Matter?

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lemonbeam

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Can non-living matter come from living matter?

An atheist said that experiments indeed show this, and that this was by random chance, not design.
 
lemonbeam said:
Can non-living matter come from living matter?

An atheist said that experiments indeed show this, and that this was by random chance, not design.
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I think you mean can living matter come from non-living matter. Asked the other way around I do that all the time in my bathroom.
 
He is likely referring to the Miller-Urey experiment.

There is dissent on whether the M-U experiment has validity because they used a composition of elements and gasses in their experiment to approximate the conditions on Earth in the dawn of life that have since been determined to be inaccurate. The atmosphere was much different than what M-U used in their experiments.

Of course there are lots of scientists who use this experiment as just the type of non-scientific, theological argument as your atheist friend. It is a huge leap from “created some amino acids in a test tube in 1952” to “Miller-Urey explains everything, there is no God, it’s all random.”
 
I’d ask the atheist to name a specific experiment that has demonstrated this. I’ve never heard of an experiment in which life has come from non-life and if there had been one I’m pretty sure I would have heard about it. We don’t have fossils or any other evidence to tell us exactly how life did come about, so we can’t be certain exactly what path it took. Scientists have hypotheses about what path it may have taken, and many of the stages of those paths have since been experimentally demonstrated.
 
lemonbeam said:
Can non-living matter come from living matter?
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I assume that you mean “Can living matter come from non-living matter?” That question is meaningless since at the level of matter there is no difference between matter incorporated into living things and matter incorporated into non-living things. A Carbon atom in my DNA is identical to a Carbon atom in the air as part of a molecule of Carbon Dioxide.
An atheist said that experiments indeed show this, and that this was by random chance, not design.
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Experiments, such as Miller-Urey and others, show that ordinary chemical reactions can give rise to chemicals that are present in living organisms. That is not random chance, but chemistry.

Google “abiogenesis” for more details on what we currently know about the origin of life from non-life.

rossum
 
Can someone please tell me more about this Miller-Urey experiment?
 
lemonbeam said:
Thanks.

Has this experiment been debunked?
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Debunked? I’m not sure that’s the word to use in this case. Either the experiment demonstrates what is claimed, or it demonstrates something else, or perhaps it demonstrates nothing of value. None of those cases is a problem for Catholicism.

You ask (at least we think you ask) if living matter can come from non-living matter. Well it does in the bible. And presumably it does according to science (there do not seem to have been any living creatures in the hundreds of billions degree enviornment of the early big bang). It seems like everybody agrees.
 
VociMike said:
Debunked? I’m not sure that’s the word to use in this case. Either the experiment demonstrates what is claimed, or it demonstrates something else, or perhaps it demonstrates nothing of value. None of those cases is a problem for Catholicism.

You ask (at least we think you ask) if living matter can come from non-living matter. Well it does in the bible. And presumably it does according to science (there do not seem to have been any living creatures in the hundreds of billions degree enviornment of the early big bang). It seems like everybody agrees.
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People here are giving completely opposite answers.

The others are saying living matter can not come from non-living matter.

You are saying that living matter can come from non-living matter.

Which is it? I’m confused.
 
all matter is in constant motion your chair the wall you, the fact that very quanta is a wave and a particle at the same moment. that means that nothing in the world is for sure all you see is a probability of what thins might be based on the rate at which light or sound bounces off of it. this also means that there is a mathmatical probablitlity that represents every miracle you can think of.
 
Those experiments and others since that time show that organic compounds (carbon based) can be created in the laboratory. The purpose of the experiments is to see if these compounds can be created in the conditions thought to exist on the earth many billions of years ago, before any life existed. No actual life was “created”, but compounds that are the building blocks of life on earth were formed. One purpose of these experiments is test the hypothesis that the conditions that existed at one time could be conducive to the formation of these compounds. The popular media blew it up to “creating life” in a test tube. Not even close.

There is nothing to “de-bunk” as the experiments were performed by top tier scientists and have been duplicated and expanded by others over the past fifty years in university organic chemistry labs around the world.

Considering that science believes it took millions of years to get from these basic organic compounds to anything that could be called “life”, I wouldn’t hold your breath that living matter will be “created” anytime soon from non-living matter.
 
lemonbeam said:
People here are giving completely opposite answers.

The others are saying living matter can not come from non-living matter.
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It can. If you drink some non-living water it gets incorporated into your living body. Matter is matter - hydrogen and oxygen are the same whether they are in yout living body or in a non-living glass of water.

They may be thinking of abiogenesis. See Wikipedia again: Abiogenesis and the references/links in that article.
You are saying that living matter can come from non-living matter.
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Yes it can.
Which is it? I’m confused.
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Scientists are right, creationists are wrong.

rossum
 
lemonbeam said:
And how and where has this been proven?
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By examining atoms and molecules from non-living substances and examining equivalent atoms and molecules from living organisms. There are no differences between the atoms or molecules from different sources. The classic experiment was Wöhler’s synthesis of an organic compound, urea, from non-organic precursors in 1828.
I’m not a Creationist.
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The people who deny the possibility of abiogenesis are creationists and they are wrong. The study of abiogenesis is far from complete, but we have made progress and are continuing to make progress. See New Glimpses of Life’s Puzzling Origins for more on the subject.

rossum
 
rossum said:
By examining atoms and molecules from non-living substances and examining equivalent atoms and molecules from living organisms. There are no differences between the atoms or molecules from different sources. The classic experiment was Wöhler’s synthesis of an organic compound, urea, from non-organic precursors in 1828.

The people who deny the possibility of abiogenesis are creationists and they are wrong. The study of abiogenesis is far from complete, but we have made progress and are continuing to make progress. See New Glimpses of Life’s Puzzling Origins for more on the subject.

rossum
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Whoa! The fact that all matter, living and non-living, is drawn from the same batch of elements does not prove that living matter was created from non-living. Only that it is and was possible. And your earlier post about water being incorporated into a living organism is about chemistry, not “creation”.

The possibility of abiogenesis as the origin of life on earth has been demonstrated, but the question of the OP and subsequent posts had to do with whether an actual living organism had been created from non-living material. The answer to that is “no”, or “not yet”.

It seems that you are answering a different question than the one being asked. Organic matter is not “life” in itself, and you are responding to this as if the query is about organic compounds, not about a life form, which is what the query is about.

The steps that have been accomplished by science so far in this regard is like laying the gravel base for the first few miles of a 1000 mile long interstate highway. They have a long way to go before traffic (life) is flowing on it.
 
rossum said:
Scientists are right, creationists are wrong.
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And any creationist who says living matter cannot come from non-living matter is ignoring the description in Genesis whereby God created man of dust from the ground. Again, everybody seems to agree on this topic.
 
chaunceygardner said:
Whoa! The fact that all matter, living and non-living, is drawn from the same batch of elements does not prove that living matter was created from non-living. Only that it is and was possible. And your earlier post about water being incorporated into a living organism is about chemistry, not “creation”.
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Go back and read the opening post in this thread:
lemonbeam said:
Can non-living matter come from living matter?
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That question is ambiguous, it could be referring to either vitalism or to abiogenesis. I have been answering both questions. Miller-Urey relates to abiogenesis while Wöhler’s synthesis of urea relates to vitalism.
The possibility of abiogenesis as the origin of life on earth has been demonstrated, but the question of the OP and subsequent posts had to do with whether an actual living organism had been created from non-living material. The answer to that is “no”, or “not yet”.
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The OP asked “can” not “has it already been demonstrated that”. As you have correctly pointed out, the answer to the ‘can’ question for abiogenesis is ‘yes’.
It seems that you are answering a different question than the one being asked. Organic matter is not “life” in itself, and you are responding to this as if the query is about organic compounds, not about a life form, which is what the query is about.
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As I said, the OP was ambiguous.
The steps that have been accomplished by science so far in this regard is like laying the gravel base for the first few miles of a 1000 mile long interstate highway. They have a long way to go before traffic (life) is flowing on it.
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The highway is only 100 miles long and not only do we have the gravel base laid from both ends, we have started work on some of the intermediate sections as well. There is still a lot of work left to do, but we can see that we have made a great deal of progress since Miller-Urey in 1953.

rossum
 
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