one day, I'm not much for reading books however. I'm more of a writer. (So I'm not making any promises about reading it) Tell me your answer to my question.
From a Theological view Yes as they both have the same creator. they can both be traced back to being a command of God(swt)
From a biological source it is possible but doubtful all life came from a single amino acid molecule.
Woodrow, there is ample and conclusive scientific evidence for LUCA, Last Universal Common Ancestor.
"In the study of early life on Earth, one name towers above the rest: LUCA. LUCA is not the name of a famous scientist in the field; it is shorthand for Last Universal Common Ancestor, a single cell that lived perhaps 3 or 4 billion years ago, and from which all life has since evolved. Amazingly, every living thing we see around us (and many more that we can only see with the aid of a microscope) is related. As far as we can tell, life on Earth arose only once.
Life comes in all shapes and sizes, from us humans to bacteria. So how do we know that all life has evolved from a single cell? The answer is written in the language of the genetic code
The genetic code is the language in which most genes are written into DNA. Such genes are recipes for making proteins. Proteins are what make the cell tick, doing everything from making DNA to digesting the food we eat and extracting the nutrients.
Incredibly, the exact same code is used in humans and bacteria, so a gene from a human being can be put into a bacterium, and the bacterium will make the human protein — this is how insulin is made.
The genetic code is universal for all life.
That the genetic code is universal to all life tells us that everything is related. All life regenerates itself by producing offspring, and over time small changes in the offspring result in small changes to the protein recipes. But because the recipes are written in the same language (the genetic code), it is possible to compare these recipes (and other genes) to build the equivalent of a family tree."
From a Theological view Yes as they both have the same creator. they can both be traced back to being a command of God(swt)
From a biological source it is possible but doubtful all life came from a single amino acid molecule.
I see. I believe you also answered my second question. Again, evolution definitely takes place, and there's a good case that can be made that evolution is present within Genesis. Yet it doesn't speak on common descent. My second question was why do scientists say that all life evolved from a common ancestor or a set of microbes? It should be easy to say that all life came from the same source, that all life share a single microbe ancestor.
The Bible says God created life, but He created many different creatures. These original creatures would be the ancestors of which all life evolved from. If science points toward different ancestors which all life evolved, then that would be in line with what Scripture says in a way. Of course a model for the Genesis account is not complete. (As far as I'm concerned. People get the bedtime story when Genesis is mentioned, but it is saying more than what we think it's saying)
We have examples of living organisms today that seem to straddle the gap between vegetable life and animal life such as the euglena and slime molds.
On the other hand, I'm not sure how much credence to give the notion that all life on Earth descended from a single, primal cell. If a single cell could spontaneously emerge through chemical reactions on the primal Earth, I don't see any reason to assume that it took place only once and that only one cell emerged from which all other life descended.
But to be brief, I don't know the answer to the question, though it does seem possible that humans and trees do share a common ancestor some 3.8 billion years or so back.
I have two questions about common descent biology. I'll ask the first question in this post, because I want the best answers for both.
Question 1:
Do humans and trees share a distant common ancestor?
Yes, they do. But it is quite a distant ancestor.
Most people know the human genome is almost 99% identical to the chimpanzee genome. But it is also about 70% identical to the genome of pumpkins. It's true.
Woodrow, there is ample and conclusive scientific evidence for LUCA, Last Universal Common Ancestor.
"In the study of early life on Earth, one name towers above the rest: LUCA. LUCA is not the name of a famous scientist in the field; it is shorthand for Last Universal Common Ancestor, a single cell that lived perhaps 3 or 4 billion years ago, and from which all life has since evolved. Amazingly, every living thing we see around us (and many more that we can only see with the aid of a microscope) is related. As far as we can tell, life on Earth arose only once.
Life comes in all shapes and sizes, from us humans to bacteria. So how do we know that all life has evolved from a single cell? The answer is written in the language of the genetic code
The genetic code is the language in which most genes are written into DNA. Such genes are recipes for making proteins. Proteins are what make the cell tick, doing everything from making DNA to digesting the food we eat and extracting the nutrients.
Incredibly, the exact same code is used in humans and bacteria, so a gene from a human being can be put into a bacterium, and the bacterium will make the human protein — this is how insulin is made.
The genetic code is universal for all life.
That the genetic code is universal to all life tells us that everything is related. All life regenerates itself by producing offspring, and over time small changes in the offspring result in small changes to the protein recipes. But because the recipes are written in the same language (the genetic code), it is possible to compare these recipes (and other genes) to build the equivalent of a family tree."
Interesting. I admit I have not taken any genetic courses since the 1970s. That was just tossed out as a possibility back then, but not probable.
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