@Cog, Sheldon, Simon, et al...

Dog-gonnit, guys! How the heck do you expect poor ol' Josh to reply when you all keep stating his next grand slam arguments for him? That's just rude, stealing his thunder like that... *shaking head in disappointment*...

Oh for fuck sake, really?! This totally bollocks arguement again....

Please, theists.... please actually read more than one fucking book!!! PLEASE!!!!!!

We need to colonize Mars asap...

Usually, when I see posts of this sort, this is the cue to push the big red button, because posts of this sort are usually the output of the usual suspects from the world of duplicitous creationist apologetics. But in this case, i'm going to hold off the ordnance, just in case for once, the alarm bells are signalling a false positive.

So, let's start, shall we?

So, if God did not create life, where did life come from?

Testable natural processes. In this case, chemical reactions. I provided a handy exposition of the scientific case for a naturalistic origin of life here. Have fun reading that, and the 70 scientific papers I cited as source material for that exposition at the end.

I am assuming most of you believe in Evolution

BZZZZZTTT!!!!! ERROR!!!!!

Evolution is NOT a matter of "belief", it is an OBSERVED FACT. An observed fact accompanied by a scientific theory with massive explanatory power. Evolution has been documented occurring both in wild populations of living organisms, and in laboratory populations being studied for the purpose. Indeed, in my collection of close to 4,000 scientific papers from the field of evolutionary biology that I have residing on my hard drive, one of those papers documents an experiment that YOU can perform in your own back garden greenhouse, and which, in about three years' time, will provide you with a speciation event.

and I would like to hear your thoughts about what is Evolution and how it is possible/ evidence for it.

Evidence? How many of those 4,000 papers would you like me to bring here, a good number of which contain documentation of direct experimental tests of evolutionary postulates?

I am no expert on the theory and want to learn more about it.

You need to start with the elementary concepts. Let's start with the following ...

Most people are aware of the elementary concepts involved in evolution, of which the most elementary is that the genes you inherit have a major impact on what you are. Another elementary concept, backed by vast mountains of data, is that between generations, some of those genes can change. Specifically, mutations can occur in the genes located within germ cells, which are the cells responsible for generating sperm and ova. Mutations in those genes are the mutations that are passed on to future generations, if the requisite sperm and ova meet.

Now, the next question to ask, is what forces act to maintain those mutations within a population. Mutations that kill their inheritors before reproductive age are obviously not maintained, and this likewise applies to mutations that result in reproductive sterility. This leaves a lot of other mutations, that don't kill, sterilise or cripple their inheritors.

The first mechanism for preserving such mutations in a population was, of course, the one Darwin put forward - selection. Understanding selection is pretty elementary. If a new mutation bestows additional prowess upon its inheritors, allowing them to leave behind more offspring, then those mutations will not only be maintained in a population, but pretty soon start to become increasingly prevalent within that population. Doesn't take a rocket scientist to understand this.

However, selection isn't the only possibility. It took scientists a little while to accommodate this idea, because it wasn't obvious how other possibilities could work, but thanks to people such as Motoo Kimura, we now have in place what is known as "neutral drift", which centres upon the fact that the majority of mutations don't actually result in significant change in reproductive prowess. Yet, these can persist too. You're currently carrying something like a hundred of them that you inherited from your parents in your genome, and you in turn will probably pass a hundred new ones to your offspring. Some of the mutations in this class will perhaps only last for one generation, before disappearing, whilst others will last for 10 or even 100 generations, and some may even be more persistent than that. Lenski's landmark experiment provides us with the evidence for this.

Basically, every population carries around with it, its own collection of neutral, or approximately neutral, mutations. Some of which persist long enough to have something interesting happen to them. Namely, they become the substrate from which interesting new non-neutral mutations can arise. Classic examples include the Cit+ mutation in Lenski's experiment, which only arose after a collection of neutral mutations arose within the requisite population from which the new Cit+ mutation could arise - a nice, rigorous demonstration of the power of historical contingency. Another example is the antifreeze glycoprotein mutation in Antarctic Notothenioid fishes, which arose when a trypsinogen gene underwent duplication in that lineage. The duplicate gene was free to accumulate mutations without interfering with the metabolism of the fishes, whose other copy of the trypsinogen gene continued functioning in the usual manner whilst the duplicate was roaming its way through mutation space. Somewhere along the line, the mutated duplicate copy started coding for an interesting new protein, which suddenly bestowed upon those fishes inheriting this a new ability - namely, the ability to move into Antarctic waters and start feeding on new food sources, without the less than happy consequences that befall other fishes sticking around too long in the Antarctic winter, whose blood freezes solid. This new protein acted as an antifreeze in the blood of the Notothenioids, and they were able to remain in Antarctic waters through the winter, thus setting up permanent home in a nice new habitat with food sources inaccessible to other fish competitors.

That's an important point to remember - neutral mutations can form the seed material for something later on that becomes selectable.

But another point to remember, is that what benefits the population doesn't always benefit individuals in that population, as far as genetic legacy is concerned. The Sickle Cell miutation is a case in point. Any individual unfortunate enough to be homozygous for this (i.e., inherits two copies of the gene, one from each parent) is going to lead a miserable life. Which makes you wonder why this mutation persists. Well, it so happens that being heterozygous for this mutation, namely inheriting one copy of the gene, doesn't lead to you having a miserable life afflicted by disease. On the contrary, it actually offers enhanced resistance to something nasty, in the form of malaria parasites. Those homozygous individuals with unfortunate disease symptoms, are the price the human population paid in the past for having a bigger proportion enjoy enhanced protection from malaria.

So, quite simply, a gene can be beneficial to a population, but have a downside for some of the individuals in that population. And this brings us to the central principle that all too many people fail to understand, namely, that evolution is a population phenomenon. Evolution is a mechanism for maintaining ?populations, and is completely indifferent to individuals.

Quite simply, you're not going to experience wholesale change of genome throughout your body in your lifetime, with the possible exception of your being an unfortunate, irradiated survivor of a future World War Three, but since the dose of radiation that will generate this change will kill you in about four days, this exception is purely academic. Basically, individuals are genetically static, Individuals don't change during their lifetimes (though certain important parts of them can, that has an impact here - see later). But the population<>/em> undergoes observable and readily measurable change the moment a new individual is added to the population through reproduction, or an existing individual dies. Incoming new individuals add a new collection of shuffled genes to the genes already present in the population, and outgoing, dying individuals remove their genes from that population. What changes, and is manifestly dynamic over even short time scales, is the population.

However, this is where life starts to get interesting. That part of you that has an impact here I alluded to briefly above, namely your primary reproductive organs, also has an input. Courtesy of the manner in which the cells of said organs divide to produce sperm and ova. Not only do they shuffle existing genes, so that reproductive events produce new combinations of said genes in future individuals, but those reproducing cells have a habit of acquiring mutations while they're producing those eggs and sperm. Mutations which don't affect you, but which may well affect your offspring pretty profoundly. Which is why you could, quite possibly, be the foundational individual injecting a new mutation into the population, without you being affected thereby - only your eggs or sperm are affected, not your entire being. Your offspring, however, end up being affected as whole organisms by said mutations.

Now, if those mutations don't kill off your offspring, and allow your offspring in turn to reproduce themselves, those mutations stand a chance of persisting in the population. Indeed, that's another aspect of evolutionary theory that all too many people misunderstand - evolution is best described as survival of the sufficiently competent.You don't have to be the 'best' (by whatever metric this is purportedly determined) in order to pass on your genes, you simply have to be good enough to avoid becoming lunch for something else.

There is, of course, a lot more ground to cover, but the above should suffice for now.

@Simon Moon

You missed, "if humans evolved from apes, why are there still apes".
______________________________________________________

And: "If all my, (family), cousins are descendants of the same grandparents, why do I still have my grandparents?"

Mutorc

So, if God did not create life, where did life come from?
I am assuming most of you believe in Evolution and I would like to hear your thoughts about what is Evolution and how it is possible/ evidence for it. I am no expert on the theory and want to learn more about it.

First of all, I wouldn't rule out a 'god' when trying to understand the origin of life.
But I would be honest and say, let's look at the evidence before us.

Now evolution is a documented, evidenced and proven fact.

The theological explanation however, is not demonstrable, has no credibility, no evidence, is not testable and is continually proven to not be necessary when modelling and understanding life on our planet and the cosmos we reside within.

When 99.9% of the evidence points to an answer, we can look at that and say, "that's good enough!".

Moving on.

Where did life come from? No one knows is the honest answer.

But what we can say is, everything and I do literally mean everything, has a plausible explanation for it's causality that obeys laws of nature.

We are not special, we follow these laws and they are never suspended in our favour.

If you think they are, then that is on you to prove the claim and to meet the burden of proof.

But I would take a hunch that Abiogenesis or Panspermia are plausible and viable options that do not require the suspension of reality, nor invoke a mythical wizard to simply woosh things into existence.