Val, it is my belief that life started from very simple organic molecules, "self-replicating" modules, that were structured in such a way that they could chemically make copies of themselves. Eventually RNA formed, and then DNA. Over very long periods of time, more complex structures aggregated and eventually resulted in what we now know as cells. At this point, evolution could get underway.
Evolution has a natural bias towards supporting life -- Even a minuscule advantage in reproduction will allow a genetic line to perpetuate itself, and over time all those tiny advantages create trends -- towards multi-cellular organisms, towards awareness of and responsiveness to the environment, towards mobility, towards sentience and intelligence. Things that work live to see another day; things that don't work tend to die out.
Man and other higher-order animals, if you look at them closely, are just collections of processes and specialized cell lines. We are communities of evolved cells that perform mostly useful functions for the community as a whole, as well as for themselves. There are a lot of dead ends and sometimes deleterious features that came along for the ride, features that no longer work, coding that might have functioned 10,000 generations ago but is now just junk DNA, taking up space on a chromosome but not doing anything in particular.
Evolution has a natural bias towards supporting life -- Even a minuscule advantage in reproduction will allow a genetic line to perpetuate itself, and over time all those tiny advantages create trends -- towards multi-cellular organisms, towards awareness of and responsiveness to the environment, towards mobility, towards sentience and intelligence. Things that work live to see another day; things that don't work tend to die out.
Man and other higher-order animals, if you look at them closely, are just collections of processes and specialized cell lines. We are communities of evolved cells that perform mostly useful functions for the community as a whole, as well as for themselves. There are a lot of dead ends and sometimes deleterious features that came along for the ride, features that no longer work, coding that might have functioned 10,000 generations ago but is now just junk DNA, taking up space on a chromosome but not doing anything in particular.
