Ask a biologist

[nihilistcat]

Exactly how did something come from nothing across the inorganic/organic divide?

Sorry for the late reply .... but our early atmosphere contained gases such as methane, water, carbon dioxide, ammonia, hydrogen sulfide, sulfur, chlorine, nitrogen, small amounts of oxygen (from UV breakdown of water molecules), etc., along with the minerals we see today. Conditions were much different than they are today (extreme volcanic activity, volcanic lightning storms, warmer temperatures than we see today, etc.). Experiments which approximated these conditions (in a laboratory) have shown how organic chemicals can form from inorganic chemicals in this type of environment. Complex organic molecules could have also originated in outer space (many organic molecules have detected in space e.g. pyrimidine has been found in meteorites, numerous types of organic molecules have been detected in distant cloud and star formations using spectroscopy, and recent astrobiological experiments have created complex organic molecules in a laboratory under outer space conditions).

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For many reasons. I view biology as the science with the most powerful near term potential. I've lost many good friends and family members to things like cancer, heart disease, respiratory disease, etc. I've seen many people I care about suffer from things like alcoholism. And as a skeptic, I've always believed that science is our only hope to cure disease, live longer and better lives, solve intractable problems like global warming, etc., so I just can't think of anything else I'd rather be doing. 

So what is your solution to global warming?

Not purely a biology problem (obviously), but since the draconian cuts in emissions that would be required to prevent bad things from happening are about as likely as jesus floating down from the heavens ... I'm pretty sure we'll be forced to sequester carbon. A multitude of ways this could be done. A really interesting recent experiment at Columbia created artificial trees that can suck up 1000 times more CO2 than regular trees (although we then have to figure out what to do with all that carbon, but there's a variety of different approaches on the drawing board that we may be able to use to bury all that carbon). 

[nihilistcat]

Why can't you guys dumb down evolution enough so that even theists can understand it?

That might be the best question I've heard yet ... but there are simplistic explanations out there, it's just that theists are so deeply indoctrinated, and the system (government, media, corporations, etc.) isn't all that interested in going to war with religion, so it's difficult for the message to get through to these knuckleheads. 

The logic of evolution is about as straightforward as it gets. Spontaneous mutations happen, in fact at this point we well understand the statistical frequency in which they happen. If a mutation makes an organisms better suited for survival, then (well) they're more likely to survive (captain obvious says you're welcome). If they're more likely to survive, then they're more likely to reproduce (since I'm unaware of dead organisms conceiving offspring). Since they're more likely to reproduce, with each passing generation, their mutation becomes progressively more prevalent relative to members of the species who do not possess that mutation.  

But even theists who concede on evolution (which at this point is probably most theists, at least in the west), they still turn to intelligent design nonsense. This is something that I think Stephen Hawking dealt with pretty well (though it's a much more complex argument which intersects with theoretical physics) ... but here again, your average jesus freak isn't exactly rushing to the bookstore to pick up a book by someone like Dr. Hawking (and I suspect that even if we had a Stephen Hawking for dummies book out there, these numskulls still wouldn't read it)