Origin of Creation

[Rutarete]

How do you think people came about? Science says evolution, but where did what we evolve from come from? And where did that come from?
Edit: According to OT it is not evolution. So besides the science outlook, how else can we look at this question?

I think every thing is an active possibility, stemming from previous possibilities, like a family tree. Now i assume that the first possibility had to be a paradox, or created itself, so i'm stuck.  Is existence a paradox?

So what are your thoughts?

[agentflare]

My personal theory goes:
If you ask why to the answer enough times, you will end up with "it just does" eventually.

There are fundamental values in our universe that cannot be derived from theory.

[tyranim]

i made humanity... after being made by chuck norris. [/joking]
ive come to stop asking myself this question. there is no way to find out and its just illogical to think there is. one can only guess... and my guess is that i made it and i have no recollection of the experience. because it was so exhausting, it wiped my memory clear of it all and just 18 years ago, my body came out of stasis. 

[johannhowitzer]

Actually, as far as science is concerned, the jury is still out on Evolution.  Some evidence supports it, some flies in its face.  On the one hand, we have a seeming progression of fossils, on the other hand we have things like observed genetic decay/dilution that would vastly outweigh any beneficial mutations, making the uphill climb from protozoa to hominids counter to scientific intuition.  Then we have carbon dating on the one hand, which clocks some expired organisms at millions of years, and on the other hand we can reverse-project the intensity of the sun's radiation, the earth's magnetic field, other similar factors, and that makes an earth so ancient look very inhospitable to the kind of life we find in fossils.

We call Evolution a theory, but as far as the evidence is concerned, it's still very much in the hypothesis stage.  On the other hand, natural selection (aka "survival of the fittest") does definitely occur on a local, observable basis.  It increases dilution of species' respective gene pools, but it's still there.

[Rutarete]

So what is your non-science answer? How else besides evolution would you look st it?

[OldTrees]

1) Science does not say Evolution is the cause of Creation or even the cause of Life. Evolution can only change existing biodiversity.
 Most of evolution is a result of genetic drift (aka neutral mutations) not natural selection. Evolution has a lot more evidence than is publicly know (partially due to compounding misconceptions in the public not making it worth our time to correct them all and partially because the complexity of the idea makes it hard for an evolutionist to remember how the public thinks and thus is poor at communicating).
I would be interested in link about genetic decay/dilution to see if they are examples of genetic drift or if it merely refers to variance being lowered which is expected in the Evolution model. Mutations -> Add variance -> Drift to near fixation (100%) or Natural selection to near fixation. -> Lower variation in that gene.
Since I plan to go into Genetics, your sources would be very useful to me.The current theory is that the first life was RNA being both able to replicate itself (with potential errors for mutations) and store genetic information. This is supported by the wide usage (I am not referring to the mRNA being used as a messanger. I am referring more to details like Ribosomes are made of RNA) of RNA is cells today.

Abiogenesis (different theory and field from Evolution) is investigating if Abiotic reactions could create Organic molecules (ones that use Carbon) and if these Organic molecules could make RNA. [See Pre RNA World. RNA world is the theoretical start of evolution. Pre RNA world is the final stage of Abiogenesis from the current theory.]

[Rutarete]

1) Science does not say Evolution is the cause of Creation or even the cause of Life. Evolution can only change existing biodiversity.
 Most of evolution is a result of genetic drift (aka neutral mutations) not natural selection. Evolution has a lot more evidence than is publicly know (partially due to compounding misconceptions in the public not making it worth our time to correct them all and partially because the complexity of the idea makes it hard for an evolutionist to remember how the public thinks and thus is poor at communicating).
I would be interested in link about genetic decay/dilution to see if they are examples of genetic drift or if it merely refers to variance being lowered which is expected in the Evolution model. Mutations -> Add variance -> Drift to near fixation (100%) or Natural selection to near fixation. -> Lower variation in that gene.
Since I plan to go into Genetics, your sources would be very useful to me.The current theory is that the first life was RNA being both able to replicate itself (with potential errors for mutations) and store genetic information. This is supported by the wide usage (I am not referring to the mRNA being used as a messanger. I am referring more to details like Ribosomes are made of RNA) of RNA is cells today.

Abiogenesis (different theory and field from Evolution) is investigating if Abiotic reactions could create Organic molecules (ones that use Carbon) and if these Organic molecules could make RNA. [See Pre RNA World. RNA world is the theoretical start of evolution. Pre RNA world is the final stage of Abiogenesis from the current theory.]

Very interesting. Unfortunately i don't really know much of genetics (bad biology teacher last year), so i don' have much to offer. But with a quick search i found this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dilution_gene (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dilution_gene) which i hope will lead you to the information you want

[johannhowitzer]

1) Science does not say Evolution is the cause of Creation or even the cause of Life. Evolution can only change existing biodiversity.

Doesn't stop it being believed all over the place.  Which I guess isn't too harmful, but the truth about what evolution is scientifically would probably be more useful - and possibly create less annoying idiots (we can hope, right?).

[OldTrees]

1) Science does not say Evolution is the cause of Creation or even the cause of Life. Evolution can only change existing biodiversity.

Doesn't stop it being believed all over the place.  Which I guess isn't too harmful, but the truth about what evolution is scientifically would probably be more useful - and possibly create less annoying idiots (we can hope, right?).

How many people would be interested in learning what Evolution actual is? I have recently had a sufficiently indepth class on the topic that I feel I could explain each of the common misconceptions. (Do not spam this thread. Please PM me instead.)

[johannhowitzer]

The information in the DNA lattice is composed of four opposing molecules - Adenine-Thymine and Guanine-Cytosine.  These two pairs are always found together, but sometimes the order is reversed.  DNA has two helixes, and a child will have one half of the DNA of each parent.  New combinations of old information results in new information; evolution occurs when a mutation introduces a new characteristic (via a new combination of existing information) to a child that did not exist in either parent.  Natural selection is the process whereby a new trait (most are minor changes) becomes either more or less viable than the previous setup, causing the child with the advantage to survive better than one with a disadvantage.

Hypothetically, this is supposed to lead to a gradual increase in special sophistication, but the process is haphazard - in fact, totally random - and negative traits are added vastly more often than positive ones, resulting in a corruptive slide of a species into less and less advantageous forms (we are seeing this in humans already, with increase of genetic disorders among other things).  This degeneration begins to build on itself - it would take a massive inflow of very beneficial traits in a short timespan to reverse it.

Meanwhile, we're seeing mass extinction of species after species, vastly outweighing the "new" species we've catalogued, which might just have never been encountered by humans before.  Our current observations just don't fit the very speculative "macro-Evolutionary" concept, which describes an increase in the number of species and a rise in their individual viability.  We're seeing the opposite.

[Time_lord_victorius]

Chuck norris, nuff said

[OldTrees]

I hope the Author will forgive this tangent into evolution.

Johannhowitzer you were right up until the word evolution.
First Paragraph

Evolution: Evolution is whenever the allele frequencies of a population change. This can happen due to, Mutation, Natural Selection, Genetic Drift (random mating does not necessitate representative offspring) and Gene Flow (migration).

Mutations are not entirely random. Certain mutations occur more frequently than others. However this is not too important of a point.

Natural Selection describes when a heritable trait (genetic cause) provides a relative reproductive advantage (more viable offspring is a good measurement) it will tend to be more frequent is future generations as long as it provides a relative reproductive advantage. This can be broken down into: Tendency to survive to reproductive age, ability to find/obtain a mate, ability to produce fertile offspring that survive. Natural selection is only partly about survival. Also this gets more complicated because it is actually the genes that are competing not the organisms. Basically you genes count each of your sibling's (you share 50% of your genes with your sibling) offspring as half of one of your offspring.

Genetic Drift is when the random sampling or chance causes the allele frequencies to change. In the below table you see the probability matric of 2 heterozygotes. If a perfect sampling occured then the allele frequencies would not change. However if the sampling was not perfect (say 2 BB, 1 Bb and 1 bb) then the gene frequencies would have obviously changed.

	B	b
B	BB	Bb
b	Bb	bb

The other common form of Genetic Drift is if a non discriminating event like a natural disaster does not destroy a proportionate sampling. (take the 2BB, 1Bb and 1bb above. if a tornado kills a BB then the gene frequencies would have changed again.) Genetic Drift is very important because it is the major cause of evolution despite not having as large an impact on adaption.

Mutation + Genetic Drift actually gives us a nice interaction. The number of mutations that enter a population is proportional to the size of the population however the chance each has of reaching fixation (100% frequency) is inversely proportional to the number of different mutations for that allele. This means that the rate populations gain new fixed mutations is a constant that can be used to determine roughly how long ago common ancestors would have been.

Finally there is Gene Flow. This is simply migration. If a member is added or subtracted from the group it can change the allele frequencies.

TLDR: Evolution is not just Natural Selection + Mutation

Second Paragraph
Sophistication has happened sometimes and not others. It is not a necessary result of evolution unlike the previous biological theories that claimed there was a ladder of life moving toward perfect. Evolution does not move toward perfect, sophistication nor even necessarily adaptation (if the other 3 forces are stronger than natural selection in that case).

Neutral mutations occur most often, then negative then positive. However there are a few things to note about genetic disorders especially in the human population.
1)Natural Selection and Mutation form an equilibrium the value of which depends on the population's mutation rate (see Genetic Drift + Mutation) and the Strength of selection on that trait. This equilibrium is at the total allele frequency for negative mutations that Natural Selection removes them at the same rate as Mutation adds them.
2)Natural Selection does not affect non reproducing individuals. This is why we have so many genetic disorders only appear after the end of reproductive age.

TLDR: Evolution does not improve creatures just changes them. All negative mutations relevant to Natural Selection are kept at a equilibrium frequency.

Third Paragraph
Species tend to become specialized. When the variance of a species drops due to specialization their risk of extinction (if the environment changes) increases. Throughout history there is documented evidence of extinction and even mass extinctions. Extinctions occur whenever the environment changes enough that a species does not adapt before they die out. Indeed there is a fairly constant background extinction rate before humans became a major contributor.

Apparent marine fossil diversity during the Phanerozoic
-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biodiversity

TLDR: Prior to major human contribution in extinction, biodiversity did increase despite a background extinction rate.